Zemmour Announces

In the last few days I’ve written twice about Eric Zemmour. Today comes the news he has formally announced his candidacy for President of France. 

Writing for Power Line, Steven Hayward has a translation of Zemmour’s announcement speech. I’ve read it and it is powerful stuff. I imagine it is what Donald Trump would have said in 2016 had he been a scholar/journalist instead of a developer/tycoon.

Zemmour attacks head on the globalist elites that have allowed France to become something its own people no longer recognize as home. He declares against the EU, and against “wokeism,” as well as his well-known opposition to multiculturalism.

News You Can Use

Paul Caron, Dean of the Law School at Pepperdine University, authors the TaxProfBlog which runs some interesting stuff. Today he has a chart by Dan Mitchell categorizing the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia) into five categories, based on whether they tax personal income and, if so, how it is done. 

Mitchell’s five categories are No Income Tax, Flat Tax, Low-Rate Graduated Tax (<5%), Graduated Tax (5-8%), and Class Warfare Graduated Tax (>8%). The percentages represent the state’s top rate for the highest earners. The nine states in the No Tax group are AK, FL, NV, NH, SD, TN, TX, WA, and WY. 

NY is in the class warfare group, FL has no state income tax. Imagine how much money Trump saved when he moved from NY to FL. He likely saved more than all but a few earn before taxes.

They’re Mostly Patriots

COTTonLINE’s favorite analyst of foreign affairs - George Friedman - makes interesting points about the mental gymnastics intelligence analysts must accomplish in order to do their jobs. He uses Russia’s Putin as an example.

Whether Putin is good or evil is a nice conversation to have. But if you want a sense of what he might be thinking, start with the fact that he doesn’t think he is evil and grasp what he is afraid of and confident in. Empathize with him. He is a former KGB officer and a patriot who watched his country collapse and be treated with disdain. Feel the pain he feels and then grasp how intelligent he is. Then it is possible you might catch a glimpse of his next move.

Analysts must bury themselves in the countries and leaders they’re dealing with. It’s their job to know the leader’s mind, and to do that, passages like Matthew 5:44 are essential. Loving your enemy is the means to destroy him. Hating him blinds you to his fundamental strength: the fact that he believes deeply in his virtue. And if you don’t understand the pride and patriotism of someone like Putin, you will never contain him.

In the instance of Putin vs. Ukraine, know that he feels morally responsible for the defense of ethnic Russians who live there. He will support them as the Pakistanis supported the Taliban. 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t tell us if he will invade, as he surely wishes to. We must also understand his assessment of the risks to Russia inherent in that act, and how much those will negatively impact his other aims in Europe and beyond. 

Crime Rate Politics

Writing at statistical website FiveThirtyEight, Daniel Cox makes an interesting point about why the increased murder rate probably won’t be a significant factor in the 2022 midterm elections.

Recent trends in geographic polarization have shown that the places experiencing the greatest surge in crime today — cities and inner suburbs, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life, where I serve as director — are largely Democratic strongholds. In other words, there are simply not that many swing voters living in the areas most affected by rising violence.

Translation: Most of the increase in murders is Blacks shooting Blacks, assaults which Black Americans inexplicably take in stride. Thus Cox is probably correct. OTOH, a spate of carjackings in upscale suburbs, as recently experienced near the Twin Cities, could have real political relevance.

Salvation Army Retreats

An item of concern recently among conservatives is that the Salvation Army, which has had a decent reputation, sent around a controversial “woke” memo. Just The News has part B of the story.

The Salvation Army has withdrawn its controversial "Let's Talk About ... Racism" guide following criticism and donor backlash over the text that asked white supporters of the charity group to deliver "sincere" apologies for their race and the past sins of the Church.

I’ll bet too many potential white donors were telling SA bell-ringers they were offended and would no longer support the church’s charitable works. There is much truth in this adage: “Get woke, go broke.” 

About the Baltic States

I’ve visited the 3 small Baltic nations which were parts of the Soviet Union: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I like them quite a lot. This year, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the USSR, Reason magazine looks at these three small nations and celebrates their unusual post-USSR success. 

These 3 members of the European Union and NATO (since 2004) are solidly European and western in orientation. The other now-independent former SSRs have done poorly, one way or another. 

If you get the chance, the Baltic states are worth a visit. So is Kaliningrad,  a small bit of Russia wedged between Poland and Lithuania which is as separate from the Russian landmass as Alaska is from the continental U.S.

More on Zemmour

We wrote yesterday about Eric Zemmour, the French historian-turned-politician who opposes the Islamic immigration that has flooded France. Today comes another, more comprehensive view of this man, in the Claremont Review of Books. Hat tip to Power Line for the link. It is a long read, as many CRB articles are, but perhaps worth your time.

