Thoughts Aloud

Archive for January, 2009

Glenn Beck’s new TV show on Fox News is already the third most watched cable news program, even though it is not in prime time. Here is an example of why:

What would happen of all Americans saw this dramatic presentation and understood the implications? ◄Dave►

I have stumbled across a politics wiki called, “Open Politics” that looks interesting. I have not explored it in depth; but it has a “Political Personality Quiz” that is intriguing, because it sorts for different dynamics than most such devices. ◄Dave►

This is worthy of the IowaHawk; but then it would have immediately been recognized as satire. I stumbled onto it someplace and traced it back to what appears to be its source at the “Jumping in Pools” blog. I’ll admit that I about spewed my coffee on my keyboard when I started reading it; but it didn’t take long on Google to convince me that it was a spoof. Not all bloggers were as diligent, and it has created quite a stir out there.

It seems to be quoted in full in dozens of places, so I will too and save you the trip:

Conservative News and Reporting
“News for the Rest of Us”
Michele Chang

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is extremely frustrated with orders that the White House is contemplating. According to sources at the Pentagon, including all branches of the armed forces, the Obama Administration may break with a centuries-old tradition.

A spokesman for General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, states that the Obama Administration wants to have soldiers and officers pledge a loyalty oath directly to the office of the President, and no longer to the Constitution.

“The oath to the Constitution is as old as the document itself.” the spokesman said, “At no time in American history, not even in the Civil War, did the oath change or the subject of the oath differ. It has always been to the Constitution.”

The back-and-forth between the White House and the Defense Department was expected as President George W. Bush left office. President Obama has already signed orders to close Guantanamo and to pull combat troops from Iraq. But, this, say many at the Defense Department, goes too far.

“Technically, we can’t talk about it before it becomes official policy.” the spokesman continued. “However, the Defense Department, including the Secretary, will not take this laying down. Expect a fight from the bureaucracy and the brass.”

Sources at the White House had a different point of view. In a circular distributed by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the rationale for the change was made more clear.

“The President feels that the military has been too indoctrinated by the old harbingers of hate: nationalism, racism, and classism. By removing an oath to the American society, the soldiers are less likely to commit atrocities like those at Abu Ghraib.”

“We expect a lot of flak over this,” the classified memo continues. “But those that would be most against it are those looking either for attention or control.”

The time frame for the changes are unknown. However, it is more likely that the changes will be made around the July 4th holiday, in order to dampen any potential backlash. The difference in the oath will actually only be slight. The main differences will be the new phrasing. It is expected that the oath to the Constitution will be entirely phased out within two years.

Good stuff.

Unfortunately, the reason it worked so well, is that it sounds so plausible for the Obamessiah. ◄Dave►

I tuned in to the Liberty Radio Network (FTL) I mentioned last night and caught an articulate young guy named Wes Bertrand doing an excellent interview discussing home schooling, mentioning Ayn Rand and Maria Montessori. He also mentioned a book he had written entitled, “The Psychology of Liberty,” and read a couple of passages out of it. One caught my attention, which was a quote by John Holt, the originator of the “unschooling” movement that is hot in the home schooling community:

Educator John Holt related some of his thoughts about students in universities and colleges and their extended transition process into the workforce:

Most of them were on campus to get a piece of paper that(they thought) would enable them to do whatever they were going to do next, when they got out of school. Most of them, if given the piece of paper, would leave immediately and do that next thing. Most of them, if they left right away with paper in hand to do that next thing, would do it about as well as they will do it after many more years on this or some other campus. Others of the students are here because they don’t know what to do next, or because they want to put off, for as long as they can, whatever they will do next.

Meanwhile, one might say that all those students are learning something. Perhaps they are. But they will not long remember more than a small part of it, or use or benefit from more than a small part of that. They are learning this stuff to pass exams. Most of them could not pass the same exam even a year later, to say nothing of ten years later. And, if some of what they learn should someday prove useful, they would probably have learned it ten times faster when they needed to use it and thus had a reason for learning
it.

I’d say he nailed it!

I listened to a 2 hour podcast of yesterday’s show, and he was taking calls, doing interviews, and pontificating just as well as the average talk radio host, only it seemed serious and not meant as entertainment like the big guys on AM. I enjoyed and would recommend it.

He has written two books, both are now available as free PDF downloads. I have read the education section of the above mentioned philosophy book, which is very well written; and have downloaded the other entitled, “Complete Liberty,” which is billed as more “plain talk” than the philosophy book, and can also be read on line. They are available on his two websites:
Complete Liberty and Logical Learning. ◄Dave►

Many of you probably already know about “The Liberty Radio Network.” It is new to me:

Introducing the Liberty Radio Network!
In its current form, the Liberty Radio Network (LRN) is streaming the best liberty-oriented content on the internet, 24/7. You will hear the latest episodes of the shows listed below, as well as live content originating from our studios in Keene, New Hampshire.

