THE USA

To an outsider, the US presidential debate yesterday was disappointing. Although it started well, it eventually evolved into a contest around private issues rather than who has the best policies to run the country. A lot of time was spent on The Donald's reluctance to disclose his financial information.

There is no moral equivalence between Donald Trump's private business finances and Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while in office, which was a blatant breach of the law and compromised national security. Clinton has since been actively engaged in a cover up, including the deletion of a very large number of emails (an estimated 30,000 emails are believed to have been deleted).

Even so, this did not prevent Clinton from sounding forth on the need for USA cyber security in answer to a question on the topic. She blamed Russia for making cyber attacks.

A large part of the debate was consumed with matters such as Obama's birther issue, alleged disgruntled business associates of Donald Trump, past lawsuits, past descriptions of women and other such tittle-tattle. A positive view is that now the tittle-tattle has been debated, then in the future, time will not be wasted on it.

The first 30 minutes of the debate were the most important, and focused on economic policy. Donald Trump explained the need to stop Mexico and China, in particular, from exploiting US trade tolerance by using a number of protectionist measures to the USA's disadvantage, and the jobs lost as firms relocated overseas. Hillary Clinton dodged the thrust of the issue, preferring to make promises about the minimum wage and child care. Her tactic was to change the topic.

Donald Trump highlighted what he saw as the USA's precarious economic situation, with its trade deficit, poor trade deals, over regulation and high taxation, and the danger posed of higher interest rates given that Obama had doubled the national debt. He said that the USA increasingly resembled a Third World country.

By contrast, Clinton ignored these issues and preferred to use pre-rehearsed smears. She alleged that there was a 'Trump Loophole' and dismissed what she described as 'Trumped-Up, Trickle-Down' economics. In her biggest whopper, she said that her husband, Bill, had done a good job in the 1990s and, regarding the Slump of 2008 – or the banking 'credit crunch' (to use a term she might prefer to avoid), she said:

'We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle-class, took their eyes off Wall Street, and created a perfect storm … Nine million people – nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.'

In fact, it was reckless banking matched by reckless economic policy that created a large rise in debt at a time of stagnant incomes that caused the crash. Central to this was Bill Clinton, who was president from 1993-2001. Lawrence Kudlow and Stephen Moore of CNBC recently wrote:

‘Let's look at the many ways the Clintons and cronies contributed to the Great Recession. The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20 percent to 3 percent by 1995 and zero down-payments by 2000. What's more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase "subprime" became commonplace. What an understatement.

Next, the Clinton administration's rules ordered the taxpayer-backed Fannie and Freddie to expand their quotas of risky loans from 30 percent of portfolio to 50 percent as part of a big push to expand home ownership.

Fannie and Freddie were securitizing these home loans and offering 100 percent taxpayer guarantees of repayment. So now taxpayers were on the hook for these risky, low down-payment loans.

Tragically, when prices fell, lower-income folks who really could not afford these mortgages under normal credit standards, suffered massive foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. So many will never get credit again. It's a perfect example of liberals using government allegedly to help the poor, but the ultimate consequences were disastrous for them.

Additionally, ultra-easy money from the Fed also played a key role …

Many bond packages were written to please Fannie and Freddie, based on the fantastical idea that home prices would never fall. Fannie and Freddie, by the way, cost the taxpayers $187 billion.

Just to make this story worse, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama voted to filibuster a Republican effort to roll back Fannie and Freddie. But on top of all this, while Hillary was propping up Fannie and Freddie, she was taking contributions from their foundations.

A Washington Times investigative report concluded that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's political action committee and individuals linked to the companies donated $75,500 to Mrs. Clinton's senatorial campaign. And on top of that, the embattled Clinton Foundation received a $50,000 contribution from Freddie Mac, according to the Times.’

Additionally, it was in 1999 that the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, which had been in place since 1933 to separate commercial and investment banking.

