Saturday, July 08, 2023

Mao Tse-Tung Disagrees That "All White People Are Racist"

As I was reading Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (aka The Little Red Book), I came across a particularly stunning quote in Chapter 2: Classes and Class Struggle:

 

In the final analysis, national struggle is a matter of class struggle. Among the whites in the United States, it is only the reactionary ruling circles that oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people.

"Statement Supporting the American Negroes in Their Just Struggle Against Racial Discrimination by U.S. Imperialism" (August 8, 1963), People of the World, Unite and Defeat the U.S. Aggressors and All Their Lackeys, 2nd ed., pp. 3-4.

 

Wow. So the "overwhelming majority of white people" are not racist? And that's according to Chairman Mao!

Yet his statement contradicts what today is a familiar accusation from the Left. Search the phrase "all whites are racist" on the internet. You'll come up with much. For instance, an article by Elena Guthrie on Huff Post, "Are All White People Racist?" [February 10, 2017], in which she concludes:

 

"All white people are racist, because all white people exist in a racist power structure that we aren't actively fighting to dismantle. Racists don't just wear white pointy hats and say the 'n' word, by doing nothing, any and every white person is still taking advantage of a power structure that favours us. Don't be more upset with being called racist than actual racism."


It seems today's Left has moved so far to the Left that the late Communist dictator of Red China now stands on "the wrong side of history."

Yet back in his heyday, Mao was as radical as you could get. He was an icon for Leftists who thought the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev had turned soft and compromised. Mao was unlike the "tired, old white men" of the USSR. Mao was cool. He was authentic. His face adorned the walls of college dorms. Women wanted to sleep with him and guys wanted to be him.

But how does The Great Helmsman measure up to the woke standards of today's intersectional Left?

Well, in his Little Red Book, Mao talks a lot about economic class struggle. He denounces imperialism and advocates for "national liberation movements." But he never makes it about race. And although it's not a term he uses, he might justifiably be described as "color blind." That makes him old-fashioned. A dinosaur among today's Left. Perhaps even a running dog reactionary!

I'm no Maoist. The man was a monster, as were and are all Communist dictators. More innocent people died under Mao's regime than even under Stalin or Hitler. Which is why Mao's above quote should give libertarians pause for thought.

When even a man of Mao's Communist street cred is guilty of such a cancel-worthy statement, it shows just how far leftward our own culture has moved.

Saturday, June 11, 2022

The Bitcoin Field Guide Exudes Pre-Crash Optimism

Libertarians have long been interested in Bitcoin, blockchain, and cryptocurrency in general, as a means of circumventing state centralized banking. A recent documentary (released just before the crypto crash of 2022) exudes that libertarian fervor.

For my review of 2021's The Bitcoin Filed Guide, click here.

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Monday, April 25, 2022

Libertarian Party of California Fields No Candidates for June 7, 2022 Primary Election

I've been inactive in the Libertarian Party for a while now. And it seems I'm not alone.

I recently received the California Voters Guide for the upcoming June 7, 2022 primary election. I was surprised to see that not a single Libertarian candidate bothered to run for office throughout the state, or in my area -- Los Angeles County.

Take a look at the list of candidates. Apart from plenty of Democratic and Republican candidates, the Green Party is running several candidates, as is the Peace & Freedom Party. Also many candidates listed as "No Party Preference" and "No Qualified Party Preference."

But not a single Libertarian.

Also no one from the American Independent Party, but that's no surprise. They rarely run candidates.

However, Don J. Grundmann is running as "No Qualified Party Preference." In his candidate statement, he says he belongs to the Constitution Party, which is not ballot qualified in California.

So the Constitution Party, which is so tiny that it does not qualify as a legal political party in California, managed to field a candidate. While the Libertarian Party, with all its greater resources and membership numbers, failed to run any candidates.

Now, it's possible that the LP is running candidates in other parts of California. Or not. But definitely no one at the state level. And no one in Los Angeles, the state's most populous region.

I wonder how this happened? I know Top Two has hurt all third parties. But the Green, Peace and Freedom, and even Constitution parties managed to rise to the challenge, while the LP is MIA.

