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Video

[brid video=”11822″ player=”1929″ title=”Second Planned Parenthood Senior Executive Haggles Over Baby Parts Prices Changes Abortion Methods”]

A new undercover video shows Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council President, Dr. Mary Gatter, haggling over payments for intact baby parts. Further, and more disturbing, Dr. Gatter offers to use a “less crunchy technique” to get more intact body parts during a practice the group has repeatedly claimed they do not engage in.

“I wouldn’t object to asking Ian, who’s our surgeon who does the cases, to use an IPAS [manual vacuum aspirator] at that gestational age in order to increase the odds that he’s going to get an intact specimen,” Dr. Gatter says in regards to modifying the abortion procedure.

Federal law prohibits altering the timing or method of abortion for the purposes of fetal tissue collection — 42 U.S.C. 289g-1 — but Gatter, who seems aware this violates the law, disregards them.

“To me, that’s kind of a specious little argument.”

The sale or purchase of human fetal tissue is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $500,000 (42 U.S.C. 289g-2).

“Planned Parenthood’s top leadership admits they harvest aborted baby parts and receive payments for this,” CMP’s Project Lead David Daleiden said in a comment. “Planned Parenthood’s only denial is that they make money off of baby parts, but that is a desperate lie that becomes more and more untenable as CMP reveals Planned Parenthood’s business operations and statements that prove otherwise.”

Seven State Governments and three House committees have opened investigations into Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted fetal body parts. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has called PPFA’s Senior Director of Medical Services to testify this month about the organization’s fetal tissue harvesting.

“As a start, I have asked our relevant committees to look into this matter,” Boehner said in a statement following the first of what will be no less than three videos. “I am also calling on President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”

A recent video released by the Center captured PPFA Senior Director of Medical Services Dr. Deborah Nucatola admitting to using partial-birth abortions to get intact parts and suggesting a price range of $30 to $100 per specimen.

Gatter is a senior official within Planned Parenthood and is President of the Medical Directors’ Council, the central committee of all Planned Parenthood affiliate medical directors.

Actors posing as buyers ask Gatter, “What would you expect for intact [fetal] tissue?”

“Well, why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying!” Gatter replies.

Gatter continues: “You know, in negotiations whoever throws out the figure first is at a loss, right?” She explains, “I just don’t want to lowball,” before suggesting, “$75 a specimen.”

Gatter twice recites Planned Parenthood messaging on fetal tissue collection, “We’re not in it for the money,” and “The money is not the important thing,” but she immediately qualifies each statement with, respectively, “But what were you thinking of?” and, “But it has to be big enough that it’s worthwhile for me.”

Gatter then turns to the women sitting to her right, pats her on the shoulder, laughs and says, “I want a Lamborghini.” Asked to repeat the statement, Gatter replies, “I said, ‘I want a Lamborghini.’”

Gatter also admits that in prior fetal tissue deals, Planned Parenthood received payment in spite of incurring no cost: “It was logistically very easy for us, we didn’t have to do anything. So there was compensation for this.” She accepts a higher price of $100 per specimen understanding that it will be only for high-quality fetal organs: “Now, this is for tissue that you actually take, not just tissue that someone volunteers and you can’t find anything, right?”

By the lunch’s end, Gatter suggests $100 per specimen is not enough and concludes, “Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.”

In a new Planned Parenthood vide, Medical

Opinion

Obama-Biden-Iran-Deal

President Obama delivers remarks to announce a historic nuclear deal he says will verifiably prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon on July 14, 2015.

Distinguished scientist Freeman Dyson has called the 1433 decision of the emperor of China to discontinue his country’s exploration of the outside world the “worst political blunder in the history of civilization.”

The United States seems at this moment about to break the record for the worst political blunder of all time, with its Obama administration deal that will make a nuclear Iran virtually inevitable.

Already the years-long negotiations, with their numerous “deadlines” that have been extended again and again, have reduced the chances that Israel can destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities, which have been multiplied and placed in scattered underground sites during the years when all this was going on.

Israel is the only country even likely to try to destroy those facilities, since Iran has explicitly and repeatedly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

How did we get to this point — and what, if anything, can we do now? Tragically, these are questions that few Americans seem to be asking. We are too preoccupied with our electronic devices, the antics of celebrities and politics as usual.

During the years when we confronted a nuclear-armed Soviet Union, we at least realized that we had to “think the unthinkable,” as intellectual giant Herman Kahn put it. Today it seems almost as if we don’t want to think about it at all.

