Shot in the Dark

The Progressive Puritans

What do you get when you combine:

  • The “progressive” MO of transferring taxpayer money to other progressives
  • “Progressives’” hatred of wealthy people (other than “progressive” plutocrats, naturally)
  • The “progressive” party line on women’s issues
  • The “progressive” drive to at least appear to bring a better life you’re bigger government?

I had to check this twice – but the City Pages actually has the story:   Governments, acting on “information” from “progressive” “feminist” groups  around the country,  are pouring money into sex trafficking enforcement based on absurd predictions about the nuimber of prostitutes supposedly showing up for Super Bowls:

He didn’t have to look hard for supporters. Dallas Police Sergeant Louis Felini told The Dallas Morning News that between 50,000 and 100,000 prostitutes were expected to come into town. The call for even more outrage was sounded by a study from the Dallas Women’s Foundation, which said the throng would include 38,000 underage prostitutes…Before Super Bowl XLIX in Glendale, Arizona, Cindy McCain — wife of Sen. John McCain — declared the Super Bowl “the largest human-trafficking venue on the planet.” Glendale produced a lengthy public service video broadcasting the evils of the flesh trade.

But according to police, not one person was busted for prostitution-related crimes or sex trafficking in the days leading up to the game.

The results?  Nearly no arrests.

Deterrence?  Perhaps.

“Progressive” delusions about the habits, peccadillos and appetites of the wealthy (who are, let’s be honest, the only people who can ever afford to go to the Super Bowl)?  Definitely.

Oh, yeah.  Minnesota’s doing the same.  Bigly.

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45 responses to “The Progressive Puritans”

  1. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    The Republicans have a vision of what government should look like (mostly just smaller), rather than a vision of what society should look like.

  2. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    OK, AT&T Stadium in Dallas can hold 100,000 people, many of them families, many others businessmen who cannot afford to be caught with a hooker, and the feminists were assuming that there was enough work for 50-100k hookers?

    And all those hookers,and their pimps, could come to Dallas or Arizona, or here, and not be noticed? Seriously? They’re all coming in disguise, and their customers know exactly what to look for, but those that live in the neighborhood, and the police, never figure anything out?

    All I can say is that they must be smoking something good to believe that!

  3. gl whisler Avatar
    gl whisler

    Bike Bubba the explanation is easy. The hookers and pimps are merely part of the 93 million McAuliffe shot dead every day. Will no one weep for the them?

  4. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    E I,

    As usual, you are talking out of your butt because your mouth knows better. Well, maybe not.

    We don’t care what kind of society that you left wing moonbats want, but when you expect us to pay for your misguided and fiscally ignorant dreams, that’s what we object to.

    If I had my way, I would separate all of the give away programs the Democrats have foisted on the American people, then tax them to pay for it all. Believe me, those taxes would hurt so bad that those programs would be deemed unacceptably costly.

  5. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    There is a lot of “fake news” out there like this, memes popular with the elites that often have no basis in fact.
    Today there is a story about some black kid in FL who was, apparently, threatened with a jay walking ticket. The reports I’ve seen admit that there was no arrest, there was no violence, and no improper conduct by the cop, but the usual suspects are screaming “racism” (with no evidence), and their claims are being repeated as fact by the MSM.

  6. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Stalin had a view of the society. Hitler had a view of the society. Mao had a view of the society, so did Pol Pot and Chavez. You keep a wonderful company, eTASS.

  7. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    “Republicans have a vision of what government should look like (mostly just smaller), rather than a vision of what society should look like.”

    Which is one big reason I’m a Republican.

  8. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    I want American society to be confident, prosperous, secure. And the best way to get there is to pare back government to the level that existed when John Kennedy was elected.

    Isn’t that how you want American society to be, Emery? Why aren’t you a Republican?

  9. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    bosshoss429: Big ideas get debated and refined by small groups of intellectuals and power players; you can’t really have a detailed discussion with 350 million people. You present a vision of society to them and, frankly, sell it to them. That is the political reality, and why every good idea needs a capable team of politicians for it to be enacted. That’s OK, we have politics because we are human. If there are several competing visions, the choice between the visions will be debated on the national stage in simplistic and values-based terms, rather than anything deeper, but that’s OK too. Voters are pretty good at sorting that sort of thing out. The problem is when there are no visions, just invitations to seek personal or group advantage through exploiting the system as it stands, which is where most politics stands these days.

    What my 21st century vision looks like:
    1. People are rewarded for their work, with top-ups for those who make least and taxes for those who make most. Those who have least to offer will be poor but not destitute, and those who contribute most will be wealthy but not obscenely so, and their children will not be guaranteed great wealth.