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Thursday, April 22, 2021

Dangers of Second Hand Marijuana Smoke

Libertarians tend to be blindly (irrationally) defensive of marijuana. Because The State prohibited marijuana smoking for so long, it must be a good thing.

But consider these facts, taken from the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation website:

* Secondhand smoke from combusted marijuana contains fine particulate matter that can be breathed deeply into the lungs, which can cause lung irritation, asthma attacks, and makes respiratory infections more likely. Exposure to fine particulate matter can exacerbate health problems especially for people with respiratory conditions like asthma, bronchitis, or COPD.

* Significant amounts of mercury, cadmium, nickel, lead, hydrogen cyanide, and chromium, as well as 3 times the amount of ammonia, are found in mainstream marijuana smoke than is in tobacco smoke.

* In 2009, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment added marijuana smoke to its Proposition 65 list of carcinogens and reproductive toxins, also known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986. It reported that at least 33 individual constituents present in both marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke are Proposition 65 carcinogens.

* Secondhand smoke from marijuana has many of the same chemicals as smoke from tobacco, including those linked to lung cancer.

* Secondhand marijuana exposure impairs blood vessel function. Published studies on rats show that thirty minutes of exposure to secondhand marijuana smoke at levels comparable to those found in restaurants that allow cigarette smoking led to substantial impairment of blood vessel function. Marijuana smoke exposure had a greater and longer-lasting effect on blood vessel function than exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke.

* One minute of exposure to marijuana SHS substantially impairs endothelial function in rats for at least 90 minutes, considerably longer than comparable impairment by tobacco SHS. The findings in rats suggest that SHS can exert similar adverse cardiovascular effects regardless of whether it is from tobacco or marijuana.

* Secondhand marijuana smoke and secondhand tobacco smoke is similar in many ways. More research is needed, but the current body of science shows that both tobacco and marijuana smoke have similar chemical composition and suggests that they may have harmful cardiovascular health effects, such as atherosclerosis (partially blocked arteries), heart attack, and stroke.

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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Congressman Tom McClintock's Recommendations for California's November 2020 Ballot Propositions

Congressman Tom McClintock offers his recommendations on California's November 2020 ballot propositions:


Proposition 14 – Brewster’s Billions: NO. “Brewster’s Millions” tells the story of a fictional character in 1902, who, in order to inherit $7 million, must first spend $1 million in a year and have nothing to show for it. In 2004, California voters were convinced to spend $3 billion on Stem Cell research – or about $260 (plus interest) for every family in California. A recent report found that $2.1 billion went to beneficiaries with links to the board that doles out the money. That money is now all but spent, with nothing to show for it. So, they’re back with another bond, this one for $5.5 billion (about $478 per family). This is amusing only as fiction.


Proposition 15 – How Not to Succeed in Business: NO. From the “How Tone Deaf Can They Be” file comes this proposal to reassess businesses annually in order to hike their property taxes. That’s because the state-ordered lockdowns, the arrests of shopkeepers trying to keep their businesses going, combined with California’s highest-in-the-country income and sales taxes and anti-business regulations, have left California’s small businesses flush with cash. It is still possible to build a successful small business in California, as long as you start with a successful large one. And remember, businesses don’t pay taxes: YOU pay business taxes, as a consumer through higher prices, as an employee through lower wages or as an investor through lower earnings (think 401k).


Proposition 16 – Judging People by the Color of their Skin and Not the Content of the Character: NO. In the Parents Involved Case of 2007, Chief Justice Roberts noted that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” California voters had come to the same conclusion when they passed Proposition 209 in 1996, which forbids state government from discriminating or giving preferential treatment “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.” Prop 16 repeals this civil rights protection for all Californians and opens a new era of official discrimination based on race.


Proposition 17 – Bank Robbers for Biden: NO. If there were any doubt of the Democrats’ contempt for the electorate, this should dispel it. This bill gives felons on parole the right to vote. Enough said.


Proposition 18 – High School Voters: NO. Wait, there’s more! Here’s a proposal to give 17-year-olds the right to vote in primary and special elections. Democrats are counting on their good judgment, experience and common sense to counter the influence of their nagging, annoying and totally unreasonable parents.


