Here is something to think about with the whole immigration debate:

I worked closely with really good local national Afghans who risked their lives in Afghanistan for 5-8 years waiting on approval to get a special Visa to come to America.

They embedded with infantry units to help translate for US & Coalition forces. Day in and day out they were in combat and despised by their fellow Afghans. They were targeted, many lost their lives, their families were kidnapped and beheaded and placed in public squares to send a message and yet they still pressed on helping us in the hope of a better life. Many are still waiting today to come here. Mind you this is after years of waiting and waiting and risking their lives daily. So who deserves to come here for a better life? Is it the person who directly benefited the US and put their lives on the line for us, or the person who breaks the law b/c they want what America can provide. What is more fair, since we cannot take in the entire world?

Is it more fair for people to just cross an open field, hide in a shipping container, hide under a boat, then melt into a city, fly under the radar, get benefits that our tax money goes to, then expect amnesty from Congress or is it more fair to reward those who directly contributed to our country before ever getting here?

What about all the women and children that are raped at the hands of coyotes and human traffickers at multiple points along their journey because our immigration laws have historically been weak and they think they can just come here and get right in. Traffickers take advantage of that and abuse the people who often pay their entire life savings to enter our country illegally.

Is that cool, why isn't the MSM speaking out against that?

Perhaps these scumbags wouldn't be in business if they knew it would lead to nowhere if they couldn't get across the border.

There's more to the issue than just "So and so wants a better life so it's a travesty that we don't give it to them". There are Billions of people all around the world who want to come here. The bottom line is we provide immigration to people, legally, that have skills we need. This is common for all developed countries in the world. It has to benefit us as a nation, not crooked politicians who want voters dependent on the government, which is why they push mass illegal immigration.

Go check out Ellis Island and look at the immigration history and the requirements people had to go through to get here. It wasn't just a free for all like the lying MSM tries to make it out to be.

Most logical Americans are fine with people coming into our country legally. We welcome them and uphold them when they strive to make a better life for themselves, as long as they Integrate, Embrace American Values, Embrace Freedom, Embrace Hard Work, Embrace our Language and Embrace our History.

But when you break the law and cut ahead of others and then demand rights, then you get rejected by most Americans.

I simply see this as the truth. I welcome all immigrants who enter legally and want to embrace America.

I work with tons of legal immigrants that are now Americans and most of them love our country more than average Americans do. They have built a phenomenal life for themselves and those around them and understand what our country is about when you follow the law. Matter of fact I don't doubt for a minute that a large majority of the illegal immigrants simply want to make a better life for themselves.

I also know many of their children and of course they have a different view. I sympathize with their parents as I sympathize with all of the other people I have met around the world who live in poverty and want to come here.

But at the end of the day everyone has to understand we have laws that have to be followed which includes an order of merit for immigrants. We simply cannot intake millions of illegal immigrants and sustain an economy.

-Guest Post

-Editor’s Note: Instead or politicizing, which most will do, why not demand accountability from our representation? If the policy is failing, change the policy. Unfortunately, there is no political will to do so.

Well, here's some news:

According to Jeff Weaver, 2016 campaign manager for Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator "is considering another run for the presidency."

The silver lining of that: it's a potential "teaching moment."

The entirety of Bernie's political philosophy, if we can call it that, is: "We want X; therefore, the state should violently distribute X."

And if you oppose this juvenile ideology, you "hate the poor."

Even though every last thing Bernie favors would make the poor less employable and give them fewer options.

I actually put together a full-length refutation of Bernieism, a book called Bernie Sanders Is Wrong.

Here's the table of contents:

PART I: Should the U.S. Model Itself After Scandinavia? 

Chapter 1 
No, Sweden Is Not a Model to Emulate 

Chapter 2 
The Truth About Denmark, the “World’s Happiest 
Country” 

PART II: Should the Government Spend Money on 
Alternative Energy? 

Chapter 3 
Wind and Solar Power? Don’t Make Me Laugh 

Chapter 4 
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels 

PART III: Is a $15 Minimum Wage a Good Idea? 

