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The paranoid purge continues

The socialists need to convince us all now, that conservatives are domestic terrorists and white supremacists.

According to comrade Pelosi we are the enemy within Congress. The only hate speech allowed is that from the all-knowing socialists and big brother tech. I see that Facebook has recently canceled Pat Fischer comments on the Daily Record letters and defending her own. The comments from socialists too fake and nutty to write their own letters are all thats left in the comment section.

Im sure they are good people, just confused/conflicted. Intolerant socialists patting themselves on the back without dissent. No such thing as freedom of speech that does not agree with theirs. They always lose arguments when freedom is allowed to flourish. Freedom bad, government good. Females are males and males are females. We can build new energy sources, roads, and infrastructure without mining or fossil fuels. Vaccinate Gitmo prisoners first. Teach sex-ed in kindergarten. Make everyone else pay for worthless college indoctrination degrees and to have their children aborted. Rewrite history so we wont repeat it. And do it all for free. Now lets get loaded!

Not only do they need President Trump out of office, they need to destroy him and any others that believe America is great. Aint gonna happen socialists. Youre already so nervous you are now praising law enforcement. You are also vetting the National Guard for any that have supported Trump. You are pursuing a worthless unconstitutional impeachment and again on false accusations out of pure hatred. You have been inciting violence for the past four years! You talk of unity now?

That fence up around the Capitol is another one of your great ideas to unite us. Looks like any other totalitarian regime now. Heck, poor old Joe isnt even trying to run the office. You and your swamp are telling him what to do! We now have a fake president and fake news! If our elections have become corrupted, democracy of and for the people is finished. The socialists spent the last four years contesting our elections. With them in charge, we may never know now. Communist Russia and China are proud and happy America is last again. Oh well if it gets miserable enough in America, the illegals and others escaping socialism may decide to stay home instead.

We choose truth over facts J.Biden Doublespeak G.Orwell, 1984

Continued here:
Letter: The socialist agenda is running amok in the U.S. - Daily Record-News

Putin's popularity is fading (Pic: Herman von Rompuy/flickr)

The mass protests in Russia are a product of poverty, lack of democracy and inequality under president Vladimir Putin.

Russian average real incomes have fallen for five of the past seven years, and fell 3.4 percent last year alone. In 2020, the average Russian had 11 percent less to spend than in 2013and workers are the hardest hit.

A series of reports have shown that over the last 30 years Russia has become the most unequal country in the world.

A 2017 study found the richest 10 percent of Russians owned 87 percent of all the countrys wealth, compared with 76 percent in the US.

The reality for ordinary Russians is soaring unemployment, rampant coronavirus, totally inadequate healthcare and falling wages.

And if they speak out or demonstrate they face harsh repression.

As Putins popularity faded, new laws were passed last year cracking down on campaigning online, restricting protests even further and giving the police more powers.

Alexei Navalny has emerged as a central figure channelling opposition to Putin because of bitter battles inside the ruling class since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The end of the East European regimes was not a move from a type of socialism to capitalism. Since 1928 what existed in Russia was a new form of class society, state capitalism.

On the ruins of the defeat of the revolution of 1917, the state bureaucracy had become a new ruling class based on its control of the means of production.

So the move towards free market capitalism was a political reorganisation of the existing system, not a social revolution.

Chris Harman, then Socialist Worker editor, described the process as a move sideways from one form of capitalism to another. But the move to market capitalism from the late 1980s was used to hammer ordinary people.

Neoliberal

Joseph Stiglitz was once the chief economist and vice president of the World Bank. But he later turned against the neoliberal assault on Russia.

He said, The people were told that capitalism was going to bring new, unprecedented prosperity.

In fact, it brought unprecedented poverty, indicated not only by a fall in living standards, but by decreasing life spans and enormous other social indicators showing a deterioration in the quality of life.

The number of people in poverty in Russia rose to somewhere between 40 and 50 percent, with more than one out of two children living in families below the poverty line

Boris Yeltsin was the first post-Soviet president. His rule balanced between three groups.

One group was made up of former KGB and security service personnel who still had central roles in government.

They distrusted Yeltsin as likely to sell out to the West. In return he tried to sideline them.

Another group had family or other close personal links to Yeltsin.

Some were close to the former regime figures but wanted to not be directly associated with them. A third group was the oligarchs who grabbed many of Russias most lucrative business sectors. They profited as the shock therapy beggared tens of millions of ordinary people.

