Often Wrong, Never in Doubt

Bad news brainwise

2012-02-15T08:33:00.001-08:00

The mental acuity decline curve.

If their students were customers, they couldn't behave this way

2012-02-15T07:13:00.000-08:00

But the public schools have inmates, not customers. So why shouldn't the principle think of them as criminals.

TODAY IN GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS: LAUSD Principal Focuses On Real Miramonte Criminals: The Children. “That both teachers and administrators view parents and students as the enemy is an open secret. But it’s rare that you see it expressed so baldly.”

The drive to dominate is innate

2012-02-15T07:10:00.000-08:00

Even among pedantic losers supervising elementary school children. All they need to do so is the State's guns, shackles and money. Without it they become merely pedantic losers. Break it up, break it all up.

NANNY STATE UPDATE: Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets:” State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food instead. “A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.”

Barack Obama: Our Federal Underpants Gnome

2012-02-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

South Park had an episode where "underpants gnomes" were implementing and exciting new business plan plan. You can watch the key parts of the episode here. Essentially it went like this:

1. Collect Underpants
2. ?
3. Profits

President Obama's newly released budget is in the finest Underpants Gnome tradition. Essentially, one can describe it's logic as:

1. Collect Underpants
2. ?
3. Balanced Budget and Prosperity

And it also makes about as much sense as a crude cartoon about tiny imaginary men does.

Hope! Change! Underpants.

The Momma's Boys index

2012-02-14T14:21:00.001-08:00

Percent of young men living with their parents is highly correlated with social and financial collapse. Not surprising, really.

Apple accounts for more than 100% of the S&P's earnings growth last quarter

2012-02-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

Stunning. And frightening.

Courtesy of Ajay Makan and Dan McCrum at the FT, Barclays Capital estimates that based on reporting thus far earnings growth for S&P 500 companies was 7 percent in Q4.

But if you strip out Apple, that plummets to 2.9 percent. One company, in other words, is responsible for most of the earnings growth among the large cap firms in the index.

Crony Capitalism pays in America as much as third world countries

2012-02-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

Economists show that markets reward political connections in the US as much as they do in corrupt, third world countries with weak institutions. Markets don't do that unless it's substantially true. From an article about our nation's leading Crony Capitalist, Warren Buffet.

Having the correct political connections was critical. A National Bureau of Economic Research study by four researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, documented the power of such connections. Economist Daron Acemoglu and his colleagues found that when Timothy Geithner, a man who had spent his career shuttling back and forth between Wall Street and Washington, was announced as President Obama’s nominee for treasury secretary, it “produced a cumulative abnormal return for Geithner-connected financial firms of around 15 percent from day 0.” The stock market reflects the thinking of all investors, and they clearly believed Geithner would be able to reward his friends directly or indirectly.

Conversely, when there was word that Geithner’s nomination might be derailed by tax issues, those same firms were hit hard with “abnormal negative returns.” Acemoglu et al. systematically examined companies that had corporate ties to Geithner, had executives who served with him on other boards, or had other direct relationships. They found that “the quantitative effect is comparable to standard findings” in Third World countries with weak institutions and higher levels of corruption. In other words, markets react to government actions in the U.S. the same way they do in a corrupt developing country. Crony capitalism pays, and the market knows it.

Are Colleges Ripping us off?

2012-02-14T07:27:00.001-08:00

In a word: yes.

Are State Colleges Ripping Us Off?

A. Barton Hinkle | February 10

Half of all college students make no learning gains in their first two years, and 36 percent show no significant intellectual growth even after four years.

Are Colleges becoming finishing schools for women?

2012-02-13T15:26:00.000-08:00

I believe that most residential colleges will become social institutions rather than primarily educational. Technology will democratize access to the best teaching, meaning that snobs (who are ever with us) will double down on the 'elite' residential college and emphasize certain forms of 'decorum' to differentiate themselves from the hoi polloi.

It won't work. But they'll blow trillions trying.

Are Liberal Arts Colleges Becoming Finishing Schools for Women?

I spent the morninig laughing and being intrigued by a book called Worthless: The Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major by a guy named Aaron Clarey. On the back of the book is picture that (I assume) is Clarey louging on what looks like the beach with an Army t-shirt on smoking a big cigar. This is the guy who is going to give you or your kid some good practical advice on how to pick a major in college.

The book takes aim at “Big Education” and in non-PC terms lets the reader know what is happening inside higher ed. Clarey has a wicked sense of humor and his graphs and charts just add to the fun. There is one that shows the breakdown of what he calls “worthless degrees.” “Nearly 70% of worthless degrees are awarded to women” he states along with a chart showing the breakdown of 68% of women to 32% of males who get these worthless degrees. Worthless degrees include those such as Women’s studies, sociology, philosophy, psychology, education and the liberal arts and humanities. In other words, those majors that avoid math.

It does seem to me at times that colleges are becoming finishing schools for women. I wonder if this is why many men avoid them?

There’s nothing reformist, nothing change-oriented about Barack Obama" - Fleisher

2012-02-13T11:58:00.000-08:00

I disagree. I think there's lots of 'change orientation'. It's just not reformist. Ari points out that all of the 'money out of politics' blather emanating from The One is just that. Blather from the biggest private fundraiser in the history of political fundraising. More here.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Super PACS. That’s called free speech and everybody is entitled to it. Here’s the problem, though, with what Barack Obama has done. This is part of a pattern of behavior with Barack Obama that goes back to 2008. If you recall back then, he said he would accept public financing for the campaign, just as John McCain did. Then as soon as he figured out he could actually raise more money than public financing would get him, he flip-flopped on that issue and took unlimited money to fund his campaign. He also, because he wants to act as if he’s changing Washington as a reformer, said he wouldn’t allow any lobbyists at the White House, then he gave wavers for lobbyists. He said his staff wouldn’t be allowed to meet with lobbyists in the White House. So what did they do? They walked out the front door of the White House, across the park, and to the Caribou Coffee House where they met with lobbyists. And now this flip-flop on the Super PAC idea itself. This is a super flip-flop. But worse than that, it’s a president who has to act as if he is smarter, better, more moralistic than all his opponents, everybody else, while his pattern of behavior is to have words that are wind, but his actions are just like everybody’s else’s in Washington. There’s nothing reformist, nothing change-oriented about Barack Obama when you get to the heart of it.

Europeanization of the Welfare State - NYT

2012-02-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

It used to be one of the defining characteristics of the US welfare system was its focus. Most of the money came from the top and went to the bottom. This contrasted with European welfare states where far more of the benefits went to the broad middle class than the poor. One of the goals of the Obami has been to make our system more European. And according to the New York Times, they've succeeded. This is before the massive Healthcare 'Reform' bill is implemented which will no doubt increase the dollars flowing to the (older) middle class from the (younger) poor.

This isn't about compassion. It never was. It's about getting and holding power. And it's the middle class who vote. Screw the poor, they're just a bunch of damned non-voting criminals.

It's all so progressive.

LINDSTROM, Minn. -- Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region's long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.

Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.

...The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

The 'Yellow Peril"

2012-02-13T09:36:00.000-08:00

Massive discrimination against Asians in admissions to our most elite campuses. Imagine that: our most 'progressive, egalitarian' institutions applying a racial double standard Didn't see that one coming...

Racial Disparity in acceptance rates

2012-02-13T09:03:00.001-08:00

Racism has consequences.

Gender Pay gap App

2012-02-13T08:58:00.000-08:00

Finds a shocking disparity in incomes between men and women.

Politico.com reported this week that "The Obama administration recently launched a software development competition designed to help achieve equal pay in the workforce for American women. The competition has several prize categories, including five scholarships to attend an 8-week design and entrepreneurship program. Another winner will get $5,000 from a private nonprofit to help further develop their app."

It's called the Equal Pay App Challenge, and here's some information from the competition's website:

"Nearly 50 years after President Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, on average women are still paid less than their male counterparts for doing comparable jobs – that’s called the pay gap. It means that each time the average woman starts a new job, she’s likely to start from a lower base salary, but it also means that over time the pay gap between her and her male colleagues is likely to become wider and wider.

For the average working woman, the pay gap means $150 less in her weekly paycheck, $8,000 less at the end of the year, and $380,000 less over her lifetime. For women of color and women with disabilities, the disparity is even bigger. Your challenge is to use publicly available labor data and other online resources to educate users about the pay gap and to build tools to promote equal pay."

Here's an example of how the app might work for some women, based on these salary data:

Enter Your Marital Status: Single

Enter whether you work full-time or part-time: Full-time

Enter the number of children you have: Zero

Do you work in a large U.S. city? Yes

Enter your age: Under 30 years old

Enter your city of employment below, and the Equal Pay App will report the gender pay gap for your demographic group in your geographic area. A negative (positive) pay gap reflects lower (higher) median full-time salaries for women in your group (single, childless, under 30 years old) compared to your male counterparts.

Atlanta: +20% pay gap in favor of women

Memphis: +20% pay gap in favor of women

New York City: +17% pay gap in favor of women

Los Angeles: +12% pay gap in favor of women

San Diego: +15% pay gap in favor of women

Charlotte: +14% pay gap in favor of women
.

Shortages emerging for 180 critical drugs

2012-02-13T08:16:00.001-08:00

It must be the Pharmaco's fault. Right? BHO and his executive orders remind me of Allende or Castro or Mao shrieking at 'capitalist hoarders' and demanding campaigns of vigilance. He's a clueless leftist academic. Always was, always will be.