Cheney a Swamp Creature

I may winter in sunny Nevada but the politics of Wyoming, where I legally reside and vote, are still very much on my mind. Thus I note the following.

Attorney Harriet Hageman is challenging Liz Cheney for the Republican nomination for Wyoming’s one and only House of Representatives seat. Just The News reports Hageman accuses Cheney of voluntarily leaving her post on the House Natural Resources Committee, the actions of which are of extreme importance to Wyoming. 

Hageman claims, with some justice, that Cheney is more attached to VA where she lives while Congress is in session than to WY which elected her. Rep. Cheney has become a #neverTrump crusader and co-chairs the House Jan. 6 investigation. These actions are not winners in conservative Wyoming, which as JTN observes, voted 70% for Trump. 

The “Greedy Jobs” Explanation

The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports research into root causes for the men vs. women pay differential. A woman economics prof at Harvard claims it is the premium paid to what she calls “greedy jobs” that accounts for most of the difference. How does she describe such jobs?

Claudia Goldin, who taught Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, outlines her argument in her new book, Career & Family, which draws on research to show that highly-paid 'greedy jobs' in City law, banking and politics force women to choose between their careers and families once they become mothers.

The term 'greedy job' describes 'a certain type of "beck and call" job, which pays over the odds for extensive travel, unpredictable, inflexible hours and demanding client facetime.'

The capitalized word “City” above is a British term meaning the heart of London which is the economic equivalent of Manhattan in NYC. Goldin adds the following:

The prestige, selectivity and enormous pay checks make this type of job highly desirable for male and female graduates. However, once children come along, it becomes difficult for two parents to maintain their 'greedy' careers.

'Men and women have fairly equal pay trajectories until babies come along,' the article notes. 'Because women tend to marry men a little older, and so ahead of them on the pay scale, it is logical for the wife to step back.'

Another major factor in gender pay differentials is that far fewer women tend to self-select into physically dangerous jobs like construction, first responder (fire-fighting and law enforcement), mining, logging, and the like. Therefore, far fewer women than men are injured or killed at work. Dangerous, dirty jobs - which society needs done - tend to pay more than safer, cleaner occupations.

Zemmour Interviewed

Writing for Spectator World, Freddy Gray documents an interview he conducted with Eric Zemmour, the most interesting person on the political right in France. Zemmour is a likely candidate in the next French presidential election. 

Zemmour is a defender of French uniqueness and an opponent of Muslim immigration into France. As the child of Algerian emigrant parents, he has the well-known “convert’s zeal” for French culture.

His views make him anathema to some, and an unlikely winner of the presidential run-off that is a feature of French elections. He is also the only truly interesting personality in modern French politics. Perhaps you will find many of his views congenial.

Ancient Climate Change

As reported in EurekAlert of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, scientists have shown that climate change wiped out Liangzhu, an advanced Chinese city, some 5000 years ago. Oddly, no SUVs were available to blame for the exceptionally heavy rains that basically flooded it out.

More proof, if any is needed, that climate change is a constant, a feature of life on this planet quite independent of human agency. Fortunately, we humans have proven sufficiently inventive and flexible to cope with it. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll posting at Instapundit for the link.

Immigration: We Want Little, Get Much

A Cato Institute poll, reported in April, found that 77% of Americans want either none (9%) or a low level (68%) of immigration. Only 23% want the high level of immigration we now experience, ‘courtesy’ of President Biden.

The poll also found that substantial majorities of Independents (61%) and Republicans (85%) believe immigration should prioritize “What benefits the United States and its current citizens.” Nearly half (45%) of Democrats share this view. If its current policies are any indication, the White House does not agree.

Do you find yourself wondering how (dare I ask “if”) we elected people as out-of-step with ourselves as the current crop at both ends of Pennsylvania Ave. appear to be? Poor President Sock Puppet blithely mumbles whatever his shadowy, unelected minders put on the prompter scroll, including “end quote.”

Canada’s Elizabeth Warren

The New York Post reports another case of a prominent woman claiming minority status to which she has no biological claim.

Carrie Bourassa, a public health expert who served as scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, was suspended on Nov. 1, five days after the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a lengthy expose on her background.

Far from being a member of the Métis nation, as she had long claimed, a laborious trace of Bourassa’s family tree revealed that her supposedly indigenous ancestors were in fact immigrant farmers who hailed from Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

One is reminded of Rachel Dolezal and Elizabeth Warren. There have been many other offenders, check Wikipedia’s List of Imposters.

Saturday Sensibility

Steven Hayward, opining at Power Line on the eternal verities of crime and punishment, and the relevance of basic economics thereto.

The root cause of crime is criminals. Increase the incentives for crime (the result of leniency) and you will get more of it. Like everything else in life, incentives matter.