    2. Consumption is taxed, not work. The world of work is a continuum between a few hours a week and 60 hours a week which can change from week to week, not a binary choice between unemployment and full time year-round work. The safety net must reflect this, increasing people’s sense of security and self worth in a flexible economy.

    3. All will have basic healthcare with rationing based on cost/benefit analysis; all will pay for part of their health costs, but medical bankruptcy will not occur. Buyer monopolies will be used to reduce costs.

    4. Income from capital is taxed to reflect the societal costs and society’s contributions to the system of capitalism which allow capital holders to profit.

    5. Government sets rules and penalizes those who break them, but does not prescribe how we live or how we conduct business in following those rules. Finance remains heavily regulated because of its inherently unstable nature and potential for abuse.

    You can have your own vision. The point is that we need one, or several competing ones, to allow government to function.

  10. In The Mailbox: 06.29.17 : The Other McCain

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  11. kinlaw Avatar
    kinlaw

    Emery, as regards “shaping or defining” culture, conservatives want the people of this country to define their culture, not the government. You give yourself away when you talk about gummint defining culture. You and your lefty allies want the gov to define our lives. Libertarians and conservatives want the people to define their own lives and culture. Maybe you should think a bit more before opening your hole.

  12. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    The Republicans are obstructionist, even in power, but the Democrats don’t matter if they can’t get elected. Trump was elected because he offered an alternative to the status quo in Washington. He is a very bad alternative, which unfortunately the American people did not grasp in time, but he is still a symptom of the larger problem. The American people wish to have a new and better vision of their society, and a government that works to realize that vision. Neither party presents a workable vision for the country; they each struggle to manipulate the levers of government without a goal for the society that they govern. Their policies are thus incoherent.

    The success of Trump stems from his ability to present a vision for America’s future. It was a really stupid, unobtainable vision, poorly thought out, but it was a vision, and that allowed him to win. Having a vision, a theme, is what he and Macron have in common. Neither is a veteran politico maneuvering themselves and their party for position within an existing system, as people like Pelosi, Ryan, McConnell and Schumer all are (and Hilary, of course). The idea that change is not possible in Washington is predicated on the assumption that change must come through tinkering within the existing system, which is impossible given the level of vetocracy.

    We are in need of leaders who are willing to abandon the past to embrace a new future. The Ayn Randian Libertarianism of the Republicans and the LBJ Liberalism of Sanders and the Democratic left both embrace the past. All of the many presidential candidates from last fall presented their vision as one that would take us back to 1985, or 1968, or some fantasy amalgam of a poorly remembered 1950s. There were no 21st century visions.

  13. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    What kinlaw said. Asking the government to execute some vision it has for society is like asking your garbageman what he wants you to put in your trash. Jeebus. He’s the hired help, doing a job for pay.
    Statesmen are an old part of politics, but they represented and led the people, they didn’t tell them to change into another type of people.
    The idea that government should lead the ignorant masses into the sunny uplands has a very specific birth in space and time — Europe, in the mid to late nineteenth century. It is a historical oddity, and an intellectual fashion, not “the way rational people do things.”

  14. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Dunning_Kruger defends Pol Pot: The Republicans have a vision of what government should look like (mostly just smaller), rather than a vision of what society should look like.

  15. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    The Cambodian American people wish to have a new and better vision of their society, and a government that works to realize that vision. Neither party presents a workable vision for the country; they each struggle to manipulate the levers of government without a goal for the society that they govern. Their policies are thus incoherent.

    Pol_Dunning_Kruger_Pot

  16. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Marxist-Leninist politics on display from SFB eTASS. Where you expecting anything less? Sick and amoral.

  17. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    Emery: “All will have basic healthcare with rationing based on cost/benefit analysis……..”

    Death Panels???

  18. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    The GOP proposes block grants to states. States run Medicaid and always have. Each state is free to choose the level of care that they provide. Those states that want universal healthcare are quite free to expand and improve Medicaid to cover all citizens, at the state’s expense of course. Why should this not be an issue for each state’s voters to decide?

  19. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Even CA stupid as s*** voters do not want universal health care. Keep pushing against that wall SFB eTASS.

  20. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    What the past 10 years of health care wrangling at the federal level should have taught us is that there is not a consensus in the US as to what the healthcare system should look like. Rather than trying to force a federal healthcare system that half the country hates on everyone, let’s have the federal government give out block grants and let the states run their own systems. Why the states whose voters are clamoring for 100% coverage do not do so is beyond me. Oklahoma and Massachusetts will never be happy with the same healthcare system. Why should their systems not be different?

  21. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Why the states whose voters are clamoring for 100% coverage do not do so is beyond me

    Because it does not work. But then comprehension of this simple fact is beyond you, as you state. You must be on of them voters (if you can vote) that are actually stupider then stupid as s*** voters.

