Though he’s primarily a businessman, Thiel has dabbled in libertarian activism. Most recently, he caused a stir by establishing the Thiel Fellowship, which will select 20 college students under the age of 20 and pay them $100,000 each to drop out of college and embark on entrepreneurial careers. Thiel is also an intellectual of astonishing breadth and depth who finds time, while running a major hedge fund, to produce thought pieces that survey the Western Canon, the geopolitical landscape, and financial economics at a gallop (such as this one for theHoover Digest).
Monday, February 07, 2011
Peter Thiel - now this is a 'cat that I can get behind
Peter Thiel of Facebook and PayPal fame is attacking the monstrous and destructive education Borg where it hurts:
He also has very sober and important things to say about Net Neutrality that everyone should read. You go, boy. Hat tip NRO
The disappearance of Man Space
This is certainly true for me. Has been for a long time. In the house that I paid for.
With no room to call their own, men were forced to build their male sanctuaries in the most uninhabitable parts of a home. Garages, attics, and basements quickly became the designated space for men, while the women and children had free reign over the rest of the house.
With no room to call their own, men were forced to build their male sanctuaries in the most uninhabitable parts of a home. Garages, attics, and basements quickly became the designated space for men, while the women and children had free reign over the rest of the house.
Obama predicted to raise more than $1 Billion for his reelection
Of course it will all be outside of the campaign finance 'reform' that our Presidential candidates have historically abided by. It seems that the system is only useful for hobbling Republicans. When a leftist can get a lot more money from his rich friends, then the system is no longer necessary. 'Reform' indeed.
Hat tip Real Clear Politics
Hat tip Real Clear Politics
Here's an illustration of a Capital strike
Doc in a box or retail medical clinics in other facilities are a market driven response to the 'access crisis' in health care. When the law was stable, their growth was rapid. As soon as it became evident that "Hope and Change" were going to gain dominant power and that they were going to radically 'reform' health care finance, investment stopped. Not slowed. Stopped. Period. Because no one in their right mind would invest good money into a sector when they didn't know the rules. How do you decide what to put into your spreadsheet?
And that's why the projections of growth are so suspect: what numbers do you put in your spreadsheet? One of the many problems with the Obami's 'reform' is that it has introduced massive, multi-year policy instability into the largest sector of the US economy, causing wild swings in sentiment as elections and legal cases occur. This chaos is likely to last for a minimum of 3 more years with horrible effects on the types of investments that could yield real cost and quality improvements.
We need to figure out how to unleash markets and make them work better, not freeze them for half a decade or more. But for that we need to have people in power who believe in and understand how markets work.
And that's why the projections of growth are so suspect: what numbers do you put in your spreadsheet? One of the many problems with the Obami's 'reform' is that it has introduced massive, multi-year policy instability into the largest sector of the US economy, causing wild swings in sentiment as elections and legal cases occur. This chaos is likely to last for a minimum of 3 more years with horrible effects on the types of investments that could yield real cost and quality improvements.
We need to figure out how to unleash markets and make them work better, not freeze them for half a decade or more. But for that we need to have people in power who believe in and understand how markets work.
Another driver of income inequality
Licensing and state regulation is one of the primary ways that the corporatist state extends its powers into new realms. Rent seekers love licensing because it empowers the incumbents and undercuts their competitors. Over time more and more requirements are added, ostensibly to 'protect the public' and 'improve quality' but usually they are simply mechanisms to limit competition to the existing cozy oligopoly. For example, one must go to school for a year to cut hair for money in Missouri. Lawyers and accountants must not only pass an extensive and comprehensive test of their professional knowledge but must also spend hundreds of thousands of dollars attending colleges for 6 or 7 years. The result, those that are good at school and have stable families and access to capital and the better part of a decade for education flourish, while the weak and the poor and unconnected are screwed.
t.
This is what they call "liberal compassion".
t.
This is what they call "liberal compassion".
Ronald Reagan - A great man in secret too
He often did things like this that haven't been publicized until after his death. A letter to Breshnev early in his Presidency asking for Scharansky's release.
