SOCIALIST UTOPIANISM EXPLAINED: Trudy Schuett’s “Iron Ladies” blog takes an interesting look at the history of Socialist Utopianism:

“As the first of the socialists, Robert Owen made some obvious mistakes that would continue to be made until the present day. The first of those was his failure to recognize people as individuals. He saw people as a homogeneous mass, with identical needs, without taking into account the differences that abound in character, ability, intelligence and other aspects that make us all uniquely human. He never recognized that his fellow socialists had free will, and most of them wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Neither did he recognize that his solution for economic slavery and oppression was equally oppressive and enslaving, only in a different form.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

REGULATORY COSTS, PART DEUX: Axios’ Kim Hart reporting that payphones (remember them?) are so few and far between that the cost of regulation outweighs revenue:

“Cincinnati Bell asked the FCC last month for a waiver to exempt it from filing the annual audits tracking pay phone transactions. According to FCC filings, the cost of Cincinnati Bell’s audit is now about five times the amount of revenue it makes from its pay phones. Sprint also asked for a waiver.”

Most bureaucracies (particularly the FCC) are loathe to waive jurisdiction or oversight, but let’s see what happens.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO: The Daily Signal breaks down revealing numbers on legislators advocating for a $15/hr minimum wage:

Almost all of the lawmakers who co-sponsored a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour also hired unpaid interns to supplement their staffs, a survey shows. A report from the Employment Policies Institute reveals that 174 of the bill’s 184 co-sponsors, or 95 percent, hire interns who are paid nothing.

Well, color me shocked!

FLORIDA MAN: If you like bizarre “Florida Man” stories (and who doesn’t) you need to read Will Greenlee in the TCPalm: “Flap involving deflated bounce house in Port St. Lucie sends man to jail.” He owns this beat.

NEW FORMULA: Want instant clicks or buzz around your article or stage production? Play to the groundlings and cast Trump as the villain: “George Orwell Saw Donald Trump Coming: Review of ‘1984’. I don’t know how old this Daily Beast writer is, but I suspect he was still in high school when this was happening:

In 2011, Obama signed a four-year renewal of the Patriot Act, specifically, provisions allowing roaming wiretaps and government searches of business records. Obama argued that the renewal was needed to protect the United States from terrorist attacks. However, the renewal was criticized by several members of Congress who argued that the provisions did not do enough to curtail excessive searches.

I know, research is hard, and it would have been too much work to find out that mass-spying was commonplace under the previous administration. At least, not when there’s a click-bait narrative to promulgate. Democratic operatives with bylines, indeed.
**UPDATE: I should have linked to this Obama ad using 1984 as a metaphor for Hillary.

TO QUOTE JUDGE KOZINSKI: “ROBOTS AGAIN”. VOA News has an interesting video report about a World Bank study saying that “automation could put 70 percent of India’s jobs at risk.”

I, for one, welcome our new new robot overlords.

NEXT THING, JOHN PODESTA WILL BE GIVING LECTURES ON CYBER SECURITY: “BILL COSBY SPEAKING TOUR WILL ADDRESS HOW TO AVOID SEXUAL ASSAULT ACCUSATIONS”

“We are now planning town halls…. We’re going to talk to young people, because this is bigger than Bill Cosby. This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today. And they need to know what they’re facing when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certan things that they should be doing. And it also affects married men.”

Well, I’m all for being vigilant against phony rape charges, but there must be a better spokesperson.

WHEN VICTIM GROUPS CLASH: The Daily Signal reports on an i̶l̶l̶e̶g̶a̶l̶ ̶a̶l̶i̶e̶n̶ undocumented resident who thought it might be fun to kill a 17-year-old Muslim girl:

Authorities said a man they identified as Darwin Martinez Torres, 22, attacked and abducted Nabra Hassanen after getting into an argument with a group of about 15 young Muslims on their way to a nearby mosque in Sterling, Virginia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials confirmed to The Daily Caller and other news outlets that Torres is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was living in Sterling.

The kicker? Nabra lived with her family in Reston, in Fairfax County, a “sanctuary” county. I’m betting her grieving family is asking the same questions that Kate Steinle‘s family is asking. Here’s wishing them all peace.

STOP MAKING SENSE: ABC News featuring interview with Mike Bloomberg, saying “Bloomberg says America should ‘get behind’ Trump because ‘the public has spoken‘.

