Democrats are Increasingly the Anti-Science Party

Curt Schilling the Science Guy
From climate change to restrooms, Democrats are increasingly the anti-science party.


By
William McGurn April 25, 2016 6:42 p.m. ET

Let us stipulate that ESPN, as a private institution, was entirely within its rights to have sacked Curt Schilling for his combative Facebook post on the continuing national saga that is North Carolina restrooms. Let’s stipulate too that the way the former Red Sox pitcher advanced his case—sharing a meme featuring a grotesque fat man in a blonde wig pretending to be a woman—was not the line of argument that, say, William F. Buckley would have chosen.

But let us also note the irony. Mr. Schilling’s main contention—“a man is a man no matter what they call themselves”—is supported by DNA and those pesky X and Y chromosomes. In short, in this fight between science and authority, Mr. Schilling is in the amusing position of being the Galileo, with ESPN filling in for the Holy Office.

Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, puts it this way: “Curt Schilling is of course correct with the science in saying that claiming to be a woman when you have the chromosomal and anatomical structures of a man does not make you such. You’re still a man no matter what you think or how you dress.”

It’s an interesting detail that has gone largely unaddressed since Mr. Schilling delivered his knuckleball. Nor is it hard to see why. For it contradicts the dominant narrative in which Democrats take their positions from a clear-eyed look at the science while Republicans are blinded by their religious, social and economic orthodoxies.

This was the trope Barack Obama invoked in his maiden inaugural address, when he promised to “restore science to its rightful place.” Well, the American people have now had almost eight years of it. Turns out that restoring-science-to-its-rightful-place comes with its own set of dogmas and orthodoxies.

It’s not just letting men into women’s restrooms, either. On a host of issues, upholding the progressive catechism these days apparently requires seeking out and punishing heretics too.

Start with climate change. It may well be, as Barack Obama declared in Paris in December, when he committed the U.S. to the global war on temperature, that “99.5 percent of scientists and experts” believe man-made climate change a fact and that “we have to do something about it.” His eventual presidential successor, he suggested, must never question this consensus.

Is there anything more inimical to the spirit of science than the idea of squelching further inquiry, freezing our existing understanding in place and silencing opposition? Because this is precisely what such phrases as “settled science” or “scientific consensus” are designed to do.

Indeed, in this climate (pun intended), we now have moves to criminalize scientific dissent. Only last month, a collection of state attorneys general met with activists to discuss ways to go after Exxon for its alleged heterodoxy on global warming.

Which hints at the real game, which is less about the earth’s warming than the hope that green enthusiasms can be used to push through a progressive economic and regulatory agenda with few questions asked. As Ottmar Edenhofer, the then co-chairman of Working Group III of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, put it a few years back: “We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy.”

Or take abortion. In progressive dogma, the right to abort a fetus is not only settled science but settled law, which means you’re not only not allowed to question it, you must not stray from the approved vocabulary.

For example, if a couple is happy about a pregnancy, the two are perfectly free to share sonograms with friends and relatives and celebrate the pending arrival of their unborn child. But if this child is to be aborted, any talk of “person” or “child” becomes verboten, lest folks get too accurate an idea of what is happening.

Alas, even the truest believers slip up. So it was earlier this month on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when Hillary Clinton—who has in this election dumped the word “rare” from the earlier “safe, legal, and rare” Clinton formula on abortion—referred to the “unborn person” as having no constitutional rights.

Pro-lifers condemned her, as expected. As perhaps unexpected, she was also attacked by her pro-choice allies for uttering the words “unborn person.” Whatever position one takes on abortion, to say that the fetus is a person if the mother wants it and it’s not if she doesn’t is not science. It’s spin.

Each election season, the American people are treated to Republican candidates who fumble badly when challenged on, say, evolution or abortion. Fair enough. But the president and his allies also have orthodoxies that limit their openness to free inquiry and objective reality. The difference is these go largely unchallenged outside the conservative press.

Wouldn’t it be entertaining if someone would ask President Obama if Curt Schilling is right or wrong about the science?