They gorged on the privatisations, sell-offs and general economic chaos that made bribery and looting possible for the most powerful.

Often they had links to the previous Communist regime but also looked to deal with Western multinationals and politicians. Take the example of Oleg Deripaska, who at one time was Russias richest man. In 2008 it was revealed that Peter Mandelson, Labour right winger and European Union commissioner, had met with Deripaska on his superyacht.

Mandelson was said to have given Deripaska trade concessions worth up to 50 million a year. George Osborne, then Tory shadow chancellor, also met Deripaska as did Andrew Feldman, the top Tory fundraiser.

The oligarchs were therefore partly enmeshed with the other Russian ruling elites, but also had separate interests. Putin, once he became president in 1999, did not trust them to follow his lead.

To consolidate his own power he began to clash with them and occasionally to liquidate themfinancially or physically. Its one reason why some of them ended up living in London, which they dubbed Moscow on Thames.

Navalny has emerged as a politician capable of falsely claiming to express some of the popular feeling against Putin. But he also speaks for sections of the rich who have been left out by Putin.

He has been through several political shifts. Navalny began as a classic neoliberal demanding the market should be let rip, privatisation rammed through everywhere and workers rights dismantled.

That wasnt very popular. So he rediscovered himself as a Russian nationalist, In 2006 he facilitated the annual Russian March which attracts antisemites, Islamophobes and fascists.

Protesters chant, Russia for the Russians and some speakers push homophobic and racist conspiracy theories. Swastikas were displayed on some of the demonstrations he supported.

In 2011 Navalny appeared in a video where he compared Muslim migrants to a cockroach infestation.

But building support through nationalism and racism is a crowded field. The fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky came third in the last parliamentary elections and has substantial support for his vile programme.

And the state itself champions hatred of Muslims and minorities.

The 19992000 battle of Grozny, just as Putin took over the presidency, saw the total destruction of the Chechen capital. It was meant as a terrifying warning to Muslims who demanded independence from the Russian state.

More recently the state has set up or manipulated terror attacks as a way of demonising Muslims and justifying extra state powers.

During a wave of protests against Putin ten years ago, Navalny discovered that more left wing ideas were popular.

He changed his pitch to the elastic concept of being anticorruption. Navalny also takes up issues such as pay rises for state workers and better pensions for all.

He is sometimes portrayed as a puppet of the West. Certainly Joe Biden has used the repression of recent protests to signal a more aggressive line against Russian than existed under Donald Trump.

Showing the traditional hypocrisy about democracy, the US state department rushed to condemn the attacks on Navalnys supporters.

Nationalist

But Navalny is more than a front for the US and the Nato nuclear alliance. He can survive politically at the moment only by continuing to put forward Russian nationalist views.

The emergence of a genuine left opposition to Putin is complicated by the fake oppositions which have repeatedly emerged. They cluster around neoliberalism or a desire to return to Stalinism.

The last major set of protests was in 2011, the snow revolution that followed rigged parliamentary elections.

They featured three main leaders. One was Navalny.

Also prominent was Boris Nemtsov, who had been a key supporter of Yeltsin including being vice president in the 1990s. He then became an outspoken critic of Putin.

But his opposition was on the basis of a return to the early days of a free market tearing into peoples liveshardly an attractive programme.

Nemtsov was then assassinated in 2015 two days before a planned demonstration over the impact of the financial crisis in Russia and against Russian involvement in Ukraines civil war.

Sergei Udaltsov played another important role. He is widely seen as the left opposition to Putin and heads the Vanguard of Red Youth.

But his leftism is a hankering for the old Soviet Union. Udaltsov poses with pictures of Stalin and defends the horrors of the 1930s, when all the gains of the 1917 revolution were wiped out.

It is the main parliamentary opposition to Putin, taking over 13 percent of the vote at thehighly controlled and corruptparliamentary election in 2016.

But it serves as an obstacle to the emergence of a real left. It generally props up Putin rather than opposing him. However sections of the Communists now seem ready to support Navalny.

The courageous protests in recent months deserve much better political representation than all the main forces that claim to be an opposition.

Neither reformed liberalism or a return to Stalinism will deliver what ordinary people need. The hope is that, as protesters take on Putin and his state thugs, more workers will be drawn into active opposition to the regime.

And that the real ideas of socialism and 1917 will be reborn on a mass scale.