Hillary Clinton mentioned that 'independent experts' had examined Donald Trump's tax plans and concluded that the plans would cost jobs and adversely affect the middle-classes. In Britain, where we were deluged with a whole horde of 'experts' claiming that a vote for Brexit would precipitate an immediate recession, we are not impressed with 'independent experts'.

Regarding law and order, Donald Trump drew attention to the effect of the murder rate on African Americans, who he considered had been let down by successive Democrat politicians; whereas Clinton was more concerned about the 'systemic racism' of the criminal justice system.

Those who believe that the USA has serious problems and needs radical change will see that The Donald shares their concerns and is determined to act. Those who do not see much wrong, and have a politically-correct outlook, can vote for Clinton in the knowledge that things will continue as they are and, presumably, she will happily double the US government debt again.

PARKINSON'S LAW

Parkinson's Law, coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955, states that 'work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion'.  He was focused on the tendency of bureaucracies to expand over time irrespective of their workload. Parkinson gave as an example the number of people employed in the Foriegn and Colonial departments in Britain as the Empire shrank.

Parkinson identified two key aspects: firstly 'An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals'; and secondly 'Officials make work for each other.' Another key aspect is that bureaucrats, especially those in well paid and cushy jobs, want to justify their continued existence. One example that could be cited is the ongoing funds flowing to a whole host of gay rights lobbies – as well as other politically correct organizations. One might have thought that all the positive images for gays and even the introduction of gay marriage might have led those in receipt of public funds to conclude that it is now 'job done'. But no, they ably manage to identify all sorts of new activities for themselves, all sorts of new slights that need to be addressed - and so the flow of monies continues.

Another key example is Brexit. Hundreds of civil servants and experts have been allocated to this task with one department being expanded and the creation of one new department entirely. Yet nothing has happened. We are continually told that Brexit is so complicated that it could take very many years. The two year limit set by Article 50 may not be long enough, we are told.

This is all nonsense. The more civil servants are allocated to the task the more complicated it supposedly gets. The May Government, rather than implementing Brexit quickly (as even the EU wanted), is procrastinating and stalling. The Government has set up a considerable gravy train that has a vested interest in avoiding Brexit. Parkinson's Law prevails.

What is needed is a speedy implementation of Turbo Brexit (see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 4^th August 2016).

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

'Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those who say this are witless. Islam says: “Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all.” Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by the unbelievers? Islam says “Kill them (the non-Muslims), put them to the sword and scatter their armies.” Does this mean sitting back until non-Muslims overcome us? Islam says: “Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you.” Does this mean that we should surrender to the enemy? Islam says: “Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors.” There are hundreds of other Koranic psalms and hadiths urging Muslims to value war and fight. Does all this mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit on the foolish souls that make such a claim.'

- Ayatollah Khoemeini, who led the Iranian revolution [the title Ayatollah means 'Sign of Allah' and is given to those deemed to be the most knowledgeable Shia Islamic scholars]

'Let's be clear: Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism'

- Hillary Clinton, tweeting just after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015

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HANSARD 15 JUNE 2016, VOLUME 611

• • Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
  Q14. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on honouring our manifesto pledge and delivering this historic referendum. Unfortunately, however, we have heard some hysterical scaremongering during the debate, and there are those in this House and the other place who believe that if the British people decide to leave the EU, there should be a second referendum. Will he assure the House and the country that, whatever the result on 24 June, his Government will carry out the wishes of the British people—if the vote is to remain, we remain, but if it is to leave, which I hope it is, we leave? [905437]
  • The Prime Minister
  I am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend. “In” means we remain in a reformed EU; “out” means we come out. As the leave campaigners and others have said, “out” means out of the EU, out of the European single market, out of the Council of Ministers—out of all those things—and will then mean a process of delivering on it, which will take at least two years, and then delivering a trade deal, which could take as many as seven years. To anyone still in doubt—there are even Members in the House still thinking about how to vote—I would say: if you have not made up your mind yet, if you are still uncertain, just think about that decade of uncertainty for our economy and everything else, don’t risk it and vote remain.

