This is what happens when we stop teaching civics and
government classes in high school. People start believing that politics is
government and that appearances and personal opinion circumvent the rule of law
and the US Constitution. This is a direct result of the Progressive Movement
having captured the education system and the mainstream media complex.
The Associated Press published a piece on
October 12th, titled, “Former Ukraine envoy testifies Trump pushed to oust her”.
In the article it states:
“…former US Ambassador to
Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators Friday that
Trump himself pressured the State Department to oust her from her post and get
her out of the country.”
Just the day before the AP published no less than three articles
under three different titles covering the exact same content:
You will please note that they are all different URL
links to separate stories. To say that the AP – and this is just one of the
usual suspects in the mainstream media complex – is pushing this story would be
a grotesque understatement.
That propaganda initiative aside, this brings me to the
larger point to be made in this article. Everyone in the Executive Branch –
with the complication of agency, bureau, and departmental Inspector Generals – serves
at the pleasure of the President of the United States. This is especially true
of US Ambassadors.
Merriam-Webster explains
that the phrase means, literally:
“…used to say that something
is done or can be done because someone wants it to be done; i.e. ‘I serve at
the pleasure of the president, and I will continue to serve as long as the
president wants me to.’”
To wit – and with regard to these incredibly misleading
AP stories, the President doesn’t need to “pressure” anyone to have a sitting
US Ambassador removed from the post. He simply needs to express his desire for
the removal to take place. The President doesn’t even need to provide a reason.
The same Progressive charlatans that are trying to make
the electorate believe that politics is government; that the political
wrangling we are served up each and every day on talk radio and the alphabet
news programs is actually the execution of government, want us to believe that
the removed US Ambassador had a “right” to her position above that of existing
at the pleasure of the President of the United States. This notion is
demonstrably false, yet it is being advanced on the American public without
definition, examination, or discussion.
The American citizenry has “enlightened” itself into the
perfect storm without even realizing it following the old adage about the frog
in the pot of boiling water. Progressives have increased their ideological
manipulation of the American people so incrementally that we have willingly
abdicated our knowledge of how our government works, what its responsibilities
are, what its boundaries are, and – literally – its purpose.
Today, as our education system and mainstream media
complex openly manipulate reality and the facts of the matter, We the People
are vulnerable because of what Donald Rumsfeld used
to call the “unknown-unknowns”. We don’t know what we don’t know…and that’s
a terrifying state in which to exist.
Author’s Note: Come join us – three rough and ready young sailors in a tiny 26-foot steel-hull yacht — for some high adventure, at times hilarious and often precarious voyaging through the South Pacific. Braving the high seas for up to ten days at a stretch between sun-drenched, castaway islands – some so remote they can only be reached by sea. Meeting the islanders and encountering exotic cultures in these unspoiled traditional societies – all on a shoestring budget. We were the Backpacker Yachties!
It was 1994. I had completed my field research on Abandoned Children and HIV/AIDS in Northern Thailand and returned to the School of Public Health, University of Hawaii in June to defend my doctoral dissertation.
At the same time, my roommate Eddie was completing his fieldwork on Pacific Island Archaeology in the Marquesas Islands, where he acquired the small, but stout sloop “Nudge Nudge” at a bargain price from a Swedish couple who had just sailed it around the world and were eager to return home.
A third friend Hal, joined us and by July we were off to the South Seas for six weeks of glorious sailing and high adventure aboard our 26-foot steel-hull vessel. Three men in a boat – and we lived to tell about it!
Captain Eddie and First Mate Jim
Ever the historian and archaeologist, Captain Eddie had photocopied a set of charts published in 1853 by the British Royal Admiralty — a beautiful historic and artistic treasure complete with decorative coconut palms drawn in at various points along the island coastlines. We were soon to find out however, that they were not accurate – and had it not been for quick thinking and a fair bit of luck, we might not have lived to tell this tale.
We were novice sailors — day sailors at best, and it was not until we were far out to sea, alone and well beyond the point of return that the precariousness of our situation became apparent. Fortunately for us, the boat was made of steel, as Eddie noted enthusiastically: “a steel hull is safer than fiberglass because we can hit a reef and not sink!”
Keeping an eye on the wind
Hal and I flew from Hawaii to Pago Pago, American Samoa, where we met Eddie who had sailed Nudge Nudge from French Polynesia to Samoa. From Pago, our first destination was Niuatoputapu, the northern-most island group of The Kingdom of Tonga, a Polynesian island state and archipelago comprised of 169 islands, of which 36 are inhabited.
The Niuas can only be reached by sea, and therefore have little contact with the outside world. Unspoiled and fascinating in many ways, not least is an enduring matriarchal tradition, and well-preserved archaeological sites with stone adzes and Polynesian Pita pottery in evidence.
Undaunted and eager to escape the damp, stifling heat of Pago Pago, we motored out to sea in the setting sun. Becalmed, we languished ‘in irons’ for the first 24 hours – retching, spewing over the side in the blazing heat and relentless bobbing of the doldrums. But happy to be at sea, even if we were travelling on “Captain Ralph’s Ocean Tours and Fish Feeding Adventures.”
