TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AND TEXAS TECH REACH DEAL TO END THE UNIVERSITY’S USE OF RACE AS A FACTOR IN ADMISSIONS PROCESS
by Kevin Ryan

The Education Department’s civil rights division is requiring Texas Tech University to end its use of race in admissions decisions, striking a deal with the university that will eliminate its affirmative-action practices.

Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday he is "reviewing the conduct" of the FBI's initial investigation into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

During a House Appropriations panel hearing, Barr also said he is open to reviewing criminal referrals from House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., targeting eight people tied to the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

"I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016," Barr testified.

The FBI's original Russia investigation, which began in July 2016, was later wrapped into special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion between President Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

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BANK OF AMERICA INCREASES MINIMUM PAY FOR ALL EMPLOYEES TO $20/HR, PROVIDING MORE EVIDENCE THAT SUPPLY AND DEMAND, NOT MINIMUM WAGE LAW, SETS WAGES
by Kevin Ryan

Bank of America announced today that it is raising the minimum pay for its 205,000 employees to $20/hr. The announcement comes just 2 years after the company gave its employees a raise to a minimum of $15/hr, and handed out bonuses to its employees, a move it credited to U.S. corporate tax reform.

The new increase in minimum pay provides further evidence disproving the fallacy that government needs to set and continually increase mandatory minimum wages. The fallacy is especially prevalent among progressives, many of whom believe that the only thing keeping American labor from being paid pennies per hour is government minimum wage law.

How, then, do they explain Bank of America voluntarily increasing the minimum wage for all its workers beyond the minimum they could pay by law? In fact, they’ve raised their minimum pay to three TIMES more than they could pay under the federal minimum wage. Voluntarily! Why would they do that??

The reality, of course, as anyone with a basic understanding of economics (or even just a brain and an open mind) could tell you, is that wages are determined by supply and demand, not by government fiat.

Wages rise because there is a finite source of labor. And since most companies would go out of business without workers, the ability to attract and keep employees, especially in good times, is just as important to a business as the ability to attract and keep customers. Thus businesses have to compete with one another for workers by, among other things, paying a good wage, and increasing it when the market dictates.

If you still don’t believe this very simple economic principle, consider the following.

• The vast majority of workers are paid far more than the minimum wage, voluntarily, by their companies. Even in states that do not have separate, higher state-mandated minimum wages (like Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, etc), 96% of employees make more than the minimum wage.

• Wages rise even in countries without minimum wage laws… often much faster than in countries with high minimum wages. Switzerland has the second highest average wages in the world… yet has no minimum wage law. Wages rose to that level without any government mandated wage law in place.

• And even when the government attempts to keep wages DOWN, companies will STILL find ways to increase them. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration put in place a freeze on wages. According to today’s progressives, a law forcing companies NOT to give out raises should have been an absolute dream come true for greedy capitalist business owners. In reality, without the ability to increase wages, companies desperate not to lose their employees had to come up with ways around the wage freeze in order to compete for workers, so they created innovative means of increasing compensation, such as paying for workers to have health insurance (a facet of American employment that remains today).

Nevertheless, we continue to get fiery speeches by people like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders claiming that, left to their own devices, businesses will keep their employees earning meager wages in perpetual servitude, ignoring basic economics and history.

SOURCES: https://www.cnn.com/…/bank-of-america-minimum-wa…/index.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-minimum-wage-worker…
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AV_AN_WAGE
http://www.ncsl.org/…/labor-a…/state-minimum-wage-chart.aspx
https://www.cnbc.com/…/bank-of-america-is-giving-some-emplo…
https://www.griffinbenefits.com/…/history-of-employer-spons…
https://www.atr.org/…/default/files/assets/TaxCutGoodNewsLi…

The list of ways China keeps tabs on citizens is getting longer

BEIJING — China’s ambitious plan to assign lifelong scores to citizens based on their behavior has stoked international concern, even as the project remains nascent and numerous hurdles must be overcome before the experiment can be implemented nationwide. In fact, the so-called social credit system is merely an extension of the myriad ways the government already rates its citizens. Here’s a breakdown of the systems China has in place.
Supreme Court blacklist

People who defy court orders are barred from numerous privileges, including getting loans, buying houses and sending their kids to private schools. Judges decide who’s blacklisted, and individuals can appeal to be removed once their issue has been rectified. The Supreme Court maintains a public database with full names and identification numbers of those on the list. By the end of 2018, people with bad debt had been prevented from taking more than 17 million flights, 5 million train trips and blocked from acting as executives or legal business representatives 290,000 times, according to the court.