HEALTH CARE: Supply of a Cancer Drug May Run Out Within Weeks. “A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.”

This seems kinda third-worldish to me. And these shortages keep happening.

UPDATE: Reader Don Jansen writes: “So price controls are imposed on injectable drugs and lo and behold a shortage arises. Who would have thunk it?” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Physician-reader Eric Novack writes: “Glenn- these shortages are very real… one center I work at has trouble getting propofol for anesthesia and another cannot get zofran (ondansetron), one of the most effective anti-nausea drugs on the market…” Very upsetting.

MORE: More here: “Again, the reader is left with the impression that drug manufacturers are hugely incompetent, failing to produce the needed amount of drugs even in the face of rising prices. Thank goodness President Obama is on the case, issuing executive orders! But the existence of any kind of shortage in a market-driven economy should make one’s nose twinkle. One drug shortage might be some kind of freakish anomaly, but 180 crucial drug shortages? The usual suspect in these kind of situations is the dead hand of government, and according to bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, writing in last August’s New York Times, that’s exactly the case. . . . In other words, government has distorted the market and removed incentives for the production of life-saving drugs. And the New York Times’ readership, unless they somehow recall Emanuel’s opinion piece, are left none the wiser.”

Obamacare plus the FDA: a recipe for disinvestment

2012-02-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

Couple pending price controls and limitations with the utterly (and under the Obami, increasingly) insane FDA regulatory regime and there is precious little room for actual health care innovation. The result: massive disinvestment in the sector, with labs closing and companies returning their capital to the shareholders. It's really the only prudent course. The capital strike continues....

AN ADMISSION OF DEFEAT? “Announcing layoffs along with a stock buyback – let’s think about what that means. AstraZeneca did that just the other day, and they’re far from the only ones in this industry (or others) spending billions to buy back their own shares while they’re cutting costs elsewhere.”

Deutschland, Deutschland Uber Alles 2

2012-02-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

My oh my how the worm has turned. Germany couldn't conquer Europe with guns so now it is conquering it with...Euros.

The real reason Obama's going to lose

2012-02-09T06:51:00.001-08:00

With Gas prices set to be above $4 all summer (thanks in part to Obama's environmental fundamentalism), the American people are going to be very, very angry at him.

CHANGE: Gas prices to spike 60 cents by May. Tank up!

The Drug War: insane, out of control, unAmerican

2012-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

And people get mad at me for calling it fascist.

TEN YEARS IN PRISON FOR SUDAFED? “Tough break. That’s 2 to 10 years. Should have committed armed robbery. The average sentence is 2 to 6 months for that in West Virginia.”

Warehousing a larger and larger proportion of our population

2012-02-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

We are becoming Europe. It's all so progressive.

I suspect you'll be hearing a lot about this email from former Reagan OMB director David Stockman (whose relationship with mainstream-conservative budget and economics gurus is long and complicated) contending the official unemployment rate in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report is "made up." I'd focus on one significant point that is mentioned halfway through and almost ignored: "The plain fact is that we are warehousing a larger and larger population of adults who are one way or another living off transfer payments, relatives, sub-prime credit, and the black market."

Well at least she's honest

2012-02-07T07:17:00.001-08:00

Comments

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

“I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”

Attaboy, Barry, Pipeline Style

2012-02-06T08:47:00.001-08:00

It’s hard to remember when an American president missed such an easy layup. Canada has vast oil resources right next door. Under a conservative prime minister it is ready and willing to enter long term agreements that would provide the US with secure and abundant supplies of oil for decades to come. Those safe and secure oil supplies would be America’s ace in the hole in both geopolitical and economic terms. They would make America a more attractive platform for manufacturing and they would underscore the country’s comparative advantage compared to less well endowed economies in East Asia and Europe.

But President Obama seems uninterested, blocking the Keystone pipeline and siding with those who hate virtually every form of energy generation that exists: coal, nuclear, oil, natural gas (fracked), hydroelectric, even wind if the turbines threaten to block the view from the oceanside homes of the well connected and well bred.

Now we are getting the comeuppance we deserve: Canada’s prime minister is off to China to have a nice long talk about deepening Canadian-Chinese oil energy cooperation.

Great work, Mr. President. Great job, greens. The Canadian oil sands will be producing all the oil, with all the CO2 you said you wanted to stop. The US national interest and the well being of the middle class are taking a big knock, the environment gets no benefit whatever, and this is what greens are calling a win

Me, I'm trying to be really, really good

2012-02-06T08:20:00.001-08:00

ALTRUISM: “The research shows that good deeds among men increase when presented with an opportunity to copulate. Theoretically, this suggests that a good deed is the human equivalent of the peacock’s tail. Practically, this research shows how societies can encourage selfless acts.”

All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than other Department

2012-02-06T08:18:00.001-08:00

SO IF A MAN GETS DRUNK AND SLEEPS WITH A WOMAN HE WOULDN’T HAVE SLEPT WITH SOBER, it’s humorous grist for jokes about “beer goggles” and “coyote ugly.” But if a woman does the same thing, woe unto anyone who suggests it wasn’t “date rape.” It’s nice to see people pointing out the contradiction in the comments.

UPDATE: A reader points out that that’s not the only double standard:

A former high school teacher has admitted to raping one of her students , but she won’t be serving time behind bars nor will she be forced to register as a sex offender.
On Thursday Brenda Ray pled guilty to three counts of rape.
Ray was arrested last summer for supplying a 16-year-old boy booze, cocaine and pot in addition to having sex with him off-campus on at least three occasions.
Officials say the victim was in Ray’s English class back in 2007 at Rio Rancho High School.
Ray taught at Cleveland High in addition to RRHS before she quit last summer before her arrest.
Ray pled guilty to the charges against her on Thursday and as part of her plea deal she was sentenced to three years probation.
While prosecutors asked she have to register as a sex offender Judge George Eichwald gave her a pass.

No double standard there. I’m sure a male teacher would have gotten exactly the same punishment for the same behavior.

There's a lot of ruin in a (rich, fashionable) city

2012-02-06T08:10:00.000-08:00

What amazes is how well San Francisco does given it's utterly lunatic governance. Two years to get approval to open an ice cream shop. Two years.

Indeed

2012-02-06T08:06:00.001-08:00

Iowahawk also noticed, "And now all the New York and New England players will return to their homes in income tax-free Florida and Texas."

Hello, we're from the Central Bank and we own most everything

2012-02-02T13:58:00.000-08:00

Monetary phenomenon have a tendency to translate into real ones. I be the major central banks have more capital than all private banks combined. Add that to Fannie, Freddie, Sally, etc. and the US banking system could be substantially nationalized as it is. Does anyone out there have a coherent perspective on all of this?

Why is Atheism such a poor evolutionary strategy

2012-02-02T12:24:00.000-08:00

One of the things that I've always wondered about the 'rationalist' (aka atheist) community is why in evolutionary terms it is so poorly selected. Religious people have far more kids than the 'rational' and us religious nutters don't even believe in meta-evolution.

If rational atheism is so right and accurate, why does it turn out to be such a lousy reproductive strategy?

Is God hating a turn off? Does belief in one's pending existential obliteration lower sperm counts?

Or is contempt for God simply correlated with contempt for children?

In other words, what is the rationalist argument for evolutionary irrationality?

This is my 3,000th post

2012-02-02T12:22:00.001-08:00

My goodness, I'm long winded.

Obama's Enemies List

2012-02-01T12:45:00.001-08:00

It's good to have the establishment on your side. That way you aren't held accountable for your Chicago Style Liberal thuggishness.

TED OLSON CALLS OUT OBAMA’S ENEMIES LIST. I was talking to a CEO last year — an Obama supporter no less — who told me he was amazed at how openly Administration officials threatened to use media demonization if he didn’t play ball. It’s like they’ve got the press in their pocket or something.
But now some of those officials have to be thinking that the people they threaten will be around after Obama’s gone, and they’ll remember.

Divorce and the deadbeat Mom

2012-02-01T12:43:00.001-08:00

Once again reality bites...hard.

STATISTICS: Deadbeat Moms More Common Than Deadbeat Dads.

Single dads are sick and tired of being labeled “deadbeats” when it comes to paying child support. And data suggest they have good reason to be upset.
The percentage of “deadbeat” moms is actually higher than that of dads who won’t pay, even though mothers are more consistently awarded custody of children by the courts.
Census figures show only 57 percent of moms required to pay child support — 385,000 women out of a total of 674,000 — give up some or all of the money they owe. That leaves some 289,000 “deadbeat” mothers out there, a fact that has barely been reported in the media.
That compares with 68 percent of dads who pay up, according to the figures.

Read the whole thing. And note this: “Not only are the dads paying up more when they don’t have custody, but when the court does hand the kids over to dads, they work more than moms who have custody. While 7 percent of custodial moms work more than 44 hours a week, 24.5 percent of single custodial dads work more than 44 hours. And only about half as many custodial dads get government help than moms.”

The Power Mad come in many different forms

2012-01-31T07:31:00.001-08:00

Dieticians, for example.

NORTH CAROLINA DIETETIC BOARD: If you blog about diet, you are acting as an unlicensed dietitian. Really, guys? Really? My advice to the people and legislature of North Carolina — save some money, abolish the board, and quit licensing dietitians anyway.