Hypocrisy - Clinton Foundation Pays Female Executives 38 Percent Less Than Male Counterparts

 Just to be clear, pointing to a gap in total 'female vs. male' numbers and claiming discrimination isn't a legitimate way to evaluate compensation by gender.  Unfortunately, it's what 'fair pay' advocates do all the time, but apparently they fail to apply their biased standard to their own organizations.

Clinton Foundation Pays Female Executives 38 Percent Less Than Male Counterparts

Guy Benson | Apr 14, 2016

The "of course" piece of that headline is, needless to say, a reference to the many other "pay gap" violations of which Hillary Clinton has been guilty over the years. Under the Democrats' clumsy calculations, she has under-paid women in her Senate office and at her State Department. The Daily Caller documents the latest transgression. Why must the Clinton Foundation wage this brutal, mean-spirited war on women? Are they unsatisfied with their separate war on transparency and good government? Questions abound. Details:

Male executives at the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation earn 38 percent more than women executives, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of the foundation’s latest IRS tax filings. The foundation’s 2013 IRS form 990 reveals that nearly three times as many men as women occupy the executive suites at the Little Rock, Arkansas-based foundation. On average, top male executives at the foundation earn $109,000 more than the top female executives with positions in the C-suite.

The piece goes on to note that Mrs. Clinton was out beating the drums on this very "issue" earlier in the week, highlighting the fact that the presumptive Democratic nominee timed her campaign launch last year to coincide with the annual made-for-politics "equal pay day:"

Clinton has called for a multi-pronged effort to close the gap, starting by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would add some teeth to the 50-year-old Equal Pay Act by preventing employers from retaliating against workers who share wage information. She’s also called for a higher federal minimum wage and new laws requiring employers to provide paid family and medical leave (she and her opponent Bernie Sanders agree on that front). “I feel like [equal pay] is something that’s long overdue but I know we’ve got to keep moving forward,” Clinton said. Equal Pay day this year falls on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Clinton’s presidential campaign. At the kickoff event held in New York City that day, Clinton promised to keep pay parity front and center in her bid for the Democratic nomination. “It is way past time to end the outrage of so many women still earning less than men on the job — and women of color often making even less,” she said. “This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a family issue.”

As for Clinton's hypocrisy, Democrats will indignantly link to various fact-checkers who've "debunked" the numbers, explaining that the calculations involved are somewhat cherry-picked and fail to take important factors into account.  Which is exactly the point.  Lefties do precisely the same thing when they wield deeply misleading "X cents on the dollar" statistics as a cudgel to hammer Republicans who oppose their latest pointless, coercive government "solution" to a problem that they deliberately inflate with bogus numbers, derived from wildly simplistic math.  As we've documented in the past, the alleged 'pay gap' almost entirely vanishes when the data is analyzed in a thoughtful, nuanced way -- and that most of that gap is due to women's choices, as opposed to discrimination.  But because Democrats only apply nuance to themselves, Republicans can be forgiven for responding in kind and asking why the Clinton Foundation hates women, and not just as it relates to the mega-bucks it pulls in from undisclosed foreign donors and authoritarian regimes with terrible records on women's rights.  Should Hillary Clinton pay a political price for this two-faced nonsense?  Sure.  Will she?  In light of Donald Trump's extraordinarily horrendous ratings among female voters, it seems unlikely.  I'll leave you with this data point on married women, a demographic Republicans traditionally win.  Yeesh:

Equal Pay Day and the 23% gender pay gap myth

Some thoughts on Equal Pay Day and the 23% gender pay gap myth 

Mark J. Perry 

The American Association of University Women (AAUW), along with the National Committee on Pay Equity (NCPE), are major participants in the feminist propaganda machine that mobilizes its forces every April and engages in statistical misrepresentations to publicize the annual feminist holiday known as Equal Pay Day. Last April, AAUW executive director Linda D. Hallman sent a mass email that made this verifiably false statement (emphasis added):

Think about it: Women have to work almost four months longer than men do to earn the same amount of money for doing the same job. What’s more, we have to set aside a day each year just to call the nation’s attention to it.

