Chile: As it will be in the future…
…it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.
Chile has had an election, and its new president will be 35-year-old leftist Gabriel Boric. There were originally seven candidates in the first round of the election, and the frontrunner was the more conservative Jose Antonio Kast. But in the second round, the original number-two finisher, Boric, won by a large margin. The legislature, however, seems more evenly split.
[Boric] is set to become the youngest president in Chile’s history and second youngest state leader in the world, as well as the president elected with the largest number of votes in the country’s history.
What are Boric’s stated plans?:
Once the most stable economy in Latin America, Chile has one of the world’s largest income gaps, with 1% of the population owning 25% of the country’s wealth, according to the United Nations.
Mr Boric has promised to address this inequality by expanding social rights and reforming Chile’s pension and healthcare systems, as well as reducing the work week from 45 to 40 hours, and boosting green investment.
The president-elect also promised to block a controversial proposed mining project which he said would destroy communities and the national environment.
Chile’s currency, the peso, plunged to a record low against the US dollar after Mr Boric’s victory. Stock markets fell by 10%, with mining stocks performing particularly badly.
Investors are worried stability and profits will suffer as a result of higher taxes and tighter government regulation of business.
I would be worried too, with a 35-year-old leftist activist in charge.
ADDENDUM: Boric isn’t an Israel fan, to say the least:
Boric’s criticism of Israel is longstanding. As a lawmaker, he supported a bill proposing to boycott Israeli goods from the Golan, West Bank settlements, and areas of Jerusalem that came under in Israeli control in 1967.
And during the campaign, many members of the community expressed concern over that, along with what they said was a pattern of demanding that local Jews condemn Israeli policy.
“We are of course willing to accept reasonable criticism about Israel, but what we hear from Boric is that Israel is a ‘genocidal’ and ‘murderous’ state,” Gabriel Zaliasnik, a prominent member of Chile’s Jewish community, told Israel’s Haaretz daily last week. “To make matters worse, he blames our Jewish community for Israel’s actions.”…
Some Chilean Jews fear Boric intends to promote his supporter, Daniel Jadue, a member of Chile’s Communist Party of Palestinian descent, who has declined to explain why his high school yearbook lists him as “an antisemite” who will “clean the city of Jews.” He has called the Jewish Community of Chile the “Zionist Community of Chile,” and Chilean Jews have called him an antisemite. Jadue has denied the charge, arguing that he himself is a Semite, as he is Arab.
There aren’t many Jews in Chile. Estimates are about 18,000 or a little bit more, which is a tiny fraction of Chile’s 19 million people. On the other hand, you may be surprised to learn – as I was – that there are considerably more Palestinians there, and that they tend to be highly successful and influential. Most of them are not recent arrivals, either, and for the most part they are Christian rather than Muslim:
The Palestinian community in Chile is believed to be the largest Palestinian community outside of the Arab world. Estimates of the number of Palestinian descendants in Chile range from 450,000 to 500,000. The effects of their migration are widely visible…
Many of the immigrants were very poor and illiterate and had to take loans to pay their travel costs. Once in Chile, Palestinians settled largely in the marginal areas of cities and worked as small merchants. In the 1950s by the time of the second government of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo many Palestinian-Chileans had acquired substantial economic as well as political power in Chile, some working as deputies, ministers or ambassadors…
The vast majority of the Palestinian community in Chile follow Christianity. The largest denomination is Orthodox Christian followed by Roman Catholic, and in fact, the number of Palestinian Christians in the diaspora in Chile alone exceeds the number of those who have remained in their homeland.
Interesting.
What sort of population votes in a 35 year old leftist activist? Oh yeah. The same type that votes in a senile 70+ year old serial liar.
Again, the opposition has sufficient juice to bloc anything he wants requiring statutory legislation.
As for why this happened, I tend to wonder if its just vandalism. Voters tossing rocks through plate glass windows just to amuse themselves.
Think about it in this country. We’ve had two actual draft dodgers in presidential politics (Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders) and a 3d man whose influential father persuaded senior brass to give him a less lethal assignment (Pat Robertson). So said draft dodger defeats George Bush the Elder, a combat veteran, and defeats him even though there was nothing grossly wrong with the administration except for a problem it shared with the Democrats – an inability to match revenues and expenditures.