Government crowding out real community

2012-01-31T06:35:00.000-08:00

Ross Douthat of the NYT makes the point that the more the state does, the less room there is for truly voluntary community action. One of the things that differentiates the US from Europe is our thriving independent, charitable sector. In their rush to emulate the (Bankrupt) European model, the Obami are damaging civil society. Take the HealthCare Reform bill for an example.

Sigh.

Good News: Residential Segregation Declining Rapidly

2012-01-31T06:25:00.000-08:00

I think intermarriage rates are soaring too. Some day, we'll even get rid of 'affirmative action'.

THE CONTINUED DECLINE OF RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION: Desegregation an Unsung U.S. Success Story.

As the figure shows, as of 1970, almost 80 percent of either whites or blacks would have had to move neighborhoods in order to achieve an even distribution of whites and blacks within the average metropolitan area. By 1990, that dissimilarity measure had dropped to 66 percent; it is 54 percent today. We are very far from living in a perfectly integrated society, but our nation is far more integrated than it was 40 years ago.
The progress over the last decade has been particularly dramatic. Every one of the 10 largest metropolitan areas experienced drops in both dissimilarity and isolation of 3.6 points or more. The isolation index is below 45 percent in every one of those 10 largest areas, except for Chicago. Long among the most segregated places in America, the Windy City has experienced a particularly dramatic decline in segregation since 2000.

Read the whole thing.

All you need to eliminate the income inequality 'problem' is to destroy the economy

2012-01-31T06:21:00.001-08:00

Which seems to be the Obami's strategy.

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Tax Foundation: Income Inequality Is Lower Now Than It Was Under Clinton.

The "Sustainable" event horizon

2012-01-30T11:00:00.001-08:00

At some point it will become impossible to use a sentence that does not use the word sustainable. That is when civilization will collapse. But don't worry, the collapse will be sustainable.

The Sucker Chart

2012-01-30T10:38:00.000-08:00

The people that lie in the divergence of these two lines are largely Obama supporters They are the suckers in this grand, insane but oh so 'progressive' tragedy.

Peak Oil Peak idiocy 2

2012-01-30T10:34:00.000-08:00

The lower 48 states are the most intensively drilled part of the planet. Yet oil production here is soaring. The Peak Oil weenies should be fired. Oh, wait, they all have government or academic sinecures - they never need to be right.

Power Logic - Trace mercury from power plants 100 miles way, bad, from light bulbs in your kids bedroom good!

2012-01-30T07:58:00.001-08:00

The statists do not believe in absolute truth, they believe in absolute power. Don't believe it, then read this:

WASHINGTON TIMES: Obama’s Twisty Light Bulb Logic. “Some critics have charged that hyping mercury poisoning in MATS was just a cover for the EPA to ramp up its regulatory assault on the coal industry. Trace amounts of mercury from coal-fired power-plant emissions affect a small number of Americans, chiefly those who live near the emissions sources. At the same time, however, the Obama administration has been trying to force Americans to accept even greater mercury risks by insisting that traditional incandescent light bulbs be replaced with compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). The mercury vapor in CFLs is at a much more dangerous concentration than anything coming out of power plants.”

No Global Warming for past 15 Years

2012-01-30T07:55:00.001-08:00

Pretty much coinciding with the period of maximum global warming hysteria. Maybe 'green' bloviating serves as an aerosol that reflects infra red rays back into space. Al Gore saved us!

SCIENCE: Forget global warming – it’s Cycle 25 we need to worry about (and if NASA scientists are right the Thames will be freezing over again): Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years.“The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years. The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century. Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.”

Many farmers are no better than thieves

2012-01-28T10:42:00.001-08:00

Thieves who use the state to loot their much poorer neighbors. Sugar is a good example. We need to recognize that these looters are not the 'salt of the earth' but moral criminals.

The Experts: Biased in favor of hysteria

2012-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

There are many honest scientists but they don't get funded. Because if there is no crisis, there is no money. The result, the most alarmist studies with the most alarmist interpretations are presented. They are then magnified by a press with a business interest in sensationalizing them. The result: demands that the state step in and 'do something'. The outcome is usually expensive, coercive and if not actively destructive, simply pointless. This unholy alliance of unethical scientists and power hungry state actors is causing our society to slowly but surely seize up.

Can't you please just leave us alone?

CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS: How The CDC Is Overstating Sexual VIolence In The U.S.

In fact, what the study reveals is the devastating impact that careless advocacy research can have on truth. The report proposes an array of ambitious government-sponsored “prevention strategies” and recommends “multi-disciplinary service centers” offering survivors psychological and legal counseling as well as housing and economic assistance. But survivors of sexual violence would be better served by good research and sober estimates — not inflated statistics and sensationalism.
The agency’s figures are wildly at odds with official crime statistics.

But perfectly aligned with funding prospects. Me, I’d rather see the CDC work on controlling actual diseases. rather than redefining behavior as a disease. But I was pointing out the politicization of public health back when InstaPundit was new.

The Higher Ed Cartel is in serious trouble from certification testing

2012-01-27T14:11:00.000-08:00

If certification testing takes off, then most colleges are doomed. James Taranto has the tale. About damn time. Bloodsuckers.

The crucial distinction here is actually between the "academic" and "investment" functions of higher ed. The industry has exploded over the past few decades based on a business model that focuses more on selling the college degree as a credential--an "investment" that yields an increase in one's own "human capital"--than on persuading young adults that education is intrinsically valuable.

If someone could offer a less expensive job-hunting license--one that assessed an entry-level job-seeker's worth to a prospective employer at least as accurately as a college degree does--then the demand for college would plummet, as young adults could realize the same gains from a much smaller investment.

That's where ETS and CAE come in. They will offer two tests. One, called iSkills, "measures the ability of a student to navigate and critically evaluate information from digital technology." The other, the CLA, "assesses critical learning and writing skills through use of cognitively challenging problems." As Vedder explains: "Students can tell employers, 'I did very well on the CLA and iSkills test, strong predictors of future positive work performance,' and, implicitly 'you can hire me for less than you pay college graduates who score less well on these tests.' "

If the practice became widespread, it would drive college costs down and force cost-cutting and downsizing within the higher-ed industry. So you can expect the industry to fight hard against it.

On using the F Word

2012-01-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

Jonah Goldberg points out that I shouldn't use Fascism to describe our out of control Federal state. Not because it's not true, but because in America the term is not understood properly. So I won't.. Even though they are.

Basically, the answer is that Liberal Fascism was a failure in at least one regard. It was never my intent to make abuse of the F-word a bipartisan affair. The idea was simply that the Left should stop using the word because they don't know what they're talking about and they're looking in the wrong direction in their eternal vigilance for fascism. Conservatism in the Anglo-American tradition has no basis in, or relation to, European fascism. And it is not just slanderous but hypocritical for liberals to hurl the term at conservatives when the fact is American progressivism does share DNA with European fascism. But that doesn't mean we should go around calling liberals fascists.

We shouldn't do it because it's rarely true or appropriate, but we also shouldn't do it because most Americans are sufficiently ignorant about the nature of fascism to make conservatives hurling the term sound crazy or extreme. It's counterproductive. The irony for me is that my critics on the left insist that the whole point of the book was to call liberals fascists. It really wasn't, which is why it failed in at least one regard.

So, yes, I could absolutely have written today's column about the similarities between Obama's fantasy of a militarized America and fascist doctrine (Mussolini described the exact same thing as the "socialism of the trenches"!). But, as George H.W. Bush used to say, that wouldn't be prudent. And prudence, unlike fascism, is at the heart of conservatism.

Another example of just how coercive and fascist our President's instincts are

2012-01-26T11:57:00.001-08:00

Please Mr. President, can't you just leave us alone?

Sorry to be late with SOTU commentary, but I haven’t seen anyone pick up on this particular point.

The President said the following thing: “I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.”

Imagine how much they lie about people who aren't powerful and don't have a surveillance camera to turn to...

2012-01-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

If you are stopped you should video all of your interactions with the police.

RAND PAUL UPDATE: A security video of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul at a Nashville International Airport checkpoint doesn’t show him being “irate,” as police asserted. I’ll bet he is now.

Obama our National Chauncy Gardener at the SOTU

2012-01-26T07:29:00.001-08:00

Best analysis:

Let me be clear, O is and always has been an ordinary political hack who was picked up by a brilliant campaign because he happened to be in the right place at the right time. This brilliant campaign ran him, and ever since he's bee trying and failing to lead the country. He's been a failure from the beginning because he's been a fraud from the beginning.

It's tough to fill an empty suit after the fact.

No Childhoodl Obesity - School Junk Food link: Study

2012-01-26T07:27:00.001-08:00

But how can this be? All the right people agree that junk food is bad. Right? Don't you just hate it when facts come crashing in?

MICHELLE OBAMA’S WAR AGAINST SCIENCE? Study Finds No Childhood Obesity Link To School Junk Food.

Red Light Cameras: It's all about the Benjamins

2012-01-25T11:20:00.001-08:00

Of course virtually everything our state does is about acquiring more power and money for those who control it.

IT’S ALL ABOUT REVENUE: Extensive, two-year study finds red-light cameras don’t decrease accidents.

I'm half way in the bubble

2012-01-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

Charles Murray's new Book called Coming Apart has a survey of how much one is isolated from mainstream America. Here's how I scored.

How Thick Is Your Bubble?

Guest

Score » 9 out of 20 (45% )
Result

On a scale from 0 to 20 points, where 20 signifies full engagement with mainstream American culture and 0 signifies deep cultural isolation within the new upper class bubble, you scored between 9 and 12.