Hallman’s statement is a statistical fairy tale because it’s based on the false assumption that women get paid 23% less than men for doing exactly the same work in the exact same occupations and careers, working side-by-side with men on the same job for the same organization, working the same number of hours per week, traveling the same amount of time for work obligations, with the same exact work experience and education, with exactly the same level of productivity, etc. In other words, the AAUW, NCPE, progressives, and gender activists falsely assume that employers all across America are using coupons like the one above to get a 23% wage discount for every woman they hire, and it’s that rampant, unjust and blatant gender discrimination that is the culprit behind the gender pay gap.

For example, Sen. Gary Peters (MI-D) said at this time last year that (emphasis mine): “Today, April 14th marks Equal Pay Day, the date by which women have made up for the wage discrimination they suffered during the previous year.” That’s complete statistical nonsense.
The reality is that you can only find a 23% gender pay gap by comparing raw, aggregate, unadjusted full-time median salaries, i.e. when you control for NOTHING that would help explain gender differences in salaries like:

1. Hours Worked: The average man working full-time worked almost two more hours per week in 2014 compared to the average woman, see my analysis here.

2. Type of Work: As I reported a few days ago, men represented 92.3% of workplace fatalities in 2014 (and the male share of job-related deaths has been consistently that high in every previous year) because men far outnumber women in the most dangerous, but higher-paying occupations like logging, mining and roofing that have the greatest probability of job-related injury or death. In contrast, women, more than men, show a demonstrated preference for lower risk occupations with greater workplace safety and comfort, and they are frequently willing to accept lower wages for the greater safety and reduced probability of work-related injury or death.

3. Marriage and Motherhood: a) single women who have never married earned nearly 94% of male earnings in 2014 (but that does not control for anything else like hours worked, age, experience, education, occupation, etc.); b) more women than men leave the labor force temporarily for child birth, child care and elder care, and c) women, especially working mothers, tend to value “family friendly” workplace policies more than men, according this Department of Labor study.

Most economic studies that control for all of those variables conclude that gender discrimination accounts for only a very small fraction of gender pay differences, and may not even be a statistically significant factor at all. For example, as Andrew Biggs and I pointed out in a 2014 WSJ op-ed:

In a comprehensive study that controlled for most of the relevant labor market variables simultaneously—such as that from economists June and Dave O’Neill for the American Enterprise Institute in 2012—nearly all of the 23% raw gender pay gap cited by the UUAW can be attributed to factors other than discrimination. The O’Neills conclude that, “labor market discrimination is unlikely to account for more than 5% but may not be present at all.”

On Equal Pay Day, when groups like the AAUW and NCPE point to a 23% unadjusted gender pay gap and demand that the pay gap be completely closed, what they are really saying is that they want women to:

• Work longer hours on average like men do;
• Work in riskier, less safe occupations like logging and commercial fishing like men do where the chances of getting injured or killed are much greater;
• Work in more physically demanding occupations like farming, construction, roofing, logging and working on oil rigs, where they’d be working alongside men outside in 100 degree weather in the summer and below zero weather in the winter;
• Accept fewer jobs in family-friendly workplace environments like teaching elementary school that coincide with their children’s schedules (with summers off, etc.), and accept more jobs in less family-friendly workplace environments like being an over-the-road truck driver or being an oil field worker.
• Take less time off, or no time off, for child birth and child care to minimize their time away from the labor force that might affect their earnings.

Bottom Line: Those who publicize Equal Pay Day and demand that the unadjusted 23% pay gap be reduced to zero are unknowingly really advocating that men and women play completely interchangeable roles in the labor market and identical roles in their family responsibilities; and that’s an outcome I don’t think most women (or men) really want. As the Department of Labor concluded in 2009, “The differences in raw wages may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.” They also concluded that “the raw wage gap should not be used as the basis to justify corrective action.”

As I concluded on my recent related post, once we adjust for all of the factors that contribute to the raw difference in pay by gender, Equal Pay Day actually probably fell close to December 31 of last year. Or maybe the first week of January…. but NOT the second week of April. Women should be embarrassed by the economic myth that is annually perpetuated on their behalf by Equal Pay Day, which suggests that gender discrimination in the labor market burdens them with 14 additional weeks of work to earn the same income as their male counterparts earned the previous year – when that’s not even remotely true.