Chapter 5 
High Minimum Wages Hurt the Vulnerable the Most 

Chapter 6 
Robert Reich Is Just as Wrong as Bernie Sanders 

PART IV: Would More Government Intervention 
Improve the Economy? 

Chapter 7 
Is “Capitalism” the Problem with American Health Care? 

Chapter 8 
Should Employers Be Required to Offer More Fringe 
Benefits? 

Chapter 9 
Is There a Gender Pay Gap We Need to Close? 

Chapter 10 
Is “Inequality” an Important Problem? 

Chapter 11 
Does Free Trade Harm American Workers? 

Chapter 12 
What’s Wrong with the Overall Sanders Approach? 

It's free. In fact, here it is:
 
http://tomwoods.com/d/bernie.pdf
Enjoy!
​
- Tom Woods

South Korea credits Trump for opening door to talks with North

Hopefully someone in the state department will give Trump cue cards to read from so he doesn’t mess this up. Here’s a few talking points to start from:

• We aren’t quite sure that you’re serious about denuclearization, but we want to believe you.
• If you denuclearize, we’ll lift all sanctions and freely trade with your people. We’ll provide a market to bring you technology, medicine, nutrition and quality of life.
• We want you and South Korea to reconcile your relationship peacefully without U.S. intervention. We want to facilitate peace, but let’s be clear, it’s peace between you and South Korea. Success or failure is yours alone.
• Lifting sanctions and opening up North Korea to the world would increase the quality of life of every North Korean citizen and the history books will attribute it to you (Kim Jong Un). Make no mistake, you will go down as a humanitarian hero, a man whose leadership changed the trajectory of a country and changed the livelihoods of millions of citizens.
• The United States will leave the Korean Peninsula once peace returns.
• Again, we don't really believe you, but we want to believe you because your citizens deserve humanity:

1985: North Korea signs Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
1992: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#1)
1994: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#2)
1999: North Korea signs historic agreement to end missile tests
2000: North Korea signs historic agreement to reunify Korea! Nobel Peace Prize is awarded
2005: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2005: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program and "denuclearize"! (#3)
2006: North Korea declares support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2006: North Korea again support for "denuclearization" of Korean peninsula
2007: North Korea signs historic agreement to halt nuclear program! (#4)
2007: N&S Korea sign agreement on reunification
2010: North Korea commits to ending Korean War
2010: North Korea announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2010: North Korea again announces commitment to "denuclearize"
2011: North Korea announces plan to halt nuclear and missile tests
2012: North Korea announces halt to nuclear program
2015: North Korea offers to halt nuclear tests
2016: North Korea again announces support for "denuclearization"

Voter ID laws should not be controversial. A few points:
​
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to drive.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to fly.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to ride a train.
--You must have a government-issued ID in order to enter this country and almost any other.
--In many venues, you must even have a government-issued ID in order to buy alcohol, buy tobacco, and be admitted to bars and clubs.

Voting is an even greater responsibility than any of those. Why, then, is it so controversial to require a government-issued ID in order for a person to vote in government elections? Voter fraud isn't a significant problem in this country, but it also isn't non-existent--and any fraud is too much fraud. Requiring voters to present a valid form of identification is one of the easiest, cheapest ways to eliminate one avenue of engaging in fraud.

Many argue that it discriminates against Hispanics and other demographics that are less likely to have government-issued ID's. In my mind, there are two responses to this.

First, all laws affect demographic groups differently. There is no such thing as a law that affects everyone in precisely the same manner. This isn't by itself a reason not to enact a law. If it were, then we could have no laws at all. (For example, even speed limit laws disproportionately impact demographics with higher rates of automobile ownership. Federal minimum wage laws disproportionately impact states with more low-wage earners. And so on.)

Fundamentally, however, there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of anyone in any demographic of getting a government-issued ID. We commonly associate ID's with driver's licenses, but that's a misconception. It is definitely true that not everyone can get a driver's license, but not everyone needs one. States also issue plain ID's.

That brings me to my second point: cost. If state ID's cost $15,000, then there may be validity to the discrimination argument. They don't though. In some states, ID's are completely free, and in most others, they cost no more than $10. If you're a citizen, then you can get one of these ID's at little or no cost. Thus, the only people who truly are locked out of voting by ID laws are people who are not U.S. citizens, and it's illegal for them to vote anyway.