Live streaming and tons of podcasts by libertarian oriented hosts. If you are weary of the Left/Right oriented talk radio fare, there is probably something here for you, and it is all free without even so much as a sign-up required. Check it out. ◄Dave►

I have stumbled across an interesting source of financial charts. They have worked out a way to reconstruct M3, which the Fed quit reporting about the time they started inflating the money supply like crazy. It appears to be updated weekly. There are all manner of charts worth perusing there and many of them look like Al Gore’s hockey stick; but my favorite is:

It represents all the currency the FED has “printed” lately (although much of it is digital instead of paper). If one looks closely, there was about a trillion dollars in circulation in early 2008 and they doubled it by mid-summer. Then they had doubled it again in September and added another trillion by Christmas. So,there are nearly five times as many dollars in circulation today as there was a year ago. Our politicos are about to add another trillion in their stimulus package, and I fear no end is in sight. It is only a matter of time until all those dollars start looking for a shrinking supply of goods, and prices join the hockey stick trend. Gold is still cheap, folks. ◄Dave►

E-mail of the day:

According to a news report, a certain private school in Washington was recently faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-14 year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom.

That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips on the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them, and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally the principal decided that something had to be done.

She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine all the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.

There are teachers …….. and then there are educators.

Sorry, I got a chuckle out of it, and needed a break from pondering the unraveling of our society. ◄Dave►

I encountered a really profound and thought provoking comment on the Secular Right blog today. In a thread entitled, “Obama’s Science,” Heather Mac Donald said:

Obama says he will “restore science to its rightful place.” All very nice and anti-oogedy-boogedy. I’ll believe Obama’s self-congratulatory rhetoric, however, when he stands up to the radical green lobby and considers the case for nuclear energy, a power source conspicuously absent from his inaugural list of PC alternative fuels.

On the oogedy-boogedy front, Texas is once again debating the teaching of evolution.

This drew a surprising number of comments, including debate over AGW, along with the predictable gnashing of teeth over the Darwin vs. Creation/ID school subjects. Then,  commenter Daniel Dare (from Europe, I think) made the following mind opener at comment #44:

I don’t think American people understand the problem.

Even now USA can’t educate all the scientists and engineers it needs. I get the impression that every second scientist is foreign-born. High-IQ Americans choose law, they choose business. Science has low-status in your country. You culture despises nerds. You revere singers and actors and sport’s stars, supermodels, business people. Above all, so many of your religious leaders bad-mouth science at every opportunity.

Confucianism/Taoism is different. The scholar is revered. They are the saints, the immortals, the Xiān (hsien). Marxism has added to this, not reduced it. A Marxist state is a technocracy. Engineers dominate the government. Not lawyers like America.

You only get away with this because of low taxes, which allows higher elite income, and the fact that you are still a leader in many fields. And because your main competitors are Westerners with similar values to you.

Wait till you are number two in everything. And your taxes rise to pay for trillion dollar deficits. After President Obama, you will have a welfare state like Europe. Maybe like Sweden LOL. After inflation hits in a year or two, everyone will be in higher tax-scales. You think you can double base-money and not get high inflation? President Obama and Speaker Pelosi will have no difficulty funding their schemes. High inflation and progressive income-tax will solve the problem.

A decade or two from now, people will go to Beijing. USA will be the ones with the brain-drain. Even the few scientists you manage to train will go to Beijing.

That’s what it’s like for developing countries now. All their elite dream of going to America.

Wow! How could one argue with his logic? To me, this is just one more (as if I needed another) reason to despair for the future of this once great country. It is like a perfect storm is lining up to flatten us very soon, and most will not see it coming. ◄Dave►

Troy has an interesting piece entitled, “I’m Sorry, So Sorry…,” in which he revisits the idea of breaking America into separate autonomous regions. Only, now he is suggesting it be done by consensus with those advocating different social systems free to choose to live where their preference prevails:

My solution? Let every group have what it wants by dividing the country into several autonomous regions, each free to choose the type of governmental/economic/social system it prefers. For sure, this would cause some dislocations since many would find themselves in a region that does not conform to their preferences. No problem. Leave them free to either:

• Willingly abide by the decisions of the majority in that region, or,
• Remove themselves to a different region, more suited to their tastes.

After all, we are a very mobile people.

Such freedom of choice and movement should remain open to any and all for a predetermined period after the division. However, after this period of choice has expired, each region should then be free to establish its own processes and rules for immigration. I suggest this last restriction in the absolute belief that those who choose poorly would soon want to flee to the protection of others who chose more wisely.

Sorry but when one chooses a system, one must choose ALL of that system. After all, would not any and every system be great if we could only choose its best attributes and be immune to its failings?

Is this not a form of the very thinking that has gotten the USA to the state of collapse?

This sounds great to me; but I see a few hidden flaws. Let’s say we break it into three pieces:

1. A socialist system, where the Politically Correct activists regulate moral behavior.
2. A corporatist system, where the Piously Correct activists regulate moral behavior.
3. A laissez faire capitalist system, where individual moral behavior is unregulated.