The Samoas disappeared over the horizon as light westerly airs finally brought us out of the doldrums and eventually gave way to the easterly trades, building to heavy seas and squalls. Thrilling sailing for novices — heading 180 degrees south, steady by the Southern Cross and Alfa-Beta Centauri. Heeled over and racing for Niua!
Catch of the day! Harnessed and clipped in whenever on deck to avoid falling overboard
It was an easy heading, keeping the mast between the twin stars of Alfa and Beta Centauri. Trailing fishing lines, fresh Mahi Mahi and Barracuda provided a steady supply of sashimi, fish soup and sun-dried jerky – as well as some exciting moments in our tiny cockpit. One spirited 50 pound Mahi managed to break the companionway door off!
On our fifth night at sea, the distant
outline of Niua’s main volcano loomed
suddenly through the mist. Darkness fell as we drew closer to the island.
The moon had risen, turning the
waves to silver. It was too dark to make out the island. But it was there – a
mysterious presence as we followed the shadowy coastline. The winds died down
to a gentle breeze, lightly filling the sails as we rounded into the lee of the
island.
Land, ho!
I was at the helm. Eddie was below checking the Global Positioning System (GPS) and studying the charts, which indicated that we were sailing safely in deep waters. Hal was nowhere to be seen – he had been suffering badly with sea sickness and had disappeared into his berth, unable to move.
Bam! Suddenly with an awful scraping, we were over on our side in the shallows, surrounded by coral heads – crunching, pounding on the rocks with every swell. British Royal Admiralty Charts1853 — seems our longitude was a bit off! We should have followed the whale. All the while he was singing to us through the hull and then turned towards the open sea — which would have led us safely away from the reef.
Scrambling over the wildly pitching decks, we shined our flashlights frantically into the gloom. Eddie began cranking our temperamental engine furiously and managed to fire it up. Incredibly, a snagged fishing line astern marked the narrow channel we had entered, enabling us to back out the way we came, through a maze of coral heads.
Hal at dawn — recovering from our harrowing scrape along the reef
As we drifted under the stars, badly shaken up, but patiently motoring back and forth along a safe line of sail until daylight, somewhere in the darkness a distant roar of breakers crashing on a reef kept us on our toes – now that we couldn’t trust our charts! But we were getting used to life aboard our ‘tin can’ and soon turned our attention to the mysterious land mass in front of us, and looked forward to exploring the island in the morning.
Stay tuned for Part Two, coming soon!
You can read more about Jim’s backstory, hereandhere.
The cost of
having four walls and a roof over your head in Honolulu has been staggeringly
expensive relative to the rest of the nation for a while now. The median price of a single-family home on
Oahu in July reached $835,000, while the median price of a condominium rose to
$460,000, according to a report from Honolulu
real estate firm Locations Hawaii. “This
means that everyone is acknowledging that this is a very serious [housing]
crisis that we are now in,” Councilmember Kymberly Pine is quoted as
saying on September 21 in Hawaii News Now.
Yet, the
Honolulu City Council is considering Bill 25, which would add
numerous energy conservation requirements for any residential dwelling that is
new or remodeled. Among the new mandates
being considered:
Water Heating
from Renewable Energy Only. This
provision would effectively mandate solar water heating and outlaw gas
heating. Some testifiers on the measure
stated that this mandate alone would add $7,000-10,000 to the cost of a home. That could be the difference between
qualifying for a mortgage or not, especially for residents making the area
median income of $85,000.
Other
testifiers pointed out that all solar water heating systems have an electric heating
element as a backup. This is because
sometimes hot water is needed at night or in the early morning, or when the sun
is behind cloud cover. So, this
requirement might result in higher electricity demand, which might not be an
intended consequence.
Ceiling Fans
and Air Conditioning. Ceiling fans or whole-house fans
would be mandatory for every bedroom and the largest room, presumably the
living room. A/C would be allowed in no
more than half of the house.
The bill does
not explicitly say that the requirements apply only to new houses. Therefore, if you have an existing house and
you need to apply for a building permit for some reason, you may have to
retrofit to conform to these requirements, although the City’s Office of
Climate Change says that no retrofitting is required.
Electric
Vehicle Charging: The current bill draft says that
new residential multi-unit buildings with 8 or more parking stalls, and new
commercial buildings that have 12 or more parking stalls, must be electric
vehicle charger ready for at least 25% of the parking stalls. Residential buildings must be AC Level 1
charger ready, and commercial buildings must be AC Level 2 charger ready. (Level 1 is basically house current, and
Level 2 must be fed by a 240-volt line.)
Some of the
testifiers state that the requirement isn’t good enough, and that the ordinance
should require 100% of the parking stalls to be Level 2 charger ready. They point out that a Level 1 charger would
need multiple days to charge a vehicle, and that there would be practical
problems figuring out which stalls would get the chargers.
Others argue
that such a capability would cost $11,300 per EV-ready stall. They say that it’s a lot to ask given that
99% of us don’t drive electric vehicles.