Ask Hillary Clinton Why Abortion Is A ‘Difficult Decision’

Ask Hillary Clinton Why Abortion Is A ‘Difficult Decision’
When Hillary Clinton labels abortion ‘difficult,’ she concedes almost every argument of the pro-life movement.

By Hans Fiene
April 8, 2016

During Hillary Clinton’s recent appearance on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Paula Faris asked the presidential candidate about her assertion that an unborn person has no constitutional rights. Clinton, never missing an opportunity to proclaim her commitment to restriction-free abortion on demand, responded with the following words:

“Under our law that is the case, Paula. I support Roe versus Wade because I think it is an important — an important statement about the importance of a woman making this most difficult decision with consultation by whom she chooses: her doctor, her faith, her family. And under the law and under certainly that decision, that is the way we structure it.”

Clinton’s response was, of course, hardly surprising, as pro-choice politicians have spent a few decades labeling abortion a “difficult decision” to derail any conservative attempts to limit access to it, because everyone knows that government bureaucrats are woefully unqualified to make difficult decisions for you. Well, government bureaucrats are perfectly capable of deciding for you that providing flowers for a gay couple’s wedding doesn’t violate your religious beliefs, but everyone knows that once “difficult decisions” migrate from the heart down to the uterus, government bureaucrats can no longer be trusted.

Why Is Abortion a Difficult Decision?

What was also unsurprising about this exchange on “The View” was that Faris neglected to parse Clinton’s response. The “difficult decision” verbiage is, after all, rather par for the political course at this point, so it’s understandable that your average journalist wouldn’t try to discover something new hidden in a phrase that’s been tossed around approximately eleventy billion times since 1973.

Within the heart of that phrase dwells a monstrously self-defeating implication that ought to be obvious to any journalist striving for a modicum of objectivity.

But within the heart of that phrase dwells a monstrously self-defeating implication that ought to be obvious to any journalist striving for a modicum of objectivity. Therefore, as a challenge to any journalist desiring to cover the abortion issue fairly, I beg they ask Clinton or any other politician who tosses out the “abortion is a difficult decision” line the following question: Why is abortion a difficult decision?

After all, the difficulty spoken of here is obviously one of a moral nature, and most medical procedures are not steeped in moral difficulty. They may be difficult in the sense that you are afraid to undergo them, but they’re not difficult from a right versus wrong perspective. A woman may ask her priest to pray with her before undergoing an appendectomy out of fear, for example, but she’s not going to ask him to pray with her out of guilt for expelling the inflamed organ from her digestive system. Likewise, no woman lays awake the night before cancer treatment wondering if she’ll be guilty of a mortal sin for letting doctors kill her tumor with radiation.

So if abortion is just a medical procedure not substantially different from these procedures, why is it a difficult decision? If the thing that a woman is having removed from her body is just a clump of her own cells, less essential to her health than the tonsils or gall bladder she’s already had yanked out, what’s the big deal with removing some unwanted goo from her uterus?

Surely Hillary Clinton would find it silly if a woman broke down in tears telling her husband or pastor that she has an abscess molar and needs his help deciding whether it’s right for her to get it removed. So what makes abortion so different? Why is abortion a difficult decision?

It’s Difficult Because We Don’t Want to Kill People

The answer is obvious. Abortion is a difficult decision because this medical procedure results in a dead baby. Choosing to have an abortion is morally difficult because a woman has to weigh her desire not to give birth to a child with her desire not to kill the child that she’s already conceived. When a teenage girl is terrified of her parents’ anger and rejection, abortion is a heart-wrenching decision to consider because it promises to take away her fear, but only at the cost of ending the innocent life in her womb. When a young woman is filled with sorrow as she considers having to put her education or career on hold due to an unexpected pregnancy, abortion is a heavy thing to consider because, while it promises to give her back the life she wanted to make for herself, it also charges a price for that freedom that her conscience will never be able to pay off.