Londongrad: From Russia with Cash: The Inside Story of the Oligarchs

by Mark Hollingsworth

9.99

Ukraine: imperialism, war and the left

International Socialism article by Rob Ferguson

bit.ly/UkraineISJ

Belarus: revolt in the shadow of Stalinism

International Socialism article by Tom Tengely-Evans

bit.ly/BelarusISJ

Originally posted here:
Why the protests in Russia? - Socialist Worker

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More:
Letter to the editor: Election ushered in socialism - TribLIVE

To the editor: The statement socialism is when the government actually owns the means of production is far too reductive to the point of potentially reinforcing the fears from the right of creeping socialism. (When will Republicans learn that demonizing liberals as socialists doesnt work? Opinion, Jan. 27)

As stated by the Oxford Lexico, the definition of socialism is this: A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

The term socialism is a big tent that covers a wide range of political, economic and social positions, virtually all of which necessarily imply an opposition to the completely unregulated workings of the free market.

Democratic socialism is the part of this overarching definition that is the aspiration of most U.S. centrists, liberals, progressives and whatever other label is currently fashionable to describe those who care about the welfare of Americans.

Kay Virginia Webster, Agoura Hills

..

To the editor: I am so over Democrats labeling conservatives fascists. I am so over reducing political discourse to uninformed name calling and identity politics.

I am so over reading a newspaper that offers only one point of view. I am so over being told that the path to government takeover of an entire industry is anything other than socialism. I am so over waiting for one example of real-world success of a socialist regime.

I am so over the concept that the Republican Party never supported anything that benefited the average American.

And no, I dont like Social Security, so I guess I dont have to shut up.

Gerald Swanson, Long Beach

..

To the editor: Abcarian quotes the late Sen. George McGovern, who said liberals were behind every social program that has benefited the public.

She might want to mention the piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in 1992 commenting on the role that government regulation played in the bankruptcy of his business.

After he retired from the Senate, McGovern bought a Connecticut hotel and restaurant. He wrote that federal, state and local rules that were designed to help workers, protect the environment, raise taxes for schools had raised costs to his business beyond what he could recover from increasing prices.

Abcarian is correct that socialism has been defined as government ownership of the means of production. But the economy can also be controlled via regulation and monopoly buying power. The Department of Defense is a current example; single-payer healthcare would be another.

George Zwerdling, Carpinteria

..

To the editor: Another apt and memorable comment regarding the labeling of socialism came about quite a few years ago, when George Wallace, the former governor of Alabama, was campaigning for president. He traveled around the country railing against the menace of creeping socialism.

However, some observers, citing the large number of federal projects in his home state, rightly observed, Yes, Wallace is against creeping socialism, until it comes creeping into Alabama.

Richard Hollis, Los Alamitos

Read more here:
'Socialist'? We just care about other Americans - Los Angeles Times

(Editor's note: A shorter version of this article was recently published in both English and Spanish at ELAMERICAN.COM).

For producing both material goods and personal fulfillment, freedom makes all the difference in the world. One country that proved that convincingly in the last 40 years is New Zealand. It is a model from which nations the world over can learn a great deal.

Situated in the South Pacific midway between the equator and the South Pole, New Zealand is two-thirds the size of California. Its 5.1 million inhabitants live on two main islands and a scattering of tiny ones. From my multiple visits there, I can confidently claim it to be among the worlds most geologically diverse and beautiful destinations.

In 1950, New Zealand ranked as one of the 10 wealthiest countries on the planet, with a relatively free economy and strong protections for enterprise and property. Then, under the growing influence of welfare state ideas that were blossoming in Britain, the United States and most of the Western world as well, the country took a hard turn toward government control of economic life.

With economic ruin staring New Zealand in the face, the countrys leaders in 1984 embarked upon one of the most comprehensive economic liberalization programs ever.

The next two decades produced a harvest of big government and stagnation. Increasingly, New Zealanders found themselves victims of exorbitant tariffs, torturous regulations, massive farm subsidies, a huge public debt, chronic budget deficits, rising inflation, costly labor strife, a top marginal income tax rate of 66 percent, and a gold-plated, incentive-sapping welfare system.

The central government in those years established its own monopolies in the rail, telecommunications, and electric power businesses. About the only things that grew during the period from 1975 to 1983 were unemployment, taxes, and government spending. This was the democratic socialism that Bernie Sanders admires, but which New Zealanders eventually realized was a national calamity.