  22. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    It appears you do not support the GOP plan which one of it’s main components is block grants to the states. Why do you hate freedom?

    It would be far easier to create a consensus for what a healthcare system should look like in each of 50 states, and experimentation could and should lead to best solutions.

  23. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    It appears you do not support the GOP plan which one of it’s main components is block grants to the states. Why do you hate freedom?

    Project much? Please point to where I said that.

  24. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Reminds me of Brexit. Easy to oppose something, more difficult to explain what should replace it.

  25. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Reminds me of Brexit. Easy to oppose something, more difficult to explain what should replace it.
    Reminds me of segregation. Easy to oppose something, more difficult to explain what should replace it.
    Reminds me of fossil fuels. Easy to oppose something, more difficult to explain what should replace it.
    Reminds me of capitalism. Easy to oppose something, more difficult to explain what should replace it.

  26. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Scott Hughes on June 30, 2017 at 12:30 pm said:
    Emery: “All will have basic healthcare with rationing based on cost/benefit analysis……..”
    This supposes that a proper cost-benefit analysis can be done. This is a ridiculous notion. How much is a woman’s life worth to her husband? How much value does society place on the woman’s life? Which valuation is “correct”?
    No one, all around the world, has a value-neutral “better” health care system than the united states, for the reason that the value of a human life is in the eye of the beholder.

  27. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Scott Hughes: Insurance companies already ration healthcare.

  28. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Emery: yes, there always has been, and always will be, rationing in health care. The question is who is making the decisions. After the history of the 20th century, do we really want to trust government in that role?

  29. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Individuals ration the health care they pay for. Insurance companies ration the health care they pay for. The government rations the health care it pays for.
    Health care is a scarce good, and economics is the study of the rationing of scarce goods.
    The idea that government is somehow “better” at rationing health care than individuals or insurance companies is a fantasy. A people may decide that “justice” demands a single payer with universal benefits, but “justice” does not mean the same thing as efficiency. Even the attempt to measure efficiency of delivered services is fraught with value judgments.
    If you want efficiency, have doctors examine newborns and cull the defective.
    The Nazis did that, and eugenics had its (progressive) fans in the American political and intellectual world, ‘back when.
    As has been noted elsewhere, some governments consider the sex-change rights of a felon in custody to be on par with the rights to be vaccinated or have your life extended by a year.
    Government rationing means political rationing by a system that even liberals admit is not designed to produce efficient outcomes.

  30. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    As has been noted elsewhere, some governments consider the sex-change rights of a felon in custody to be on par with the rights to be vaccinated or have your life extended by a year.

    Right on cue, NHS signaled they will pay for womb transplants for transgenders. Why is it that libturds never, ever learn?

  31. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    BB: I favor block grants to states. Most states live under balanced budget requirements. As such, they will be compelled to run their healthcare initiatives in a fiscally prudent manner. Let each state determine the level of care that they wish to provide.

  32. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Great. Average wait time to get a clogged gallbladder removed in England is over three months, and they’re saying they need to provide new uteruses so men can have babies. Priorities there for you, I guess. Maybe they’ll be cutting bypass surgery next so they can give testicles to women who want to be daddies, too?

    Never mind that I’d guess that they’ve not tested anti-rejection drugs on pregnant mothers to figure out what it would do to the poor kid. We can’t shorten FDA tests for critical chemotherapy drugs and such, but we will skip them entirely for men who want to have babies.

  33. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Woolly: I’m a bit surprised the Republican plan doesn’t model itself after the Swiss plan.
    The problem with Obamacare is it is a hybrid of a private insurance system with many single payer features. So far the replacement plans of the GOP are hybrids as well. They differ only on how much of the single payer features they have.

  34. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Back in the day — the 60s, 70s, and 80s — most Left intellectuals believed that soviet-style central economic planning was superior to the free market. Not just in terms of “economic justice”, but in terms of absolute economic growth. There was no more rational reason to believe this than there is to believe that Gypsies can tell the future. It was all based on cherry picked and anecdotal data. The American military had a more forthright idea of the power of the power of the Soviet economy because it was their job to fight the USSR. The intellectuals were dilettantes. The made the Soviets economic winners because it was the fashion.
    No one on the Left, and I mean no one, has paid the slightest price for being wrong on the greatest question of the 20th century: free market versus planned economy.
    I see the same dilettantism today. No one on the Left is treating questions of value in healthcare seriously. They all assume that “single payer” will mean whatever benefits they enjoy now will continue, but better!
    In real life, the priorities of a single payer health care system will be politically driven. Whether you get your $60k hip replacement so you can walk again, or an addict gets $60k worth of in-patient treatment, will be determined by a process over which you have no influence.