For those who are getting mightily fed up of the repeated nonsense spoken about how no one knows what Brexit means, and how we must remain in the Single Market, please note the exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions above – in particular: ‘As the leave campaigners and others have said, “out” means out of the EU, out of the European single market, out of the Council of Ministers—out of all those things’. That was perfectly well understood at the time and the voters knew exactly what they were voting for.

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THE USA

At a recent speech in Reno, Nevada, a hectoring Hillary Clinton made a bid for the politically-correct moral high ground in the US presidential election. She condemned not only Donald Trump, but even criticised him for having UKIP's Nigel Farage at a rally. The vote for Brexit in Britain's EU referendum is having international repercussions.

Clinton referred to Farage as being a part of 'the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world' who had 'stoked anti-immigrant sentiments to win the referendum on leaving the European Union'. Clinton further alleged that 'The godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism is Russian President Vladimir Putin', with whom Clinton alleged both Farage and Trump had associated.

Someone should inform Clinton, very slowly, that Farage is the leader of UKIP and did not lead the Brexit campaign in the referendum. The Brexit campaign was managed by the Vote Leave organization (the English Rights Campaign supported Vote Leave), which was at loggerheads with UKIP. Boris Johnson led the campaign, which was cross-party. Vote Leave positively distanced itself from UKIP. Clinton misrepresents Farage's role and influence in the Brexit vote. In any event, Farage did not stoke 'anti-immigrant sentiments', but did criticise the EU's calamitous response to the vast people smuggling now responsible for the immigrant invasion of Europe. ISIS is estimated to have made more than $300 million in profits from its people-smuggling operations. Those profits continue to grow.

Clinton accused that 'From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He's taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties'. Clinton attacked Donald Trump's appeal to 'black communities' made 'in front of largely white audiences' and that 'he certainly doesn't have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of colour'. This, of course, all assumes that ethnic minorities are victims of 'systemic racism' and hence that the US society is something bad. Her comment about 'largely white audiences' should be noted.

Needless to say, Clinton was scathing about Donald Trump's comments on immigration. She alleged: 'Oh, and by the way, Mexico's not paying for his wall either. If it ever gets built, you can be sure that American taxpayers will be stuck with the bill'. She condemned Donald Trump's intolerance of illegal immigration: 'He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country. He'd abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says if you're born in the United States, you're an American citizen. He says that children born in America to undocumented parents are, quote, “anchor babies” and should be deported'. Millions of them. And he'd ban Muslims around the world – 1.5 billion men, women, and children – from entering our country just because of their religion'.

Even the Breitbart website attracted Clinton's scorn, given that its head has been appointed Trump's campaign CEO. She quoted that Breitbart has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as embracing 'ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas. Race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim and anti-immigration ideas – all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology know as “Alt-Right”. Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right”. The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity” … This is part of a broader story – the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world'. It was at this point that Clinton launched her attack on Farage. Clinton accused: 'White supremacists now call themselves “white nationalists”. The paranoid fringe now calls itself “alt-right”. But the hate burns just as bright'.

Indeed, Clinton proceeded to hold Trump responsible for a supposed 'Trump Effect', where 'bullying and harassment are on the rise in our schools, especially targeting students of colour, Muslims, and immigrants'. This rise in so-called hate crime is an allegation being peddled in Britain following the EU referendum, and great lengths have been made to inflate the statistics. Even wolf whistling is now deemed a hate crime, and criticism of Islam is deemed Islamophobia. Extra funding has been given to the police to uncover all this. For Clinton, Trump's message is 'Make America hate again'.

By contrast, Clinton claimed that 'It's about who we are as a nation' and that for her 'It's a vision for the future rooted in our values and reflected in a rising generation of young people who are the most open, diverse, and connected we've ever seen'. Clinton urged 'Let's stand up against prejudice and paranoia'.