There is one matter however which I feel I must bring to your attention. All information having to do with my govt’s practices & policies past & present is available to me now that I hold this office. I have thoroughly investigated the matter of the man Scharansky [sic] an inmate in one of your prisons. I can assure you he was never involved in any way with any agency of the U.S. govt. I have seen news stories in the Soviet press suggesting that he was engaged in espionage for our country. Let me assure you this is absolutely false.
Recently his wife called upon me. They were married and spent one day together before she emigrated to Israel assuming that he would follow shortly thereafter. I believe true justice would be done if he were released and allowed to join her.
If you could find it in your heart to do this the matter would be strictly between us which is why I’m writing this letter by hand.
Indeed
Common Cause: Another leftist stalwart with rather situational ethics
Common Cause has always been a stalking horse for the left. Now that through the magic of Youtube they've been outed doing things that the media have been searching in vain among the Tea Parties for for two years, it's becoming more visible to the average American. This whole interweb thingy really isn't working out very well for the statist centralizers, is it? Hat tip Instapundit
COMMON CAUSE’S CONVICTIONS OF CONVENIENCE: Or, given the whole “lynch Clarence Thomas” business, maybe we should call it Kommon Kause’s Konvictions of Konvenience.
Related: Common Cause And The Oldest Profession. “Amusingly, Bob Edgar is a former Congressman himself who supposedly got into things like Common Cause in order to clean up the political system: I’m not sure how this can be reconciled with explicitly calling for the lynching of uppity black men (and their wives) – but then, neither did Common Cause – at least, once they got caught. Although the sheer crawling nature of that apology makes one wonder who from Common Cause’s leadership cadre got caught on camera calling for somebody’s death…”
Say it ain't so, Barack
When he was running for President Barack Obama made a big deal of how unconstitutional, criminal, indeed, evil the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies were. You know, Guantanamo, Rendition, Targeting US Citizens for death without recourse to due process.
Not that I'm objecting. But Mr. Obama's ethics are remarkably situational, aren't they? Hat tip Instapundit.
Not that I'm objecting. But Mr. Obama's ethics are remarkably situational, aren't they? Hat tip Instapundit.
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Even the NYT can't stomach Nanny Bloomberg's latest foray into lifestyle fascism
According to those that keep track of these things New York is by far the least free state and NYC the least free city in our nation. Today comes another example of just how brutally fascist the Big Apple has become. Even the Times can't stick their hand picked political classes' arrogance anymore. Go ahead, take a bite of the Big Apple. Don't mind the maggots.
[T]he mayor and City Council have overreached. The council voted — 36 to 12 — to ban smoking outdoors in city parks, beaches and even plazas, including in Times Square.
No smoking at the crossroads of the world? The vortex of tourism that brings smokers and nonsmokers in great numbers? The site of the world’s most famous New Year’s Eve party, where who knows what goes on? All of this takes the mayor’s nannying too far, even for those of us who want to avoid the hazards of secondhand smoke.
Already smokers are forced to huddle outside, these days perched on the city’s gray, leftover snowdrifts. Starting in early summer, after the mayor signs the bill into law, they will not be able to stray onto the 14 miles of city beaches or into the city’s 1,700 parks, not even Central Park or windswept Battery Park. Instead of smoking on Brighton Beach, what does a smoker do — take a boat out 12 nautical miles into international waters?
Some City Council members wanted to find a less-drastic solution — like having the ban but establishing smoking areas on the beach or patches of the park. It’s not great, but it’s better than an all-out ban. Also, the city would have to provide a lot more receptacles for cigarette butts and enforce antilittering laws in those areas.
Meanwhile, there is talk that the mayor and the City Council want even more, like banning smoking near doors of office buildings and apartments. They need to take a deep breath and remember that we tried prohibition 90 years ago. They called it a noble experiment. It turned into a civic disaster.
When 'activists' become stone cold killers
The vaccine autism hoax is a small example. A much more murderous one is the DDT hoax that has let a previously controlled condition - Malaria - rage out of control, killing at least 50 million mostly children around the world. Bill Gates comments:
Who will hold these murderous 'activists' to account? Hat tip instapundit.