Note, 1992 was the year the Democrats began consistently rejecting quality candidates and often nominating the worst of the bunch. Their quality made scarcely any impression at all (James Webb, Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, John Hickenlooper) or trailed their garbage candidate(s) (Bob Kerrey, Jerry Brown, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Wesley Clark). If you look just at the consequential candidates in terms of quality, they selected the 4th out of 5 in 1992, the 2d out of 2 in 2000, the 3d out of 4 in 2004, the 2d out of 2 in 2016, and the 5th out of 5 in 2020. Neither their voters nor their donors admire experience, accomplishment, policy knowledge or circumspection.
Chile clearly has a somewhat unique political heritage. So, I don’t suppose it should be surprising if the pendulum swings from one side to the other.
In the early ’90s I worked for British Aerospace and we were training Chilean pilots from the airline that bought our airplanes. Some of my colleagues followed them home for on-line training. I did not get down there, but those who did simply loved Chile. Several spoke of emigrating; although none did.
Of course we could have all been labeled as right wing nuts so the Chilean politics of the time did not seem intimidating.
I’ve been to Chile twice. First time in 2006 and second time in 2013.
During the first visit I saw a country that seemed relatively conservative. Things were well maintained, orderly, and prosperous. People in general seemed content.
On the second visit the atmosphere in Santiago, Valparaiso, and even down south in Puntas Arenas had changed. There were political slogans posted here and there, the streets were not as clean and orderly, people seemed less content, and In Santiago there were remnants (trash, signs, flags) of protest along with lots of graffiti. One Chilean told me the left was busy ginning up protests against the copper industry, the national pension plan, and demanding free college for all.
I knew the history of Chile’s communist movement under Allende that was ended by the military coup under Pinochet.
You would think that the economic ruin Allende brought would be remembered and avoided. Not so. The seductive promise of communism just doesn’t die.
It’s good that, as Art Deco points out, the legislature is more conservative, but it’s possible that Chile is in for some more “bad economic luck.” The leftist protestors will take to the streets to encourage more “equity” and against the copper industry. (Insane. It’s their primary export and store of national wealth.) We’ll see if the legislature can stand up to them. I hope so. Chile could be a stable, prosperous nation if governed by free market principles. It’s a beautiful country with a variety of climates and terrain along with enough natural resources to be prosperous.
The Chilean voters seem to have chosen the Venezuelan option. As for 1% owning 25% of the wealth, doesn’t that sound like us ?
“… there are considerably more Palestinians there, and that they tend to be highly successful and influential.” I find it interesting how Palestinians tend to be successful and prosperous…when they are not under the control of other Palestinians (i.e. the PLO, Hamas, etc.).
As for 1% owning 25% of the wealth, doesn’t that sound like us ?
I think it’s more like 1/3 in this country.
And that’s true of just about any country where private property and free exchange is the order of the day. Recall he’s referring to salable assets. Most wealth is in the form of human capital, which is income generating but not salable as an asset.
The Chilean voters seem to have chosen the Venezuelan option.
Chavez in 1998-99 was able to generate a preference cascade which allowed him to rewrite the country’s constitution with almost no vociferous opposition in the constituent assembly elected. The constituent assembly elected earlier this year is way too leftist, but still about evenly split between the right, the left parties who have worked within Chile’s institutions for 30 years, and a technocratic and non-aligned element on the one hand, and various Jacobin organizations on the other.
They don’t have the legislature or Venezuela’s unfortunate history.
Interesting on the numbers of “Palestinians.” In my experience, many Arabic-speaking Christians in the Middle East were anti-Jewish. It seemed to me they inhaled it from the language and culture. Too bad these immigrants brought this mental disorder with them.
I hope the legislature is able to keep this radical president in check.
Chile also has great Wine. Wonder if that industry will survive and prosper.
John F. MacMichael:
These are predominently Christian Palestinians.
Of course, so was Sirhan Sirhan.
Latin America overall has had poor governance through history. There was an interesting study that compared the governance in countries around the world with the previous colonial occupier of that country. Given the state of political affairs in Spain & Portugal, is it any surprise Latin American countries are a mess?
Forget Franco and look at the recent history of Spain with Basque terrorist and Catalan politicians being kicked around. In Portugal there was a case where the party advocating pulling out of EU won the most seats but nowhere near majority. The President of Portugal decided that it wasn’t in the best interest of Portugal to give that party a chance to form a govt.