It would seem to me that few businesses that actually produced wealth would wish to stay in the socialist paradise (1), and would move to (3) where I would be. This would devastate the welfare state, for lack of a source of funds to redistribute to all the lazy whiners demanding their benefits. This might cause them to wish to invade (3) to re-enslave some producers.

Then, both (1) and (2) would require heavy enforcement mechanisms to force their citizens to “do the right thing.” This would drive all the dopers and criminals into (3) where they wouldn’t have enforcers breathing down their necks every moment of the day. This would force the cooperative citizens of (3) to hire more cops than they would otherwise need, and penal facilities that they probably had not planned for.

I am willing to kick the idea around; but it seems fraught with a lot of unintended consequences, and I suspect it would evolve into civil war eventually anyway. ◄Dave►

“Libertarian Papers: An Online Journal for Libertarian Scholarship” debuts today. It looks impressive:

A new libertarian journal—a new type of libertarian journal—is born today. Libertarian Papers is an exclusively online peer-reviewed journal. Its home is this elegant, fast, easy-to-use website. Please feel free to browse around.

Publishing online has allowed us to break free of many of the constraints faced by paper-based journals. Scholars working in the libertarian tradition will find dealing with us to be a refreshing change. For instance, we publish articles consecutively, online, as soon as they are peer-reviewed and a final copy is submitted. No waiting for the next issue or printing delays. We have also done away with arbitrary space limits. And we don’t care what citation style you use, as long as it is consistent, professional, and enables the reader to find the work referenced. Neither our time nor the author’s need be wasted converting from one citation style to another, or wondering whether “2nd. ed.” goes here or there, or whether it should be “2d. ed.” instead. In a digital age, old forms must give way to new forms.

And as our publications are online and open, you won’t find our authors furtively posting a scanned copy of their paper articles on their own sites, while their article is trapped in musty paper on a dark shelf—but if they want to, they are free to do so, since to the extent possible everything here is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Want to republish your piece in a book? No need to ask us for permission. We want to spread the ideas of liberty, not impose DRM on them.

I look forward to reading the three papers already there, and to future scholarly submissions.  I have already subscribed to their RSS & Twitter Feeds. ◄Dave►

E-mail of the month:

To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is the changing political landscape in this country.

However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help you decide what is in your best interests.

First, while it is easy to spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to understand that for every business owner there is a back story. This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You’ve seen my big home at last year at a Christmas party. I’m sure; all these flashy icons of luxury conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life.

However, what you don’t see is the back story.

I started this company 28 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300 square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living apartment was converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a defective transmission. I didn’t have time to date. Often times, I stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and partying. In fact, I was married to my business — hard work, discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes. Instead of hitting the Nordstrom’s for the latest hot fashion item, I was trolling through the discount store extracting any clothing item that didn’t look like it was birthed in the 70’s. My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I, however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9am, mentally check in at about noon, and then leave at 5pm, I don’t. There is no “off” button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I eat, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this business is attached to my hip like a 1 year old special-needs child. You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden — the nice house, the Mercedes, the vacations… you never realize the back story and the sacrifices I’ve made.

Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail-out all the people who didn’t. The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.

Yes, business ownership has is benefits but the price I’ve paid is steep and not without wounds.

Unfortunately, the cost of running this business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don’t pay enough. I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes. Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for $288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my “stimulus” check was? Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over 2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her next welfare check? Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this country.

The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck you’d quit and you wouldn’t work here. I mean, why should you? That’s nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I agree which is why your job is in jeopardy.

Here is what many of you don’t understand … to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I didn’t need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that $288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don’t defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the poor of America are the essential drivers of the American economic engine. Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change you can believe in. So where am I going with all this?

It’s quite simple.

If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your child’s future. Frankly, it isn’t my problem anymore.

Then, I will close this company down, move to another country, and retire. You see, I’m done. I’m done with a country that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

So, if you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the economy; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country, steamrolled the constitution, and will have changed its landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry about.

Signed, Your Boss

Atlas is definitely shrugging. I’d love to meet this anonymous producer who has had enough. I first sold my business with sixteen employees and retired at the age of 45 for similar reasons. I would only add the hassle of dealing with employees who have been programed to think they have a right to a job on their terms. Only a drastic change in my personal life circumstances, ever allowed me to break my promise to myself to never have another employee. ◄Dave►

I am disgusted with the events of today. I know that it is politically correct to be all excited by the carefully crafted symbolism, and what it “says about America” that the unaborted child of an underage school girl, statutorily raped by an irresponsible college playboy with a wife back home in Africa, actually conned the sheeple into electing him as POTUS; when he wasn’t even Constitutionally qualified as a natural born citizen of our country. I am in no mood to forgive that fraud perpetrated on us, today or ever. The man is an usurper, is not my President, and Constitutionally never could be; period.

Among all the feel good hoopla today, I can’t count the references to our history of slavery; yet not once did anyone point out that the Obamessiah has no slaves in his ancestry. I also heard damn little about what his election means policy wise for liberty and capitalism. Having read his books, and after studying his background as much as his carefully concealed history permits, it doesn’t look good.