Our politicians have kicked the can down the road — and it is the biggest, most annihilating explosive can of all, that will be left for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with.

Back in the days of our nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, some of the more weak-kneed intelligentsia posed the choice as whether we wanted to be “red or dead.” Fortunately, there were others, especially President Ronald Reagan, who saw it differently. He persevered in a course that critics said would lead to nuclear war. But instead it led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War.

President Barack Obama has been following opposite policies, and they are likely to lead to opposite results. The choices left after Iran gets nuclear bombs — and intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond Israel — may be worse than being red or dead.

Bad as life was under the communists, it can be worse under nuclear-armed fanatics, who have already demonstrated their willingness to die — and their utter barbarism toward those who fall under their power.

Americans today who say that the only alternative to the Obama administration’s pretense of controlling Iran’s continued movement toward nuclear bombs is war ignore the fact that Israel bombed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear facilities, and Iraq did not declare war. To do so would have risked annihilation.

Early on, that same situation would have faced Iran. But Obama’s years-long negotiations with Iran allowed the Iranian leaders time to multiply, disperse and fortify their nuclear facilities.

The Obama administration’s leaking of Israel’s secret agreement with Azerbaijan to allow Israeli warplanes to refuel there, during attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, was a painfully clear sabotage of any Israeli attempt to destroy those Iranian facilities.

But the media’s usual practice to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil in the Obama administration buried this news, and allowed Obama to continue to pose as Israel’s friend, just as he continued to assure Americans that, if they liked their doctor they could keep their doctor.

Some commentators have attributed Barack Obama’s many foreign policy disasters to incompetence. But he has been politically savvy enough to repeatedly outmaneuver his opponents in America. For example, the Constitution makes it necessary for the President to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate to make any treaty valid. Yet he has maneuvered the Republican-controlled Congress into a position where they will need a two-thirds majority in both Houses to prevent his unilaterally negotiated agreement from going into effect — just by not calling it a treaty.

If he is that savvy at home, why is he so apparently incompetent abroad? Answering that question may indeed require us to “think the unthinkable,” that we have elected a man for whom America’s best interests are not his top priority.

The United States seems at this moment

Opinion

Muhammad-Youssef-Abdulazeez

Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, has been identified as the suspect behind two terror attacks at military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn.

The details about Mohammad Abdulazeez, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga grad accused of murdering four Marines and a sailor, dripped out in the familiar pattern. The first thing to come out of the shocking news is the name of the alleged attacker. Then there is speculation about what sick ideology may have inspired the horrendous act. And there are pictures of the comfy suburban nest the killer came from alongside interviews with baffled neighbors.

Finally comes the inside story bearing the inevitable headline, “Family Troubles Before Killings in Chattanooga.” Abdulazeez’s mother had tried to divorce the father in 2009, accusing him of abusing her and the children and planning to take a second wife, which he held would have been allowable under Islamic law. The parents reconciled, but that’s a lot of craziness.

As for Mohammad, he was facing a court date for drunken driving and illegal drug use and had been fired from a job at a nuclear plant. A family spokesman said the 24-year-old had been fighting depression, pointing to mental illness as a possible cause.

It takes an extremely twisted personality — twisted for whatever combination of reasons — to shoot unarmed strangers, which the Marines and sailor were. So the terrorist needs a larger cause to hide behind.

It appears that Abdulazeez chose radical Islam as a cover for his personal disintegration — though investigators do not yet know whether organized Mideast terrorist groups got to him during a visit to Jordan.

Look at the back stories of other young men who committed or are accused of committing acts of terrorism in this country. The similarities are hard to ignore.

Consider Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old charged with massacring worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. His parents had gone through multiple divorces, and he had reportedly attended at least seven schools.

The kid was obviously unbalanced. He had previously dressed in black and asked creepy questions of workers at a mall. Police found drugs on him, and he was ordered to stay away from the shopping center.

Quite the mess, Roof found grandiosity among the fumes of white supremacist ideology.

Adam Lanza was the 20-year-old who shot up an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, murdering 26, mostly children. He was mentally ill, beyond a doubt. But even more craziness reigned behind his freshly painted suburban front door. Lanza’s mother was a gun nut who left weapons and ammunition lying around the house. He hadn’t seen his father in two years.