Well, will be interesting to see what develops in Chile, now that they have, for a second time, voted in a president who is a hard core communist.
Recall that the first communist elected there, Salvador Allende , was killed in a military led coup d’etat.
Allende was killed during the coup, despite the fact he was defending himself with an AK-47 given to him by that great defender of individual rights and and democracy, Fidel Castro.
Receiving a gift from El Hefe, Castro, should tell you all you need to know about Allende and what his plans were.
And let’s not forget the freely elected, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. When he took office, as communist Castro wannabes are prone to due, he began changing the laws and Constitution to solidify and increase his hold on power. And how many trips did he make to Havana to consult with his God, Castro?
Whoever thinks that communists elected to office – regardless of his party’s number of seats in parliament – will simply follow the law and not attempt , legally or not, peacefully or not, using terror or not, arresting political opponents or not, etc. etc., well , they must have their head way up their anal sphincter and be absolutely ignorant of history.
And this behavior is not limited to communists; it is true of any elected official that is dead set on obtaining absolute power. Any and all means are used to solidify their power.
Any and all means.
History is very very clear on this.
All collectivist ideologies are inherently totalitarian in nature. As the “greater good” can be and will be used to justify whatever is declared to be mandatory.
How many Venezuelans now wish that they had left when Chavez was elected? The smart Chileans will start preparing to emigrate now, while they still can.
Latin America overall has had poor governance through history.
Chile has a long history of constitutional government, encompassing about 80% of its history as a sovereign republic. It is nearly the most affluent of Latin American countries and has the lowest rates of violent crime.
History is very very clear on this
Reds in charge of Latin American governments in the last generation include Mauricio Funes in El Salvador (2009-14), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007-17), Lenin Moreno in Ecuador (2017-21), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2006-19), Luis Arce in Bolivia (2020-), and Luis Ignacio da Silva in Brazil (2003-10). You’d likely have better policy in those loci if someone else had been in charge. You haven’t had an Allende / Chavez style disaster in any of these places.
Chile is a beautiful country, so if housing and property values crater (denominated in dollars), then maybe I’ll look at spending my winters down there.
I spent the morning pushing snow out of my driveway, with my Yooper Scooper. Last week, a windstorm blew down a thirty-foot spruce in my yard. The fantasy of foreign climes beckons, to say nothing of communist utopias. To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities, and I’m feeling old and needy, even though I’m a white male oppressor. I should have enslaved BIPOCs when I had the chance. What a fool am I.
John Tyler:
Allende actually killed himself.
Sounds a lot like the under 30 (when elected) leader of Harris County, “Lockdown” Lena Hidalgo. Fortunately, Lena’s power is checked by the conservative State government. She has a dumb covid warning level that is ignored by everybody, but if it was up to her, Harris County would look a lot like New South Wales. People working seems to be a problem for her.
the number of Palestinian Christians in the diaspora in Chile alone exceeds the number of those who have remained in their homeland.
Can you imagine life as a Palestinian Christian, with the UN and all the other ‘socially conscious’ NGOs shoveling megadollars to the Palestinian Muslims? Sounds like they began their hegira years ago.
We’ve had two actual draft dodgers in presidential politics (Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders) and a 3d man whose influential father persuaded senior brass to give him a less lethal assignment
Don’t omit Al Gore, whose photographic life in Vietnam left him unperforated.
Can you imagine life as a Palestinian Christian, with the UN and all the other ‘socially conscious’ NGOs shoveling megadollars to the Palestinian Muslims? Sounds like they began their hegira years ago.
They began leaving after the 1948 war. When I was in college, a favorite liquor store was owned and staffed by Christian Palestinians. They had arrived right after the war. That was 1956.
Don’t omit Al Gore, whose photographic life in Vietnam left him unperforated.
He was a reporter for Stars & Stripes. It is known that brass were anxious he might be killed so arranged for a posting that kept him out of the line of fire, mostly. What’s not been discovered is any documentation indicating that Albert Gore, Sr ever asked for special consideration for his son. There is in the archives evidence that Sen. Willis Robertson did ask for consideration, supplemented by Paul McCloskey’s testimony. (FTR, McCloskey’s testimony I would wager was embellished). I believe about 8% of all us military personnel posted to VietNam were killed or wounded, so it wasn’t unusual to be sent home without being perforated.
