Rules for Radicals

I'm starting to read "Rules for Radicals" by that 1960's radical SOB, Saul Alinsky.  Even on the first page, he shows his love for Marxism and also minimizes the true Holocaust when he inaccurately describes the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy to rid the US of anti-American Communists as a "holocaust".  This should be a good read.

Then "Rules for Conservative Radicals" by Michael Patrick Leahy. From the description, Leahy takes Alinksy's secular tactics and combines it with moral principles. But first, I need to get through "Rules for Radicals" before moving onto the good stuff.

*To be updated*

Rosie O'Donnell Calls for Communism

h/t Patch

Havens Center

The Havens Center is a self-described progressive organization which seeks "social and political change." Its biennial Real Utopias Project "examines various basic institutions ... and focuses on specific proposals for their fundamental redesign." Ah, there's nothing like a fundamental transformation, is there? A link to one of the Real Utopia Projects which brought me to this website, Using Pensions for Social Control of Capitalist Investment, is interesting to say the least. And the others are just as eerie.
Cloward and Piven, anyone? Or more of a "nudge"?

Progressives have Lower Level of Economic Knowledge than Conservatives

In the May 2010 Issue of Econ Journal Watch, the results of a survey performed by Zogby International in 2008. The results (pdf) solidified the common sense and correctness of conservative economic policies. As reported by the progressive blog, Think Progress:

According to Zeljka Buturovic and Dan Klein, people who self-identify as “progressive” have low levels of economic knowledge whereas those who self-identify as “libertarian” or “very conservative” rank very highly. For reasons suggested by Tyler Cowen, I think that conclusion is nonsense. But I do think they have the goods on the fact that people who self-identify with the left have some trouble grasping the interplay of prices and supply restrictions.

If you look at radical liberals' and progressives' policies of high taxes and big government and how those policies affect our economy, you shouldn't be surprised at these results in the least. I'd suggest reading the primary literature - its primary purpose regarded education levels and knowledge of "Economic Enlightenment" in addition to ideology. There they concluded that college education doesn't increase your knowledge about the mechanics about the economy. h/t Gateway Pundit

Is the US #37 in health care in developed nations?

This is based off of a study done by the UN/WHO; an anti-US bias exists right there. Even they admit their data is "hampered by the weakness of routine information systems and insufficient attention to research" and that, when good numbers weren't available, they "developed [data] through a variety of techniques." And as those in the UN often do, they also just blindly believed what governments around the world told them about their systems (can we really believe corrupt regimes like Cuba?). The study's criteria include how progressive your tax system is as well as a subjective (i.e. what they think) measure of "fairness." This is the category which reduced our "grade" in the study the most, by getting 54th on this "fairness" scale. Their idea of "fairness" is like that of "equality of results," the idea behind the progressive "social justice" doctrine which tries to make everyone equal despite obvious inequalities in a population [Life isn't fair, but let's try our darndest to make it that way, even if we have to resort to socialism]. If two people go into a hospital and can only be cured by an expensive treatment, it is better in the eyes of the UN's standard to have both die than to have one live, even if one can afford it. The only 2 ways to achieve "fairness": "The healthy subsidize the sick" or "the rich subsidize the poor," with the first one being a basic tenent of insurance and the second one being the basic tenent of socialism. So, with a study that requires socialism to have a good health-care system, how can a non-socialist country (as of now) like ours be judged fairly against others? In order to figure out how to judge countries on "fairness," the WHO just conducted a survey, 1/2 of the respondants of which were themselves. And after the survey was "checked for consistency and bias," the UN then put 62.5% of the study on some sort of "equality" as defined by the UN. And we're supposed to believe this statistic when the entire study is stacked against the US by an anti-American organization like the United Nations? Next, how does Cuba stack up, really?