KPN

KPN's Journal

July 3, 2018

Many American Revolutionaries were much younger than you might think

when they declared independence from Britain

How old were the American Revolutionaries when the colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776?

Some of America's Founding Father's were shockingly young when the colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776. Some were older, like Thomas Jefferson who was 33, John Hancock who was 39, or Benjamin Franklin who was 70. Others were shockingly young — even teenagers. James Monroe, for example, was 18 and Alexander Hamilton was 21.

All Things Liberty compiled a list of the ages of famous people at the start of the American Revolution.

http://www.businessinsider.com/youngest-actors-in-american-revolution-fourth-of-july-independence-2018-6#nathan-hale-21-16

Experience or youth? In normal times, I'd go with experience. These aren't normal times.

It's time to back our youth.

June 29, 2018

I would ignore it if I didn't think it was harmful.

I have 3 adult kids who were Bernie supporters. Only one of them voted despite my non-stop arm-twisting ( fortunately we are all in deeply blue Oregon). They express concerns that I am unable to dismiss. They are not racist, they are not stupid, one of the two who didn’t vote is gay, they all have college degrees, they all work hard and honestly to support themselves. I am proud of who they are and what they stand for. Frankly, anyone who criticizes them is criticizing me — and off base. I could go on. Suffice it to say blaming people like my adult kids — which is exactly what they are doing in effect — is self-defeating. It angers me ... especially coming from what I consider my own.

May 29, 2018

OMG -- switched to Faux News during commercial

and watched Neil Cavuto ask Herman Cain if it had been a liberal entertainer, would ABC have acted so quickly? Can't believe I'm seeing that crap!

Mr 999 answered "Probably not." But to his credit he did say "but that" racist statement would have taken anyone down at some point.

May 6, 2018

Job losses from automation or trade pacts? Will we learn from this?

A simple request: please don't turn this into something it is not by making this about supporting our fake pResident.

The Epic Mistake about Manufacturing that's Cost Americans Millions of Jobs

America’s manufacturing sector is in far worse shape than the media, politicians, and even most academics realize. Manufacturers’ embrace of automation was supposedly a good thing. Sure, some factory workers lost their jobs. But increased productivity boosted living standards, and as manufacturing work vanished, new jobs in construction and other services took its place. This was more of a shift than a loss, explained Bradford DeLong, economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Thanks to a painstaking analysis by a handful of economists, it’s become clear that the data that underpin the dominant narrative—or more precisely, the way most economists interpreted the data—were way off-base. Foreign competition, not automation, was behind the stunning loss in factory jobs. And that means America’s manufacturing sector is in far worse shape than the media, politicians, and even most academics realize.

In the four decades between 1960 and 2000, US manufacturing employment was basically stable, averaging around 17.5 million jobs. Even during the 1980s and 1990s, as Korea and other smaller Asian nations joined the ranks of Germany and Japan to threaten the dominance of US factories, the absolute number of manufacturing workers stayed mostly flat.

Between 2000 and 2010, manufacturing employment plummeted by more than a third. Nearly 6 million American factory workers lost their jobs. The drop was unprecedented—worse than any decade in US manufacturing history. Even during the Great Depression, factory jobs shrunk by only 31%, according to a Information Technology & Innovation Foundation report. ... How, then, do you reconcile the epic employment slump of the 2000s with the steady rise in output? The obvious conclusion is that factories needed fewer people than they did in the past because robots are now doing more and more of the producing. That’s tough for factory workers, but US manufacturing is doing fine. That rests on the basic assumption that the manufacturing output data reflect the actual volume of stuff produced by US factories. It’s a reasonable assumption to make. Unfortunately, it’s not an accurate one.

Two decades of ill-founded policymaking radically restructured the US economy, and reshuffled the social order too. The America that resulted is more unequal and more polarized than it’s been in decades, if not nearly a century. ... In effect, US policymakers put diplomacy before industrial development at home, offering the massive American consumer market as a carrot to encourage other countries to open up their economies to multinational investment. Then, thanks to the popular narrative that automation was responsible for job losses in manufacturing, American leaders tended to dismiss the threat of foreign competition to a thriving manufacturing industry and minimize its importance to the overall health of the US economy.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs/ar-AAwGZsq?li=BBnbfcN

May 5, 2018

These Kids Will Bring Them Down ... Eventually.

Parkland student rips Trump over NRA speech: 'He's a professional liar'

On Saturday, , a survivor of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting slammed President Trump for speaking at the National Rifle Association ... Cameron Kasky, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, made the comments in an appearance on CNN's "New Day."

"He's a professional liar who will say anything to appease whatever crowd he's at," Kasky said. "If he's in front of families he might say something in support of common-sense gun reform, but then when he's at the NRA he'll say something to get a big cheer."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/parkland-student-rips-trump-over-nra-speech-hes-a-professional-liar/ar-AAwMHnX?li=BBnb7Kz

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