In Portugal there was a case where the party advocating pulling out of EU won the most seats but nowhere near majority. The President of Portugal decided that it wasn’t in the best interest of Portugal to give that party a chance to form a govt.
Portugal usually has coalition governments, so if that party could not get the co-operation of others, that’s a normal decision on the part of the head of state.
I think you’ve confused Portugal with some other place. None of the larger political parties in Portugal are advocates of Lusitexit.
I follow this one gentleman on Facebook. He is a Christian in Israel, who lobbied for Israel to recognize Arameans as an identity for the ID, and he’s working on revitalizing spoken Aramaic. He also has programs to help Christian kids prepare for Israeli army service.
Notice that I’m not calling him either an Israeli Arab or Palestinian. I used to wonder why no one did what he was doing, but now he is doing it.
I especially wondered about it after Bethlehem went from being a Christian town (and nice) to a Moslem town (and crap. It’s so sad…)
They’re Maronite, I think. (I read his Hebrew posts, and my Hebrew is not very good. And the translation option is not very good.) The Maronites are Eastern Catholic in full communion with Rome. They have a very interesting history.
It’d be great if someone from his organization b visited that community in Chile and laid out the reality on the ground there.
me: In Portugal there was a case where the party advocating pulling out of EU won the most seats but nowhere near majority. The President of Portugal decided that it wasn’t in the best interest of Portugal to give that party a chance to form a govt.
Art Deco: Portugal usually has coalition governments, so if that party could not get the co-operation of others, that’s a normal decision on the part of the head of state.
I misspoke about “pulling out of of EU” when in fact it was policies contrary to commitments to EU. The party with majority of seats is always given the first chance to form a govt in a parliamentary system. That wasn’t the case in Portugal.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Portugals-President-Wont-Allow-Leftists-to-Form-a-Government-20151023-0052.html
Those on the left control a majority in parliament, but the president says letting them govern would violate commitments to the European Union.
Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he will not allow a coalition of leftist parties to form a government despite the fact that they won an outright majority in parliamentary elections held earlier this month.
To be fair, progress is an [unqualified] monotonic process. Liberalism is divergent. Libertarianism is independent. Conservativism is moderating. Principles matter.
Art Deco,
Chileans now face a risk/benefit consideration. In the next election, leftist President Gabriel Boric may be turned out of office. But if he is reelected and then pulls a Chavez (and leftists always want to do so), Venezuela’s fate may await those who could have gotten out without great loss now.
Generally, those who have done well have much invested in their country and are naturally reticent to leave. By the time that there remains no doubt, it’s frequently too late. The bourgeoisie are the first to be purged. As the truly wealthy have the resources to cut their loses and flee with enough to set themselves up in a new location. While the poor have nothing to confiscate.
Apparently, a majority of Chilians have not learned from Venezuela’s lesson. Not surprising, it’s far easier to blame Venezuela’s misfortune upon the “wrong people” being in charge than to scrutinize afresh one’s assumptive premises.
Of course, that’s true here and in every country where progressives hold sway. There’s never a shortage of people who think they can get something for nothing.
Wherein the societal issue becomes fatally dysfunctional is when the nonproductive outnumber the productive. When services outnumber goods, in effect the chairs are being rearranged as the Titanic goes down.
Emigration to a new land that had to be cut out of a wilderness enforced a pragmatic mind set upon America’s first generations. Once the land was tamed, life’s demand for focused efforts toward survival started to wane. The industrial age drew the majority of the population into the cities, where who you knew started to become as important or even more important than what you knew.
Recently, I read a persuasive article that argued that it’s not Red States VS Blue States but rather Blue Cities VS Red Counties.
At base, its a struggle between those wedded to Fantasy VS those stubbornly insisting that Reality is the final determinate.
“ Those on the left control a majority in parliament, but the president says letting them govern would violate commitments to the European Union.
Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he will not allow a coalition of leftist parties to form a government despite the fact that they won an outright majority in parliamentary elections held earlier this month.”
In fact the government appointed by Cavaco Silva was immediately rejected by the parliament. A new left wing government was formed (socialist party supported in the parliament by two small but influent communist parties). The socialist party won the 2019 election but its extreme left wing support has broken one month ago. The country’s performance with respect to other EU members has deteriorated and the debt is now huge. An anticipated election next 30th January will follow whose result is quite difficult to predict.