In other words, even if you're part of the new upper class, you've had a lot of exposure to the rest of America.

Quiz School

Take this quiz & get your score

How Thick Is Your Bubble? » Create A Quiz

Being Liberal means never having to use your own money..

2012-01-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

Obama and Romney fit the data: religious conservatives give lots of money to charity, liberals give very little. I let you draw your own conclusions. I recall when Hilary was caught donating (and writing off) used underwear to charity. Liberals are compassionate with other people's money, as befits those obsessed with power.

Fox Nation: "WHO'S GREEDY? Obama Gave 1% to Charity, Romney Gave 15%"

Obama: our nation should be more like the military

2012-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

Bill Kristol notices that 'progressives' like the way that the Military does what it's told....

Does liberalism embody the military virtues? Is martial virtue the highest stage of progressivism?

President Obama wants us to think so.

Because only the state can own you

2012-01-25T09:21:00.001-08:00

The Obami are getting uglier by the day.

WP…the Obama administration last week asked a San Francisco appeals court to overturn a recent decision that said bone marrow donors can be paid for what their bodies produce.

The Shakedown squad

2012-01-25T09:02:00.001-08:00

Now that everything is against the law, the purpose of 'crack' law enforcement squads is to punish those that their political masters and media chatterers deem 'evil' which almost exclusively involves those that don't support the statist agenda. The rule of law is disintegrating around us. The technical term is fascism.

HAVE THEM START THEIR INVESTIGATION IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Obama Announces New Financial Crimes Unit. “The unit will be staffed by ‘highly trained investigators’ and charged with tracking ‘large-scale fraud.’”

Rejecting Keystone: An Act of Insanity

2012-01-25T08:55:00.000-08:00

From Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post:

"President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won’t get much. Stopping the pipeline won’t halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global-warming emissions. Indeed, Obama’s decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills."

The key to understanding Obama's decision making process is to understand that he is by choice and by experience a Chicago Liberal. The Chicago Liberal view of governance is centered on power, not on policy. Policy choices are made because they cement or enhance the ruling group's power over the city, state, nation. It is fundamentally a fascist worldview. This is how Obamacare could promise to 'make healthcare affordable' while passing a system that the CBO projects will increase healthcare spending from 16 to 20 percent of GDP - it makes far more voters dependent upon the state and therefore, the party of the state. Likewise, the Keystone decision was not based upon greenery, jobs, or any other objective policy basis but upon how it would affect the ruling coalition's power. This is something that principled moderates like Robert Samuelson or David Brooks just don't understand. And until they do, things are going to get worse. A lot worse.

HT: Warren Smith

Most Postal Services are Profitable - Except the US Mail

2012-01-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

Another example of how the Federal Government is so large, complex and riddled with special interests that it can't get the simplest things done - like rationalize the Postal Service like every other civilized country has done. Such are the wages of a mega empire linked with a magic money machine. Break it up, break it all up.

3. An international study of postal services in 30 high-income countries finds that most are profitable, and the ongoing losses in U.S. are an exception (losses in all five years from 2007-2011).

The tale behind the official unemployment numbers: despair

2012-01-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

And with Obamacare and vast reams of new financial, environmental and other regulations coming on line, this is more likely to get worse than better. Hope! Change!

SPENGLER: Forget about Economic Recovery: Obama Is Toast. “People are hurting, and badly. The official unemployment rate may have fallen, slightly, but the real unemployment rate — the number of working-age Americans who aren’t working — rose from about 12% before the 2008 crisis, to about 23%, and hasn’t come down. That includes people who have retired early because they can’t find work, spouses who used to earn a second income but have gone back to homemaking because work isn’t available, self-employed people whose businesses have collapsed, young people who live in their parents’ basement because they can’t afford tuition and can’t find work. . . . Roughly one out of eight Americans who presumably want to work, and were working before 2007, can’t find work today.”

Warren Buffett Cleans Up on the Keystone XL decision. Environment to suffer.

2012-01-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

It turns out that the oil not shipped via pipeline will be shipped after all on Warren Buffett's Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway at much higher cost and with much more risk to the environment.

And you thought the Obama Administration's decision was a 'principled' one. Crony Capitalism anyone?

When President Obama, who is normally a great proponent of “infrastructure” projects, made his bizarre decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline project, I wondered if he might have been induced to create those thousands of American jobs if the oil could be moved by his beloved high-speed rail.

As it turns out, oil is already moved from northern latitudes, such as the booming oil fields of North Dakota, down to the Gulf of Mexico by rail of the old, low-speed variety. Fortunately, as Newt Gingrich pointed out during the Monday night Republican debate in Florida, the oil is on private land, so Obama can’t shut production down.

Shipping the oil with a pipeline would have significantly reduced costs, as an Associated Press report explains:

Billions of dollars of infrastructure improvements have been made in recent years to allow North Dakota's oil shipping capacity to keep pace with the skyrocketing production. North Dakota is the nation's fourth-biggest oil producer and is expected to trail only Texas in crude output within the next year.

Alison Ritter, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Mineral Resources, said the state's so-called takeaway capacity is adequate, though producers and the state were counting on the on the Keystone XL to move North Dakota crude.

Shipping crude by pipeline in North Dakota adds up to $1.50 to its cost, compared to $2 or more a barrel for rail shipments, producers say.

"Oil that would have moved by the Keystone XL is now going to shift to rail transportation," Ritter said.

Amusingly, a spokesman for the Sierra Club admitted “there is no question that [transporting] oil by rail or truck is much more dangerous than a pipeline,” but that didn’t stop the zero-growth eco-fanatics from calling in their chips with President Downgrade to kill that pipeline.

Those rail shipments are expected to “increase exponentially with increased oil production and the shortage of pipelines,” according to Justin Kringstad, director of the North Dakota Pipeline Authority. That’s going to be quite a windfall for the railroad companies, isn’t it?

As it happens, 75 percent of the oil currently shipped by rail out of North Dakota is handled by Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC… which just happens to be a unit of Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. What a coincidence!

For some reason, nobody from BNSF or Berkshire Hathaway would return the AP’s telephone calls, but oilman Harold Hamm told them he was sure this was just a wonderful “lucky break” for Barack Obama’s favorite billionaire, who is “certainly favored by this decision.” I’ve heard Buffett’s famously overtaxed secretary will be a guest at the State of the Union address tonight. Maybe someone could ask her about it.

The “tax me more” refrain from liberal billionaires is one of the oldest sucker games in the book. For the well-connected, the money that can be made through government power – whether by influencing corrupt politicians, or merely predicting what they’re going to do - dwarfs whatever income they offer to cough up.

He's going to vacation more. A lot more.

2012-01-24T11:25:00.001-08:00

Even those closest to BHO don't know what he's going to do with a second term.

In the Book of Proverbs we read, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I was reminded of those words in reading this story from Politico, which begins this way:

Take this quiz: If President Barack Obama wins a second term, he has promised that he will do … what exactly? There are people who follow the president closely who couldn’t answer that question. And even those who try would surely find themselves disagreeing with one another. As he stands before the nation Tuesday evening to present his State of the Union address, Obama is a president whose positions may be well-known but whose agenda — what he actually intends and can reasonably expect to achieve if voters give him four more years — is blurry. …Obama has yet to outline in a concrete way what he will do, said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian with Princeton University.“He is an enigma,” Zelizer said. “He is not a politician with a clear set of ideas.”

The TSA's purpose

2012-01-23T13:32:00.001-08:00

From Advice Goddess:

The TSA's main accomplishment seems to be obedience training for the American public - priming us to be docile (and even polite) about giving up our civil liberties.

In related news, the Supreme Soviet unanimously ratified the Soviet Union's 17th 5 Year Plan

2012-01-19T10:04:00.000-08:00

Hearing packed with Greens, Administration allies finds “overwhelming support” for 54.5 MPG CAFE rule.

"We double wheat production! Triple Tractor output! Shirkers will be shot!"

America's License Raj

2012-01-19T07:32:00.001-08:00

Almost thirty percent of America's workers need a state issued license to earn their living. Guess who all the licensing benefits? Here's the curious case of dentistry.

From an article at Governing.com:

…dental care is hard to come by in underserved areas of the country. Try finding a dentist in the remotest rural or deepest urban pockets of the land, and for blatantly economic reasons, they just aren’t there. That’s why states are looking to fix the problem by creating a so-called mid-level dental provider. Much like a nurse practitioner (NP) or physician assistant (PA) is to a doctor, this provider would be educated and licensed to perform basic dental services — routine checkups, cleanings, filling cavities and extracting teeth — under the supervision of a fully trained dentist.
…Yet in much the same way that the American Medical Association fought against the creation of NPs and PAs, the American Dental Association (ADA) and its state chapters are lobbying hard to thwart state legislatures as they work to create this new level of dental care providers, who are common and well liked in other parts of the world.
…“Publicly their main objection is safety issues,” Oswald says. “They tried to discredit the model, saying the therapists were not trained to the same level as dentists. In reality, all the research around the world shows that [mid-level providers] provide as good, if not better, care. Every time they stated safety as a factor, we asked for research, which they didn’t have.”

By the way, states with tougher licensing of dentists do not have better dentistry, but they do have higher prices. Almost thirty percent of the US workforce is now required to hold a license including shampoo specialists.