Neighbors saw Lanza as “a little weird” but not homicidal, according to a New Yorker article. But psychiatrists observed a deeply disturbed individual, his feelings of worthlessness alternating with flashes of self-importance.

And although Lanza didn’t seem glued to a particular ideology, the article did not hesitate to label him a terrorist: “Adam Lanza was a terrorist for an unknowable cause,” it said.

About half of mass murderers kill themselves at the end. As a Harvard psychiatrist noted, they want to “end life early surrounded by an (aura) of apocalyptic destruction.”

As such, Andreas Lubitz, the 27-year-old Germanwings co-pilot who crashed a planeload of passengers into a mountainside, could be called a terrorist, as well.

The question remains about what mix of toxic thinking and brain chemicals would motivate these people, all men in their 20s, to kill masses of unarmed innocents. And with that, we must wonder how much a role teachers of cracked belief systems play in causing such atrocities.

Do they create terrorists out of normal people, or do they provide the match that ignites walking tinderboxes of inner chaos? No easy answers are forthcoming.

The details about Mohammad Abdulazeez, the Chattanooga

Opinion

Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate, real estate mogul Donald Trump, speaks at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Saturday, July 18, 2015. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Is anyone concerned that the media have succeeded in using a flap between Donald Trump and John McCain to divert our attention from serious issues facing the nation?

Trump has been very outspoken in recent weeks on certain issues, especially immigration. His unfiltered remarks have resonated with people, driving him high in the polls among the GOP hopefuls.

I don’t think for a second this means Trump has a realistic chance of getting the GOP presidential nomination, much less winning the presidency, but it is a powerful indication that people are tired of what’s been going on in the country. In supporting Trump, people are rebelling against political correctness and the refusal of the political class to control our borders.

People are also tired of leftists controlling the narrative and bullying conservatives into silence. They see Trump as a refreshing figure who is unafraid to fight back. That doesn’t mean they agree with everything he says.

Concerning the McCain-Trump altercation, McCain drew first blood, calling Trump’s supporters “crazies.” Trump went too far in firing back with “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”

The leftist media immediately pounced on this, gleefully turning it into a feeding frenzy against GOP candidates. Their goal was to force each candidate either to condemn Trump, which presumably would hurt Trump, or to defend him, which would hurt those candidates.

Few would defend Trump’s remarks, but how about McCain’s? Is McCain forever excused because of Trump’s overreaction?

McCain can pretend he used “crazies” as a term of affection, but he and his fellow establishment elites do think immigration hawks are crazies. That’s right; they home in on Trump’s outrages, but their real beef is with conservatives.

There is nothing crazy about believing that a sovereign nation ought to control its borders. There is nothing crazy in insisting that immigration occur through the proper legal channels, which include learning about our uniquely glorious heritage and endorsing the American idea. Any non-suicidal nation would require these at a minimum. The federal government’s deliberate sabotaging of border control is what is outright nuts.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone complained about conservative candidates always falling for the liberal media’s gotcha questions and allowing them to hijack the narrative. “Just refuse to play their game,” they say.

Well, Sen. Ted Cruz is refusing. When the media pressed him to condemn Trump, he refused to take the bait, yet he stated that he highly respects McCain’s war record and honors all United States veterans.

By doing so, Cruz is sending multiple messages: 1) He does not agree with Trump or condone the insulting remarks. 2) He adores the U.S. military and veterans. 3) Regardless, he refuses to be ensnared and diverted to nonissues. 4) He won’t say anything to dampen the enthusiasm of patriots who’ve had their fill of President Obama’s destructive policies. And 5) he will stay on message and control his own political campaign.

It’s unfortunate that some have denounced Cruz as a moral coward for refusing to condemn Trump. That is absurd. He needn’t condemn the indefensible to prove he’s not a moral coward. He’s making the larger point that we must stay focused on the issues. We never will if we continue to defer to those who believe that Caitlyn Jenner is more newsworthy than Iran, which is, with our help, moving giant steps closer to becoming a nuclear power.

Instead of faux fretting over Trump, could we please stay focused on Obama’s disgraceful nuclear deal with Iran, his attempted end run around Congress by taking it to the United Nations first and his stunning indifference to freeing $150 billion to the diabolical Iranian regime to fund global terrorism?