So, what is the
takeaway from all of this? I’m reminded
of one phrase drummed into my head when I was growing up: “If you aren’t going
to use it, don’t buy it.” There seem to
be some provisions in Bill 25 that will require potential home buyers to pay
for things they might not use. If we as
a people don’t care about that and want to force changes in social behavior to
support The Environment and industries supporting The Environment, then this
bill should pass. If we care about
protecting consumer choice and the efficiency of the marketplace, or if we are
concerned about the housing crisis and the availability of affordable lodging,
then this bill should be shelved. Let’s
see how the discussions on this bill play out.
In case you haven’t consumed any health news recently, there is a big beef over research showing red meat is not bad for you. A huge study has contradicted decades of anti-red-meat advice, and the experts who gave that advice are red-faced and livid.
The new research was a systematic review of existing research, conducted by a team of interdisciplinary researchers with no conflict of interest. After eliminating many poorly done studies, and studies done on animals (which have unknown application to humans), the team concluded, “The panel suggests that adults continue current unprocessed red meat consumption (weak recommendation, low-certainty evidence). Similarly, the panel suggests adults continue current processed meat consumption (weak recommendation, low-certainty evidence).”
The problem is that this contradicts decades of research saying that meat, especially red and processed meat, is bad for health, allegedly causing heart disease and cancer. Virtually every medical organization has been telling people to stop eating meat for health reasons.
What are all these experts going to do now that the research studies they were relying on for their recommendations were flawed and biased? Experts hate to be told they are wrong. After all, they are the experts, so who can trump them?
This study did. And the response has been anger from the medical community, a very unscientific response.
In a story on the findings, and the reaction from the embarrassed and defensive medical community, the New York Times wrote, “Already [the study authors] have been met with fierce criticism by public health researchers. The American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and other groups have savaged the findings and the journal that published them.”
The Times explains, “While the new findings are likely to please proponents of popular high-protein diets, they seem certain to add to public consternation over dietary advice that seems to change every few years. The conclusions represent another in a series of jarring dietary reversals involving salt, fats, carbohydrates and more.”
Clearly, the Emperor never likes to be told he has no clothes. This is a major rebuke, not only of medicine, but of nutrition research and public policy. As the Times article continued, “Some [medical experts] called for the journal’s editors to delay publication altogether. In a statement, scientists at Harvard warned that the conclusions ‘harm the credibility of nutrition science and erode public trust in scientific research.’”
Harvard doesn’t want the public to realize that its public health recommendations are based on bad science. The public may lose trust. We can’t allow the public to realize that medical advice is sketchy, at best.
Some medical groups don’t like the implications of the study, since they philosophically oppose meat consumption. According to the Times, “Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group advocating a plant-based diet, on Wednesday filed a petition against the journal with the Federal Trade Commission.”
Realize that these groups are calling for censorship of scientific information that goes against policy.
This is Lesson One from this study: medicine resorts to censorship when information runs counter to current policy and can embarrass the medical community and those in power.
What about the quality of nutrition science and research?
According to the Times, “The new studies were met with indignation by nutrition researchers who have long said that red meat and processed meats contribute to the risk of heart disease and cancer. “Irresponsible and unethical,” said Dr. Hu, of Harvard, in a commentary published online with his colleagues. Studies of red meat as a health hazard may have been problematic, he said, but the consistency of the conclusions over years gives them credibility.” (Emphasis added.)
Hu is not alone. According to the Times, “Despite flaws in the evidence, health officials still must give advice and offer guidelines, said Dr. Meir Stampfer, also of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He believes that the data in favor of eating less meat, although imperfect, indicate there are likely to be health benefits.”
This is a very revealing statement. Apparently, when we take years of bad research falsely showing meat is bad, and combine all these bad studies, it somehow provides a true result. This is, frankly, frightening. Are we to actually trust bad research if many bad studies have the same false conclusion?
I’ve always learned that two wrongs don’t make a right. I suppose, to these medical experts, many wrongs do make a right. Does anyone still wonder why there is so much confusion and reversal of advice from the medical community?
Lesson Two: Places like Harvard, which create public health policy, are comfortable with drawing conclusions and making health policy advice based on bad information.
There is a further statement by Harvard’s Hu that is revealing. According to the Times, “Nutrition studies, [Hu] added, should not be held to the same rigid standards as studies of experimental drugs.” (Emphasis added.)
Apparently, this also means that there should be a lower standard for giving nutrition health advice to the public than for giving drug advice. Of course, there was never any disclaimer with the anti-meat advice that it was based on questionable research.
Lesson Three: Medical advice is of varying quality, and sometimes outright wrong.
This raises an important question. If scientific validity of research is questionable, and yet public health policy needs to be promoted, how are policy makers to decide on recommendations?
This is where values and political interests come to play.
The Times article gives a clear statement. “The prospect of a renewed appetite for red meat also runs counter to two other important trends: a growing awareness of the environmental degradation caused by livestock production, and longstanding concern about the welfare of animals employed in industrial farming.”
The Times continues, “Questions of personal health do not even begin to address the environmental degradation caused worldwide by intensive meat production. Meat and dairy are big contributors to climate change, with livestock production accounting for about 14.5 percent of the greenhouse gases that humans emit worldwide each year. Beef in particular tends to have an outsized climate footprint, partly because of all the land needed to raise cattle and grow feed, and partly because cows belch up methane, a potent greenhouse gas.”