Hat tip: Carpe Diem

Government bennies are the BEST bennies

2012-01-18T14:44:00.001-08:00

Difference between private and Federal Government pensions. So who is 'serving' who?

Under Islamists: Murder rate of women in Turkey rises 1400 percent

2012-01-18T13:19:00.001-08:00

Get an Islamic government, slaughter a bunch of women? Seems that way in Turkey. But it's a religion of peace. Of the grave, perhaps.

Obama to Minorities: "Suckers!"

2012-01-17T07:30:00.001-08:00

Obama has always been a creation of the leftist intelligentsia. He claims to be 'African American' despite having no African American roots. His career has been one of an exquisitely turned out carpet bagger. A privileged upper middle class poseur exploiting the moral authority of a people whose experiences he has never shared. He shows his true colors with policies that benefit his elite friends while devastating 'his' people.

He's so progressive.

JOEL KOTKIN: Martin Luther King, Economic Equality, And The 2012 Election. “The biggest question is whether the current progressive agenda supports minority upward mobility. From its inception the Obama administration’s focus has been on the largely white information economy, notably boosting universities and the green-industrial complex based in places like Silicon Valley. The Obama team’s decision to surrender working class whites to appeal to what Democratic strategists call the ‘mass upper middle class’ makes political sense but could lead to problems for an American working class that is itself increasingly minority. An emphasis on green industries and strong across-the-board regulation often works against traditional industries like heavy manufacturing, warehousing and fossil fuel development that historically have employed many minorities. Opposing development of new petrochemical plants and such things as the XL Pipeline — opposed by many greens and their allies in the Obama Administration — could reduce new opportunities for minority workers, many of them unionized, particularly in the heavily African-American, and increasingly Latino, Gulf region. Modern-day progressivism’s primary laboratory, California, tells a cautionary tale.”

Our government: Arrogant, indifferent, cruel, pointless

2012-01-16T12:14:00.000-08:00

This is an example of when anti drug hysteria unites with green hysteria and clever rent seeking businesses to reduce the people's freedom and increase their misery. Incidentally I used to use Primatene, it was a godsend when I had breathing problems. And ten years ago Primatene Mist cost $6, not $20. Please, please Mr. Government, can't you just leave us alone?

The War On Citizens Getting The Medication They Need To Remain Alive And Breathing
Commenter MonicaP sent me this letter about a really disturbing recent experience she and her husband endured -- and luckily he did endure, but no thanks to the government:

I thought you might find my husband's recent experience trying to get Primatene Mist interesting. Primatene Mist was taken off the shelves as of Dec. 30, supposedly because it contains CFCs. The fact that the inhalers and pills were moved behind the counter several years ago because of meth fears has something to do with it, I suspect.My husband was watching a football game with a friend when he began to have an asthma attack. His friend was watching his three small children that night, so my husband drove to CVS to get some Primatene Mist, not knowing at the time that it was no longer for sale. The pharmacy had it in stock, behind the counter, but couldn't sell it to him, and they didn't have any pills in stock. They suggested he go to another CVS and see whether they had the pills in stock. So a guy who was having clear problems taking in enough oxygen was forced to drive to another store (Walgreens, ultimately) to get the pills. Then they had him show ID and sign a form promising he wouldn't alter the drug before they would sell it to him.
My husband was lucky his asthma attack was relatively minor and that the pills he eventually got worked almost as quickly as the inhaler. Had the asthma attack gotten more serious while he drove around town, he would have been in trouble. Or he might have been forced to go to the ER when he could have easily treated himself at home. And now countless people are going to have to pay out of pocket or have their insurance charged for doctors visits for something that used to be as easy to get as aspirin and condoms.
We'e so afraid of people getting high that we're willing to let people die to prevent it. The CFC issue seems like a cop-out. I understand outlawing trivial uses, like in hairspray, but I'd think we could make an exception for something that saves people's lives.
MonicaP

If we decide to believe the government's story, it seems we'd rather protect the ozone from what has to be the minimal incursion of CFC's from asthma inhalers than let people keep breathing. From the FDA:

Why No More Primatene Mist? Primatene Mist inhalers use CFCs, which decrease the earth's ozone layer. This layer of the atmosphere protects us from some of the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, which can increase the risk of skin cancers and cataracts. The United States and many other countries have signed an international agreement to phase out CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances.

Ahron Sherman writes at The Daily Miner:

According to the Food and Drug Administration, discussion to phase-out CFC-based epinephrine inhalers started in 2006, and the FDA decided that Primatene Mist did not serve an essential health need.

Really? Tell that to MonicaP and her husband.

Sherman continues:

Manufacturers have been changing their inhalers to replace CFCs with an ozone-friendly propellant called hydrofluoroalkane, according to the FDA. The problem is that these types of inhalers are not available without a prescription, cost more and work differently.Doctor Sam Ahn of the Asthma Allergy Clinic of Phoenix said the transition from CFC inhalers to HFA inhalers has been relatively smooth, despite the inconvenience felt by some.
The HFA inhalers are more expensive, he said.
Whereas Primatene Mist inhalers run for about $20 a pop, HFA inhalers containing albuterol can cost as much as $60 each.
The HFA inhalers have a lighter velocity spray than the CFC-based ones, Ahn explained. This causes many of his patients to think they are not getting enough of the medication. Despite the weaker spray, both types of inhalers administer the same dosage of medication, Ahn said.
Another consequence of the soft spray is that the HFA inhalers need to be cleaned every one or two weeks, Ahn said. This wasn't the case with CFC inhalers because the spray was forceful enough to basically clean the apparatus itself. People who have made the transition between inhalers tend to forget to clean them, which does alter the dosage, Ahn said.
"Overall, it hasn't been a bad transition," Ahn said.

Again, tell that to MonicaP and her husband.

An immense, hidden tragedy

2012-01-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

Like with most 'progressive' disasters, it's the wealth and jobs that aren't created that is the greatest, but hidden strategy. Such as the millions of people that have left the workforce. The productive contributions of millions of people have evaporated. The Capital Strike continues to roar.

Feds: Head Start Doesn't Work....At All

2012-01-12T13:39:00.000-08:00

Well, no duh. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to it over the past 25 years knows that. And now even uberliberal Joe Klein of Time is forced to admit the obvious. But the truth is that it's hard to find any 'anti poverty' program that is anything but an expensive power grabbing 'jobs for the boys' program.

Except in the case of Head Start, where it's mostly jobs for the Girls. The fact is that 'Good Government Liberalism" doesn't work worth a damn. Which is why it has almost been completely replaced by Chicago, "Grab all you can" Liberalism. Or as I like to call it: fascism. From Via Meadia.

“Head Start” has been the poster child of federal aid to education ever since the Lyndon Johnson administration introduced it as part of the Great Society. And for decades liberals have pointed to it as one of the great advances that the federal government has brought to education, and as evidence that creative social engineering by smart professional interventionists can change the world.

But a long-suppressed government report finally released by the Obama administration report is shaking the foundations of Head Start, and the news isn’t coming from right wing conservatives but from Joe Klein at Time magazine. As Klein reports,

We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program’s effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.

These days, defenders of Head Start say less about what it does for kids (essentially nothing) but about the jobs it creates in poor neighborhoods. This is blue liberal thinking at its most self-parodic: we can’t develop social programs that will accomplish something worthwhile, but we can at least use the illusion that such programs work to create jobs for people who will then vote for the politicians who give them make work jobs.

True enough, as far as it goes, but it would just be cheaper to send them all checks. While it might be utopian to hope that a huge government boondoggle would shut down just because it’s been proven useless, even federal bureaucrats seem disturbed by the thought that limited antipoverty resources are being spent on a known flop. The L.A. Times has the story:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Head Start program, enacted reforms in December to address concerns about quality and accountability, among other things. They include a provision that, for the first time, requires low-performing agencies to compete for funding. Previously, funding for grantees was automatic.

It’s a start. The bigger story, though, is that the fundamental assumptions behind decades of government policy in education are coming unglued. The tools we’ve been using to address some of our most serious social problems don’t work. The money we’ve spent has been wasted.

It isn’t the just the Tea Party and Ayn Rand acolytes saying these things. It’s President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. It’s Time magazine.

A paradigm is falling apart.

Art Laffer confirms it: Warren Buffett is a Homespun Humbug on the tax issue

2012-01-12T09:05:00.000-08:00

Mr. Buffett has claimed that he pays too little in tax and wants to pay more on his 'income'. Art Laffer unpacks this claim and compares it to Mr. Buffett's actual behavior which, of course, is tax minimizing. The Omaha Obamamaniac has followed a brilliant strategy: yowl class warfare and soak the rich while piling up as many Benjamins as possible. Along with George Soros, he is the most cynical of speculators.

Mr. Buffett stated in his op-ed that he paid $6,938,744 in total income and payroll taxes in 2010, representing 17.4% of his taxable income, which puts his taxable income just under $40 million. Although certainly a fantastic sum, $40 million actually understates Mr. Buffett's income in 2010 by more than 250-fold.

Mr. Buffett's net worth rose by $10 billion in 2010 to $47 billion, according to Forbes Magazine. That increase, an unrealized capital gain, is part of his total income by any standard definition, including the one used by the Congressional Budget Office. After also including a $1.6 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Mr. Buffett's true income in 2010 was much closer to $11.6 billion than the $40 million figure cited in his op-ed. Hence his true effective tax rate was only 6/100ths of 1% as opposed to 17.4%. And these are just the additions to his income that we know about.