Personal credit rating

China’s central bank sits atop a vast pool of credit profiles for nearly 1 billion people and 26 million enterprises. Its database includes information on bank loans, social security, housing pension, tax evasion and even court rulings. Financial institutions ranging from the nation’s five biggest banks to small loan companies are able to use it to check citizens’ credit scores — preventing those with bad credit from taking on more debt. Records are automatically refreshed after several years and infractions can be expunged, with the frequency of those updates linked to the seriousness of what the person did wrong. The system is similar to credit ratings used in many other countries.

Sesame credit

Ant Financial, an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, uses the scoring system to track its customers’ creditworthiness. The company suffered some backlash when users discovered they were automatically signed up for it without being notified. This score can affect a range of things, including whether customers need to put down a deposit to rent a bicycle and whether they can obtain loans. Ant argues that its system is needed because so many people — especially those living in rural areas of China — don’t have credit scores (or even bank accounts).

Tourism blacklist

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism names and shames citizens who behave in an “uncivilized” manner overseas, and bans them from traveling. Offenses include fighting, stealing — even climbing on public statues. The country’s Civil Aviation Administration has imposed flying bans on those who flout airline safety rules, after a string of incidents involving Chinese travelers accidentally opening emergency exits. Most recently, Beijing park authorities proposed using artificial intelligence and facial recognition to identify and bar tourists who exhibit bad behavior from its parks during the Qingming Festival, or national tomb-sweeping holiday, the state-run Global Times reported.

National blacklist

The National Development and Reform Commission — which is spearheading the social credit plan — set up a branch in 2017 to promote information-sharing between government departments and China’s vast regions. In its 2018 annual report, the NDRC said it had added some 14.2 million incidents to a list of “dishonest” activities — but that more than 2 million people had also successfully been removed from the blacklist.

Social credit system

All these systems could ultimately feed into or influence the establishment of the nationwide Social Credit System the government wants in place by 2020 to determine whether its citizens are well behaved and punish or reward them accordingly. A number of cities have been experimenting with the concept for years, and 12 were selected as pilots on Jan. 1, 2018. People have points added or deducted depending on everyday social behavior including recycling, keeping their dogs leashed and parking cars where they’re supposed to. Local governments have also adapted their own systems to focus on particular behaviors they want to address. Ultimately, data collected from various blacklists and rating systems already in use could feed into the overarching national program.

The security guard, a suburban policeman, was on-duty for the McDonald’s restaurant Saturday afternoon. He was leading the two men out of the restaurant when one of them struck the guard on the head with a glass bottle, police said. A struggle ensued and was captured on video.

Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday he believes "spying did occur" on President Trump's 2016 campaign.

During testimony before a Senate panel, Barr said it was his obligation to ensure the government did not abuse its surveillance powers and he had set up a team to investigate whether this happened with the Trump campaign.

"I think spying did occur," Barr testified. "But the question is whether it was predicated - adequately predicated - and I'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated, but I need to explore that," Barr added.

Barr was grilled by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Justice Department, on reports he was assembling a team to review why the FBI opened a counter-intelligence inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

"I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It's a big deal," Barr said, an apparent reference to GOP allegations that the FBI misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor former Trump 2016 campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

"I'm not suggesting it wasn't adequately predicated -- I need to explore that. I think it's my obligation. Congress is usually very concerned about intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies staying in their proper lane," the attorney general added.

In a plea to stop young white people from continuing their exodus from the country, South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa posed a rather curious solution on the campaign trail — tying them to trees and begging them not to emigrate.Speaking at a meeting of wine farmers in Stellenbosch in the Western Cape on Tuesday, the South African president said he did not want to see young white farmers and the skills they possess leaving the country, jokingly posing his own solution to the ongoing emigration crisis.

“If I could, I’d tie them down to a tree and say don’t leave, I want you here in this country,” Ramaphosa told the group of mainly white farmers. The leader also moved to assure the wine growers over their fears surrounding land reform in South Africa, promising that if re-elected, it would be done in accordance with the law.