While we are all scrambling to castigate Trump to prove our moral bona fides, we are ignoring that the federal government subsidizes Planned Parenthood and the group’s harvesting of human organs. We are overlooking Obama’s pernicious plan for the federal government to amass shockingly detailed information about U.S. citizens for collection in racial databases that will be used to stir up racial discord in the name of “diversity” when Obama leaves office. We are allowing Obama to get away, once again, with refusing to identify the murderer of U.S. service members as a Muslim terrorist.

There are so many disturbing things going on we don’t have time to keep up with all of them even if we aren’t diverted over what GOP candidate A said about GOP candidate B.

No, I won’t defend some of Trump’s statements, but nor will I call his supporters “crazies.” If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he and his supporters would be considered crazies and extremists.

Meanwhile, the people who are truly doing crazy stuff have become the new normal. The ordinarily unflappable traditionalist, America-loving citizens have had it with being vilified and muzzled while real craziness is elevated to normal. They appreciate Trump’s outspokenness in the midst of such widespread cowardice and surrender on our side — even if they don’t approve of all his comments.

Could we please stay focused on the real issues? It would be hard to overstate how momentous these matters are to the future of this nation.

Is anyone concerned that the media have

News

Cuban-Interests-Section-Embassy

FILE – In this July 1, 2015 file photo a man on a scooter drive past the Cuban Interests Section, which serves as the de facto diplomatic mission of Cuba to the U.S., in Washington. (Photo: AP/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

The U.S. formally restored diplomatic relations with communist Cuba Monday, as Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez visited the U.S. capital for the first time. After midnight, the countries’ diplomatic mission in Havana and Washington, D.C., respectively, became fully operation embassies, marking the end to a Cold War-era policy implemented by President Kennedy more than a half century ago. Rodríguez and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are set to hold talks and a joint press conference during the day.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno RodrÌguez, flanked by their respective advisers, sit together in Panama City, Panama in this handout photo

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (centre, right) and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno RodrÌguez (centre, left), flanked by their respective advisers, sit together in Panama City, Panama April 9, 2015 in this handout photo, as they hold a bilateral meeting – the first between officials at their level since 1958 – on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas. (Photo: REUTERS/U.S. State Department/Handout via Reuters)

Rodríguez said he would mark the occasion by raising the Cuban flag at the new embassy. During the night, Cuba’s flag joined the others on display at the U.S. State Department headquarters in Washington. The last time a Cuban foreign minister visited Washington, Dwight D. Eisenhower was president and John Foster Dulles was secretary of state. Eisenhower severed relations in 1961, in the early years of Fidel Castro’s rule, prior to Kennedy putting the nail in Cuba’s economic coffin.

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana plans to announce its upgrade to embassy status in a written statement on Monday, but the Stars and Stripes will not fly at the mission until Kerry visits in August for a ceremonial flag-raising. Despite the policy change, restrictions on trade and travel remain in place and cannot be changed on the part of the U.S. without an act of Congress.

Cuban-American lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as American conservatives, oppose and criticized the normalization of relations.

“Their views on human rights are not legitimate, they’re immoral,” Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio, who is Cuban America, said of the Cuban government.

The U.S. formally restored diplomatic relations with

World

United-Nations-General-Assembly

United Nations General Assembly.

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously endorsed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the six world powers in a resolution co-sponsored by 15 members. The resolution, which was adopted Monday morning, also authorizes a series of measures leading to the end of U.N. sanctions that have hurt Iran’s economy.

President Barack Obama announced the deal last week with Vice President Joe Biden by his side, making a series of claims that have not held up to scrutiny by those on the left and right. The agreement requires international inspectors to ask Iran’s permission first before they can begin the verification process Obama touted, after which Iran has 14 days to decide whether to grant it. If not, the same group of weakened nations that negotiated the deal would have another 10 days to make their decision about what to do next. While the international group may have final say, that is, if they have the political will and resolve, the deal essentially gives Iran 24 days to drag out the process.

However, the U.N. Security Council measure also provides a weak yet existing mechanism for U.N. sanctions to “snap back” in place if Iran fails to meet its obligations. The resolution had been agreed to by the five veto-wielding council members, who along with Germany negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran.

The U.N. Security Council has unanimously endorsed

Economy

Europe-Greece-Bailout

July 12, 2015: Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, right, speaks with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde during a round table meeting of eurogroup finance ministers at the EU Lex building in Brussels. (Photo: AP/Michel Euler)

For understandable reasons, the fiscal mess in Greece has dominated the European economic headlines. But there are other developments that deserve attention. Amazingly, some politicians think Europe’s stagnant economy can be improved with more harmonization, more bureaucratization, and more centralization.