Many counter this by saying, "True, but low-income and less educated demographics frequently do not know how to get these free ID's."

​Come on, folks: Individual responsibility is an important value in this country. If you don't know how to do something that you need to know how to do, then you must take some initiative and figure that something out. Acquiring a state ID is simple, and figuring out how to do it doesn't even require an Internet connection.

As I write this fat check to Uncle Sam, I've always wondered... What if elections were held immediately after we paid our tax bill every year?

What if taxes weren't withheld from everyone's paychecks every year and they had to come up with thousands each April?

What if my tax bill was itemized every year? Rapper Cardi B famously noted that when she gives millions to private charities, she gets emails showing the schools she's helping to build and the kids she's assisting, why doesn't Uncle Sam?

What if your tax bills were itemized? Of the XXX you owe:

$251 goes to Egypt for foreign aid
$14 goes for treadmills for shrimp
$149 goes to govermental printing costs that could be avoided by changing font
$110 goes to Air Force One for unofficial vacations
$.48 on an unused monkey house
$29 fraudulent tax reimbursements to prisoners
$410 on 'improper payments' or fraudulent payments due to lack of financial controls
$1.89 on a 3-week long FAA party
$42 NSA and other gov't use of World of Warcraft as collections platform
$4 U.S. Census commercial that appeared during the Super Bowl
$.22 On a laundry-folding robot
$17 On a study about baby names (and "The astounding conclusion: Popular names are popular with parents.")

Do you think people would be more active in holding politicians/bureaucracy accountable?Who cares more about your money? You or the Government? Of course it's you. Looking at the list above, would you better invest that money in your life or are you glad it went to countries where they openly burn our flag?
​
50 Examples of Government Waste
​

See also, 13 Silliest Uses of Taxpayer Money

Since you made it this far down the post, I'll let you in on a little secret. This 4th of July, we're going live with a new website www.Liberty.wiki. We're building out the infrastructure at the moment and learning wiki markup from scratch! Please bookmark it and, once up and running, contribute of your own free will, with an article or two on something that you're an expert at!
​
​

The question Ted Cruz just asked Mark Zuckerberg is the one question I want to know the answer to....

Does Zuckerberg know, or care about, the political leanings "of the 15-20,000 Facebook employees dedicated to content review"?


Because the thing is, that skew matters.

I have no doubt that Zuckerberg and Facebook don't ask people what their political views are in the hiring process. That's not normally how hiring works. When I applied to work at the CATO Institute i had zero questions about my political leanings. Zero.

But that's not necessary for bias to emerge.

What actually happens is that people self-select into particular industries and companies for a host of reasons, the corporate values and tone of the working environment weeds out a lot, hiring managers tend to hire people generally like themselves so even if they don't ask any particular questions, they're looking for people they can work with so obviously finding points of agreement around interests and values help people get jobs in the first place.
​
And Facebook is located in the Bay Area in California, which has its own skew.

The problem, though, is that if 18,000 of their 20,000 content reviewers all lean a certain way, then the content they flag and the content they review will too.

And that means they're putting more scrutiny on (in this case) conservatives, libertarians, or just non-leftist types, and flagging more right-leaning posts as inappropriate, banning more of those pages.

I see this already in terms of the fact checking system Facebook has implemented.

And the irony of this is that if Facebook does more of the same, the result will be even MORE polarization, which is the very thing they claim they want to prevent.

I'm fine with Mark Zuckerberg ONLY hiring militant leftists, if that's what he wants to do.

I just want there to be transparency.  Don't said that you're unbiased, if you're not.  Be clear that Facebook is what it is- a great platform that has a bias and if you don't align with that bias, you can get kicked from the platform with no recourse.

Zuckerberg said that he believed for the first 10-12 years of running Facebook that their role as a company was to build tools for people to use to connect with each other.

Now he believes the company should have a new mission: To police the user-base and make sure those tools are being used "for good".