  35. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Emery’s vision: “People are rewarded for their work, with top-ups for those who make least and taxes for those who make most.”

    I like this idea. I’ve always wanted to work in the poRn industry but since I’m old, short, fat, bald and have “small hands,” I couldn’t make a living at it.

    Now that my efforts will be rewarded regardless of quality and my income topped up despite being completely unsuited for my job, I’m ready to start a new career.

  36. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Don’t sell yourself short JD. You would make an excellent “Fluffer” in the porn industry. You seem to have found a niche at blowing hot air.

  37. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Not gonna go there. I’ll just go grab popcorn and wait for swiftee.

  38. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    I shouldn’t have to settle for a supporting role, E. You’re the one advancing Marx’s Labor Theory of Value. It’s the ultimate participation award – I get paid the same as the Big stars, we all do, because we’re rewarded for our effort and not for the quality of our work.

  39. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    A lot of people who don’t want to accept basic truths about weak governance and poor industry in their own countries. It is an emotionally appealing explanation for people that find self criticism difficult.

  40. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    Emery: Your belief in experts and politicians central planing non- public goods and having voters vote on it boggles my mind. Then throw in the Fed “helping” the process.

    How is the Fed and the U.S. taxpayer going to help Illinois? We are talking about human needs not being met.

    Emery, your goofy faith in central planning is not going to increase the GDP. It will lower it
    —
    “Scott Hughes: Insurance companies already ration healthcare.” This is more about our have consumed our future and we don’t have the resources to be civil to people in their old age.

  41. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    “Buyer monopolies will be used to reduce costs.”

    If this “works” what are the knock on effects? Discuss.

  42. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    There was another great Real Vision video on how we have completely consumed our future. No savings. Tons of debt and liabilities. Human capitol aging. This is a disaster.

  43. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    BTW, King Banaian makes a big deal about this economist http://tinyurl.com/yaaxn3rm After listening to this I can see why. Every Republican needs to memorize that interview.

  44. TheFedSucks Avatar
    TheFedSucks

    Our elected officials have been asking, “How can we give health insurance to everyone?”

    There are a few problems with this question:

    Health insurance is a fiscal entity geared toward protecting one’s assets. Does it make any sense to force those who have no assets to purchase insurance?
    Using insurance as the medium to receive medical care causes escalating costs as the phenomenon of moral hazard is ignored. So, going this route inevitably will result in price increases like we have already witnessed under the Affordable Care Act.
    Health insurance is not healthcare. Just because you have health insurance does not mean you will get healthcare or that the insurance company will even pay for your healthcare. The inevitable result is increasing costs with reductions in healthcare provided. So, unless you want continued inefficiencies, escalating costs and bureaucratic nightmares, you might want to rephrase the question asked.
    Maybe a better question to ask is, “How can we provide the best quality healthcare to the greatest number of our citizens for the least cost?” The only real answer to this question is free market capitalism.

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/were-not-asking-the-right-questions-about-healthcare-reform-and-obamacare-repeal/article/2627350

    http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/26/podcast-unpacking-senate-healthcare-bill-obamacare-aftermath/

  45. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    There is a whole sub-discipline in economics that concerns “public choice.” The upshot is that it works on an a different principle than “I choose to use my money to buy something from a willing seller.”
    Unlike free market transactions, there are losers, people who pay, willy nilly, more for things than they value those things.

    Public choice takes the same principles that economists use to analyze people’s actions in the marketplace and applies them to people’s actions in collective decision making. Economists who study behavior in the private marketplace assume that people are motivated mainly by self-interest. Although most people base some of their actions on their concern for others, the dominant motive in people’s actions in the marketplace—whether they are employers, employees, or consumers—is a concern for themselves. Public choice economists make the same assumption—that although people acting in the political marketplace have some concern for others, their main motive, whether they are voters, politicians, lobbyists, or bureaucrats, is self-interest. In Buchanan’s words the theory “replaces… romantic and illusory… notions about the workings of governments [with]… notions that embody more skepticism.”

    http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/PublicChoiceTheory.html
    I have a bit of a problem with the phrase “self-interest” as used in the above def. Many people will take it to mean “greed”, or “selfishness”, when it really means greater knowledge. If I have to choose to between a big SUV, and minivan, and an economy car, only I know which provides me with the most value for the money spent.
    Compare this to liberals, who seem to be able to look at a vehicle and the person driving it and decide if that car is appropriate for them. Or a house. Or anything, really (this, FYI, is what makes Bill O’Reilly anti-free market.)
    Liberals, who want more and more capital devoted to public goods, ignore the science and the empirical data, and go with there own greed: they cannot determine what you value, but they want to tell you how to spend your money anyway.

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