Defending the legality of abortion while acknowledging its moral indefensibility is ultimately an untenable position.

Quite simply, when Hillary Clinton labels abortion “difficult,” she concedes almost every argument of the pro-life movement—that life begins at conception, that abortion takes an innocent human life, that taking innocent human life is wrong, and that guilt is the natural result of sinning so greatly against our most vulnerable neighbor. The only pro-life argument Clinton refuses to concede, of course, is the conclusion—namely that, for the sake of both women and their unborn children, abortion should be illegal.

But as I’ve argued before, defending the legality of abortion while acknowledging its moral indefensibility is ultimately an untenable position, and those who are firmly committed to their respective sides in the abortion debate will not tolerate rhetoric that erodes their positions from the politicians who are supposed to be on their side, as evidenced by the response to Clinton’s original comments from many on the Left who recognize that there’s only so long you can concede that the unborn are persons before you can’t justify keeping it legal to tear their bodies apart in the womb.

Maybe Hillary Clinton Really Wants to Celebrate Abortion

So no matter where journalists stand on Roe v. Wade, it would benefit everyone for them to mine the words “abortion is a difficult decision,” that standard little phrase Clinton and others always use to justify abortion. The American people, after all, have the right to choose their next president, but we can only make an informed decision if journalists ask the questions we don’t have the opportunity to ask, and get the answers we desperately need.

We can only make an informed decision if journalists ask the questions we don’t have the opportunity to ask, and get the answers we desperately need.

So ask. “Why is abortion a difficult decision? Is it because abortion takes an innocent human life? Is that what you believe is happening?”

I’d be very interested in hearing Clinton’s response. Since she’s a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, I’d imagine Clinton would initially hem and haw about these questions being above her pay grade before being told to adopt the more stable position that abortion is not something sad that we allow but something empowering that we celebrate, a position that would make it much easier for voters to understand her position on the issue and consider how well it represents their own.

But, then again, perhaps she’d surprise me. Perhaps if caught flat-footed on national television, perhaps if forced to see the implicit pro-life concessions in her phrasing without her handlers being able to whisper them away in her ear, Clinton could have the scales fall from her eyes and see that choosing to have an abortion is a difficult decision because the thing being aborted is a living, human child who deserves to be treated with dignity and love and doesn’t deserve to die simply for the crime of being inconvenient.

Perhaps in that moment, Clinton could see that the reason abortion fills women’s hearts with difficult emotions is because those women feel they have no option but to take a life that neither they nor God wants to see taken. Perhaps if asked to explain why abortion is morally problematic, Clinton’s devotion to scripted answers would give way to an overwhelming desire to be honest and she’d concede, “You know what, maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe if abortion is such a difficult decision, it shouldn’t be completely unrestricted. Maybe, as I did with gay marriage, I need to reevaluate my position.”

Granted, I know that expecting a career politician to have an ideological conversion on live television is rather foolish. But, just like an unborn person who has no constitutionally protected right to life in Clinton’s eyes, I can always dream.

Minimum Wage Activist Interview

Interesting interview with a $15 minimum wage activist. This is a great example of how the minimum wage discussion is totally divorced from logic, economics, and value delivery. The activist does not recognize or care that she is imposing costs on owners and customers and that forcing owners to pay more in wages than workers deliver in productivity will result in layoffs or automation.  A small group will be better off, but a much larger group will be worse off in terms of higher prices, fewer profits to reinvest in the business, and lost jobs.  In economic terms, a 'dead weight loss' results, and total value created is reduced.

I wish Neil had asked her how they arrived at $15 as the proper minimum wage. I guarantee she would have answered that is 'fair' or would provide a 'living wage' - her answer would have nothing to do with business economics or her delivering $15 worth of productivity.   

It's disappointing that workers are being misled in this way. They are being told this will be a great catalyst, that their increased spending power will grow the economy and everyone will benefit. Clearly, that's not how wages work. If it worked that way, then $15 is way too low - it should be $100/hour or more. When workers are (over)paid more than they produce (including higher-paid workers), that inefficiency is a drag on growth and actually constrains resources that would otherwise be used to expand business and create more jobs. 