The EU Observer has a story about a French scheme to transform the eurozone into a supranational government.

French president Francois Hollande has called for a stronger more harmonised eurozone… “What threatens us is not too much Europe, but too little Europe,” he said in a letter published in the Journal du Dimanche. He called for a vanguard of countries that would lead the eurozone, which should have its own government, a “specific budget” and its own parliament. …French prime minister Manuel Valls Sunday said…France would prepare “concrete proposals” in the coming weeks. “We must learn the lessons and go much further,” he added, referring to the Greek crisis.

I’m not sure what lessons Monsieur Valls wants people to learn. Greece got in trouble because of big government and excessive intervention.

So why is anyone supposed to believe that adding a new layer of government is going to make Europe more prosperous?

In all likelihood, the French are pursuing this agenda for two selfish reasons.

  1. A “harmonised eurozone” means that all affected nations would have to abide by the same rules, and that inevitably means taxes and regulations are set at the most onerous levels. The French think that’s a good idea because it’s a way of undermining the competitiveness of other eurozone nations.
  2. A eurozone government with a “specific budget” sets the stage for more intergovernmental transfers in Europe. The French think that’s a good idea since they presumably could prop up their decrepit welfare state with money from taxpayers in nations such as Germany, Finland, and the Netherlands.

By the way,not all French politicians are totally misguided.

At least one of them is expressing more sensible ideas, as reported by the U.K.-based Telegraph.

France is “the sick man of Europe”, François Fillon, the former centre-Right prime minister, has said in an open letter to French president Francois Hollande, calling for urgent economic reforms.“The Greek tragedy shows that the threat of bankruptcy is not abstract,” according to Mr Fillon… French commentators writing about the Greek crisis in recent days have pointed out that France’s own national debt of more than €2 trillion (£1.4 trillion), amounting to 97.5 per cent of GDP, places it in the same league as Spain and other southern European countries.

By the way, the commentators who are fretting about French debt are focused on the wrong variable. The French disease is big government. High levels of debt are simply a symptom of that disease.

Moreover, I’m not sure that Monsieur Fillon is a credible spokesman for smaller government and free markets since he served during the statist tenure of President Sarkozy.

In any event, if there are any serious reformers in France, they face an uphill battle. As I’ve previously noted, many successful people and aspiring entrepreneurs have left France.

Here’s a news report on the phenomenon.

[brid video=”11766″ player=”1929″ title=”France’s Reckoning Rich Young Flee Welfare State”]

And just in case you think this is merely anecdotal data, here’s a table showing the nations that lost the most millionaires since 2000.

In the case of China and India, rich people leave because they want to establish a domicile in a developed nation.

But successful people escape France in spite of its first-world attributes.

Let’s now cross the Pyrenees and see what’s happening in Spain.

Our Keynesian friends, as well as other big spenders, are always trumpeting the value of infrastructure projects because they ostensibly pump money into an economy.

I’ve made the point that such outlays should be judged using cost-benefit analysis. Well, it appears that Spain listened to the wrong people. It got a €10,000 return on an infrastructure “investment” of €1,100,000,000.

One of Spain’s “ghost airports”—expensive projects that were virtually unused—received just one bid in a bankruptcy auction after costing about €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) to build. The buyer’s offer: €10,000. Ciudad Real’s Central airport, about 235 kilometers south of Madrid, became a symbol of the country’s wasteful spending.

Wow, and I thought Social Security was a bad deal.

But Spanish politicians should be known for more than just misguided boondoggles.

Some of them also are working hard to make sure citizens don’t work too hard. Here’s a story from an English-language news outlet in Spain (h/t: Commentator).

Between the hours of 2pm and 5pm you will struggle to find anyone in the Valencian town of Ador; the town’s inhabitants will have taken to their beds to catch their mandatory forty winks. The town’s summer siesta tradition is so deep-rooted the mayor has enshrined his citizen’s right to an afternoon snooze in law. …Ador could be the first town in Spain to actually make taking a siesta obligatory by law. …The new rules also stipulate that children should remain indoors:

One imagines the next step will be mandatory bed checks by new bureaucrats hired for just that purpose.

Though maybe they would need special permission to take their mandatory siestas from 11:00-2:00 so they would be free to harass the rest of the population between 2:00-5:00.

In any event, we can add mandatory siestas to our list of bizarre government-granted human rights.