“He’s our president, and we need this country to be run well. I didn’t vote for him,” Bloomberg added. “Let’s just all hope that Donald Trump is a good president of the United States.” Also a businessman and philanthropist, Bloomberg said Americans should direct their energy toward changing the outcome of the next election rather than fighting the current administration.

All that “being reasonable” stuff is not going to play well in the #Resistance parlors on the Upper West Side and Georgetown.

**Disclosure: I worked for his company as Global Media Counsel for more than 13 years.**

WHICH BUFFOON? Washington Babylon set leftie hearts a-fluttering this morning with the headline “Trial For Venal, Buffoonish Leader Set for Fall; Process Could Lead to Ouster for Collusion.” Imagine their disappointment when they found out upon reading it was not the buffoon they were hoping for: One with a “D” after his name:

[New Jersey Senator] Menendez “is accused of improperly seeking to help Florida doctor Salomon Melgen in a Medicare overbilling case, a contract dispute with the Dominican Republic and with visa applications for three girlfriends. Prosecutors say Menendez accepted nearly $1 million in campaign donations and luxury travel, including a Paris vacation, from Melgen.”

Nice trolling!

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR: Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub is floating the idea of expanding their investigative scope to include looking at political ads appearing on-line. The Washington Examiner reports that:

“A new proposal by an anti-Trump Democrat on the Federal Election Commission would expand the federal government’s probe into alleged Russian influence to foreign companies and internet sites that take political ads, like Facebook or the Drudge Report, while giving the FEC an unprecedented role that some say oversteps its authority.”

What almost any broadcaster or publisher — be it legacy or new media — will tell you is that political ads are a critical part of their revenue stream, and such mission creep would surely not stop at Drudge or Facebook, but threatens everyone from The Gateway Pundit to The New York Times.

FUN FACT: The landmark First Amendment Times v. Sullivan case was based not on something the Times wrote, but was in fact based on a political ad run by the NAACP.

A DOGWHISTLE TO INCITE VIOLENCE? “Attacking Trump is not enough,” a senior Democratic aide said late Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about strategy.”

Is this a dogwhistle for more violent attacks and assassination attempts against Republican lawmakers? If the roles were reversed, that would be the narrative, I have no doubt. Perhaps our moral betters might want to re-think words like “attack.” The heightened language of politics-as-war is the ugliest thing I’ve seen since forever.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Again, another picture is worth a thousand words. You know, the real irony is that these brave, fearless, empowered women always seem to burst into tears when things don’t go well. I don’t mean to sound misogynistic, but the added irony is that a woman won this race.

TOO COZY, OR FLAT OUT CORRUPT? The AP reports that Jay Solomon, the Wall Street Journal’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent has been sacked:

The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday fired its highly regarded chief foreign affairs correspondent after evidence emerged of his involvement in prospective commercial deals — including one involving arms sales to foreign governments — with an international businessman who was one of his key sources.

The WSJ is staying mum on details, and the AP takes pains to be fair that “It was not clear whether Solomon ever received money or formally accepted a stake in the company”, but it underscores the temptation reporters face when they get too cozy with sources. This is not the first time the WSJ has faced this problem.

**Update: The “editors” at Yahoo News (giggle) don’t know the difference between the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. HINT: These buildings are not even in the same city. Layers and layers of fact-checkers, you know.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: BuzzFeed’s “FOIA Terrorist” Jason Leopold learns that A Bunch Of CIA Staff Got Fired For Stealing Snacks From Vending Machines:

The thefts took place starting in the fall of 2012 and continued through March 2013, according to a declassified Office of Inspector General report from October 2013. The report is one of hundreds only recently released to BuzzFeed News through a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2015.

Granted, the thefts only totaled about $3,314.40, but it makes one wonder why they would go to such an elaborate plan and effort just about the same time ̶T̶r̶u̶m̶p̶ ̶a̶n̶d Putin were busy “hacking our democracy.” Priorities, I guess. I mean, hey, free Snickers bars.

FROM THE DAILY SIGNAL: “How Hip-Hop Is Teaching High Schoolers About the Free Market“. Hey, anything that gets youngsters to read Adam Smith is OK by me. If this takes off, there are going to be far fewer BernieBots clamoring for “free” stuff.

Caskey’s goal is to reach the urban student with the relevance of the economic way of thinking. He says, “I want to inspire zeal for the discipline of economics among young people, but particularly among urban young people, a historically underserved population, especially in the educational sense.”

You can check out the lessons here.