All that has been accomplished here is to make a lucky few low-skilled workers marginally better off at the expense of their counterparts who now will be fired, replaced, or unable to take advantage of opportunities that don't exist because resources were wasted overpaying the lucky few.

It's already happening.

No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia

No, Bernie Sanders, Scandinavia is not a socialist utopia


By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist October 15, 2015

When Bernie Sanders was asked during CNN’s Democratic presidential debate how a self-proclaimed socialist could hope to be elected to the White House, he gave the answer he usually gives: Socialism has been wonderful for the countries of Scandinavia, and America should emulate their example.

“We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people,” Sanders said. When the moderator turned to Hillary Clinton, she agreed that America has to “save capitalism from itself” and that, yes, Scandinavia is great. “I love Denmark,” declared Clinton. It was the only time in the debate a candidate uttered the verb “love.”

Liberals have had a crush on Scandinavia for decades. “It is a country whose very name has become a synonym for a materialist paradise,” observed Time magazine in a 1976 story on Sweden. “Its citizens enjoy one of the world’s highest living standards. . . . Neither ill health, unemployment nor old age pose the terror of financial hardship. [Sweden’s] cradle-to-grave benefits are unmatched in any other free society outside Scandinavia.” In 2010, a National Public Radio story marveled at the way “Denmark Thrives Despite High Taxes.” The small Nordic nation, said NPR, “seems to violate the laws of the economic universe,” improbably balancing low poverty and unemployment rates with stratospheric taxes that were among the world’s highest.

Such paeans may inspire Clinton’s love and Sanders’ faith in America’s socialist future. As with most urban legends, however, the reality of Scandinavia’s welfare-state utopia doesn’t match the hype.

To begin with, explains Swedish scholar Nima Sanandaji, the affluence and cultural norms upon which Scandinavia’s social-democratic policies rest are not the product of socialism. In “Scandinavian Unexceptionalism,” a penetrating new book published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Sanandaji shows that the Nordic nations’ prosperity “developed during periods characterized by free-market policies, low or moderate taxes, and limited state involvement in the economy.”
For example, Sweden was a poor nation for most of the 19th century (which helps explain the great wave of Swedish emigration to the United States in the 1800s). That began to change as Stockholm, starting around 1870, turned to free-enterprise reforms. Robust capitalism replaced the formerly agrarian system, and Sweden grew rich. “Property rights, free markets, and the rule of law combined with large numbers of well-educated engineers and entrepreneurs,” Sanandaji writes. The result was an environment in which Swedes experienced “an unprecedented period of sustained and rapid economic development.” In fact, between 1870 and 1936, Sweden had the highest growth rate in the industrialized world.

Scandinavia’s hard-left turn didn’t come about until much later. It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that taxes soared, welfare payments expanded, and entrepreneurship was discouraged.

But what emerged wasn’t heaven on earth.

That 1976 story in Time, for example, went on to report that Sweden found itself struggling with crime, drug addiction, welfare dependency, and a plague of red tape. Successful Swedes — most famously, Ingmar Bergman — were fleeing the country to avoid its killing taxes. “Growing numbers are plagued by a persistent, gnawing question: Is their Utopia going sour?”

Sweden’s world-beating growth rate dried up. In 1975, it had been the fourth-wealthiest nation on earth (as measured by GDP per capita); by 1993, it had dropped to 14th. By then, Swedes had begun to regard their experiment with socialism as, in Sanandaji’s phrase, “a colossal failure.”

Denmark has come to a similar conclusion. Its lavish subsidies are being rolled back amid sharp concerns about welfare abuse and an eroding work ethic. In the last general election, Danes replaced a left-leaning government with one tilted to the right. Loving Denmark doesn’t mean loving big-government welfarism.