Here we see another motive behind the dismissal of this large study. There has been a public drive to stop climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and meat consumption needs to be stopped to help achieve these environmental goals.
According to an article in Plant Based News, “Public Health Officer Henning Ansor, of the Public Health Department in Santa Barbara County in the US, said: ‘For the Annals to publish this article (and for the authors to even write it without concern for the environmental effects of food choices) shows, to what extent we as physicians, are out of touch with the real world. It is a disgrace!’” (Emphasis added.)
In other words, if people listen to this study and eat more meat, it can harm the environment. So, let’s tell the public meat is bad for health so we can save the planet.
Other groups, like the Physicians Committee on Responsible Medicine, which filed a petition with the FTC against the journal, promotes plant-based foods in order to reduce animal cruelty in factory farming.
While animal welfare and environmental impacts of meat production are real concerns, these are not relevant to the scientific question of the health impacts of meat consumption.
As the authors of the study explain, “The panel chose to exclusively focus on health outcomes because environmental and animal welfare concerns are very different issues that are challenging to integrate with health concerns, are possibly more societal than personal issues, and vary greatly in the extent to which people find them a priority.”
This was some of the bias this new study eliminated. They focused on the health issue of eating meat, and not on the agenda of ending meat consumption to save the planet and stop animal abuse.
People, including doctors and policy-makers, often judge research studies by whether or not they agree with the conclusion. If it jibes with one’s prejudices and goals, then you agree. If it makes you question your prejudices, then you reject the study.
Lesson Four: Public health advice is not based on good science, but on political agendas.
Realize what this means. Public policy decision-makers are arguing that they should continue to tell people that meat is bad in order to save the planet. It’s okay, in their minds, to lie to the public about research if it achieves a desired goal. In other words, the ends justify the means, and public health policy is a lie to achieve a political goal unrelated to individual health.
Can we believe anything we are told by the medical community?
This is why scientists at Harvard warned that the conclusions ‘harm the credibility of nutrition science and erode public trust in scientific research.’”
And they are correct. According to the new study, “The organizations that produce guidelines did not conduct or access rigorous systematic reviews of the evidence, were limited in addressing conflicts of interest, and did not explicitly address population values and preferences, raising questions regarding adherence to guideline standards for trustworthiness.”
There is a clear pattern here. There are people who call themselves scientists and policy-makers who promote their agendas by lying to the public about health issues.
These are the experts. These are the people the media turns to for healthcare information and advice. They seem comfortable giving nutrition advice based on bad research, and irrationally believe that enough bad research pointing to the same conclusion means the conclusion must be correct.
Time and time again these experts have been shown wrong. And their response is typical denial and rationalizations, and censorship of those who disagree with their agenda. That’s also what peer review is about, which is an editorial process. It guarantees that new research is in line with the current agenda. It doesn’t have to be good research, so long as it achieves the policy goals desired.
And it’s not limited to nutrition. People are wise to question all medical advice. The acceptance of poor research and the promotion of political agendas are not limited to nutrition studies. Lying to the public to achieve a political goal is unethical, and bad science, but seems acceptable to policy-makers at Harvard and elsewhere.
It is no wonder that our healthcare is the most expensive in the world, while being one of the lowest in outcomes. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, “The U.S. spends more on healthcare than any high-income country, yet Americans have poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with other countries, according to a report from the The Commonwealth Fund.“
According to the Commonwealth report, “Here are the three things to know:
1. The U.S. ranked last place among the 11 countries for health outcomes, equity and quality, despite having the highest per capita health earnings.
2. The U.S. also had the highest rate of mortality amenable to healthcare, meaning more Americans die from poor care quality than any other country involved in the study.
3. Poor access to primary care in the U.S. has contributed to inadequate chronic disease prevention and management, delayed diagnoses and safety concerns, among other issues.”
Can you see a pattern? Bad science is used for public policy, with bad outcomes. There may be some political agendas achieved, such as high profits for drug companies, but at the expense of health.
Healthcare in the US is clearly about politics and economics. We definitely need to take medical and public health advice with a grain of salt.
Except that they, currently, also claim salt is bad for you.
A few months
ago, we tried to remind folks about “It’s the
Economy, Stupid.” There we reported that we had
been getting lots of news about our economy, and none of it was good.
This month, the
University of Hawaii’s economics research organization, UHERO, released its third quarter
economic outlook on Hawaii. The title
of the paper wasn’t exactly comforting: “Already Weak, Hawaii’s Prospects Look
Increasingly Dicey.” “All told,” the
report stated, “the outlook is for Hawaii to tread water over the next few
years, vulnerable to waves that could well pull us under.”
What has gotten
us to this point? One problem is our
population, which fell in both 2017 and 2018.
This decline isn’t simply due to reassignment of active duty military. As multiple news sources have been
confirming, people have been, and are, leaving our fair shores. “[L]ikely responding to better work
opportunities and lower living costs on the US mainland,” the UHERO study says.