For legitimate reasons, the fiscal mess in

Policy

nsa-headquarters

June 6, 2013: A sign stands outside the National Security Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. (Photo: AP)

I’ve written before about the tremendous success of Hong Kong. The jurisdiction routinely is ranked as being the world’s freest economy, and its fiscal policy is a role model for spending restraint.

One reason Hong Kong has prospered is that it has enjoyed a policy of benign neglect, particularly when it was a British colony prior to 1997. More specifically, the United Kingdom by happenstance appointed John Cowperthwaite to help govern the colony. And his view of governing was to leave things alone.

…while the mother country lurched in a socialist direction at home under Clement Attlee, Cowperthwaite became an advocate of what he called “positive non-interventionism” in HK.

Cowperthwaite was especially wise in realizing that collecting statistics was risky because advocates of big government would want to justify and implement intervention on the basis of data.

To Cowperthwaite, the planner’s quest for statistics was anathema. So he refused to compile them. When Friedman asked him in 1963 about the “paucity of statistics,” Cowperthwaite answered, “If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.”

This may seem to be an arcane point, but imagine how much freer we would be if Washington didn’t have access to our private information.

Consider these examples.

  1. The burdensome modern income tax would be impossible if government didn’t have information on our income and assets.
  2. Disgusting examples of asset forfeiture would no long occur if the government didn’t have data on our bank accounts.
  3. Failed interventions such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core would be impractical if Washington didn’t have education statistics.
  4. Our medical system wouldn’t be messed up by Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare if politicians didn’t have data about healthcare.

The list is almost endless.

And now we have another disturbing example. As the New York Post reports, the Obama Administration is engaging in an intrusive and Orwellian data-collection exercise as a precursor for central planning of the economy and manipulation of private behavior.

Unbeknown to most Americans, Obama’s racial bean counters are furiously mining data on their health, home loans, credit cards, places of work, neighborhoods, even how their kids are disciplined in school — all to document “inequalities” between minorities and whites. This Orwellian-style stockpile of statistics includes a vast and permanent network of discrimination databases.

Why are they doing all this snooping? To justify more intervention, of course.

The bureaucrats are guided by the theory of disparate impact, which is based on the absurd notion that any difference in racial statistics somehow is a sign of malignant racism.

So it doesn’t matter if there isn’t any evidence of racism. It doesn’t matter if there’s any suggestion of actual discrimination.

What matters if that a bunch of bureaucrats want power to micro-manage the economy and control our lives.

Here’s what’s happening, for instance, in housing.

…the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing database, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolled out earlier this month to racially balance the nation, ZIP code by ZIP code. It will map every US neighborhood by four racial groups — white, Asian, black or African-American, and Hispanic/Latino — and publish “geospatial data” pinpointing racial imbalances. The agency proposes using nonwhite populations of 50% or higher as the threshold for classifying segregated areas. Federally funded cities deemed overly segregated will be pressured to change their zoning laws to allow construction of more subsidized housing in affluent areas in the suburbs, and relocate inner-city minorities to those predominantly white areas.

By the way, if you think this is just hyperbole, the federal government has been using Westchester County in New York as a guinea pig based on residential housing data. With terrible results, as you can imagine.

And the Department of Housing and Urban development also has been using subsidized housing as a tool for central planning of society.

Needless to say, this is the wrong approach. Instead of letting bureaucrats in Washington act as some sort of national zoning commission, we should shut down HUD and get the federal government completely out of the housing sector.

And, more broadly, we should heed the wise words of John Cowperthwaite, who helped Hong Kong become rich by denying bureaucrats access to data.

The United States should heed the wise

Policy

Gun-Control-Failure-One-Photo

Marine recruitment office in Chattanooga, Tenn.

I proposed an “IQ Test for Criminals and Liberals” back in 2012 which asked readers to imagine that they were thieves. And I then asked them, as they were planning their crimes, how they would react if they knew that a particular homeowner was armed. Would they:

  1. break into the house because you once heard a politician or journalist assert that gun ownership doesn’t deter crime?
  2. decide after a bit of reflection about potential costs and benefits that it might be more prudent to find another house to rob?

My goal was to help well-meaning leftists understand that criminals respond to incentives. And even the really stupid ones will seek to maximize how much they can steal while minimizing the risk of bad outcomes.

And if you’re a criminal, one potential bad outcome is getting shot by an armed homeowner.