Then, there was his revealing speech at Philadelphia the other day, which was brilliantly parsed over at the E3Gazzette:

“It was these ideals that led us to declare independence, and craft our constitution, producing documents that were imperfect but had within them, like our nation itself, the capacity to be made more perfect.”

MuscleDaddy didn’t cotton to the notion of changing these documents, and neither do I; and yes, MD, I remember my oath – and it never expired.

The best commentary I have seen today came from Robert Ringer. In a piece entitled, “The World’s Silliest Question,” he rightly asks what is meant by everyone wishing Obama a “successful” presidency:

So, before you decide whether or not you want Barack Obama to succeed, you would be wise to define what, exactly, it is that you want him to succeed at. Don’t be intimidated by today’s feel-good, “patriotic” mantra: “We all have to come together as Americans.”

Keep your head when those around you are losing theirs, and recognize that such Orwellian doublespeak is but a euphemism for: “You hard cases who still believe in capitalism and individual liberty are morally obliged to join us in moving our socialist agenda forward. And if you don’t, you’re unpatriotic.

”Why, none other than Shepherd Smith told me just a short time ago (through my TV screen, of course) that “Today is a great day for democracy.” Sorry, Shep, but I’m not buying into that one — even though I’m sure that John “Reach Across the Aisle” McCain must have been smiling and bobbing his head up and down when you said it.

I prefer to fight on for the real thing, and I hope you feel the same way. If we’re lucky enough to have free elections in 2012, perhaps another person of color — one who believes in small government and the sanctity of the individual — will win the presidency. Now that would be a man or woman I would want to see succeed.

But to get there, millions of people are going to set aside their emotionally based delusions and to be rational enough and strong enough not to buy into the massive, ongoing brainwashing campaign that is about to begin. Be prepared!

Then, a new commenter named “Victoria,” who states that she is black herself, offered a voice of reason among some untoward emotion even on the the Secular Right blog today. On this thread, she made several good comments. One was:

I must admit to being a tad bit horrified.

The important move is to have gotten rid of those monsters who hijacked the government for eight years and have caused who knows how much damage to the country’s attempt at maintaining a constitutional system. Okay, that’s done. I must admit to harboring a dream of seeing Ron Paul strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue today. Okay, that’s over.

But how could any thinking person get caught up in wanting “symbols” to rule over them? Do we go through this emotional routine again, if a woman is elected President next go-round? What difference would it make if the new President were Romney, or Biden, or Edwards? Wouldn’t we be concerned, in their cases, about their prospective policies? What difference would it make if Anglo-Euros were to serve as Presidents throughout the rest of this country’s history — a country founded by Anglo-Euros — if they were individuals we felt were worthy of the office? I can understand The Mob buying anything, but how does a rational, thinking person fall for the notion that even the Presidency is somehow “owed” to blacks? Or to Hispanics? Or to women? And that every ethnic group must get its turn. (When do the Hmong get theirs?)

Since Hispanics/Latinos are the largest minority group, should we all work to make them the next symbolic gesture? This is not regard for an individual. This is sheer nuttiness. I expect little flower-hatted church ladies to be enthralled by the “symbolism” of the moment and to get all teary-eyed. But not thinking people.

We’ve just been through some truly critical stuff that’s not over yet. The only thing that should have been on voters’ minds this past year is electing the most sensible person, not patting themselves on the back for voting in some symbol — or for “making history.”

Well said, Victoria.

Finally, another commenter, Lionell Griffith, back at E3Gazette summed it up:

I have not left my country, my country has left me. I have absolutely no obligation to follow where it is going. I have no responsibility to respect the result of this election nor the people it put in office. The ONLY thing I owe to my fellow man is to respect his individual rights exactly as long as he respects mine. Beyond that point, may he be damned to the hell he has chosen.

Let the resistance begin.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. ◄Dave►

Thank you President Bush, for at least deleting one item on the list of things I could never forgive you for:

In his final acts of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the prison sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration.

Bush’s decision to commute the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, who tried to cover up the shooting, was welcomed by both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. They had long argued that the agents were merely doing their jobs, defending the American border against criminals. They also maintained that the more than 10-year prison sentences the pair was given were too harsh.

It should have been a no-brainer; but it sure was looking like he wouldn’t do it. ◄Dave►

Mark Steyn, who started a whole new genre of “Apocalyptic Stand-Up” with his bestseller “America Alone,” has a new column entitled, “Our permanent state of routine emergency.” Noting that Bush is leaving DC in an official state of emergency so that FEMA can pay for the additional costs to local governments of the inauguration, he discusses government mission creep in his unique style:

One reason why nobody’s ever done that before is because a presidential inauguration is not (to be boringly technical about it) an “emergency.” It’s penciled in well in advance – in this case, so well in advance that for years Democrats have been driving around with “1-20-09″ bumper stickers on the back of their Priuses. Emergency-wise, that’s the equivalent of Hurricane Dan Rather wrapped around a lamppost in his sou’wester, hanging there in eager anticipation every night for half a decade. Generally speaking, changes of government are only “emergencies” in the livelier banana republics where this week’s president-for-life suddenly spots the machete-wielding mob scrambling over the palace walls so nimbly he barely has time to dial the Liberian branch of FEMA and put in a request for extra Portapotties and a rope-line management team.