BILL GATES ON THE VACCINES/AUTISM HOAX:
Well, Dr. Wakefield has been shown to have used absolutely fraudulent data. He had a financial interest in some lawsuits, he created a fake paper, the journal allowed it to run. All the other studies were done, showed no connection whatsoever again and again and again. So it’s an absolute lie that has killed thousands of kids. Because the mothers who heard that lie, many of them didn’t have their kids take either pertussis or measles vaccine, and their children are dead today. And so the people who go and engage in those anti-vaccine efforts — you know, they, they kill children. It’s a very sad thing, because these vaccines are important.
Who will hold these murderous 'activists' to account? Hat tip instapundit.
US Manufacturing - Perhaps we don't stink so much after all
One of the characteristics of the discourse over American 'Decline' is its self serving nature. Every rent seeker has his own narrative which starts with: "Look how much our country is sucking" and ends with "and this is why the state needs to give me more subsidies and privileges".
That is why it is so nice to get a perspective on just how well America is doing in a sector that has been particularly abused by self seeking declinists: Manufacturing. Hat tip, Carpe Diem
That is why it is so nice to get a perspective on just how well America is doing in a sector that has been particularly abused by self seeking declinists: Manufacturing. Hat tip, Carpe Diem
James Madison predicted it: regulatory and tax instability benefits the rich and well connected
In Federalist Paper #62 James Madison explains one of the drivers of our 'rich get richer' culture: regulatory and legal instability. If you have literally hundreds of thousands of rules and are changing thousands of them every year, you give those who sit at the center and have the expertise and money to exploit them massive advantages. You know who they are: lawyers, investment bankers, large corporations, large pressure groups and unions.
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.
Madison also predicted the capital strike brought on by the current administration's cyclone of 'hope and change'.
In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.
Presumably Obama read Federalist #62 - after all he is a constitutional 'scholar'. I guess he didn't understand it. Or perhaps he understood it too well. Back in Madison's day we had the Federalists and the anti-Federalist. Perhaps the Obami with their penchant for the hyper-state and ultra-centralization should be called the 'super-Federalists'.
Whatever you call them, they have been remarkably destructive.
Glenn Reynolds argues that our problem isn't 'too many lawyers' it is 'too many laws'. Although I suspect that the one goes with the other. His column is worth a read, though.
Whatever you call them, they have been remarkably destructive.
Glenn Reynolds argues that our problem isn't 'too many lawyers' it is 'too many laws'. Although I suspect that the one goes with the other. His column is worth a read, though.
Saturday, February 05, 2011
Yet Switzerland is filled with hob nobbing dictators and Presidents for Life
Hatred for America always was a sacrament of the US Left. With The One they've had a tough go of it lately so no wonder they got excited when 'W' is coming to town.
Anti-Americanism isn't a mode of thought - it's a mechanism to avoid thought. Hat tip, National Review
A planned trip to Switzerland next week by George W. Bush was canceled after human rights activists called for demonstrations and threatened legal action over allegations that the former president sanctioned the torture of terrorism suspects. …
A lawyer for the organization said Bush’s appearance was canceled because of the risk of violence, and that the threat of legal action was not an issue.
“The calls to demonstrate were sliding into dangerous terrain,” the lawyer, Robert Equey, told the Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve.
Anti-Americanism isn't a mode of thought - it's a mechanism to avoid thought. Hat tip, National Review
Lobbyist boom in DC: Hope and Change indeed
Expanding the central state means expanding the scope for rent seeking. Here's a good example of just how out of hand it has gotten:
In an e-mail obtained by ABC News, a top staffer for the key Senate Appropriations subcommittee called for a meeting of lobbyists and interest groups that would be affected by expected cuts to the Labor and Heath and Human Services budget. The Jan. 24 meeting was attended by approximately 400 people, sources told ABC, and served as a "call to arms" for those determined to fight Republican budget cuts.
"One thing everyone should be able to agree on now is that a rising tide lifts all boats, and that a higher [Labor, Health & Human Services] allocation improves the chances for every stakeholder group to receive more funding," the committee staffer for Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, wrote in an e-mail inviting people to the meeting.
Hat tip Powerline
California is so screwed
JE Dyer of commentary describes Jerry Brown's plan to reform California finances. He points out that while the aged moonbeam does propose some cuts, he makes no effort to reform the pensions and regulatory madhouse that have made great swathes of the state non-viable. I will make a prediction: in four years California will be in the same amount of trouble if not worse.