Policymakers
take note! We, among many others, have
long warned that if government squeezes our population too hard with taxes,
regulations, and other impediments, people will vote. Not necessarily at the ballot box, but with
their feet. UHERO has looked at the hard
numbers, and they see that people are in fact taking their business elsewhere. Are you concerned about population
decline? Or about “brain drain”? Then don’t deny the problem any longer. We need to do something about our cost of
living. And by the way, what happens
when the cost of government stays the same but the number of people
contributing to that cost decreases?
More cost per person results, which adds pressure to lawmakers to
increase taxes and jack up our cost of living even more.
Can the problem
be solved by squeezing our tourism industry further instead of our general
population? UHERO observed that the
number of visitors in Hawaii on a typical day is flatlining, and visitor
spending is trending downward. They are
seeing “a sharp pullback in international markets, where the number of visitor
days has declined across all major market segments.” More visitors may be arriving, but they are
spending less. Translation: Tourists are taking their business elsewhere
as well. Some of that may be due to
federal action such as increased tariffs and strength of the dollar relative to
other world currencies, but we probably are already at the point where further
squeezing of the visitor market gives us economic trouble.
On that front,
the recent political spats about transient vacation rentals and the resulting
crackdowns in Honolulu, Maui, and other counties have already put a big dent in
the supply of places where tourists can be housed. UHERO says that the crackdown on Oahu alone
caused a greater than 8% drop in Oahu’s overall number of units available for
visitor accommodations. Maybe some or
many of those places were illegal in the first place, but the economic result
is in any event further squeezing that industry sector. Now isn’t the right time to attack it
further.
As policymakers
begin their annual debate on how to finance government, they should consider
that most of our tax laws depend on business activity. When the economic engine we call business
makes money, they make money. Are we
going to put more brakes on the engine with more taxes, fees, and
regulations? Instead, we should be
bending over backwards to find ways to help the engine spin faster.
Everyone dies, not just
millionaires and billionaires. The questions we all need to have created
answers to are: 1. Who do I want to make medical and financial decisions for me
when I can no longer do so myself; 2. Who do I want to care for my minor
children or my dependent elderly parents when I’m no longer here; 3. Who do I
want my earthly possessions to go to, no matter how many or few I have, when I
pass?
Estate planning is not just for the rich and famous.
Estate planning sounds like you need to be of nobility and own country estates before it applies to you. However, estate planning only means that you are making a plan for when you pass away or are no longer able to make good decisions for yourself. The word “estate” is just the legal term for “all your stuff.” Even if all you have is a car and some furniture, you still want to be able to decide who gets those, and not leave it up to probate court to decide!
Estate planning, which includes trusts and wills, is not just for the rich and famous. Everyone, whether you’re single or married, can benefit.
Writing a will is the most
important thing you can do as a parent. If you have dependents, children or
adults, you need to have a plan in place for their care in the event you pass
away before they do. That plan is the most basic form of a will and a MUST DO.
Without this plan in the form of a legal document (i.e. a will), your
dependents will become wardens of the state. This means that the state will
decide where your children or adult dependents will end up.
Trusts are not just for Hollywood trust-fund babies either. A trust is just another document that is often used as a secure and easy way to have your possessions move from you to the beneficiaries (whomever you have chosen to receive your stuff), without them having to go through state courts.
For example, you can have your life insurance policy, or your IRA account, or your car in a trust, with your child as the beneficiary of that trust. You can still use all of these things while you are alive as your own. You are not losing anything by placing it in a trust. The advantage of a trust is that whatever you have placed in it will automatically transfer to the person(s) you want these possessions to go to.
Just about every family is going to need estate planning.
For medical and financial decisions, everyone over 18 needs an individual Power of Attorney (POA) designating a person to make those decisions for them in the event they are rendered incapacitated. For medical decisions, next of kin are still given that authority, but family members do not always agree on who that would be or may not know what to do.
Having a medical POA in place is crucial to provide clarity during a time of great distress. Due to privacy laws, financial and other business accounts are not accessible to ANYONE without the authorization of the account holder. A financial POA created ahead of time will avoid damage to financial standing or credit scores in the event a person is not able to act on his or her own behalf.
Eileen Nims is based in Mililani
Based in Mililani, Eileen is a Trusts and Estates attorney who received her law degree from Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaii. She is very familiar with Family Court and has also worked in the Circuit Court criminal division. Eileen also serves as a legislative attorney in the Hawaii State Senate and gives law clinics at Mililani High School. She holds a Masters’ Degree in counseling and has worked in that capacity for many years. Eileen believes in creating harmony and protecting families from preventable hardships. She can be reached at eileen@nimsesq.com or by phone at (808) 664-1834.
Ivanka at UN General Assembly Image from Hollywoodlife.com
September 25, 2019
Despite all the rhetoric about encouraging and defending women’s equality, having a nipple showing through a blouse is apparently still considered a cardinal sin.
The most recent apparent offender is Ivanka Trump, one of America’s leading women. Despite her expensive outfit, which was admired by critics, there were two points that raised attention while she was at the UN to hear her father’s speech. Outraged nipple-phobes quipped and sniggered that either she was in an extremely cold room, or she had a major “wardrobe malfunction” by forgetting her bra.