Trump has responded to the Clinton allegations:

'Now, I have not seen Hillary Clinton’s remarks. And, in a sense, I don’t want to dignify them by dwelling on them too much, but a response is required for the sake of all decent voters she is trying to smear. The news reports are that Hillary Clinton is going to try to accuse this campaign, and the millions of decent Americans who support this campaign, of being racists. It’s the oldest play in the Democratic playbook. When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument. It’s the last refuge of the discredited politician. They keep going back to this same well, but the well has run dry.

This is the year that the people who have been betrayed by Democratic policies, including millions of African-American and Hispanic-American citizens, reject the politicians who have failed them and vote for change.

As I’ve discussed for many days now, Democratic politicians have run nearly every inner city in America for fifty or sixty years or more. Their policies have produced only more poverty, joblessness, and failing schools. Every policy Hillary Clinton supports is a policy that has failed and betrayed communities of colour in this country. But she just doesn’t care – she’s too busy raking in cash from the people rigging the system.

Nearly 4 in 10 African-American children live in poverty. 58% of African-American youth are not working. More than 2,700 people have been shot in Chicago this year alone. These are the consequences of Hillary Clinton’s policies. She has brought nothing but pain and heartache to our inner cities.

On top of that, she wants to raise taxes on African-American owned businesses to as much as nearly 50 percent. We should be helping these businesses to grow and expand – but Hillary Clinton is trying to shut them down.

She opposes school choice. She supports open borders that violate the civil rights of African-Americans by giving their jobs to people here unlawfully. She supports trade policies that have closed factories in African-American communities and put millions of African-Americans out of work. She supports radical regulations that put Americans out of work and raise the price of their energy bills. She supports policies on crime that make communities less safe, and that make it harder to raise your children in security and peace.'

To focus on the ideological aspects of Clinton's diatribe, Trump is correct to say that allegations of racism are 'the last refuge of the discredited politician', although for the politically correct it is often the first resort. What is striking is the lack of originality and the clumsy presentation of communist theories. Clinton is consumed by political correctness and has mindlessly dug up and re-hashed laughable and malevolent theories from the early half of the 20^th century.

The Genesis of Political Correctness: The Basis of a False Morality (by Michael William, available from Amazon, Kindle or direct from CreateSpace) devotes one chapter to a report entitled The Authoritarian Personality, produced by members of the Frankfurt School, in the USA in 1950. Those who wrote this turgid piece of communist propaganda actually have the gall to pass it off as research. Given that the conclusion of this alleged 'research' was that: conservatives were mentally-defective proto-fascists and should be targeted as priority for attack as they were deemed to be less likely to oppose fascism; children needed to be re-educated; and the only true opposition to fascism was communism, which they tried to pass off as liberalism: 'To be “liberal” ... one must be able actively to criticize existing authority. The criticisms may take various forms, ranging from mild reforms (e.g. extension of government controls over business) to complete overthrow of the status quo [i.e. a communist revolution].' A 'complete overthrow of the status quo' is not liberalism, but communism.

The report described what it called 'the pseudodemocrat [who] does not now accept ideas of overt violence and active suppression … [but] Undoubtedly very many people who are now pseudodemocratic are potentially antidemocratic, that is, are capable in a social crisis of supporting or committing acts of violence against minority groups.' It further concentrates on what it describes as ethnocentrism: 'A primary characteristic of ethnocentric ideology is the generality of outgroup rejection,' and that 'The focus of the present study was, therefore, on liberalism and conservatism, the currently prevalent left- and right-wing political ideologies – with an eye, to be sure, on their potential polarization to the more extreme left and right. There is considerable evidence suggesting a psychological affinity between conservatism and ethnocentrism, liberalism and anti- ethnocentrism.'