With an endless roster of failed government programs and economic ruin staring them in the face, the countrys leaders in 1984 embarked upon one of the most comprehensive economic liberalization programs ever undertaken in a developed nation. The two heroes most responsible for this radical redirection were Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardsona story told by Bill Frezza in this video.

From the mid 1980s into the 1990s, the New Zealand government sold off dozens of money-losing state enterprises.

Another hero of that day was economist Roger Kerr. His son Nicholas lives in Dallas, Texas and is an adjunct scholar with the Lone Star Policy Institute. Nicholas delivered a fascinating speech in January 2020 in which he explained his fathers pivotal role in saving New Zealand from socialism. He points out that among the maze of stupid regulations the socialists imposed, you needed a prescription from your doctor if you wanted margarine.

In another documentary narrated by Swedish author Johan Norberg, the New Zealand transformation is explained beautifully. It also does a fine job depicting the socialist nightmare that prompted the free market reforms. It ought to be mandatory viewing for any course in economic development.

All farm subsidies were ended in six months. Tariffs were cut by two-thirds almost immediately (today the average tariff is just 1.4 percent). Most imports enter the country completely freeor very nearly soof any quota, duty, or other restriction.

Taxes were slashed. The top rate was cut to 33 percent, half of what it was when the big government crowd was in charge. The books were finally opened so people could actually see what government elites in Wellington were spending their money on.

From the mid 1980s into the 1990s, the New Zealand government sold off dozens of money-losing state enterprises. The government workforce in 1984 stood at 88,000. In 1996, after the most radical downsizing anywhere in recent memory, its public sector workforce stood at less than 36,000a reduction of 59 percent.

Establishing a new business in New Zealand was made quick and easy, largely because the regulations that were not abolished were finally applied evenly and consistently. At the same time, compulsory union membership was abolished, as were union monopolies over various labor markets.

Both the Fraser Institutes Economic Freedom of the World Index and The Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom rank New Zealand as the third freest economy in the world.

The dramatic changes paid handsome dividends. The national budget was balanced, inflation plummeted to negligible rates, and economic growth surged ahead at between 4 percent and 6 percent annually for years.

New Zealands national government bobs back and forth between the major political parties but the reforms of nearly four decades ago have remained largely intact. By some important indexes, the country is in a remarkable and enviable position.

Both the Fraser Institutes Economic Freedom of the World Index and The Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom rank the country as the third freest economy in the world, producing steady GDP growth as one result.

The Heritage Foundations Index reveals in its analysis of New Zealand that Subsidies are the lowest among OECD countries, and this has spurred the development of a vibrant and diversified agricultural sector. It also points out that There are very few limitations on investment activity, and foreign investment has been actively encouraged. The top personal income tax rate, at 33 percent, is right where it was when it was slashed in half nearly 40 years ago.

The Fraser Institute also ranks countries in terms of overall Human Freedom and, separately, in terms of Personal Freedom; New Zealand comes in at #1 and #4, respectively.

Freedom Houses global tally of political rights and civil liberties gives New Zealand a score of 97 out of 100, placing the country in its top category for freedom.

Reporters Without Borders rates nations according to how much freedom of the press they allow. In its latest ranking, RTB puts New Zealand at #9 in the world. Only eight countries possess greater press freedoms.

The World Bank produces an annual Doing Business Index that measures the burden of government regulations on entrepreneurs. New Zealand scores the very top position#1 in the world for both starting a business and the ease of doing business. To open a business in the average country elsewhere in the world takes three to four times longer than it does in New Zealand.

With all this freedom, a socialist might expect New Zealand to be among the poorer countries of the world, perhaps even a cesspool of exploitation. But of course it is not.

Transparency International rates the world based on how corrupt each countrys public sector is perceived to be by experts and business executives. Once again, New Zealand is #1.

Writing in the New Zealand Herald, the University of Waikatos Alexander Gillespie notes additional measures of New Zealands status, some of which are exceptional while others are more modest:

The Economist says our internet (in terms of affordability and access) is also ranked 2nd best, behind Sweden. Conversely, the last Global Competitiveness Report has us fall a spot, to 19th place. Similarly, the Global Innovation Index, recorded New Zealand falling out of the top 25, to 26th position.

For peace, in terms of societal safety and security, the extent of ongoing domestic and international conflict, and the degree of militarization, Vision of Humanity says we are ranked 2nd best, behind Iceland.

