• THE CENTURIES OF ACCUSTOMED STATURE FOR IVY LEAGUE and other so-called ‘elite’ universities are rapidly  and deservedly coming to an end, as result of: (1) The post-2020 riot changes in admissions practices, to admit ‘diverse’ students well beyond their percentage of the population; (2) Abolition of meritocracy measured by high-school and SAT performance; (3) Acceptance of untested foreign students (especially from oil-rich middle east countries, subsidized with full tuition); (4) Who then “demand radical changes in faculty standards and course work to accommodate their unease with past standards of expected student achievement; (5) who are non-Jewish, with an inherent culture of anti-Semitism; (5) Citing grievances, along with other self-deemed ‘oppressed’ students (race/ gender/ feminist/ environmental/ queer/ etc.) and poorly-educated graduates, who’ve had little course work in traditional history, literature, philosophy, logic or sciences…  The sheer student delight on news of Hamas attack on Israeli victims seemed akin more to 1930s Germany than contemporary America… “Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity/ Equity/Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations with anti-Enlightenment societies.”  [VICTOR DAVIS HANSON] 
  • A HUGE TAXATION ISSUE HAS JUST REACHED SUPREME COURT DECISION LEVEL: whether ‘unrealized’ foreign income is taxable, when not distributed as dividends or capital gains. Until 1917, most such corporate profit was untaxed until ‘repatriated’ to the U.S; then Congress changed the rules to capture ‘offshore tax dodging’ which moved profits across borders to avoid taxation, and also applied to individuals with 10% holdings in the U.S. corp. “The Mandatory Repatriation Tax, retroactive 30 years, was based on a premise that “definition of income is malleable and subject to Congress’s discretion – versus prior interpretation of the 16th Amendment that both directs apportionment of federal taxes among the states, as well as prohibits retroactive taxation.” Since wealth tax proposals regularly surface in Congress, the implications are huge going forward” for potential to further increase budgets and/or reduce the $32 trillion deficit. [EPOCH TIMES – 12/4/23]
  • IS THE ‘VALUE’ OF DEMOCRACY JUST $230,000 PER PERSON? Researchers at Princeton & Univ. of Barcelona surveyed two-thousand Americans along with French & Brazilian citizens, focusing on metrics including public health insurance/ income & wealth inequality/ and presence or absence of democratic elections, querying their priorities and the ‘Value’ they put on Democratic processes. It turns out the “the price at which citizens of a country with free elections would give up their fundamental right to choose their representatives – i.e. Democracy – was, for Americans, $230K annual salary – a pay hike, on average, of 219%.”  https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2306168120
  • BUT WE DO HAVE THE DELUSION OF DEMOCRACY, with reliance on pollsters who claim to speak for the ‘silent majority’ while dismissing the voices of the actual majority, based on small sample sizes (from a few hundred phone calls or texts) and outwardly-biased media coverage, especially, without knowing if the responding people (or robots), the few-second clips on news media, or social media blurbs, are even trying to be honest.  Evidently, it’s much more convenient to be told who we should vote for by pundits & politicians, rather than engage in meaningful discussions of issues and strategies, with candidates hopefully emerging based on legitimate support from legitimate citizens who took the trouble to actually ‘vote’ in a controlled process.  Just sayin’.
  • THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

Baby Boomer Life Skills, once critical, now useless:  https://biggeekdad.com/2023/11/baby-boomer-life-skills/ 

A thoughtful provocative perspective on the direction, future, survival of the human race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKWM76weXBc

“Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change. Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger. While federal officials have authorized more than $2 billion of the funds to be sent to states, fewer than half of states have even started to take bids from contractors to build the chargers — let alone begin construction.”   [RED STATE]