Of particular relevance is that it defines conservatism as being 'to mean traditional economic laissez-faire individualism, according to which our economic life is conceived in terms of the free (unregulated) competition of individual entrepreneurs. Business, accorded such great prestige by conservative values, is regarded as deserving great social power in relation to labour and government' and that 'Conservative ideology has traditionally urged that the economic functions of government be minimized. Fear of government power (like union power) is emphasized, and great concern is expressed for the freedom of the individual, particularly the individual businessman.' In fact, this definition is a biased description of economic liberalism, not conservatism.

According to the report: 'The ethnocentric conservative is the pseudoconservative, for he betrays in his ethnocentrism a tendency antithetical to democratic values and tradition … His political-economic views are based on the same underlying trends – submission to authority, unconscious handling of hostility toward authority by means of displacement and projection onto outgroups, and so on – as his ethnocentrism. It is indeed paradoxical that the greatest psychological potential for antidemocratic change should come from those who claim to represent democratic tradition. For the pseudoconservatives are the pseudodemocrats, and their needs dispose them to the use of force and oppression in order to protect a mythical “Americanism” which bears no resemblance to what is most vital in American history' and that 'This is not merely a “modern conservatism”. It is, rather a totally new direction: away from individualism and equality of opportunity, and toward a rigidly stratified society in which there is a minimum of economic mobility and in which the “right” groups are in power, the outgroups subordinate. Perhaps the term “reactionary” fits this ideology best. Ultimately it is fascism. While certainly not a necessary sequel to laissez-faire conservatism, it can be regarded as a possible (and not uncommon) distortion of conservatism – a distortion which retains certain surface similarities but which changes the basic structure into the antithesis of the original.'

The psychobabble stems from the attempted merging of Marxism and Freudian theories. This was deemed an act of genius, and the various Lefties kept telling themselves this was so at the time. It further facilitated the inclusion of dirty talk.

Although the press made much of Melania Trump's embarrassment when her speech writer cribbed from an earlier speech made by a Democrat, little has been said regarding Hillary Clinton's usage of a communist argument from 1950. Clinton may have used different terminology – 'Alt-Right' as opposed to 'pseudoconservative' – but the argument is the same. It is a communist argument and one that she is pushing aggressively. Nor is Clinton's line an aberration. During the EU referendum in Britain, the murder of a Labour MP by someone who was known to be mentally unstable prompted the following Clinton Tweet (italics the English Rights Campaign own emphasis): 'It is cruel and terrible that her life was cut short by a violent act of political intolerance'. Clinton led the charge in trying to demonize the views of ordinary people by linking those views with the actions of a mental case (see the English Rights Campaign item dated 21^st June 2016). More recently, Clinton has attracted some attention after saying:

'You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [Laughter/applause]. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.'

This contempt is not unique. In an earlier campaign, Obama condemned those who he said felt left behind and 'cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations'.

The Democrats have at senior levels of their party those who hold the values and interests of a very large section of the US population in contempt. Clinton's 'Alt-Right' argument is identical to the communist argument contained in the The Authoritarian Personality from 1950, although Clinton has spared us the Freudian dirty words. The argument is contrived and shameful.

Clinton's entire political belief system is determined by political correctness. This is someone who is close to becoming the US president. Political correctness is simply a derivative of communism – a creed that was responsible for more than 100 million deaths in the 20^th century. Yet we are supposed to take lectures on morality from these people.

The USA today is in a similar position to Britain at the beginning of the 20^th century (see The Ponzi Class: Ponzi Economics, Globalization and Class Oppression in the 21^st Century, by Michael William – available from Amazon, Kindle and direct from CreateSpace). It is a great power experiencing economic decline, with rivals exploiting the USA's tolerance and weakness. Donald Trump has presented a programme of reform to try and reverse the USA's decline and solve its problems. He is a patriot. Clinton has offered political correctness.

The fight between patriotism and political correctness is the fight between good and evil. It is as clear cut as that.