The Democracy Index, which looks at considerations such as free and fair elections and influence of foreign powers, has us at 4th best in the world. Norway, Iceland and Sweden do better.

Our happiness remains steady, as the 8th most cheerful place on the planet, says the World Happiness Report.

Home schooling is legal in New Zealand, with minimal registration requirements. Parents may use the national curriculum or choose an alternative. Its popularity is growing.

With all this freedom, by one measure or another, a socialist might expect New Zealand to be among the poorer countries of the world, perhaps even a cesspool of exploitation. But of course it is not, as anyone who understands economics and human nature would predict. The International Monetary Fund reports that GDP per capita in the land of the Kiwis is the 22nd highest in the world, while the Legatum Institute puts New Zealand in the top 10 in global prosperity.

If the gap between rich and poor concerns you, you should be happy to know that New Zealand scores relatively well by that indicator too. The Gini Coefficient, crude though it may be, is the most often cited representation of a countrys wealth inequality. It ranges between 0 (everyone has the same income) and 1 (one resident earns everything, nobody else earns anything). World Population Review claims that New Zealands Gini is 0.672, better than the world average of 0.74. The same index reveals the country with the best Gini in the world is the U.S., at 0.480.

The World Banks calculation of the Gini Coefficient differs markedly from the above, and decisively in New Zealands favor. The World Bank says New Zealands Gini before taxes and transfers is 0.455, nearly identical to the 0.486 for the U.S. (Click here for a critique of the Gini Coefficient.)

New Zealands Labour Party Prime Minister is Jacinda Ardern, who is often regarded overseas as more leftist than she has governed at home. Though more sympathetic to public sector spending than the opposition ACT or National Parties, she earned the enmity of many progressives last year for ruling out new taxes on wealth or capital gains. But in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019, she was cheered by many on the left for pursuing anti-free speech and anti-gun measures.

A businessman and friend of mine, Emile Phaneuf, moved from Arkansas to New Zealand a few years ago. He was attracted by its economic and personal freedom. He tells me that the country has mostly lived up to his high expectations but adds a caveat: Housing regulations are a mess.

New Zealands experience is one of numerous examples in which socialism caused ruin that capitalism then fixed.

In 2018, Arderns government banned foreigners from buying most residential property. Landlords face a myriad of rules that restrict rent increases and force them to provide services such as broadband. In time, the housing market may desperately need the same liberating forces that fixed the rest of a once over-regulated economy.

Meanwhile, here in the Americas, Venezuela sits at the opposite end of the spectrumdead last or close to it in every measure of freedom. The result? All the hot air from politicians there about We will help people has come to nothing but despair, misery, hunger, impoverishment, and tyranny. The one-way human traffic speaks volumes. It is a story of failure and human tragedy that socialism produces repeatedly.

New Zealands experience is one of numerous examples in which socialism caused ruin that capitalism then fixed. (Germany under Ludwig Erhard after World War II is an especially spectacular one). I know of no cases in history in which capitalism produced disaster that socialism then repaired. None. The only thing socialism does for poor people, it seems, is give them lots of company. What New Zealand did, central-planning disasters from Venezuela to Cuba to California must eventually imitate to recover.

What is the big-picture lesson here? Montesquieu, the French Enlightenment thinker, summed it up in 1748: Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

My Response to Time Magazines Cover Story on Capitalism by Lawrence W. Reed

New Zealand Farmers Break Free of Crippling Subsidies by Josh Siegel

New Zealands Remarkable Transformation by Daniel J. Mitchell

Tariffs Were Killing New Zealands Economy; Free Trade Turned It Around by Patrick Tyrrell

Greece Should Copy New Zealands Dramatic Policy Reform by Daniel J. Mitchell

The New Zealand Way (podcast) by Maurice P. McTigue

Rolling Back Government: Lessons from New Zealand by Maurice P. McTigue

A Virus Worse Than the One from Wuhan by Lawrence W. Reed

The XYZs of Socialism by Lawrence W. Reed

Eight Principles of Freedom by Lawrence W. Reed

Trailblazers: The New Zealand Story (video) narrated by Johan Norberg

How Business Leaders Helped Save New Zealand from Socialism by Nicholas Kerr

(Correction: This article was updated to reflect that the capital of New Zealand is Wellington.)

Originally posted here:
New Zealand's Path to Prosperity Began With Rejecting Democratic Socialism | Lawrence W. Reed - Foundation for Economic Education