It seems that, despite the feminist revival in this post-#MeToo culture, women are still being judged for their appearance. It doesn’t matter what is in their heads. All that matters are their headlights.
Ironically, a few days earlier, prosecutors in Fort Collins, Colorado, decided to give up on trying to force women to cover their nipples. According to the news website, The Hill, “A Colorado city this week formally removed a public ordinance from its code that banned women from going topless in public, months after an appeals court ruled such a law constituted discrimination against women. Fort Collins, Colo., decided it wouldn’t appeal a February ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a previous federal judge’s ruling that the ban was derived from ‘negative stereotypes depicting women’s breasts, but not men’s breasts, as sex objects,’ the court wrote in its decision.”
In another story in the Coloradoan, it explains that, “The City Council on Tuesday agreed to remove references to the 2015 policy from Fort Collins’ public nudity code. Language barring women and girls over age 10 from exposing their breasts in public will officially disappear from city code Sept. 17. But the ban has been unenforceable since February 2017, when a district court judge ruled it violated the 14th Amendment because it applied only to women.”
We have seen lately how divided the US has become. Here is another divide: those who want to free the nipple and breast from sexuality, and thereby free women from the oppression of breast obsession; and those who want the breasts safely caged in a bra, making the breasts nippleless, motionless, and, apparently, harmless.
Of course, one of the sources of the anti-Ivanka nipple story is a Russian news service, Sputniknews.com. The Russians are clearly not happy merely interfering with US elections. They now want to create an uproar over Ivanka’s nipples. If the Democrats can now tie President Trump to Ivanka’s nipples, we could have another White House scandal, which will probably be called, “Nipple-Gate”.
There are actually two main points to this story.
The first point is that we as a culture have not evolved past sexist attitudes towards women. So long as we regard women’s breasts as objects for the viewing pleasure of others, we will be objectifying women, which alienates women from their own bodies.
The second point is that women of the caliber and public presence of Ivanka Trump are willing to show the world that they have nipples.
We are led to believe that Ivanka suffered a “wardrobe malfunction”, implying that she would never want her nipples showing. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that a woman who dresses as well as Ivanka and who is clearly aware of her appearance would accidentally forget her bra, or inadvertently allow her nipples to show. My guess is that Ivanka knew her nipples would show, and was proud of her decision to be bra-free.
Many celebrities are now bra-free, and it’s not for feminist reasons. They have heard about the link between breast cancer and bras. While nipple-phobic women cannot imagine freeing themselves from the constriction and discomfort of bras for cultural reasons, millions of women are now bra-free, and loving the experience of health and freedom it provides compared to wearing a bra. Here is an article about the bra-cancer link from the personal physician of many celebrities, including Gwyneth Paltrow.
Indeed, according to many studies from around the world, bras are a leading cause of breast cancer. Bras are designed to change breast shape, and this applies constant pressure to the delicate breast tissue, including the nipples. This interferes with lymphatic circulation in the breasts. Lymph fluid accumulates, resulting in chronic lymphedema of the breasts, and causing pain, cysts, and the progressive toxification of the breast tissue. Over time, this leads to cancer.
We are the first researchers to examine directly the bra-cancer link, which we did with our 1991-93 US Bra and Breast Cancer Study. While doctors had known about the bra-cancer link since the 1930’s, the issue was ignored until our work, which we got published in our book, Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Breast Cancer and Bras, now updated for 2018. Since our research, there have been dozens of studies confirming our results, and new bras designed to be less constrictive and harmful to the breasts.
The fact is that bra-free women have about the same risk of breast cancer as men, while the tighter and longer the bra is worn the higher the risk rises, to over 100 times higher for a 24/7 bra user compared to a bra-free woman.
Does Ivanka Trump know about the bra-cancer link? She probably does. Did she deliberately decide to be bra-free to attend the UN speech by her father, in order to show her support for the bra-cancer link? Probably not. And given the negative reaction to her clothing choice sans bra, it would be no help to her dad to publicly address this issue.
On the other hand, President Trump probably knows about Ivanka’s bra avoidance choice. And we all can see imagesof First Lady Melania Trump’s bra-free breasts on the Internet. Donald Trump says he loves and respects women. With the First Lady and his daughter supporting bra-freedom, perhaps Donald Trump will be the first US President to sign an Executive Order putting warning labels on bras. That would certainly help end the breast cancer epidemic.
But don’t expect nipples to get much attention this election cycle, unless the Russians have their way in creating Nipple-Gate. Of course, in Russia it’s so cold that even men’s nipples show it.
Maybe we should make men with big nipples wear bras? This is another form of equality. Instead of elevating women to the political rights status of men by freeing women’s nipples, why not simply make men wear bras, too? Both sexes can be equally oppressed. On the other hand, most men would not put up with the discomfort of bras. Women are trained with training bras to accept the discomfort. Men don’t get this training. So getting men to feel they need to wear bras would take some new cultural tricks to shame them the way we shame women into bras.
In the meantime, kudos to Ivanka, who is clearly pointing the way to a more healthy and equal future.
