Too Big To Care?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Friday endorsed a $5 billion settlement with Facebook for its violations of privacy of its users. The proposal now goes to the Justice Dept. for final approval. In addition to the fine, the settlement is expected to require Facebook to implement new measures to protect user’s personal information.

The proposed settlement comes after Facebook sold massive amounts of personal information during the last two election cycles. In 2017, Facebook acknowledged that a personality-prediction app it developed had been sold to several analytics firms. And note that wording— “sold”, so it was a conscious decision not an accident. Continue reading “Too Big To Care?”

The Example of Socialism

Last presidential election cycle, we had an avowed socialist in Bernie Sanders, who gathered a significant number of votes in the Democratic primaries. In New York, voters elected a young self-described socialist, Alexandra Occasio-Cortez, to Congress and she has become the darling of liberals.

Surveys also show that there is a small but growing positive image of socialism among young people in the country. Continue reading “The Example of Socialism”

Practicing What We Preach

Most would agree that one true measure of a person is if they actually live and do what they say they believe.

Bernie Sanders, the self-described socialist who recently declared he was running again for President, is running on a platform of helping the less fortunate by taking money from the wealthy and redistributing it to those at the bottom end of the economic ladder who often, he says, have the system rigged against them. How does his record stack up? Continue reading “Practicing What We Preach”

This is Socialism

Newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has quickly become a darling of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Ocasio-Cortez defeated a member of the Democratic Congressional leadership in last year’s primary and went on to win her heavily Democratic district in the general election. Young and unabashedly leftist, the self-described socialist has been making an impression with her uncompromising advocacy of socialistic and far left proposals. But you have to give it to her-she has the integrity of her beliefs. She is pushing proposals that are in line with the socialist ideals that she says she believes.

Unlike people like Bernie Sanders, who ran for President in 2016 as a socialist but then when the election was over bought his third house, an expensive vacation getaway on Lake Champlain, Ocasio-Cortez comes from a humble background and is pushing an agenda heavy on government planning, intervention and control of the economy and every aspect of society. Continue reading “This is Socialism”

Giving Back and Helping Others-A Look At Ourselves

As we close the year, people often give though to taxes and year end charitable giving. As we do, Thinking Man couldn’t help but ponder the topic. And because, after all, we do talk about ‘politics’, we talk about charitable giving and helping those less fortunate among us in the context of the ongoing debate that we have in our country about social programs, and how much the government should spend on programs to help low income individuals and families. A broad generalization, which admittedly leaves out very important details such as the effectiveness of social programs and their social effects, is that liberals tend to favor more spending on social ‘safety net’ programs that give money to the lower income or disadvantaged while conservatives tend to not want to spend as much as liberals on those programs.

Part of the premise of ‘Thinking Man’s Politics’ is to think and not to give attention to blind rhetoric or political ‘talking points’. To get answers, and answers that work we much think for ourselves and to find what’s best no matter which side of the political spectrum it comes from or who is in favor of an idea. So, Thinking Man wanted to use data to examine the intersection of those topics-does a certain political belief or perspective indicate a level of compassion, at least as indicated by personal charitable giving. And so the following is a summary of parts of that discussion: of where charity-specifically personal donations to charity- comes from and who gives the most to others. (In examining the issue, several sources have been used, including IRS data from 2012-admitedly a bit dated but it’s what was readily available and compiled). Continue reading “Giving Back and Helping Others-A Look At Ourselves”