The same cost-benefit analysis applies to mass shooters. Regardless of whether these shooters are motivated by feelings of inadequacy or Islamofascist ideology, their goal is to kill as many people as possible before being stopped.

So it makes sense, from their warped perspective, to seek out “gun-free zones.”

And when these nut-jobs start shooting in places where there’s very little likelihood that they’ll encounter immediate armed resistance, that means a higher body count.

Which is what happened at Fort Hood. And in Santa Barbara. And in Newtown, Connecticut. And at the Aurora movie theater. And at Virginia Tech. And now in Chattanooga.

Here’s a photo from the recent shooting spree by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Notice the sign, right by all the bullet holes, stating that “Firearms Are Prohibited In This Facility.”

Needless to say, this sign didn’t stop the attack. It may have even encouraged the attack.

In any event, the rule did affect one group of people, as Sean Davis explained forThe Federalist.

The gun-free zone sign didn’t prevent the shooter from firing a gun at completely innocent individuals within the zone. It did, however, prevent them from defending themselves.

And here’s the really depressing part of this tragedy. The military personnel targeted by the terrorist weren’t unarmed because Chattanooga had bad policy.

They were unarmed because of federal government policy. Writing for Fox News, John Lott explains this bizarre policy.

Army regulations are very clear stating that personnel cannot have firearms during their official duties.  Last year the Obama administration instituted interim rules that clearly prohibit privately owned weapons from all federally leased office and land, including recruiters’ offices. …With the exceptions of military police, military personnel are banned from having weapons on base, in federally leased buildings, or while they are carrying out official duties. For would-be terrorists among us there is an abundance of possible targets. …Allowing military personnel to at least defend themselves reduces the number of easy targets that terrorists/killers can attack.

Amen. Let members of the military have the ability to defend themselves.

And expand concealed-carry laws so that citizens also have greater ability to thwart crime and mass shootings.

P.S. I shared above a great cartoon from Chuck Asay. You can click here to see another. And these two posters make the same point quite effectively.

P.P.S. While folks on the left are one of the targets of my IQ test, not all liberals are misguided on the gun issue. As you can read here and here, there are a couple of them who put reason ahead of ideology.

P.P.P.S. It’s also encouraging to note that some lawmakers realize it’s a good idea to have more protection for schoolchildren.

In the it Chattanooga shooting, Aurora, and

Polls

Donald-Trump-Arizona

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to thousands at a political rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on July 11, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: Getty)

Media outlets and GOP hopefuls alike were quick to pounce on Donald Trump for claiming he would win the Latino vote in an interview with NBC. But according to a new poll by Gravis Marketing, Nevada “Latinos love Trump,” as the 2016 presidential candidate and billionaire mogul claimed.

Donald Trump is way out in front of his rivals at 27.7 percent, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who recently announced, in second with 15 percent. In third, Dr. Ben Carson enjoys 7.8 percent with Jeb Bush a point behind at 6.8 percent. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, rounds out the top five with 5.4 percent.

“We see a significant change in Nevada from the last poll we conducted,” said Doug Kaplan, President of Gravis Marketing. “Trump is taking the oxygen out of the room. He is taking votes from Bush and Cruz.”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had some harsh words for fellow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump regarding his rhetoric on illegal immigration. Bush has repeatedly claimed that Trump’s rhetoric will turn off Hispanic voters in the general election. However, according to Gravis Marketing, which enjoys an A- rating on the PPD Pollster Scorecard, Bush’s claims are off base, at least in the Silver State.

When Hispanics are polled in general, Trump’s support jumps to 31.4 percent, higher than his overall performance of 27.7 percent. The only other candidate to receive double digit support from Hispanic voters is Scott Walker with 11.4 percent.

“The strong showing by Donald Trump can’t be ignored,” says Robert Herring, Sr., CEO of One America News Network, who commissioned the poll. “Trump is clearly resonating with voters and, at least in Nevada, his 20 percent lead over Jeb Bush is commanding. Scott Walker, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio continue to poll well, yet it’s still early in the campaign process with over 20% of the Republicans polled still undecided.”

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton leads with 55.4 percent, a 37.1 percent lead over Bernie Sander at 18.3 percent. Clinton and Sanders are the only two candidates receiving double digit results.

“Bernie Sanders continues to poll in the double digits and possesses the closest threat to the Clinton campaign,” Herring said.

“Hillary is still over 50% and cruising to the nomination,” Kaplan added.

According to a new survey by Gravis

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