Little does he know, he's headed down an authoritarian path. Did he not take Dystopian Lit at Harvard?

What are your thoughts on how this can turn? Are you already off Facebook completely?

Perspective is everything and facts are important in the gun debate.  Unfortunately, after tragedy strikes, facts are cast aside in favor of emotionally-based pleas that 'We Must Do Something!'

The graphs below are provided with little to no commentary as it is unnecessary.

Thomas Sowell is one of a handful of people whose prose I genuinely envy.

He's also brilliant, of course.

Milton Friedman, whom I disagree with on some things, was known for being an effective debater, but I think Sowell has even him beat: anti-capitalist platitudes don't stand a chance against the Sowell meat grinder.

And now, just today -- at age 87! -- Sowell has released a brand new book: Discrimination and Disparities.

I haven't read it yet, but I will.

From what I've seen of it, the new book reminds me of Sowell's criminally neglected work Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?, which I've been recommending for as long as I can remember (my Amazon review from 2001 is still up).
 
One by one, the standard platitudes about discrimination and poverty fall before Sowell's relentless statistical assault. Discrimination causes poverty? How about the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia? Discrimination against the Chinese minority is actually written into the Malaysian constitution. And yet the Chinese minority still dominate the economy.

Likewise, Japanese-Americans were discriminated against so badly that 120,000 of them were forcibly relocated during World War II. Yet by 1959 they had equaled whites in income, and by 1969 were earning one-third more.

Politics is the only way for a minority group to advance? To the contrary: the general pattern in the United States has been for a group to become wealthy first and only then to enter politics (if at all). The Irish, on the other hand, who placed such emphasis on political action, lagged behind other ethnic groups.

The book is filled with information like this. Page by relentless page, Sowell relentlessly undermines the idea that outcome differences must be of sinister origin.

If Polish-Americans are 25 years older, on average, than Puerto Ricans, is that not going to be reflected in greater work experience, higher net worth, etc.? Yet nobody even bothers to consider age differences.

If half of Mexican-American women are married by age 18, but only 10 percent of Japanese-American women are, won't their life trajectories be radically different -- even if they were identical in all other traits?

By the end of Sowell's book, any reasonable person has to understand how cartoonish and silly it is to expect identical outcomes from different groups across a wide range of human experiences.

Of course, today the very existence of an intergroup disparity is made the subject of hysterical denunciations by campus demonstrators who aren't exactly known for appreciating subtlety.

All the more reason to cheer the truly great Thomas Sowell, and the unexpected gift of his new book.

-Tom Woods

The video below is making the rounds on social media and claims that...

"Russian meddling is the biggest attack on our democracy since 9-11. Here's how it works and what we can do about it."

The problem with over-simplified videos like this is that they are able to embed a lot of spin when they apply broad-stroke simplification to a complex issue. The listener doesn't have the time to evaluate each simplified declaration as true or false before moving on to the next talking point. This video is no different.

In reality, Facebook has been extremely cooperative in the handing over of data to prosecute the ‘Russian trolls’. If Russian trolls were the problem, do not doubt that Facebook would have provided extensive, accurate data that would support this claim. The media would kill for confirmation of that narrative, yet no supporting data has surfaced.
​
Instead, the larger picture could never be more clear.
​

Wait what? See below for an inextensive, quick first few pages of Google results pushing the narrative of Collusion, Collusion, Collusion before the Mueller Indictment and the VP for Facebook Ad destroyed that narrative!
​

• What we learned about Trump, Russia, and collusion in 2017
• It sure looks like there was collusion between the Trump operation and Russia
• Collusion: How Russia Helped Trump Win the White House
• Trump-Russia collusion- Steve Bannon testifies
• Nearly half of Americans believe Trump tried to obstruct the Russia investigation
• Trump: Even if there was collusion with Russia, 'it’s not a crime'
• In collusion with Russia, Trump’s rhetoric takes a desperate turn
• Stop Assuming Trump Is Innocent of Russian Collusion
• What more evidence of Trump-Russia collusion do you need?
• What We Know About the Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Russia
• America will know ‘real soon’ if Trump colluded with Russians
• If true, this CNN report about Russia could destroy Trump’s presidency
• There is now 'more than circumstantial evidence' of Trump-Russia collusion
• Did Trump collude with Russia? The deep state may already know
• Robert Mueller Releases Information Showing Trump Campaign Tried to Collude With Russia
• President Trump is behaving a lot like someone who colluded with Russia
• Americans doubt Trump’s story on collusion with Russia, poll finds
• The Trump-Russia Collusion Investigation Is Far From a 'Witch Hunt'
• EVIDENCE OF TRUMP-RUSSIA COLLUSION ALREADY EXISTS, WATERGATE PROSECUTORS SAY
• Amongst others...