The proposition that a new federal administration is itself a federal emergency is almost too perfect an emblem of American government in the 21st century. FEMA was created in the 1970s initially to coordinate the emergency response to catastrophic events such as a nuclear attack. But there weren’t a lot of those even in the Carter years, so, as is the way with bureaucracies, FEMA just growed like Topsy. In his first year in office, Bill Clinton declared a then-record-setting 58 federal emergencies. By the end of the Nineties, Mother Nature was finding it hard to come up with a meteorological phenomenon that didn’t qualify as a federal emergency: Heavy rain in the Midwest? Call FEMA! Light snow in Vermont? FEMA! Fifty-seven under cloudy skies in California? Let those FEMA trailers roll!

Like much of his commentary, if you read the whole thing you will be chuckling behind your tears. ◄Dave►

I just read chapter one of a book that was written a year ago, before all of the financial shenanigans last fall. “Entitled The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It,” it was prescient indeed:

But as the century ended, so did this extraordinary run. Tech stocks crashed, the Twin Towers fell, and Americans’ sense of omnipotence went the way of their nest eggs. As this is written in early 2008, three million fewer Americans are drawing paychecks. The federal government is borrowing $500 billion each year to finance the war on terror as well as an array of new or expanded social programs, and many parts of the financial system, including sub-prime mortgages, credit insurance, and municipal bonds, seem to be imploding.

The dollar, meanwhile, has become the world’s problem currency, falling in value versus other major currencies and plunging versus gold. The whole world is watching, scratching its collective head, and wondering what has changed. The answer, as will become clear in the next few chapters, is that everything has changed, and nothing has. The spectacular growth of the past two decades, it now turns out, was a mirage generated by the smoke and mirrors of rising debt and the willingness of the rest of the world to accept a flood of new dollars. Just how much the U.S. owes will shock you. But even more shocking is the fact that we’re still at it. Like a family that has maintained its lifestyle by maxing out a series of credit cards, America is at the point where new debt goes to pay off the old rather than to create new wealth. Hence the past few years’ slow growth and steady loss of jobs.

So why say that nothing has changed? Because today’s problems are new only in terms of recent U.S. history. A quick scan of world history reveals them to be depressingly familiar. All great societies pass this way eventually, running up unsustainable debts and printing (or minting) currency in an increasingly desperate attempt to maintain the illusion of prosperity. And all, eventually, find themselves between the proverbial devil and deep blue sea: Either they simply collapse under the weight of their accumulated debt, as did the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s, or they keep running the printing presses until their currencies become worthless and their economies fall into chaos.

This time around, governments the world over have clearly chosen the second option. They’re cutting interest rates, boosting spending, and encouraging the use of modern financial engineering techniques to create a tidal wave of credit. And history teaches that once in motion, this process leads to an inevitable result: Fiat (i.e., government-controlled) currencies will become ever less valuable, until most of us just give upon them altogether. These are strong words, we know. But by the time you’ve finished the next two chapters we think you’ll agree that they are, unfortunately, quite accurate.

I bet a whole lot of folks wish they had read and heeded this book before last fall. The key word is “heeded.” I was saying similar things on another forum last summer and nobody wanted to hear it, much less act on it. I am the only one I know who has not lost a dime during recent events. ◄Dave►

Perhaps I just answered my own question in the last post. I stumbled across a mind blowing report in The Social Contract extensively documenting the cost of the unprecedented growth we are experiencing because of illegal immigration. Entitled, “The Twin Crises: Immigration and Infrastructure,” by Edwin S. Rubenstein, it is a beautifully formatted, fact and reference filled, 87 page PDF file that deserves to be widely read. To encourage you to do so, here is the introduction:

This article highlights the role of immi­gration in depreciating and driving up the cost of maintaining, improving, and expanding infrastructure in the U.S. Fifteen different categories of public infrastructure are covered:

• airports
• bridges
• dams
• drinking water
• energy (national power grid)
• hazardous waste
• hospitals
• navigable waterways
• public parks and recreation
• public schools
• railroads
• border security
• solid waste
• mass transit
• water and sewer systems.

Infrastructure and immigration? That’s an odd couple. Immigration policy has been de­bated for years, but the debate usually focuses on border security, amnesty, and whether il­legal alien workers are really needed to do the jobs that Americans “won’t do.”

Immigration’s impact on public infra­structure is rarely discussed.

Until the past few months, infrastructure policy was itself on the back burner, surfac­ing only when a bridge or levee collapsed, but generally of interest only to civil engineers and policy wonks.

How things change! Today, infrastructure spending is widely seen as a key lifeline for a sinking economy. The lion’s share of Pres­ident-elect Obama’s stimulus package will fund road and mass transit projects, school construction, port expansions, and alternative energy projects.