If anything, our society has an under-incarceration problem. We lock up too few criminals, and those for too-short sentences.

Black Friday

Beginning today, on the shopping holiday labeled “Black Friday,” it is officially okay to have Christmas decorations on view. They showed up in some retailers nearly a month ago, right after Halloween, but that was considered jumping the gun.

The name - Black Friday - originates from long ago when bookkeepers would write in their ledgers the profits in black ink, and losses in red ink. This became known as Black Friday because it is the day that, enjoying booming pre-Christmas sales, dry goods retail establishments supposedly flip over from a net loss for the year to a net profit. 

It probably was never true for genuinely successful firms - think Walmart or predecessor Kmart. Still the idea of hanging in there until you make a raft of Christmas sales persists and has some validity.

My initial thought was that things might be different in this era of “etail” online sales, but further reflection suggests online sellers have to maintain large, underused warehouses to accommodate the Xmas rush much as Macy’s and Sears did with retail space in years past.

It’s not surprising college students thought the name somehow held racial connotations, doesn’t everything seem to these days? In this instance it doesn’t, and never did.

Lesson Learned

Each year the fellows at Power Line repost a 2009 Thanksgiving rumination by Hillsdale College historian Paul A. Rahe. It looks at the organization of the Plymouth Plantation, their failed experiment with biblically inspired socialism, and the lessons they drew therefrom.

Reading it is surely worth your time, but for those too busy or disinterested in colonial history, herewith a distillation. The colonists discovered seeing a direct (as opposed to indirect or collectivized) connection between one’s labors and one’s own economic well-being was the motivator they needed to move beyond penury and in the direction of plenty. 

Working for “the common good” proved much less productive than working for the good of one’s immediate family. Understanding, and more importantly accepting, this bedrock truth about human nature is what separates so-called “progressives” and the economic realists we currently label “conservatives.” 

Which brings to mind Winston Churchill’s updated version of George Santayana’s aphorism, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

Celebrate the Harvest

Today we celebrate our nation’s harvest festival, which we call Thanksgiving Day. However much or little faith shapes our modern lives four hundred years later, it certainly was central in the lives of those religious refugees from Europe who celebrated the first harvest festival in New England. Hence the name.

My wish for you is a day of peace and plenty in the company of good friends and loved relatives. It is traditional, to engage in a bit of gustatory excess, in celebration of another successful harvest season. 

Note well, Christmas is exactly one month from today. Plus the shortest day of the year and the official start of winter are even sooner. Be safe, be well, be happy.

Poll: Biden Underwater

The Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll released today finds the following:

41% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Biden’s job performance. Fifty-eight percent (58%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 21% who Strongly Approve of the job Biden is doing and 49% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -28.

Very clearly a lot of Democrats are lukewarm about Biden, as well they might be. In a nation where nearly everyone drives, each visit to the gas pump reminds people of how much worse things have become in the last 10 months. 

Survey: Whites Lie About Race

A survey of 1250 white college students found many lied about their race in applying to schools, the story comes from the website Intelligent.com. The obvious motive is improving their chances of acceptance and aid at their school-of-choice.

The survey found that 34% of white Americans who’ve applied to college falsely claimed on their applications they’re a racial minority.

The number one reason why applicants faked minority status is to improve their chances of getting accepted (81%). Fifty percent also lied to benefit from minority-focused financial aid.

Nearly half the male students claimed to have lied, while fewer than one-in-five women so claimed. The most common thing to falsely claim is Native American heritage, a la Elizabeth Warren. The story also reports colleges do not ask for proof of race, a good-to-know factoid.

This looks exactly like whites taking advantage of very real, intentional structural racism - “affirmative action” - which favors those who are non-white and non-Asian. Hat tip to The College Fix for the link. 

The data is self-report and some caution is wise in interpreting the findings. I can imagine undergraduate men thinking “I should have lied” and reporting that they did.

I Have a Question

I’ve been thinking about the previous post, and claims made by Tucker Carlson that the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol was, if not instigated, at least made worse by FBI infiltrator/agitators who egged on the protestors. That this happens is clear, apparently being at least somewhat responsible for a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democrat governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Will Rogers famously said of his commentary, “I only know what I read in the papers.” With a similar caveat that I’m reliant on the reporting of many others, I have a question about government law enforcement personnel urging people to do illegal acts.

Is this something we want our federal or state governments doing? Urging people to break the law and subsequently be arrested, tried, and imprisoned? Don’t we have enough people doing such things on their own, without taxpayer-funded encouragement? 

When undercover police work goes beyond information gathering and becomes agitation or outright instigation, it seems wrong to me. I believe it an inappropriate activity for our government, what we expect from a Stasi or KGB, not the FBI.