Because unlike in the past, the private sector is not going to ride the rescue this time. RTWT.
Because unlike in the past, the private sector is not going to ride the rescue this time. RTWT.
It makes sense to get rid of the tarbaby - if we can
The future is with India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil, not necessarily with the middle east. New technologies - both 'green' and oil and gas based are in the process of radically reducing our dependence on energy from outside of North America - which aside from terror, remains the middle east's only contribution to the world. Reduced engagement with the middle east would also save a lot of money and probably result in far fewer muslims immigrating, reducing the relative size of what is apparently a largely unassimilable and obstreperous minority. Michael Lind is a nut on domestic policy, but these comments are spot on.
The key is to figure out how to steadily, slowly reorient our policy and extricate ourselves from what has become an enormous waste of time and money in both Democrat and Republican administrations. It won't be easy but given our straightened circumstances and world realities, it has to be done. Hat tip to Reihan Salam
Among other things, an Asia First strategy would allow the U.S. to preserve its security while reducing the Pentagon budget in the interest of long-term solvency. Having renounced further labor-intensive wars of counterinsurgency and nation-building in the Greater Middle East, the U.S. could downsize the Army, in favor of a military based chiefly on elite special forces, naval and air forces and unmanned drones. Some of the savings could be channeled into homeland security defenses — for example, protecting infrastructure and telecommunications against the mysterious cyber attacks that have been directed at the U.S. and Europe from China. Other savings could be devoted to rebuilding America’s dual military-civilian manufacturing base, which has been ravaged by offshoring and the collaboration of U.S.-based multinationals with Chinese, Japanese and German industrial policies. Any future great-power conflict is likely to take the form of a cold war, in which the ultimate victors will be those whose domestic industrial economies are the strongest and whose banking systems are subordinate to their national interests.
The key is to figure out how to steadily, slowly reorient our policy and extricate ourselves from what has become an enormous waste of time and money in both Democrat and Republican administrations. It won't be easy but given our straightened circumstances and world realities, it has to be done. Hat tip to Reihan Salam
Environmentalists: They're not on your side
Environmentalists by their actions evince a contempt for the average man. Most of them are rich and live the lives of the rich. They just don't want anyone else to experience what they already enjoy. Thus they roam around trying to drive the price of things people need to live: energy, food, housing higher - no skin off they're nose - they're already rich.
Here's Canada, trying to provide more oil from a politically and environmentally responsible source and the environmentalists? Well, you get the picture. Hat Tip Instapundit.
“And the choice that the United States faces in all these matters is whether to increase its capacity to accept such energy from the most secure, most stable and friendliest location it can possibly get that energy, which is Canada, or from other places that are not as secure, stable or friendly to the interests and values of the United States,” Harper said at a press conference following his meeting at the White House. Obama did not address the Keystone XL project Friday.
Environmentalists have mounted an opposition campaign to the Keystone project, arguing that the pipeline could increase the chances of an oil spill and citing the greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production. They held a protest Friday outside of the White House.
Here's Canada, trying to provide more oil from a politically and environmentally responsible source and the environmentalists? Well, you get the picture. Hat Tip Instapundit.
“And the choice that the United States faces in all these matters is whether to increase its capacity to accept such energy from the most secure, most stable and friendliest location it can possibly get that energy, which is Canada, or from other places that are not as secure, stable or friendly to the interests and values of the United States,” Harper said at a press conference following his meeting at the White House. Obama did not address the Keystone XL project Friday.
Environmentalists have mounted an opposition campaign to the Keystone project, arguing that the pipeline could increase the chances of an oil spill and citing the greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands production. They held a protest Friday outside of the White House.
Charles Krauthammer: 'If Godzilla Appeared on National Mall Gore Would Say It’s Global Warming'
Indeed. Hat tip Instpundit.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/02/05/charles-krauthammer-if-godzilla-appeared-national-mall-al-gore-would-#ixzz1D75c1vWt
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/02/05/charles-krauthammer-if-godzilla-appeared-national-mall-al-gore-would-#ixzz1D75c1vWt
This is awesome news. Really.