Bio: Sydney Ross Singer and Soma Grismaijer are medical anthropologists and directors of the Institute for the Study of Culturogenic Disease.
Here in Hawaii,
we are intensely dependent on goods that come into the State from faraway
places, whether it be the U.S. mainland, Asia, or anywhere else in the
world. Part of the Merchant Marine Act
of 1920, more commonly known as the “Jones Act,” affects us greatly because it
prohibits any ship from carrying passengers or cargo between two U.S. ports
unless the ship is American built, owned, crewed, and flagged. A recent working paper released by
the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, or UHERO, collects and
reports hard data on the effects of the Jones Act.
The points made
in the study merit further discussion among policymakers both here and
nationally. Among them:
When the Jones
Act was passed in the 1920’s, the United States was a major power in the
shipping industry. Since then, Asian
shipbuilding rose dramatically and left us in the dust, and the U.S. water
shipping capability tanked. In 1960
there were nearly 3000 U.S.-flagged merchant ships. In 2016 there were fewer than 200.
The Jones Act
has restricted domestic water trade.
Goods that would normally be transported by sea between U.S. ports
instead must be put on a truck or airplane.
As domestic water transportation has become more difficult, states and
the people in them must acquire goods from overseas (those goods then may be
subject to customs duties and tariffs) or pay more to get the goods put on a
plane. As a result, prices of the goods
rise. The effects are worse in
non-contiguous states that are most reliant on water transportation, primarily
Alaska and Hawaii, although effects are felt heavily in other coastal states
such as California, Massachusetts, and New York. One of the featured contributions of the
UHERO study is the marshalliing of empirical data to support those conclusions.
Proponents of
the Act, such as the late Sen. Daniel
Inouye, emphasized that the Act’s requirements were “tied directly to national
security and the importance of ensuring healthy American shipyards that may be
called upon in times of national emergency.”
Yet the federal government found it necessary to waive Jones Act
requirements temporarily in order to assist in recovery efforts after Hurricanes
Katrina (2005), Sandy (2012), Harvey and Irma (2017), and Maria (2017).
Proponents of
the Act have also argued that it would be unfair to allow foreign operators to
compete for American cargo without the responsibility of complying with U.S.
laws, including environmental protection laws such as ocean dumping and marine
mammal protection rules. However,
environmental protection laws and treaties can be enforced in the U.S.
regardless of who is violating the law.
In 2017, for example, two Greek shipping companies were penalized $2.7
million after being convicted on federal charges stemming from discharging oily
waste into the marine environment. In
addition, the UHERO study argues that the Jones Act harms the environment by
forcing transportation of goods to be done on motor vehicles and aircraft, both
of which pollute the environment more significantly than watercraft.
Finally,
policymakers here, especially, should be considering a related policy
question. Our state can’t tax air
transportation of passengers or cargo because federal law prohibits it. However, we can and do apply the GET or the
Public Service Company Tax to other transportation carriers. These taxes ultimately get passed on to the
consumers of the goods transported, driving up our already stratospheric cost of
living. Are those taxes a good idea, or
should we be looking at taking them away to ease the burden on all of us?
Have you read a lot about the pro-democracy (read:
pro-freedom) demonstrations currently taking place in Hong Kong? If you are
like most people you are surprised to hear that they are still taking place.
That’s because the “loud-mouth media” – or the big cable networks, to be more
specific – are more concerned with sensationalism than news that happens to be important
to the fabric of humanity.
“Hong Kong police fired tear gas on Sunday to break up pro-democracy
protesters who trashed fittings at a railway station and shopping mall, the
latest confrontation in more than three months of often violent unrest.”
These freedom-seeking protesters have been fighting a violent
battle against the Communist Chinese government of the mainland for three
months and these protests land on the back pages and/or below the fold if
they are reported on at all.
Meanwhile, US House Intelligence Committee chairman, Adam
Schiff (P-CA), is
threatening to withhold executive office funding for the Director of
National Intelligence over the President’s suggestion to the president of
Ukraine that his nation look into the shady – and most likely illegal –
dealings in that country by Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe
Biden.
At a time when our intelligence community should be
focused on first, threats against our nation, and second, the opposition to tyrannical
oppression anywhere it exists, our elected government class is so engaged in politics
they are failing those who are shedding blood in a quest for freedom.
Just as when President Obama facilitated the demise of
the Green
Revolution in Iran by executing inaction, we in the West – and not just in
the United States, but throughout the free world – exist in a moment that will
define a part of us for the ages. Will we allow Communist China to extinguish
the hope of freedom in Hong Kong, or will the free world apply pressure on
China to live up to the agreements it made with Britain when that country
handed Hong Kong back over to the Chinese?
Western politicians hang their hats on the rhetoric of freedom. They thump their chests about the blood our Founders shed to acquire American freedom and the many revolutions in Europe that delivered the masses from serfdom. In the freedom movement in Hong Kong, they have a chance to exert non-violent pressure on China to achieve freedom for Hong Kong’s estimated 7.39 million people.
The question is this. Will they, or is politics and the retention of power to much of an addiction for them?
Q: We
continue our series on the past 30 years of state tax with our researcher, the
Hawaii State Tax Watch Doggie’s wife.