IT’S LIKE THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, BUT WITH ORGANIC AVOCADOS: Business Insider gets Whole Foods CEO John Mackey to explain what went wrong with Whole Foods:

In a town-hall meeting last Friday, Mackey said the grocery chain has long prioritized its employees over shoppers, and that shoppers should instead be its No. 1 priority.

At least there’s market forces at work here. If only educational administrators saw the same problem the same way…

FROM MICHELLE MALKIN: No, they don’t look very happy, do they? A picture is worth a thousand words.

FASTER, PLEASE: VOA News reporting on a new test in medical trials that may predict a patient’s responsiveness to new generation of tumor-fighting cancer drugs.

NAPKIN MATH: Ossoff raised $23.6 million to make a symbolic run against President Trump, most of it from Marin County, California and Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Running the numbers, Democrats might have been better off considering that same amount would have bought 855,072 school lunches (at $2.76 each); 236,000 elementary school textbooks (at $100 each) or even 956 Priuses (at $24,685 each).

Max Weber said that the purpose of a bureaucracy is to maintain or expand its own power. Who cares about children, education or the environment when there’s power to be grabbed? Either that, or Democrats just aren’t very good with numbers.

YOU THINK? “Journalism Standards Collapsed in the 2016 Election.” Michael Goodwin is the chief political columnist for The New York Post. Before joining the Post in 2009, he was the political columnist for The New York Daily News, where he served as executive editor and editorial page editor and led its editorial board to a Pulitzer Prize. Prior to that, he worked for 16 years at The New York Times. I’d say he knows a thing or two about a thing or two:

“To the age-old elements of who, what, when, where, and why, [New York Times editor Dean Baquet] added the reporter’s opinion. Now the floodgates were open, and virtually every so-called news article reflected a clear bias against Trump. Stories, photos, headlines, placement in the paper—all the tools that writers and editors have—were summoned to the battle. The goal was to pick the next president.”

Political coverage underscores the old saying that “politics is Hollywood for ugly people.” Working in the industry I can honestly say that there are great old-school journalists at AP, The Times, The WashPost and elsewhere. But those are people covering finance, economy, manufacturing and general assignment. The political reporters are all about being “behind-the-scenes” king (or queen) makers. Even Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s deputy national security advisor (and brother of CBS News President David Rhodes) admitted in a Kinsleyan gaffe that:

The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.

The saddest part is that most of the MSM are in complete denial, and are racing with each other to be The Official Organ of the Resistance. Racing to the bottom, that is. This will keep ending in tears.

THE COOLEST THING TO COME OUT OF WALES SINCE TOM JONES: “‘A magical experience’: Beautiful images capture rare bioluminescent plankton off the coast of Wales.“

PAGING PAJAMA BOY! I had no idea such drugs existed, but the potential for screwing up a lot of young lives is humongous…The Daily Signal reports “New Paper Says Puberty Blockers Aren’t the Answer to Gender Confusion“:

“Increasingly, gender therapists and physicians argue that children as young as nine should be given puberty-blocking drugs if they experience gender dysphoria. But a new article by three medical experts reveals that there is little scientific evidence to support such a radical procedure.”

I’m pretty opened-minded about the whole gender-identity thing — what do I care what you call yourself? — but like gay conversion therapy and similar “treatments”, when you start messing with kids there’s a lot of potential harm. You add to that the statistic that “41 percent of people who identify as transgender will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, compared to 4.6 percent of the general population” and sooner or later there’s going to be some heartbreak somewhere.

I’LL TAKE ERIC HOLDER FOR $500, ALEX: “Who Holds the DEA Accountable When Its Missions Cost Lives?”

Soros-funded ProPublica reports that the DEA (like the ATF) may be responsible for dozens of deaths in the Mexican drug wars:

Against the wishes of the lead agent on the case — whose informant specifically warned of the potential for bloodshed — the DEA told a Mexican federal police unit with a long history of leaking to traffickers that it had the [sensitive] information.

Of course, all this happened in 2011. And like “Fast and Furious” the mainstream press was suspiciously incurious about anything that might embarrass Attorney General Holder or then-President Obama. Sharyl Attkisson was pushed out of CBS News for even daring to report it. But now that there’s a new sheriff to “hold accountable”, well, that’s just different. 

BONUS FUN FACT: President Obama asserted Executive Privilege in June 2012 to avoid answering questions about the failed project, and that was rejected by a federal judge.

I’M SHOCKED! SHOCKED, I SAY!: Hidden trove of suspected Nazi artifacts found in Argentina. Waiting for liberal OpEds to demand Mueller investigate any Trump businesses there. “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”