Dinesh D'Souza once quoted a friend who was moving to the US from India: "For once I want to live in a country where the poor people are fat". I grew up in countries where malnourished children roamed the streets and I can tell you with certainty: it is wonderful...wonderful news that obesity is a big 'problem' in the world. We should have more problems like this. Hat tip Instapundit
THIS ACTUALLY REPRESENTS A TRIUMPH OVER ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY: “More than one in 10 of the world’s population is obese – more than half a billion adults – and rates have doubled since 1980.” Think about it: For millions of years, the normal condition of humanity was hunger. Now, it’s becoming overeating. Okay, that’s not ideal — but it’s actually progress. If the price of the escape from hunger and premature death is more fatties, that’s not a bad trade, really.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Faith over Credentials
The Anchoress points out the difference between knowledge and credentials. The rest here.
Perhaps the over-reliance upon credentials is connected to the undervaluing of faith in society. In the past, people of faith had the examples of holy men and women who managed to exhibit enormous wisdom through grace, whether they were exceedingly well educated, like St. Augustine, or not educated at all, like St. Catherine of Siena. Saints are full of wonder; it is their ability to wonder, in fact, that allows them to be open to grace, the gate of all of their theological and philosophical brilliance.
And when faith was common to kings and paupers, self-evident brightness and acumen were appreciated and acknowledged. People understood that there was more than one way to learn, or that ideas could be burnished and gifts could be nourished by sheer curiosity sustained on a pilot-light of passion, even without the consent and certification of an appointed body.
As recently as sixty years ago society was willing to take some things on faith, and that habit-of-faith allowed room for instinct to have a voice; it permitted one to try people out—to give a guy a chance to prove himself. Lacking faith, lacking a mindset that can trust in possibilities, there is nothing to fall back on but credentials.
And if credentials are all we value, we miss out on the Churchill, or the Baxter, or the Hamill, to our great detriment. Education and certification, particularly in the hard sciences, is essential and good, and a broad education is life-enriching. But society needs a few people audacious enough to strike out, or to dare the system, if only to show us that it is still permissible to wonder.
Perhaps the over-reliance upon credentials is connected to the undervaluing of faith in society. In the past, people of faith had the examples of holy men and women who managed to exhibit enormous wisdom through grace, whether they were exceedingly well educated, like St. Augustine, or not educated at all, like St. Catherine of Siena. Saints are full of wonder; it is their ability to wonder, in fact, that allows them to be open to grace, the gate of all of their theological and philosophical brilliance.
And when faith was common to kings and paupers, self-evident brightness and acumen were appreciated and acknowledged. People understood that there was more than one way to learn, or that ideas could be burnished and gifts could be nourished by sheer curiosity sustained on a pilot-light of passion, even without the consent and certification of an appointed body.
As recently as sixty years ago society was willing to take some things on faith, and that habit-of-faith allowed room for instinct to have a voice; it permitted one to try people out—to give a guy a chance to prove himself. Lacking faith, lacking a mindset that can trust in possibilities, there is nothing to fall back on but credentials.
And if credentials are all we value, we miss out on the Churchill, or the Baxter, or the Hamill, to our great detriment. Education and certification, particularly in the hard sciences, is essential and good, and a broad education is life-enriching. But society needs a few people audacious enough to strike out, or to dare the system, if only to show us that it is still permissible to wonder.
Civility watch - Common causers want to Lynch Clarence Thomas....
COMMON CAUSE RESPONDS TO CALLS FOR A CLARENCE THOMAS LYNCHING BY ITS SUPPORTERS, and James Taranto observes: “Everybody does it? Think it through and you will see that this is a stunning indictment of the American left. To begin with, it is not true that everybody does it. As we noted yesterday, the formerly mainstream media have spent the past two years trying to depict the Tea Party as precisely the sort of racist, hateful, violent political movement that Common Cause appears in the video to be. That media effort has failed, not for lack of will but for lack of evidence. If everybody did it, the Tea Party would do it, and if the Tea Party did it, you would have read about it in the New York Times.”
Plus this: “So here we have a corporation that advertises itself as a ‘grassroots organization’ while exercising its First Amendment rights to advance the position that corporations do not have First Amendment rights, only individuals do. Some individuals, participating in the corporation’s ‘grassroots’ rally, exercise their First Amendment rights in ways that harm the corporation’s image. The corporation responds by exercising its First Amendment rights to denounce those individuals for having exercised their First Amendment rights. And it does in its capacity as a faceless corporation, by issuing a statement for which no individual–not even CEO Bob Edgar–takes responsibility.”