Proposition 19 – Fire Sale: NO. Right now, parents can leave the family home to their family without a crippling property tax hike. This bill ends that exemption, purportedly to add more money for firefighting. It’s a good bet that more family homes will be lost in fire sales than in fires.


Proposition 20 – A Step Back from the Abyss: YES. Long version: This measure repairs some of the damage of Jerry Brown era laws that have made California less safe. It increases penalties for many theft and fraud crimes that Brown reduced to misdemeanors, requires convicts to submit DNA for state and federal databases and restores the ability of parole boards to keep dangerous prisoners behind bars. Short version: Jerry Brown opposes it.


Proposition 21 – Rent Control with Nothing to Rent: NO. There’s an old soviet-era saying, “What good is a free bus ticket in a city with no buses?” The same is true of rent. Rent controls are very effective at drying up the supply of rental housing in any community where they’re imposed. Those currently renting do very well, but they hold on to their old apartments and landlords stop building new ones. Presto: nothing to rent – but at a very affordable price.


Proposition 22 – Let My Uber Go: YES. One of the worst bills ever enacted by the California legislature (and that says a lot) is AB 5, that essentially ended independent contracting in California. This measure exempts app-based drivers, meaning independent contractors put out of work by AB 5 can still take an Uber to a free state.


Proposition 23 — Bringing Venezuelan Heath Care to Dialysis Patients: NO. Two years ago, SEIU tried to impose price controls on dialysis. They lost and are back with this measure that imposes onerous and expensive requirements to have physicians on duty at dialysis clinics and prohibiting them from going out of business without state approval. This will help dialysis patients by assuring higher prices and will help encourage new clinics to open by forbidding them ever to close. Makes perfect sense.


Proposition 24 – When in Doubt, Don’t: NO. This measure purports to expand consumer privacy, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a consumer privacy group, calls it “a mixed bag of partial steps backwards and forwards.” Here’s what is crystal clear: it will unleash a new regulatory agency with vast powers to prosecute businesses that run afoul of the increasingly intricate consumer privacy laws in California. Another nail in the coffin of the once “Golden State.”


Proposition 25 – Catch and Release: NO. When suspects are arrested, they’re jailed until posting bail to assure they show up for trial. Surprisingly, many suspects don’t want to; go figure. Jerry Brown and the lunatic legislature did away with this process in 2018, replacing cash bail with “risk assessments.” This law was temporarily suspended pending this referendum, but the leftist Judicial Council did away with bail for most crimes during the COVID scare, resulting in the arrest, immediate release and subsequent re-arrests of criminal suspects the same day for different crimes. A NO vote would repeal this insane law.

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Sunday, August 25, 2019

Tulsi Gabbard: The Best Among the Democrats

For now, at least, Tulsi Gabbard seems the lesser evil among the major party candidates running for president. She's saying some good things about foreign policy. She's opposes "regime change wars" (her term) and is willing to explore peace options with enemies.

Some of her recent tweets:

"I'll never apologize to smear merchants for doing everything I can to prevent more of my brothers & sisters from being killed/wounded. If it means meeting with a brutal dictator or a 100 dictators, I will do whatever it takes to prevent or end a regime change war." —TeamTulsi


"U.S. presence in Afghanistan costs $4 billion a month. Imagine what we could do with those billions to care for our sick, support our teachers, provide housing & education, & other ways serve the American people. I’ll end wars that waste our money and make us less safe." —TeamTulsi


"As president I'll end the failed war on drugs, legalize marijuana, end cash bail, and ban private prisons and bring about real criminal justice reform. I’ll crack down on the overreaching intel agencies and big tech monopolies who threaten our civil liberties and free speech."
 
She's not perfect. What candidate is? Especially from an establishment party. But the U.S. could do much worse than electing Gabbard for president in 2020.

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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Memories of a Not Much Loved President Bush

Former President George H.W. Bush died last November 30th. I wrote my own memories about the man and his legacy on December 9th, publishing it in a few places.

Here is what I wrote:

Like Winston Smith in George Orwell's 1984, I see the telling of recent history changing before my eyes. This past week, commentators across the political spectrum praised the late President George H.W. Bush.

But I don't recall him having gotten much love during his political career. ... click to continue.

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