It also, doesn't stop them from lathering their base with hopes of collusion which could still occur.
​

Why isn't this widely reported as a scarlet letter of failure on mainstream media outlets that pushed the narrative so hard for so long? First off, it's a complex story and can't be discussed perfectly in 3 minute soundbites that steer cable TV news segments.

While there are allegations that it was actually the Democrats who colluded with the Russians, there is no concise and perfectly packaged smoking gun that proves so. Hillary didn't directly write a check to the Russians for dirt on Trump.
​
Instead:

• The Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign hired a company called Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump.
• Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele who used Russian sources developed from his years as a spy to produce the Anti-Trump dossier.
• The dossier was 35 pages of sensational allegations against Trump — including that he cavorted with Russian prostitutes in a bed once used by Barack Obama; that he was offered bribes of more than a billion dollars by the Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft to end U.S. trade sanctions on Russia if he won the presidency; and that Trump officials secretly met with Russian officials to collude on "hacking" the Democrats during the 2016 election. In the intelligence world we say "Intelligence without proof is merely gossip".
• The fake dossier was used by FBI as legitimate to spy on Trump campaign, specifically a FISA warrant was issued against Trump adviser Carter Page, though at this point, he had already left the Trump campaign.

​Without a direct smoking gun, the only outlets that will push the narrative of direct Democratic collusion with the Russians turns out to be Fox News and Alex Jones.
​

A dossier which was paid for by one political party was being used by the government to spy on that candidate's opponent*. This precedent is dangerous especially as we see many within the FBI organization were acting in a blatantly partisan manner while on the taxpayer's dime.

If I was Carter Page, I'd be looking into a civil suit against the government's wrongful intrusion into my 4th Amendment Rights by politically motivated federal law enforcement officials within the FBI.

I have to re-stress this point, there's not yet any evidence to prove any 'collusion' narrative. Indeed, after more than 18 months, the Comey-Mueller FBI investigations of alleged Trump collusion with Russia have come up bone dry. I stand by my previous remarks:

If evidence exists of collusion between Russia and Trump to rig or hack the election, let's get the proof out there and hang him for it.

Instead, the readily apparent media goal is to pack television shows, social media timelines and article titles with half-truth reporting in order to muddy the picture. If you don't really take the time to look into the "Trump-Russia Collusion" narrative, you'll likely just assume it true based on the volume of reporting thrown in your face daily.

What's increasingly apparent is that the Robert Mueller investigation, which was kickstarted in 2016 by the Trump Dossier, has turned into a continuation of the Democrats' failed 2016 political campaign against Trump, with vague insinuations of misconduct or outright criminality but never any proof.

Now that the goalposts have shifted, I urge you to take every opportunity to point out that we were lied to and the media should have zero credibility going forward. How do we go back and tell every person who read the previous list of articles, or quickly scrolled past them in their social media timeline that they were patently false and created with an agenda in mind? We can't. Those people went on living their lives unable to hold an adult conversation on the topic because they've been effectively influenced. We're never able to right the wrong that has taken place.
​

You speak to them around the water fountain and they can't explain why, they've seen no evidence, but it must be true. They are naive to believe the media is pure in it's intentions. They are ignorant to the fact that the media could be complicit in pushing a narrative.

For more, go read Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by by Ryan Holiday marketed as 'the cult classic that predicted the rise of fake news—revised and updated for the post-Trump, post-Gawker age.'

You'll quickly understand that the media is no longer the unofficial fourth branch of government which attempts to check government power with truth.