Conclusion: “For the sake of truth in advertising, Common Cause should change its name to Hypocrisy Hub.”
Hat tip Instapundit.
Government Bureaucrats: They're not on our side, gang
How dare we have opinions. Hat tip instapundit
CITIZEN ACTIVIST GRATES ON STATE: STATE TRIES TO SHUT HIM UP. Get this: Citizens come up with an 8 page traffic plan presentation with diagrams and traffic projections to make their case, and the state — in the person of North Carolina chief traffic engineer Kevin Lacy — responds by trying to get them punished for “practicing engineering without a license.” Best bit: “Lacy says he filed the complaint because the report ‘appears to be engineering-level work’ by someone who is not licensed as a professional engineer.”
Stay in your place, proles, and don’t challenge your betters.
The problem with abortion is that it coarsens and stains all who touch it
I’m hearing three more Live Action Planned Parenthood clinic videos will be released Friday …
Hat tip National Review
Hat tip National Review
And meanwhile tens of millions of Americans are written out of the system as criminals
In modern America, drug convictions are felonies and once you have a felony a company called Talx - part of Equifax (and owned and operated by members of my church) tracks you for employers and others electronically. For the rest of your life. Our young men are drugged in school so they will be 'acceptable' to the matrons who run it and then when they come of age, they take the hint and drug themselves upon which they are convicted of felonies by our MADD mad culture. At that point they are permanently excluded from society by high tech vindictiveness like Talx. And it's starting to pile up - fewer than 40% of college graduates are now men. 41% of all children are born out of wedlock and the sperm banks are besieged by lonely women wanting to buy buy high IQ sperm to replace the 'respectable' men who are no longer there - in today's world those men are 'criminals'. And the 'great and good' - Christian or Atheist, liberal or conservative couldn't care less.
The rational response is to persuade your sons to move to a civilized country, like Canada which somehow survives while criminalizing only one eighth the proportion of human beings the US does.
Hat tip Instapundit. Megan McCardle has more:
The rational response is to persuade your sons to move to a civilized country, like Canada which somehow survives while criminalizing only one eighth the proportion of human beings the US does.
Hat tip Instapundit. Megan McCardle has more:
MEGAN MCARDLE: THE GOALS AND MEANS OF METH CONTROL:
I want my Sudafed. What I’ve noticed is that they keep making it harder to get, but we keep getting more meth labs. Naturally, the political class’s answer is more of the same! And nobody’s held accountable, and nobody’s willing to relax changes that have proven ineffectual — they just accumulate like barnaclesSo with meth, we made it illegal, and then it turned out you could make the stuff from cold medicine in a very dangerous and dirty home production process, so we made it hard to get cold medicine, so they switched to an even more dangerous process, so now we’re going to make it even harder to get cold medicine . . .At every step, we don’t consider the whole cost of functionally prohibiting cold medicine; we consider only the marginal cost of the new prohibition. And we compare that marginal cost to the whole cost of drug addiction, nasty amateur meth labs, etc. This policy ratchet means we can easily end up in a situation where the sum of our drug laws are worse than the disease of drug addiction, even though no one particular prohibition is.Are we in that place? Well, if you’re someone who needs a decongestant, particularly someone with chronic allergies or sinus or ear infections, then this is a pretty major cost–as anyone with recurring episodic problems can tell you, it’s getting harder and harder to get doctors to write you prophylactic prescriptions, because of dual pressure from healthinsurers and the government.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
The fascists are screwing up....big time.
Senator Rand Paul has come out with a budget that cuts one third of the annual deficit. It wipes out the NEA, the NEH, most of the two DOEs and privatizes the Smithsonian. Read the rest here. The upshot: you can wipe out most of the Federal borg and still not get far enough because the massive Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid entitlements constitute most of the budget.
Yet the left won't let those be touched. And there's the rub: we are looking at a world where almost all of the Federally funded foot soldiers of the left along with their fellow travelers in the Universities and fat bottomed charities are at risk of obliteration to save the big entitlement programs. Which in the end are going to get nailed anyway.