Barack Obama awards the presidential Medal of Freedom to Warren Buffett, February 2011.

The "Buffett Rule" would not tax the vast majority of his shielded income, including either his unrealized capital gains, which are currently taxed at zero percent, or charitable contributions, which are tax deductible. If the "Buffett Rule" were applied as President Obama proposes, then Mr. Buffett's federal tax bill would have been $14.4 million, rather than the $6.9 million he actually paid. As a fraction of his true income, his effective tax rate would only have risen from 6/100ths of 1% to 12/100ths of 1%.

Mr. Buffett's donation to the Gates Foundation goes to the heart of my critique of his public call for higher tax rates on the rich. Just look at the second contractual condition for his ongoing pledge to the Gates Foundation: "The foundation must continue to satisfy the legal requirements qualifying Warren's gift as charitable, exempt from gift or other taxes."

In other words, if his gift weren't tax sheltered he wouldn't give it. So much for "shared sacrifice."

So much for the "responsible stewardship" of the not for profit sector

2012-01-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

College Presidents triple prices for functionally the same product and still claim that they deliver good or excellent value. The only guarantor of good value is a free, unsubsidized market between private for profit businesses. As an added plus Colleges would also pay taxes on the grotesque and unseemly wealth they have accumulated.

And they call them Public 'servants'. Serving themselves, perhaps.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Value Gap: Americans Increasingly Question The Cost Of Going To College. “The annual price tag for a college credential has risen about three times as fast as inflation, and there is no sign that it’s slowing down. In the last decade alone, tuition rates at public colleges and universities, which enroll about 80 percent of American students, rose by an average of 5.6 percentage points above inflation every year. . . . College presidents seem tone-deaf to those concerns. In a companion survey conducted with The Chronicle, three-fourths of college leaders said the system was providing a good or excellent value.”

The endless expansion and arrogance of the State

2012-01-11T07:25:00.000-08:00

This sort of stuff happens all the time. There was a time when I liked and respected the police.

No More. Now at best, I fear them.

A 16-year-old girl in Florida parked in the wrong space, had her car keyed, suspected another girl, and posted on her own Facebook page the following:

oh so you keyed my car? well your karmas gonna be a wholeee lot worse that that

The next day, school officials suspended her for three days–and a criminal charge of “stalking” was brought against her by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department

As Scott Greenfield says:

To call the arrest of Allie Scott crazy is to state the obvious. That both a school district and a sheriff’s office would nonetheless indulge in such insanity is the piece that would make a good subject for Kafka.

Other incidents of Kafkaesque abuse of authority by public school officials and local police departments are easy to find.

For most of history, in most places in the world, people have lived in fear of The Authorities. For a couple of centuries, that fear was largely lifted (with certain obvious exceptions) in the territory of The United States of America. Now, as a result of the endless expansion of governmental powers and the political and administrative arrogance which have inevitably followed, it is returning. The American populace is being collectively cowed.

Michelle Obama really pissed off about the 'angry black woman' stereotype

2012-01-11T06:55:00.001-08:00

It better stop or someone is going to get hurt.

Obama regulations crush New England fisheries, rich and well connected benefit, (natch)

2012-01-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

But Our Dear Leader is for the 'little guy'. Yeah, short, rich campaign contributors. Here. Money graf:

This is not an isolated incident. In those American fisheries that have been subjected to catch-share regulations (excluding recently affected New England), Food & Water Watch magazine found that only 37 percent of boats survived the transition.

New England’s fishing industry is similarly plummeting, despite being affected by the regulations for less than a year. In five months, over half of the Northeast’s fishing fleet had been lost.

The trend is likely to continue, as catch-share permissions are being consolidated into just a few, wealthy, well-connected hands. Of the 247 ground-fishing vessels (which catch fish that swim close to the sea floor) in New England that are still active, 55 boats accounted for 61 percent of the revenue.

Obamaphobia: Americans greatest fear: Obama will be reelected - Poll

2012-01-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

A US News poll finds that by two to one Americans fear that The One will get Two. Seems rational to me.

Scientists aren't on your side, they're on their side.

2012-01-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

And therefore massive skepticism to their claims is needed. Bayer did a study of pharma 'findings' from academic studies (in the most prestigious refereed journals) and found that they could not replicate 70% of them. Imagine that: the most rigorous studies vetted by the top journals and only 30% could be replicated. Now transfer that to the deeply fraudulent and politically motivated worlds of climate "science" and social "science" and factor in the well known political biases of our chattering classes. 90% bullshit? You just can't trust our so called 'elites'. At all.

ANDREW FERGUSON: The Chump Effect: Reporters are credulous, studies show.

Lots of cultural writing these days, in books and magazines and newspapers, relies on the so-called Chump Effect. The Effect is defined by its discoverer, me, as the eagerness of laymen and journalists to swallow whole the claims made by social scientists. Entire journalistic enterprises, whole books from cover to cover, would simply collapse into dust if even a smidgen of skepticism were summoned whenever we read that “scientists say” or “a new study finds” or “research shows” or “data suggest.” Most such claims of social science, we would soon find, fall into one of three categories: the trivial, the dubious, or the flatly untrue.

And they are not amused

2012-01-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Hey I've got an idea, why don't they just leave us the hell alone?

THE STATE HAS NOTICED that your children are getting fat.

Black America's Deal with the Devil bites them. Hard.

2012-01-09T08:02:00.000-08:00

Black employment is heavily concentrated in the state and state subsidized sectors. By contrast other minority groups are underrepresented in State employment. Now the State is bankrupt. A lot of faux black 'progress' is unraveling.

Such are the wages of trusting the monopoly state. A lot of other, more comfortable groups are about to learn the same bitter lesson.

Weak Jobs Boost Skips Blacks

As CNN Money reports, Blacks are not benefiting from the mild jobs recovery now underway, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment for African American women actually declined in 2011, while overall, African Americans lost more jobs and gained fewer new ones than the general population.

The reason is something Via Meadia has been writing about: governments (and semi-governmental entities like the USPS) employ a large number of Blacks. Teachers, firefighters, policemen, clerks and managers working in government are the heart and soul of the Black middle class.

Those are precisely the jobs that have been slashed during the last recession and will be under pressure for some time to come. Pay and benefits for government employees will be falling even as the number of new hires drops. Unless state and local tax revenues pick up soon, more layoffs will come. It is likely that the burden of huge pension bills will end up falling most heavily on young African American workers; governments everywhere have underfunded their pension programs and will have to make up the gap in the future by cutting new hires and slashing pay.

Health care, another important source of employment for African Americans, is also going to be squeezed. Whether through the current Obama reform, a single payer program, or some new GOP plan, this sector is going to be squeezed as rising costs make the current ways of doing business unsustainable

Why, let them drink Tea!

2012-01-09T07:37:00.001-08:00

It's good to be the king.

THE TEA PARTY THE WHITE HOUSE COULDN’T RESIST: White House threw secret ‘Alice in Wonderland’ bash during recession.

A White House “Alice in Wonderland” costume ball — put on by Johnny Depp and Hollywood director Tim Burton — proved to be a Mad-as-a-Hatter idea that was never made public for fear of a political backlash during hard economic times, according to a new tell-all.
“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, tells of the first Halloween party the first couple feted at the White House in 2009. It was so over the top that “Star Wars” creator George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle with invited guests.
The book reveals how any official announcement of the glittering affair — coming at a time when Tea Party activists and voters furious over the lagging economy, 10-percent unemployment rate, bank bailouts and Obama’s health-care plan were staging protests — quickly vanished down the rabbit hole.
“White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged,” the book says.
However, the White House made certain that more humble Halloween festivities earlier that day — for thousands of Washington-area schoolkids — were well reported by the press corps.

The complicit press corps, that is.

It's good to be the government.

2012-01-09T07:12:00.001-08:00

The richer Washington gets, the poorer the nation becomes. It's all so progressive.

ROGER KIMBALL: Our Masters In Washington.

Tootling around Washington, I was struck by—well, not by its prosperity, exactly, but by what is clearly a lavish outlay of funds—your funds, in fact. Everywhere I turned there were huge building cranes. In one spot, I counted 7 over the space of a few blocks. It looked a little like a Third World country suddenly flush from newly discovered mineral reserves of some sort. Which I suppose describes the situation in Washington accurately enough, except that for “mineral reserves” you need to substitute “deficit spending.” I remember meeting my friend Edward Shils several years ago in Washington: “My, they live well on our money,” he said. What would he say today, I wonder, when Washington has come more and more to resemble Versailles circa 1780.

The Great Recession's Silver Lining

2012-01-09T07:08:00.001-08:00

Falling government employment.

Glorifying our fearless political leaders

2012-01-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

Hey, they scammed the money, so they should get the glory. We should name something after Al Capone.

Apparently there’s such a thing as the “Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant” in El Paso. It seems like an impressive facility and the kind of thing the West is going to need more of as the water runs dry. But what’s up with the name? The former senator isn’t dead — why is something named after her?

Hutchison helped secure more than $29 million in federal funds for the project, a partnership between the local water utility and Fort Bliss. The guaranteed supply of water from the plant eased concerns over whether enough was available for the thousands of troops transferred to the Army base.