Whatever they had will be gone in 5, 4, 3, …
Chilean wines are a good and fairly inexpensive btw
Our tradition if individual property rights is unique to the Anglosphere and even more unique to the US. The events in Chile highlight the information set out by Daniel Hannan in Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. If anyone has not read it they should.
I had a US born business associate who lived in Chile. He bought a beautiful piece of property and built a house, only to find that the land was still owned by some royal heir. None of the things that guarantee property rights here worked there. After the house was built and the property developed the lack of a reliable court system allowed it all to be taken in an amazing series of what seemed to a US citizen as corrupt evil events.
Without an independent judiciary and a tradition of private property rights, these countries will never be far from chaos. Another thing he commented on was the widespread and successful criminality. Much like we see in Soros DA areas. He said the only security was physical structures that were hard to breach. Personal self defense was also dangerous and likely to find the defender in trouble with the law while no attempt was made to find the perpetrators.
We tried to market a complex computer hardware/software system in Chile and failed. It was far superior to anything they had but a conglomerate which looked like what a royal collection of minor princes would have looked like in the middle ages controlled that area and the system capabilities were meaningless. Unless you paid off and cultivated them you were wasting your time. He had gotten to Chile as an engineer trainer on an earlier system and stayed in a management position with the user. His family background provided him with a command of Spanish.
Culture is everything. We are incredibly fortunate to have our culture of freedom, private property, commercial honesty, and legal predictability. We need to understand and protect it much better than we have been doing.
I had a US born business associate who lived in Chile. He bought a beautiful piece of property and built a house, only to find that the land was still owned by some royal heir. None of the things that guarantee property rights here worked there. After the house was built and the property developed the lack of a reliable court system allowed it all to be taken in an amazing series of what seemed to a US citizen as corrupt evil events.
Are you sure you haven’t confused Chile with some other Latin American country? Chile is famous for being the Latin American country with the most well-developed and active court system, and, if I’m not mistaken, well-ordered land titles as well. Given that the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies were ejected from Latin America by 1822, I cannot imagine which ‘royal heir’ might have title to a piece of property there.
The party with majority of seats is always given the first chance to form a govt in a parliamentary system.
No it isn’t.
Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he will not allow a coalition of leftist parties to form a government despite the fact that they won an outright majority in parliamentary elections held earlier this month.
You forgot to mention that his choice of ministry had to be submitted for approval to the legislature, which rejected it. Cavaco Silva gave up after a month. The government you’re telling me could never take office has been in office for six years.
In the next election, leftist President Gabriel Boric may be turned out of office. But if he is reelected
The law in Chile is one term and out.
Art Deco
No I am not. We both expected Chile to be the best place to start marketing the system because of its reputation. He had worked there for several years and knew the industry. We planned to open in Brazil after several live operations in Chile..
We were wrong. As soon as any meaningful amount of money was involved it was pure corruption all the way down.
It was far superior to anything they had but a conglomerate which looked like what a royal collection of minor princes would have looked like in the middle ages controlled that area and the system capabilities were meaningless. Unless you paid off and cultivated them you were wasting your time
Your medieval minor princes are figures in a country with a per capita product which is second only to Panama’s in Latin America. Bracketing out receipts from fuel and mineral exports and bracketing out the income received by the most affluent decile in each country, the real per capita income of the broad public in Chile is similar to that of the broad public in the United States ca. 1950. The homicide rate has in the last decade fluctuated between 2.5 per 100,000 and 4.5 per 100,000, i.e. lower than that of the U.S.
As soon as any meaningful amount of money was involved it was pure corruption all the way down.
I’m not seeing how another business refusing to buy whatever you were selling is ‘pure corruption’.
Mr. Britain, as far as I can see, you and Mr. Tyler are having quite stereotyped responses to a particular situation and aren’t interested in pesky details.
This fellow Boric sounds like someone who shouldn’t be put in charge of a Chia pet, but his discretion is not unconstrained. Your single best guess is that the Chilean public will suffer injuries to their well-being, then make a course correction. Good judgment is caused by experience, which is caused by bad judgment. The one thing that could prevent a course correction is Boric getting hold of the electoral system and the military high command, as the seedy Daniel Ortega did in Nicaragua.