The real key to Scandinavia’s unique successes isn’t socialism, it’s culture. Social trust and cohesion, a broad egalitarian ethic, a strong emphasis on work and responsibility, commitment to the rule of law — these are healthy attributes of a Nordic culture that was ingrained over centuries. In the region’s small and homogeneous countries (overwhelmingly white, Protestant, and native-born), those norms took deep root. The good outcomes and high living standards they produced antedated the socialist nostrums of the 1970s. Scandinavia’s quality of life didn’t spring from leftist policies. It survived them.

Sanandaji makes the acute observation that when Scandinavian emigrants left for the United States, those cultural attributes went with them and produced the same good effects. Scandinavian-Americans have higher incomes and lower poverty rates than the US average. Indeed, Danish-Americans economically outperform Danes still living in Denmark, as do Swedish-Americans compared with Swedes and Finnish-Americans compared with Finns. Scandinavian culture has been a blessing for native Scandinavians — and even more of one for their cousins across the ocean.

No, Scandinavia doesn’t “violate the laws of the economic universe.” It confirms them. With free markets and healthy values, almost any society will thrive. Socialism only makes things worse.Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeff_jacoby.

North Carolina Fights Federal, Corporate Blackmail Over Trans Bathroom Law

Corporations are free to take their business to whomever they choose (how ironic - I thought they could be forced to provide a service on demand as a condition of them being 'open for business').  The government, however, is a different matter.  The President is using the threat of withholding federal money to enact policy over a state beyond his Constitutional reach.  That is a gross misuse of power.  The federal government does not have an 'open bathroom' policy as far as I'm aware, but the President feels it's appropriate to meddle in a state's decision on the matter.

North Carolina Fights Federal, Corporate Blackmail Over Trans Bathroom Law
President Obama and major corporations are threatening North Carolina with millions in lost funds for passing a law to ensure equal access to sex-specific bathrooms by both sexes.


By D.C. McAllister
April 4, 2016

North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which requires people to use the bathroom that matches their biological sex and not their preferred “gender identity,” has been maligned across the nation as “anti-LGBT,” but the law isn’t discriminatory at all.

The state legislature passed and the governor signed the Privacy and Security Act after the Charlotte City Council voted to require businesses to allow a man into a women’s restroom, shower, or locker room if the men want. According to governor’s office, “this ordinance would have eliminated the basic expectations of privacy people have when using the rest room by allowing people to use the restroom of their choice.”

The Charlotte ordinance, which had been soundly defeated in the past but was pushed through this year despite opposition from parents, businesses, and pro-women groups, brought up serious questions about privacy, as well as safety concerns that perverts posing as transgender people could take advantage of the law to harm others.

North Carolina’s action is not isolated. It is one of at least 37 states where cities and towns cannot pass regulations that exceed the authority given to them by the state. In passing the bathroom ordinance, Charlotte was exceeding its authority and setting rules that had ramifications beyond the city. According to the state, “the legislature acted to address privacy and safety concerns if this ordinance was allowed to go into effect on April 1.”

The backlash has been heated as the legislature has been accused of passing a bill that violates the rights of LGBT citizens. In response, Gov. Pat McCrory published a list of “Myths vs Facts” about this common-sense privacy law. He makes 18 very important points, including that the bill does not “limit or prohibit private sector companies from adopting their own nondiscrimination policies or practices,” “take away existing protections for individuals in North Carolina,” prevent businesses from allowing “transgender individuals to use the bathroom, locker room or other facilities of the gender they identify with, or provide other accommodations,” or “prohibit towns, cities or counties in North Carolina from setting their own nondiscrimination policies in employment.” In addition, “This law simply says people must use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. Anyone who has undergone a sex change can change their sex on their birth certificate.”

President Obama is currently considering whether he thinks the new law is a reason to axe North Carolina’s federal aid for schools, highways, and housing. Title IX funding is being threatened, even though a court has already ruled in Virginia that schools should not lose Title IX funding for not allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. According to this ruling, McCrory is right that NC won’t lose the funding. This decision, however, is being appealed.

No one is being denied use of a bathroom, and private businesses are free to do what they want.