Yes, our infrastructure is in trouble. The American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2005 Report Card assigned an overall grade of D to the 15 infrastructure categories. Grades were selected on the basis of physical condition and capacity following a traditional grading scale (for example, if 77 percent of our roads are in good condition or better, the roads would be given a grade of C).

But if money were the problem, there would be no problem. Since 1982, capital spending on public infrastructure has in­creased by 2.1 percent per year above the inflation rate. Over this period, governments have spent $3.1 trillion (in today’s dollars) to build transportation infrastructure, and an­other $3.8 trillion to maintain and operate it. Last year, we spent 50 percent more, after ad­justing for inflation, on highway construction than we did a quarter of a century ago. Yet over this period, highway miles increased by only 6 percent, while U.S. population grew by 31 percent—half of it due to immigration.

The “demand” for highway infrastruc­ture, as measured by population growth, grew six times faster than the “supply” of highway infrastructure.

Bottom line: Our infrastructure is “crum­bling” because population growth has over­whelmed the ability of government to produc­tively spend the vast sums it already devotes to infrastructure.

All types of infrastructure are under stress because of immigration.

Public schools are a prime example. Although immigrants account for about 13 percent of the U.S. population, they are 21 percent of the school-age population. In California, a whopping 47 percent of the school-age population consists of immigrants or the children of immigrants. Some Los Angeles schools are so crowded that they have lengthened the time between classes to give students time to make their way through crowded halls. Los Angeles’ school construc­tion program is so massive that the Army Corps of Engineers was called in to manage it.

This is a boom time for hospital construc­tion. Sixty percent of hospitals are either building new facilities or planning to do so. But we have a two-tier hospital system in the U.S. Hospitals in poor areas—that serve primarily uninsured immigrants and Medicaid patients—cannot afford to upgrade their facilities. The uncompensated costs are killing them. In California, 60 emergency departments (EDs) have closed to avoid the uncompensated costs of their largely illegal alien caseloads.

Immigrants may not use any more water than other people. But they dispro­portionately settle in parts of the country where water is in short supply—and their sheer numbers have overwhelmed conserva­tion efforts. Cities like San Antonio, El Paso, and Phoenix could run out of water in 10 to 20 years. San Diego’s water company has resorted to a once-unthinkable option: recy­cling toilet water for drinking.

National parks along the southern border are scarred by thousands of unauthor­ized roads and paths used by illegal aliens crossing into the U.S. Their fires, trash, and vandalism have despoiled thousands of acres of pristine parkland.

The traditional response to these prob­lems was to throw more federal, state, and local tax money into infrastructure. When public support falters, infrastructure users are usually hit with higher tolls, higher transit fares, higher water bills, and other usage-re­lated fees. As a last resort, many governments sell or lease entire highways, water systems, parks, and other infrastructure systems to private companies.

There is no end to the financial chicanery that infrastructure junkies will employ to support their habit. Wall Street veteran Felix Rohatyn recently proposed this “novel solu­tion” to the problem:

Although private investors have successfully built new roads in places such as Poland and Spain, they have not done so exten­sively in the U.S. But a National Infrastructure Bank could redi­rect private efforts away from refinancing old facilities—as in the case of Chicago’s Skyway—to building new ones.

According to our plan, most of the funds the federal government now spends on existing pro­grams (along with many of those program’s experts and facilities) would be transferred to the bank, which could not only finance the projects but also resell the loans it makes to investors in capital markets, much as other assets are rebundled for investors. The receipts from these sales would allow a new round of lending, giving the bank an impact far in excess of its initial capitalization.

That is no solution; it is a recipe for an­other debacle a la sub-prime mortgages.

The prognosis is not good. In August 2008 the Census Bureau projected that U.S. population will be 433 million in 2050—an increase of 135 million, or 44 percent, from current levels. Eighty-two percent of the in­crease will be from new immigrants and their U.S.-born children.

The brutal reality is that no conceivable infrastructure program can keep pace with that kind of population growth. The tradi­tional “supply-side” response to America’s infrastructure shortage—build, build, build—is dead, dead, dead. Demand reduction is the only viable way to close the gap between the supply and demand of public infrastructure.

Immigration reduction must play a role.

Each of the subject areas are then covered in frightening detail. When one adds this infrastructure dimension to the malaise our economy is in, and realizes that the politicians in DC have no intention of tackling the illegal immigration debacle, for the same political reason they can’t address the coming SSI/Medicare entitlement disaster, there really is little hope for our future as a prosperous nation.

We lived in the best of times, folks. It is all downhill from here. Sorry, kids, our generation blew your future already by continuing to elect Progressive politicians who pandered to our foolish need to feel good and compassionate. ◄Dave►

Not surprisingly, Michelle Malkin has her knickers in a twist over this, and without thinking about it I would too; but I think there may be merit to the idea. The proximate trigger for our current economic meltdown was the bursting of the housing bubble. At this point, most of the “toxic” assets plaguing lenders is nonperforming real estate mortgages, because people are walking away from those that are upside down.