Culture is everything. We are incredibly fortunate to have our culture of freedom, private property, commercial honesty, and legal predictability. We need to understand and protect it much better than we have been doing.
What are you talking about? Our court system is a scandal.
“You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to shoot your way out.”
– maybe Ben Stein
Art Deco
The system sold for several hundred thousand and it looked like a total of twenty sales might be possible. Once you get past the technical management you hit a group of connected people who make or break the deal.
The main way these countries implement advanced technologies is when a connected member of the group goes abroad and brings it home. If you don’t have a good connection you are wasting your time. If you don’t play the game you either leave or spend the rest of your life being f**cked over.
Our Swampians are striving to bring such a system here, but the Deplorables are able to fight back, thanks to a culture that needs much more explanation and appreciation than our educational system has been providing.
If there is cosmic justice we would see a burst of disgust with the self anointed elite where Ivy Leagers would be assumed to have gotten their position by connections and not by personal ability. Our Academia would be seen as a modern manifestation of the Planter Class, the only difference being that instead of living off the current stolen labor of their slaves they are living off the stolen future labor of theirs through student loans.
What if the Radical Republicans had succeeded in giving former slaves forty acres and a mule by breaking up the huge plantations? A century of racism would not have happened.
Maybe it is time to look at using the incredible endowments in Academia to repay student debt and refund those who paid their way. Then apply a huge tax penalty on payments to administrators, effectively preventing their existence.
Government guarantees on student debt should end immediately, and the ability to discharge it in bankruptcy must be restored. The fact that enough people in both parties agreed to not allow it is amazing. The GOP takeover by pro-life fanatics has blinded them to common sense.
We find ourselves in a situation where our young adults are unable to buy their first house and start families, but where a corrupt establishment preaches that without a degree you are doomed to be low class and can never succeed at anything. Student debt is sold to gullible teenagers with no opposition and no understanding of what it means for their future.
Student debt, like slavery, must be abolished.
The “GOP taken over by pro-life fanatics.” Like Mittens or Collins or Murkowski or Manchin? Well that last one isn’t GOP. Those GOP fanatics include Cruz and Lee; throw them out, right? Who is the fanatic, Dick?
Well, time will tell if Chile becomes the next Venezuela or not.
We find ourselves in a situation where our young adults are unable to buy their first house and start families, but where a corrupt establishment preaches that without a degree you are doomed to be low class and can never succeed at anything.
My Aunt and her husband saved money for 11 years in order to assemble a down payment to buy a house in 1959. It was a 1,300 square foot 3 bedroom house in what was then an exurban locus (now a peripherally suburban locus). On the day they moved in, she was 34 years old and he was 44. He was a skilled worker employed by a public utility, i.e. above the median in the social strata of the time They didn’t have a large family, just my two cousins. Between 1940 and 1970, the share of the population in owner-occupied housing went from about 35% to about 65%. You still had to pay your dues before you landed a piece of property.
Having introduced student loans, I have to post this link: https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-pauses-student-loan-payments-since-were-all-gonna-die-soon-anyway
To Anonymous: Try to run in a GOP Primary without being a pro-lifer and watch your kids be attacked at school. It is a complete takeover by single issue fanatics. The crazier the better, normal people don’t want to be associated with them and avoid taking local party positions.
Roe being overturned may be good because these people will no longer control the GOP, allowing a free market limited government focus to return. Most pro-lifers want larger government as long as they can use it to outlaw sin.
Try to run in a GOP Primary without being a pro-lifer and watch your kids be attacked at school. It is a complete takeover by single issue fanatics. The crazier the better, normal people don’t want to be associated with them and avoid taking local party positions.
This is a fantasy, of course.
What’s amusing about your complaint that what we get from the Chamber-of-Commerce fellators who are the mode among Republican politicians has amounted to jack squat most places. That’s true with regard to this issue and a half-dozen others.
The other amusing thing is that Vichy evangelicals have spent the last six years complaining that soCon voters actually make choices among competing alternatives rather than taking their marbles and going home (at times when it would be convenient for partisan Democrats for them to do that).
They are coming after my/your kids. Those evil babyphiles. Hear about them all the time, they are truly the dregs of society and polity. Or not.
And of course they are not “normal” people. A.B. Normal, that’s what they are.
You seem to “know” a lot about what those evil monomaniacal anti-abortion people want. Are they really people?