Ahh, I see. So it’s like a philanthropist who gives the money to build a new hospital and has it named after himself. Except in that case it’s his money, not mine. Senator Byrd from West Virginia was obviously the master of this kind of thing, naming every second building in the state after himself because he was the one who scammed the money out of taxpayers from the rest of the country. Next thing you know, they’ll be naming the months of the year after themselves. Oh, wait, someone already did that.
As we drown under trillions in debt, this may seem like a small thing, but it’s not. The sense of entitlement of our political class is part of what’s gotten us into this mess. Legislation preventing any government property or any project supported by public funds from being named after any current or former politicians still living would at least send the message that this isn’t their money to dispose of as they will.

The death of Keynesianism

2012-01-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

The Economy now nearly numb to monetary and fiscal stimulus. Not that this will stop the statists. They will keep flooring the accelerator until we go off the cliff.

Why not apply loser pays to the government

2012-01-06T07:52:00.000-08:00

Because it would reduce state power and the whole point of fascism is to maximize the power of the people who control the state. And since there are literally hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations, essentially the structure of our legal system is designed for mass oppression at the whim of those who control the state apparat. Unless you're rich, you lose.

I think that in a criminal case it should be mandatory. As the criminal justice system works now, it’s really a species of “taking.” Consider: if the government chooses to prosecute me, I can (1) spend a lot of money to prove myself innocent; or (2) go to jail. (They won’t provide me a lawyer unless I’m poor, which I’m not). My paying for my lawyer is an integral part of the process of justice, which benefits society as a whole, and I’m essentially forced to do it. (When the alternative is going to jail, “forced” isn’t too strong a word.)

Perhaps, if I’m guilty, then the legal fees should be considered part of the punishment. But if I’m innocent? The government has just forced me to spend a lot of money to ensure the efficient function of the justice system. (Prosecutors, remember, aren’t supposed to want to see the innocent convicted, so they’re as much beneficiaries of my defense as I am.) The efficient functioning of the justice system is a public good. We’re not supposed to take private property for the public good unless we provide “just compensation” to the owner.

But if I’m an innocent defendant, where’s my “just compensation?” Oh, the McDade Amendment (which the Justice Department absolutely hates) lets me recover my legal fees if I can show that the prosecution was harassing, malicious, etc. But that’s only part of the problem (and recoveries here are hard to come by anyway). What if I’m just a poor schlub? I can be — probably will be, unless I’m loaded — financially ruined, only to get a “sorry, sucker, but at least you don’t have to go to jail” at the end.

When you add to this the enormous financial resources of the government, and the absence of any market discipline — or, usually, any political discipline except in high profile cases — then a “loser pays” rule in criminal prosecutions seems fair to me. Any thoughts?

Just leave them (and us) alone

2012-01-06T07:48:00.000-08:00

Our Elite's smug arrogance is reaching epic proportions. They judge and hector and regulate and coerce more each day, believing that their version of reality and their vision of the future is 'superior' therefore they have some 'right' to rule over the rest of us. They are as bankrupt as the governments they control.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Was Santorum ‘Weird’ For Bringing Home His Stillborn Baby? “There is much I don’t like about Rick Santorum’s ideas, but the story of how he and his wife dealt with the tragic death of their baby is not something that bothers me. Pete Wehner has an appropriately indignant post, quoted below, about the attacks on Santorum over this issue (and he summarizes the sad story as well), but it strikes me as indecent to criticize the loving, if discomfiting, behavior of people who have just suffered the worst possible tragedy known to humankind.” Like I said, after the Trig Palin assaults nothing surprises me.
Related: Patterico: In Mocking Santorum, Eugene Robinson Reveals A Sickness in Our Society. “The problem is not just that some leftists can’t understand the love that some people feel for their unborn children — or for their children who (like Sarah Palin’s son Trig) were born with disabilities. What really infuriates is the contempt they show for parents who make different choices than they would . . . and the smug arrogance with which they pronounce judgment on the most intimate aspects of others’ private lives.”

Guess what? Public schools suck all over the world.

2012-01-06T07:23:00.000-08:00

SEEING A CHILD LIKE A STATE.

In the early 20th century Helen Todd, a factory inspector in Chicago, interviewed 500 children working in factories, often in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. She asked children the question: “If your father had a good job and you didn’t have to work, which would you rather do—go to school or work in a factory?” 412 said they would choose factory work. One fourteen year old girl, who was interviewed lacquering canes in an attic working with both intense heat and the constant smell of turpentine, said “School is the fiercest thing you can come up against. Factories ain’t no cinch, but schools is worst.”
The recent expansion of the “ASER-like” simple assessments of literacy and numeracy skills of all children in a village based approach provides an accurate, and chilling, picture of just how little learning is going on inside schools in many poor countries. The ASER data can show the learning profile, the association of measured skills and grade completion, by showing what fraction of children who have completed which grade can read a simple story (expected of a child in grade 2) or do simple arithmetic operations. Take Uttar Pradesh in 2010. By the end of lower primary school (grade 5) only one in four children could divide. Even by grade 8, the end of upper primary only 56 percent could. Similarly, by grade 5 only 44 percent could read a level 2 paragraph and by grade 8 still only 77.6 could. A large plurality of children, even of those that had persisted and been promoted through eight full grades or primary school—roughly 8000 hours of available total instruction—were either illiterate or innumerate or both.
Even these children can however see the disparity in accountability between them and their teachers. The regular civil service teachers in Uttar Pradesh are massively privileged: making over three times the market wage, no accountability, not even to show up for work, and able to mistreat students with impunity. Data from the 2005 India Human Development Survey (Desai, Dubey, Vanneman, and Banerji 2008) show that 29 percent of parents report their child was “beaten or pinched” in government schools in the previous month. Worse, a child from the poorest group of households is almost twice as likely to be beaten or pinched in a government school than a child from the richest group of households. This is in contrast to private schools which show no income favoritism in beating. Studies consistently find absence rates of regular teachers in government schools in UP around 25 percent—not to mention low rates of effort when in attendance.

Fire ‘em and privatize. For the children.

Obama diverting victims damages to cronies

2012-01-06T07:19:00.001-08:00

Chicago Liberals in their natural habitat:

PAYOLA POLITICS: DOJ Steers Countrywide Settlement Cash To Leftist Groups With Dem Ties. “The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the ‘victims’ but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit.”

No Give, No Take Organ Donation

2012-01-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

Creative ways to organize exchange between private individuals create more wealth. In this case it creates a larger pool of organs for transplantation. Of course simply allowing people to sell critical organs would expand the market even more. Social squeamishness is costing tens of thousands of people their lives.

In Entrepreneurial Economics I argued for a “no give, no take” system for organ donation–people who signed their organ donor cards would be given priority over non-signers should they one day need an organ. The idea has an element of justice to it but the primary goal is to increase the incentive to sign one’s organ donor card.

Israel recently adopted this policy by giving extra points on the allocation system to people who previously signed the organ donor card. In the case of kidneys, for example, two points (on a 0-18 point scale) are given if the candidate had three or more years previous to being listed signed their organ card. One point is given if a first-degree relative had signed and 3.5 points if a first-degree relative had previously donated.

It’s early but so far the policy appears to be very successful:

Due to the population’s surge of interest in obtaining an organ donor card, the Adi-National Israel Transplant Center has extended through March 31 the deadline to register as a donor and receive special benefits.
…During the past few weeks, Adi’s phone system has collapsed several times due to the high demand.
Since Adi decided to give preferential treatment to those registering as a potential organ donor, tens of thousands of people have registered, raising the number of potential donors to over 600,000. Until last year, the rate of registration was among the lowest in the Western world.

Hat tip to David Undis whose excellent group Lifesharers (I am an adviser) is implementing a private version of no-give, no take in the United States.

Here is my piece on Life Saving Incentives and here are previous MR posts on organ donation.

Information technologies are cumulative in their effect

2012-01-04T15:21:00.001-08:00

Improved software, of which algorithms are a specialized part, is another key source of improvement that can't be overlooked.

Moore’s law squared

by JOHN on JANUARY 1, 2012

In a review of linear programming solvers from 1987 to 2002, Bob Bixby says that solvers benefited as much from algorithm improvements as from Moore’s law.

Three orders of magnitude in machine speed and three orders of magnitude in algorithmic speed add up to six orders of magnitude in solving power. A model that might have taken a year to solve 10 years ago can now solve in less than 30 seconds.

Source: In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman

The Capital Strike enters a new, more dangerous phase

2012-01-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

With the Constitution Bending (not even recess) appointments of three new members to the NLRB, the Obama administration has served notice that it will attempt to achieve administratively what it could not achieve legislatively: namely a significant expansion of union power and representation. The result will be chaos as unions rush to take advantage of a very biased NLRB ahead of the inevitable take over of the Senate by Republicans next year.

The impact on employment? Employers will have a new and remarkably corrupt reason to sit on their hands. The capital strike will continue. Stay tuned for more economically destructive rent seeking by an administration frantically ransacking the Federal Government for more ways to reward its friends before the next election. Very Chicago.

Politico breaks the news that the president has appointed no fewer than three members to the activist National Labor Relations Board:

President Barack Obama made more controversial recess appointments Wednesday, filling three open seats on the National Labor Relations Board just hours after he appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The three appointees — Sharon Block, Terence F. Flynn, and Richard Griffin — will take their place on a board that has been sharply attacked by Republicans for favoring labor.

“The American people deserve to have qualified public servants fighting for them every day – whether it is to enforce new consumer protections or uphold the rights of working Americans,” Obama said in announcing the appointments.