I have heard that there are over a million houses on the market with no buyers. A classic oversupply that has deflated the value of everyone’s real estate holdings. Meanwhile, we are supposedly permitting the mass migration of illegal alien peasants from Mexico because there are jobs American ghetto dwellers won’t get off their shiftless butts to do. Let’s kill two birds with one stone.

The program described in Michelle’s article is a typical governmental disaster; but what if we offered a green card to anyone with a clean record who would buy outright, with cash, any home for sale in America for the next year. We could also require them to deposit another $100K or more in an American bank to insure they had the capital to get started off on the right foot in their new life in America.

I would have infinitely less heartburn over entrepreneurial immigrants, who could pay their own way, not become a burden to our ever burgeoning welfare roles and social services, and are more likely to wish to assimilate into our native culture. Meanwhile, it would infuse our economy with a half of a trillion dollars of real cash, instead of taxpayers buying these assets; and property prices would go back up instead of continuing to crumble. Where am I going wrong here?

A mental midget blathered the following inanity at the end of our Ayn Rand discussion today:

There are two massive problems with Ayn Rand. First, her philosophy is ludicrous. She claims to believe only in what can be rationally observed and proven; yet she herself willingly consents to completely irrational ideas while refusing to admit as much. For instance, money is a fundamentally irrational phenomenon. Money has no intrinsic value, nor any objective existence; its a consensual illusion for the sake of an ordered society. In other words, its a leap of faith. This doesn’t even occur to Rand. Nothing is more ludicrous, for instance, than the fetishization of gold in Atlas Shrugged. Gold is a completely useless substance in and of itself, its only value is what is given to it by humans – on no rational basis at all – and then consented to by others. On this level, capitalism for Rand is clearly a religion: a delusion accepted for practical purposes, i.e. a noble lie.

Then he went on to discuss her literary failings. I couldn’t resist the following reply:

What twaddle. “Irrational” is not a synonym for “abstract.” “Money” is simply the abstract term we use for a useful medium of exchange among traders and temporary storage of disposable wealth. If I trade one of my excess perishable oranges to a neighbor for 20 steel nails, because I know another neighbor will gladly trade me one of his excess apples for fifteen nails next fall, the nails serve as “money” for all three of us.

There is nothing irrational about us agreeing to this arrangement, and there is nothing phenomenal about the nails to a rational man who owns a hammer. They have intrinsic value as a building supply, even though we also choose to use them for money. The apple grower has the choice to use them as nails to hang up his winter shutters, or save them as money he can trade for something else he will need in the spring; an option he would not have had with rotting apples.

Now, absent meddlesome neighbors trying to interfere in our mutually beneficial and unregulated commerce, there is nothing prohibiting me from agreeing to wait for payment from the first neighbor, if he agrees to pay me an extra nail or two in “interest” for the time he retains my “capital.” Conversely, I could offer to advance my “capital” to the apple grower, at a nail or two less than his asking price, for the promise of an apple when his crop comes in; a deal that he might jump at if he has an immediate need and is short of capital.

Thus capitalism is born, is entirely rational, and all participants eagerly enter into the exchanges and contracts with open eyes. Nobody is harmed or cheated, because we each trade something we value less, for something we value more. I, as the much maligned “capitalist,” am the only one who takes risks (that I will get paid eventually for my “loans”); but I am paid for taking them. If the other neighbors keep their “hands off” and continue not to meddle in our private affairs, we can call it laissez faire capitalism.

All manner of durable commodities have been used as money in human history, but silver and gold have been the favorites; because of their scarcity, and thus their high value for small, easily transportable, quantities. Contrary to your assertion, gold has intrinsic value, exists objectively, and is not illusory. I’ll not deny that some may have a fetish for gold; but that only enhances its intrinsic value, and insures that it will always be easy to trade a quantity of it for something one values more. This makes it an ideal commodity to use for money.

Objectively, nothing has “value” other than that assigned to it by a human mind, whether rationally or not. To the trader, it matters not how a seller determined his asking price. The buyer only has to decide if he personally values the offering more than what he must give up in trade for it. If he does, both win in the deal; if not, no deal is made. Thus, there are no losers in pure free trade. The only way to lose in capitalism is to invest capital at risk, and no one is required to do so.

There are rewards for risking capital; but rational actors choose for themselves whether the rewards outweigh the risks. There is simply nothing metaphysical or delusional about money or capitalism. It is pretty simple and really only common sense among producers and traders. It is an elegant system for reasonable men engaged in commerce. Those who oppose it are immediately suspect; for chances are that they wish to attain unearned produce, by enslaving the producers, one way or another, to provide them. ◄Dave►

Camille Paglia has become one of my favorite Leftist commentators, because she calls them like she sees them; rather than throwing away her credibility by defending the indefensible, as most of her contemporaries on the Left do nowadays. Her latest column, entitled “Obama’s early stumbles,” is classic Camille addressing many subjects in answer to reader’s e-mails.