The final straw, to be against sin. Well that is a crushing closing argument, every right thinking, normal person is all in on sin. What’s not to like about sin (and evil)?
🙂
They are coming after my/your kids. Those evil babyphiles. Hear about them all the time, they are truly the dregs of society and polity. Or not.
And dysfunctions in the finance of higher education are their fault as well.
Sitting comfortably in my home here in the USA it’s very easy to give advice to others.
My advice to the Chilean Jewish community is to get out while you can.
The US could use 18,000 hard working people. Not that the d’s are gonna let all them pesky joooossss in.
Israel could certainly use more people. And going there would be a real finger in the eye to that Jew-hating pal of the incoming Chilean ‘leader’.
I see that Denial is just not a river in Egypt.
Fortunately for mankind the Boomers are aging out, and from my observation the younger pro-lifers are not nearly as crazy as the retiring bunch. Unfortunately that is not true with lefties.
We are left with a professional class terribly in debt, an Academia completely in control of leftist idiots, a press that can only survive by passing out fake news to its tribe, and a Swamp that has lost the need to even pretend that they are not totalitarians interested in self-preservation.
In Trump we had someone who actually set out to solve problems, and did so in things like the Abrahamic Accords and cracking down on Iran. He may get another chance but he is also not young.
There is no reason why Russia should be seen as an opponent beyond the need for the Swamp to have an enemy.
I think Andrew Yang may have something with his Forward Party focus on ranked choice voting and basic income. .
Those who have not read his books should.
Leftists control the Democratic Party in much the same way pro-life and anti-sin people control the GOP. A large politically homeless group may use Forward to coalesce in the same way the Republican party arose, and with current technology weeks not years can bring about dramatic change.
Dick sees he is up the river without a paddle. Is that a metaphor?
Funny that those monomaniacal Boomers and the following generations didn’t loose sight of their principles or just go along with Dick. Boomers can’t die soon enough for you? 🙂
How did the Mississippi and Texas abortion laws come to be, Dick? How did Pro-abortion crowd find their sacrament in front of the Supreme Court? Was it your approach, or keeping the “issue” alive these ~50 years?
“Pro-life and ant-sin people control the GOP.” Do you write for the BabylonBee?
“Roosia” good. Swamp not good. Leftists not good. (Blind pig finds all three acorns.) Blind pig is on a roll (or wallow)?
Andrew Yang good. Abortion good. Forward! (Blind pig finds no acorns in three.)
I was going to let this slide so as to not take the thread off-topic, but it seems too late for that, so here goes…
Dick Illyes wrote: “Government guarantees on student debt should end immediately, and the ability to discharge it in bankruptcy must be restored.”
The logical result of these changes in policy would be that middle-class kids could no longer attend college. Only children of the rich would be able to afford it. I, for one, don’t think that would be an improvement.
Dick again: “Student debt is sold to gullible teenagers with no opposition and no understanding of what it means for their future.”
Calculating interest on debt is sixth-grade math. If prospective college kids can’t perform sixth-grade math, they have no business attending college.
More Dick: “The GOP takeover by pro-life fanatics has blinded them to common sense.” and “The crazier the better, normal people don’t want to be associated with them and avoid taking local party positions.” and “Most pro-lifers want larger government as long as they can use it to outlaw sin.”
and finally: “It is a complete takeover by single issue fanatics.”
I think we found the single-issue fanatic.
I’ll bet those single issue fanatics (tautology?) don’t care about CRT in schools or the Trans mafia in schools, sports, and culture either. They are just so short sighted, those fanatics!
Is the CRT and Trans mafia a manifestation of sin? Ooh, perish the thought.
The logical result of these changes in policy would be that middle-class kids could no longer attend college. Only children of the rich would be able to afford it. I, for one, don’t think that would be an improvement.
No it isn’t. It would mean that educational finance would have to be composed of family resources, donations, endowment income, grants to students and loans taken out with banks, credit unions, and finance companies at market interest rates.
And there are other measures that could be taken.