This is the president declaring war on the House and Senate GOP. Expect lots of power-grabbing executive orders to follow.

This is why we need multi-lingual ballots

2012-01-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

The Constitution requires that candidates for citizenship speak English. Yet we now must provide multi-lingual ballots. This is because the rules are not being followed by civil 'servants' who have sworn to uphold the Constitution. Once again our Federal state is lawless and out of control. Remember: so called civil 'servants' aren't on your side, they're on their side. Here's more evidence of the Federals contempt for the rule of law:

Finally, my colleague David North just today has crunched numbers dumped by USCIS and found that it’s become dramatically easier to get citizenship. Of the naturalization decisions rendered in FY 2000, 31.1 percent were denials. In 2011, only 7.6 percent were denials. As David notes:

The data in the table reinforce what I have written in several previous blogs: USCIS is an agency that loves to say “yes” when asked to grant a benefit and its current leadership is leaning on the system to make it even more friendly to applicants of all kinds.

Obama's Debt Star

2012-01-04T07:12:00.000-08:00

And this does not include another 85 Trillion in NPV of future liabilities. We're going down. Hard.

OBAMA’S LEGACY: US Closes 2011 With Record $15.22 Trillion In Debt, Officially At 100.3% Debt/GDP. I guess the “Debt Star” really is his emblem.

More Obama PushmePullyou Madness

2012-01-04T07:10:00.000-08:00

Pushing home ownership as a social welfare program created the sub prime mess. John Lott points out that our Dear Leader has learned nothing from that disaster.

Just days before Christmas, the Obama administration gave Bank of America a big lump of coal, levying a hefty $335 million dollar fine on the company for discriminating against minorities in its lending practices.

Supposedly Countrywide, a mortgage company bought by Bank of America in 2008, had not given out enough low interest rate loans to minorities from 2004 to 2008.

What the large fine reveals is that President Obama hasn’t learned anything from the recent financial crisis.

What the president sees as discrimination in awarding a mortgage, lenders saw as wise business decisions.

Corn Crime from the Corn Caucus

2012-01-03T15:15:00.001-08:00

Ethanol: It shifts money from the working class and poor to the rich, despoils the environment and drives up food prices for the world's poorest. Of course it's supported by politicians across the political spectrum. It could be that Corn Farmers are the most evil pressure group in America. Perhaps that's why Federal Politicians love them so much...they're role models. And exhibit number one for why our Federal Superstate is headed for destruction. If we can't cut these thieves off, how are we possibly going to cut back Grandma?

The Case for Optimistic Pessimism

2012-01-03T10:00:00.001-08:00

When everything is smashed, there is no one above you and a lot of pieces to play with. - Me.

The case for optimism

2012-01-03T09:59:00.001-08:00

The chance of a lifetime

A friend asked me the other day, "...given the sorry state of so much in the world, what's possible to look forward to?"

The state isn't sorry. It's wide open.

Interest rates are super low, violence is close to an all time low, industries are being remade and there's more leverage for the insurgent outsider than ever before in history.

The status quo is taking a beating, there's no question about it. That's what makes it a revolution.

I said this nine years ago and I stand by it. In the twelve years since I wrote this essay, people have started social movements, built billion dollar companies, toppled dictators, found new jobs, learned new skills and generally made a ruckus.

State Sponsored Spyware: the next assault on our freedoms

2012-01-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

Corey Doctorow explains why general purpose computers will come under assault by the State and it's penumbras. Because free computation is the enemy of state sponsored looters everywhere.

The Statists: seeking to blame Wall Street for the Federal Government's sins

2012-01-03T08:40:00.000-08:00

Wall Street is just a market filled with sinful people like every other place. It operates in the environment that the State creates. Our vast and unaccountable Federal State has created an environment where the powerful and connected can loot the weak and dispersed. That Wall Street takes advantage of the Federal's immense power is not a bug of the system, but a key feature. That being said, the attacks that seek to divert blame from it's source are getting very extreme. I particularly like the fascist imagery - It's so....accurate. And in Newsweek, no less. Kristallnacht II anyone?

SO MUCH FOR THAT “NEW CIVILITY” BULLSHIT: In Newsweek: “There will be prosecutions and show trials. There will be violence, mark my words. Houses burnt, property defaced. I just hope that this time the mob targets the right people in Wall Street and in Washington. (How does a right-thinking Christian go about asking Santa for Mitch McConnell’s head under the Christmas tree?)”

China feeling surrounded?

2012-01-03T08:33:00.000-08:00

Wally Mead talks about how the Chinese fear cultural encirclement. And ties it back to Jeff Davis, Kaiser Bill and Adolph Hitler. Very interesting.

Christmas is a good time to remember that a normal distribution of events has TWO tails

2011-12-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

Despite all of the sourness in our world today, as much as we expect disasters, we should also expect miracles. Because of the incarnation, Time's arrow has a direction: it points to Christ.

Christmas, Kurtosis, Fat Tails, Black Swans and Risk Management
+ Comment now
Christ was born into the Pagan world of Rome, a world of cyclical despair. As historian of science Stanley Jaki spent his life documenting, the pagan world view was one of endless cycles, of oscillations, of rise and fall, golden ages of glory, bronze ages of decline, iron and stone ages of despair, with no genuine permanent progress. For this reason, among others, Jaki says neither the ancient Greeks nor Romans produced modern science, which depends greatly on the idea of progress.

I would argue that this is the reason why they also failed to create modern economics, which is also based on the idea of progress. For the ancient pagans you can move along supply curves, but not shift them to the right. Hesiod said if you want to have more wealth the only way is to work more hours.

The idea of the Labor Theory of value fits perfectly with a world of cyclical futility. More money comes only from more sweat; the only thing resembling an escape is the acquisition of slaves through conquest. Wealth for the slave owner is still built on sweat, but the slave’s, not his. The only thing he risks is the blood that he loses in combat acquiring the slaves.

That’s the world of the Caeser Augustus whose executive order for a tax census sent Joseph and Mary back to their home town of Bethlehem to be counted. Augustus’ wealth came from Joseph the carpenter’s sweat. And if Joseph resisted, then it would be blood, so a pregnant woman is conscripted into a perilous journey.

Technological breakthroughs, better business modeling, virtuous cycles built on capital accumulation were not the basis of Augustus’ wealth; confiscation was. In fact, according to Aristotle, return on capital was a violation of the nature of things. If the only way to create more wealth was to shed more sweat, then capital was unnatural, the attempt to find fertility where only barrenness could exist. Interest, therefore, was based on an unnatural act, that of treating wealth as though it was fertile, when it was as barren as a mule.

Which brings us to Christmas. What is more barren than a virgin’s womb? (Perhaps only the tomb, but that is a topic for a column in April.) The late Christopher Hitchens quipped more than once that if civilization suddenly collapsed, would we really need to remind ourselves that Christ was born of a virgin?

The obvious implication is that the Christmas story (Fact? Myth?Both?)is useless for the rebuilding of civilization. That is a very odd observation from a man who prided himself on his knowledge of history, because, in fact, that is exactly what civilization did remind itself of after it collapsed. What Civilization?

Why Christopher Hitchens’ civilization and yours and mine: Western civilization.

When Rome fell and barbarian hordes raped and murdered their way across the dark ages, civilization was rebuilt on the Christmas story. Mary, a woman, was the Chris-bearer (in Greek, Christopheros) after whom Mr. Hitchens was named. She assented to that role willingly. If an all-powerful God does not rape, then neither should you. If God prized human life enough to bind himself to it through incarnation, then you, barbarian warrior, should not murder. If God comes as a child through a woman, then women and children are fully human, endowed with no less dignity than men.

If in the battle of Christ vs. Caeser, Christ is both right and ultimately triumphant, then you, oh king are limited in your power. Small wonder (but wondrous all the same) that the emperor Henry IV stood in the snow on Christmas day 1077 to publicly repent of his acts of oppression against the Church and so began the investiture controversy which eventually broke the back of statism and led to the rise of modern liberty.

Christmas is a good time for us to recognize that though the world generates catastrophes, but it also has been given what JRR Tolkien called eucastrophes. Eucatastrophes are sudden, unexpected, but perfectly logical-in-hindsight explosions of good. Tolkien coined the word first to describe the incarnation which Christians are currently celebrating.

Eucatastrophe is to catastrophe, as fat right tails are to fat left tails. And any risk management system which scans the world for the latter is incomplete if it ignores the promise of the latter. If the story of Christmas is true, the power of euchastrophe is stronger than the power of catastrophe. But it is much harder to see, hidden far from power, swaddled and surrounded by shepherds.

What does all of this have to do with Kurtosis (and what is that anyway?) and normal distributions and black swans and risk management? For that come back next week, when I should be writing about New Years, but will still be writing about Christmas.

Obesity is a national security issue?

2011-12-29T10:42:00.001-08:00

Yeah, that's the ticket.

ENERGY IS A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE. THEREFORE, OBESITY IS A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE: “Americans, on average, have gained enough weight during the past 40 years to cancel out automakers’ vehicle-lightweighting efforts such as using lighter components or removing spare tire, reflecting an additional challenge automakers face to meet progressively more strict fuel-economy and greenhouse-gas emissions standards. . . . The combined weight gained by the average American male and female can cut average fuel economy by as much as one percent, which could translate to an additional 153 million gallons of gas burned in the U.S. over the course of a year.” Hence, Michelle Obama’s food-nannyism is really about national security. Take it away, White House Press Office. . . .