Watch
Doggie: And me!
A: Oh! So you finally finished barking at the
garbage truck?
Q: We’ve
been talking about the taxes that have ballooned over the years.
Doggie: And next on our list is conveyance tax. This needs to be paid whenever real estate is
bought or sold.
A: It also applies to some real estate
transactions other than sales. For
example, when real estate is leased. In
that situation the taxable amount is the present value of the rent payments.
Doggie: When the tax was originally enacted in 1966,
the tax rate was 5 cents per $100 of price paid.
A: That was the rate 30 years ago. The tax didn’t raise much revenue. It was designed to require buyers and sellers
to report the amount paid in real estate transactions because it wasn’t in the
recorded deeds. That information was
needed to properly administer the real property tax, which the State handled before
the 1978 Constitutional Convention decided to transfer the real property tax to
the counties.
Doggie: Over the years, the tax rate was hiked again
and again. Now, the top rate is $1.25
per $100 of price paid for a condo or single-family residence that doesn’t
qualify for a county homeowner’s exemption, and $1.00 per $100 for other
property.
A: And there are two earmarks on the tax, 10%
for the land conservation fund and 50% for the rental housing revolving
fund. According to the Department of
Taxation’s annual reports, the tax brought in about $3.5 million in fiscal year
1995 and a whopping $100.6 million in fiscal 2018.
Doggie: How’s that for explosive growth?
Q: So what happened to our individual income
tax, which is near and dear to our hearts?
A: In 1989, our top individual tax rate was 10%. The standard deduction for a married couple
filing jointly was $1,900, and personal exemptions were $1,040 per person. A family of four at median household income
($38,829 in 1989, according to DBEDT’s 2018 Data Book) would have $32,769 of
taxable income and would need to pay $2,393.
They would be in the second bracket from the top where any extra dollar
made would be taxed at 9.5%.
In 2018, the
most recent filing year, our top individual tax rate is 11%. The standard deduction for a married couple
filing jointly is $4,400, and personal exemptions are $1,144 per person. A family of four at the 2017 median household
income ($91,460) would have $82,484 of taxable income and would need to pay $5,359. They would be in the fifth bracket from the
top where any extra dollar made would be taxed at 7.9%.
Doggie: That doesn’t look like explosive growth.
A: I think that’s because people watch the
income tax carefully, while they might not understand or appreciate the
specialty taxes.
Q: Our mission at the Foundation for the past 60
years has been to promote and encourage efficiency and economy in Hawaii
government at both the state and county level and to make sure people have
enough information to watch all the taxes carefully.
Doggie: If people don’t, bad things might happen, as
we found out with the TAT, the barrel tax, and the conveyance tax. Keep your eyes peeled and bark if something
looks funny! We will!
The Dumbing Down of the US Perfectly Illustrated in the Ukraine ‘Investigation’
This is what happens when we stop teaching civics and government classes in high school. People start believing that politics is government and that appearances and personal opinion circumvent the rule of law and the US Constitution. This is a direct result of the Progressive Movement having captured the education system and the mainstream media complex.
The Associated Press published a piece on October 12th, titled, “Former Ukraine envoy testifies Trump pushed to oust her”. In the article it states:
“…former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators Friday that Trump himself pressured the State Department to oust her from her post and get her out of the country.”
Just the day before the AP published no less than three articles under three different titles covering the exact same content:
You will please note that they are all different URL links to separate stories. To say that the AP – and this is just one of the usual suspects in the mainstream media complex – is pushing this story would be a grotesque understatement.
That propaganda initiative aside, this brings me to the larger point to be made in this article. Everyone in the Executive Branch – with the complication of agency, bureau, and departmental Inspector Generals – serves at the pleasure of the President of the United States. This is especially true of US Ambassadors.
Merriam-Webster explains that the phrase means, literally:
“…used to say that something is done or can be done because someone wants it to be done; i.e. ‘I serve at the pleasure of the president, and I will continue to serve as long as the president wants me to.’”
To wit – and with regard to these incredibly misleading AP stories, the President doesn’t need to “pressure” anyone to have a sitting US Ambassador removed from the post. He simply needs to express his desire for the removal to take place. The President doesn’t even need to provide a reason.
The same Progressive charlatans that are trying to make the electorate believe that politics is government; that the political wrangling we are served up each and every day on talk radio and the alphabet news programs is actually the execution of government, want us to believe that the removed US Ambassador had a “right” to her position above that of existing at the pleasure of the President of the United States. This notion is demonstrably false, yet it is being advanced on the American public without definition, examination, or discussion.
The American citizenry has “enlightened” itself into the perfect storm without even realizing it following the old adage about the frog in the pot of boiling water. Progressives have increased their ideological manipulation of the American people so incrementally that we have willingly abdicated our knowledge of how our government works, what its responsibilities are, what its boundaries are, and – literally – its purpose.
Today, as our education system and mainstream media complex openly manipulate reality and the facts of the matter, We the People are vulnerable because of what Donald Rumsfeld used to call the “unknown-unknowns”. We don’t know what we don’t know…and that’s a terrifying state in which to exist.