1. Replace the current architecture of degrees. In lieu of that:
a. Preparatory certificates for admission to certain occupational schools. These could consist of on point arts-and-sciences and business courses, with perhaps some technology courses. They would not exceed 70 credits in duration.
b. Occupational certificates and degrees given by specialized schools, which may or may not be subsidiaries of a holding company. Some credentials might be certificates of < 30 credits, calendar year degrees of 48 credits, and degrees of one, two, or three academic years in length (30, 60, 90 credits). These would be laser focused on learning the occupation at hand.
c. Internships, clerkships, residencies, apprenticeships appended to such programs
d. Fancy professional schools with programs ranging from 48 credits to 170 credits (not including the preparatory certificate). Again, all time devoted to learning the profession.
e. Academic degrees of one, two or three years duration. Again, these courses would be in a discrete subject.
f. Research degrees which begin with a 4th year of coursework and then a dissertation. Some would be in academic subjects, some in vocational subjects with a research component (e.g. engineering, agriculture, business, public policy).
g. Degrees at divinity schools and seminaries (private only).
h. Degrees at conservatories (which might offer DMA or research degrees).
i. Degrees at arts institutes which might be of a variety of durations, but focus on performing disciplines rather than academic ones.
j. Degrees at service academies (military, naval, air, merchant marine, civil aviation, fire police, EMT).
k. Diplomas at institutions with a practical life of their own. Hospitals, museums, archives, libraries. These might be used to train nurses, laboratory technicians, curators, archivists, librarians &c.
2. Have public institutions be financed by vouchers. In essence, a student admitted would have a contingent claim on a tuition voucher and a room and board voucher from the state treasury. They could claim their vouchers by paying a recipients' fee to the state treasury. The fees paid would be general revenues for the state and the schools would never see them. They present the vouchers to the school, and that clears their obligation to the school. (There being no mandatory fees permitted and any ancillary charges being optional and a function of client preferences). The school presents them to a dedicated state fund and is compensated out of the fund.
3. In regard to above, the dedicated funds financing higher education would be themselves financed by an income tax whose architecture and rates were specified in the state constitution, so the devotion of public funds to higher education would be a fixed share of the state’s personal income flow and the global number of students registered a function of the number of people in given age ranges.
4. The recipient’s fee would be a function of the quantum of residency credit the student has accumulated. That’s a function of the number of tax returns filed for the dedicated funds wherein he is listed as a dependent of the filer and the number of returns he has filed himself wherein he had no dependents listed. Again, the fee is calculated according to the number of returns filed, not the amounts paid. For students with residency credit equaling 65% of their natural life, the recipient’s fee would be $0. For students with no residency credit, the fee would be the redemption value of the voucher.
5. Private higher education would be financed without any sort of public subsidy, as described above.
I see that Denial is just not a river in Egypt.
After which follows you free-associating.
I spent two weeks in Chile in 2018. A very nice and mostly safe country to visit.
Some observations: The wine is marvelous and inexpensive. The climate is like southern California to temperate (the south). Men greet each other with a handshake and hug. Women are greeted with a polite hug and peck on the cheek. People are friendly and accommodating. English is not a scholastic requirement so the general population speaks only the most basic English. Most rental cars are manual transmission. Roads are in good shape and easily navigable even at night. Even in the countryside most properties are fenced (walled in the towns).
Chileans themselves look like Mexicans (that is to say Indian and Spanish) with a sizable mixture of northern European and a good handful of Asians. Many important historical figures have northern European surnames.
We weren’t in country long enough to get a sense of politics but prior to our trip the press was making note of immigration causing a spike in crime. We encountered no problems. Which probably is mostly a function of where we spent the most time.
“Israel could certainly use more people.”
What she said. We need more ethno states with predominantly or exclusively race-based immigration and citizenship rules! Troublesome minorities residing within should be kept on a tight leash.
I’m all for it!
And it *is* Good for the Jews.
Like ex-pats in Hong Kong or Xuighurs in Xi land?
}}} a senile 70+ year old serial liar.
Physicsguy, you’re much too kind.
Rapist
Pedophile
Plagiarist
Traitor
Liar
Racist
… and one or two others that don’t come to mind right now.
I would point out that Chile has, for the last 50+ years, enjoyed considerable benefit from having a stable economy, and being the only South Am country which did so…. When the SHTF in South America a couple decades back, Chile was far and away the only one not in deep financial doo-doo as a result of being the only one run based on sound fiscal policy.
Apparently, the youth have not been taught this point, much as ours.
:-/
https://www.hoover.org/research/how-milton-friedman-saved-chile