Obama’s threat in the name of “civil rights” puts pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law. Experts say this is unlikely, but Obama’s review of the pro-privacy act puts North Carolina on notice, as has happened in other states. Such a threat would make sense if the law were actually discriminatory, but it isn’t since men and women are being treated equally—both have equal access to bathrooms according to their actual sex. No one is being denied use of a bathroom, and private businesses are free to do what they want.

Despite this fact, big companies, such as American Airlines, Lowe’s, Google, Apple, and the NBA have denounced the law. ESPN, which has been considering Charlotte Motor Speedway for its summer X Games, has said it embraces diversity and inclusion and will “evaluate all its options.”

Facebook, which has a data center in North Carolina, says it’s “disappointed by the recent events in North Carolina.” The NCAA, which has men’s basketball tournaments planned in North Carolina through 2018, has stated that it is “monitoring the situation.”

Obviously, there is a full-court press of intimidation being leveled at North Carolina for standing up for a common-sense privacy law. This hysteria over HB2 shows the power LGBT militants and their sycophants in Hollywood and big business exert over the minds of Americans, which results in nothing less than propagandized groupthink rooted in mass delusion.

Threatening a state that wants to protect those rights is a form of bullying that borders on fascism.

Forcing businesses to allow men into women’s bathrooms (and vice versa) and violating real privacy rights and then threatening a state that wants to protect those rights is a form of bullying that borders on fascism—a point Tammy Bruce made when LGBT activists made threats against owners of a pizza shop in Indianapolis.

“For us to put on to these small business owners this kind of totalitarian boot is clearly us becoming the monster we were fighting against,” she said. “This kind of bullying, this kind of fascism in the name of equality doesn’t make sense.”

Libertarian journalist John Stossel agrees, saying in an interview with Bill O’Reilly that the homosexual “movement has moved from tolerance to totalitarianism. It’s the totalitarianism of the Left.”

The Ultimate End: Expanding Government Power

When the governor of New York said he was going to ban travel of public employees to North Carolina because of the pro-privacy law, McCrory called him out for his ludicrous declaration.

If you stand with North Carolina, you stand for states’ rights, individual liberties, actual civil rights, and common sense.

“Is the type of democracy we’re going to have where you go to Cuba and then you tell citizens not to come to North Carolina?” McCrory asked. “First of all, a lot of New Yorkers already moved to North Carolina, have made North Carolina their permanent home. I’m sorry, Gov. Cuomo, but that’s a fact. Maybe it’s because we believe in just common-sense privacy laws, and by the way we also are against any types of discrimination, but that doesn’t mean we overturn basic common-sense expectations of privacy that men and women and children expect when they go to a locker room or a restroom or a shower facility. This is ridiculous.”

It is ridiculous. The Charlotte ordinance that started all this would have forced businesses and schools to open bathrooms to anyone according to their self-perceived gender identity, violating the safety and privacy of women and children. The state of North Carolina rightly stepped in, because this is a valid pubic safety issue, and restored the rights of North Carolinians as well as protecting women and children, something the gay mafia dismisses in the name of its militant agenda.

Now, the Obama administration is trying to exert authoritarian control over a sovereign state in the name of civil rights when no civil rights are being violated. This is really what’s at the heart of transgender laws—not equal protections of transgender people, but the growth and power of the state.

Anyone who supports this kind of totalitarian overreach or cheers the boycott of North Carolina has drunk the Kool-Aid of leftist bullies. If you stand with North Carolina, you stand for states’ rights, individual liberties, actual civil rights, and common sense. The NC governor needs to be supported, not attacked, and encouraged not to cave to the dictates of the gay mafia as other governors have done.

“The bottom line is that it will take real courage to stop the machine of government abuse of power, a machine the gay mafia has such a hand in promoting,” writes Senior Contributor to The Federalist Stella Morabito. “GOP governors who refuse to respect the will of the majority of the people of their states by caving to LGBT tactics of extortion may think they are protecting their state’s economy and reputation. They may even feel gratification when the mafia pats them on the back for cooperating, and congratulates them for ‘nothing happening’ to the nice state they got there. But that will prove to be nothing but a temporary illusion for those governors and their states. And as such things always go, the children will suffer the most.”