On Obama:

However, you are quite right to call the controversy over the indictment of buffoonishly sly Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich a “mess.” That the normally deft Obama team mishandled its rapid response to it was obvious from the get-go. Obama’s first statements about his and his staff’s communications with Blagojevich were inadequate at best and misleading at worst. Then there was a second stage of needless blunders when Obama opposed the tarnished Blagojevich’s perfectly legal appointment of Roland Burris to fill Obama’s vacated Senate seat — a foolishly hard line that the president-elect inevitably had to reverse.

On congress:

On the other hand, I agree with you that Congress has come across lately like a clumsy, flea-bitten bunch of “bozos.” Its poll ratings are lower than stinking swamp mud. I have a soft spot for the nimble Nancy Pelosi, a master of the ladylike stiletto thrust, but Harry Reid is a cadaverous horse’s ass of mammoth proportions. How in the world did that whiny, sniveling incompetent end up as Senate majority leader? Give him the hook! As for the “radical change” that you fear, it’s hard to imagine (short of a crisis-driven imposition of martial law) how that will ever happen in our sluggish, consensus-driven political system.

On Palin:

As I have repeatedly said in this column, I have never had the slightest problem in understanding Sarah Palin’s meaning at any time. On the contrary, I have positively enjoyed her fresh, natural, rapid delivery with its syncopated stops and slides — a fabulous example of which was the way (in her recent interview with John Ziegler) that she used a soft, swooping satiric undertone to zing Katie Couric’s dippy narcissism and to assert her own outrage as a “mama grizzly” at libels against her family.

Ideology-driven attacks on Palin became clotted liberal clichés within 24 hours of her introduction as John McCain’s running mate. What a bunch of tittering lemmings the urban elite have become in this country. From Couric’s vicious manipulations of video clips to Cavett’s bourgeois platitudes, the preemptive strike on Palin as a potential presidential candidate has grossly misfired. Whatever legitimate objections may be raised to Palin on political grounds (explored, for example, by David Talbot in Salon) have been lost in the amoral overkill that has defamed a self-made woman of concrete achievement in the public realm.

On the “Fairness Doctrine”:

Instead of bleating for paternalistic government intervention, liberals should get their own act together. Radio is a populist medium where liberals come across as snide, superior scolds. One can instantly recognize a liberal caller to a conservative show by his or her catty, obnoxious tone. The leading talk radio hosts are personalities and entertainers with huge rhetorical energy and a bluff, engaging manner. Even the seething ranters can be extremely funny. Last summer, for example, I laughed uproariously in my car when WABC’s Mark Levin said furiously about Katie Couric, “What do these people do? Open fortune cookies and read them on air?”

On AGW:

In the 1980s, I was similarly skeptical about media-trumpeted predictions about a world epidemic of heterosexual AIDS. And I remain skeptical about the media’s carelessly undifferentiated use of the term “AIDS” for what is often a complex of wasting diseases in Africa. We should all be concerned about environmental despoliation and pollution, but the global warming crusade has become a hallucinatory cult. Until I see stronger evidence, I will continue to believe that climate change is primarily driven by solar phenomena and that it is normal for the earth to pass through major cooling and warming phases.

On the “gay gene”:

After the American Psychiatric Association, responding to activist pressure, removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, psychological inquiries into homosexuality slowly became verboten. To even ask about the origins of homosexuality was automatically dubbed homophobic by gay studies proponents in the ’80s and ’90s. Weirdly, despite the rigid social constructionist bias that permeated the entire left, gay activists in and out of academe now leapt on the slightest evidence that could suggest a biological cause of homosexuality. The very useful Freudian concept of “family romance” (typified by the Oedipus and Electra complexes) is almost completely gone. Yet the intricate family dynamic of every single gay person I’ve ever known seems to have played some kind of role in his or her developing sexual orientation.

On vocational ed vs. college:

Perhaps there’s hope of change because of the tens of thousands of liberal arts graduates with expensive degrees who are finding themselves out of work and depressingly marginalized in a society where the manual trades offer guaranteed employment at relatively high wages. A dose of Buddhism might do people good: Sweeping garden sand into oceanic designs around ornamental rocks is considered a spiritual exercise in Asia. I say that landscaping, construction, carpentry, metalworking and all the other trades should be promoted by primary education as worthy careers for both men and women. The pre-college rat race is a sadomasochistic imposition on the young that robs them of free will and saps their vital energies. When will they rebel?

On humanities professors:

Why are American professors forcing American students to plow through a boneless blob of a book that is predicated on now totally passé French manners and mores? Why is egregious theoretical verbosity being force-fed to cyber-savvy, text-messaging young people who barely read as it is and who still haven’t found their own writing voices? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind — yes, the big wind of elite school flatulence, which may be the true cause of global warming.

Her columns are only published monthly and I wouldn’t miss one. ◄Dave►

Muscledaddy has served up a classic at E3 that shouldn’t be missed. I am still laughing. ◄Dave►