From my standpoint as a Libertarian, that sequence of events is wonderful: obliterate all of the lefty subsidies first and then reform the big entitlements. By doing so we will get rid of literally millions of unionized fascist foot soldiers who will no longer have the time and their unions will no longer have the money to spend politicking on behalf of state power.
The budget chaos that leftist profligacy has guaranteed also guarantees that the left is entering the political equivalent of nuclear winter. And here's to hoping that they forgot to build their fallout shelters.
Yet the left won't let those be touched. And there's the rub: we are looking at a world where almost all of the Federally funded foot soldiers of the left along with their fellow travelers in the Universities and fat bottomed charities are at risk of obliteration to save the big entitlement programs. Which in the end are going to get nailed anyway.
From my standpoint as a Libertarian, that sequence of events is wonderful: obliterate all of the lefty subsidies first and then reform the big entitlements. By doing so we will get rid of literally millions of unionized fascist foot soldiers who will no longer have the time and their unions will no longer have the money to spend politicking on behalf of state power.
The budget chaos that leftist profligacy has guaranteed also guarantees that the left is entering the political equivalent of nuclear winter. And here's to hoping that they forgot to build their fallout shelters.
Obami held in 'contempt' by Federal judge for reimposing drilling ban after judge struck it down
Of course no one will get jugged or suffer any career consequences. Consequences for dishonestly taking people's property are only for the little people. Hat tip Planet Gore.
A Louisiana federal judge on Wednesday held the Interior Department in contempt for re-imposing a deepwater oil-drilling ban last year after the judge had struck down an earlier version of the moratorium.
The contempt finding provides political ammunition for Republicans and pro-drilling Democrats who say Interior is blocking offshore development. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) quickly called the order a “sharp rebuke of the Interior Department for continuing to place politics before all else following the BP spill.”
Judge Martin Feldman’s ruling — which is stuffed with harsh words for Interior — orders the department to pay attorneys’ fees in the case against last year’s drilling ban brought by several offshore oil services companies.
Lieberman and Collins: Fr. Hood massacre was preventable
I don't know if I agree with the 'preventable' message, but I do know that if soldiers had been armed, a lot of the deaths would have been preventable. And I do know that the failure to recognize the risks of American jihadis due to political correctness is a real problem. It would be nice if we could recognize our enemies without fear of being called 'islamophobic' or 'racist'. Hat tip National Review
The federal government needs to drop the political correctness and call violent Islamic extremism what it is, according to a newly released report on the Fort Hood shooting by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
The committee’s chairman and ranking member, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) and Susan Collins (R., Maine), held a press conference earlier today to discuss their investigation into the November 2009 massacre. That month, U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan opened fire at the Texas base, killing thirteen people. “Our report’s painful conclusion is that the Fort Hood massacre could have and should have been prevented,” Lieberman said. He added that employees at the Department of Defense “had compelling evidence of [Hasan’s] growing embrace of violent Islamic extremism before the attack that should have caused them to discharge him.”
Ethanol Genocide? - Global Food Prices at record highs: UN
Historically our Farm Lobby have just fleeced the rest of America to line their pockets - hurting our 'way of life' to buttress theirs. But now with the latest expansion of the grain to ethanol boondoggle more than one third of the US corn crop will be going to biofuels. And that's helping drive up food prices to record levels. And the tragedy is that most starvation occurs not because food is unavailable but because it is expensive.
Our farmers: getting richer at the world poor's expense. It's not exactly genocide, but it's pretty damned close. And I bet most of them call themselves 'Christians'.
Hattip Instapundit
Our farmers: getting richer at the world poor's expense. It's not exactly genocide, but it's pretty damned close. And I bet most of them call themselves 'Christians'.
Hattip Instapundit
Destiny! Destiny! He is fleeing Destiny!
Come to think of it, this Presidency does resemble a bad Mel Brooks movie. We have the spectacle of Obama standing on the sidelines while the biggest leadership opportunity of our generation is passing him by. I always thought that it is for events like this that men seek the Presidency - to be great. Evidently not for The One. Noemie Emery explains. Hat tip my friend John Macauley.
A crisis is a bad thing to waste, Rahm Emanuel told him, but this is the second one in succession Obama has failed to finesse. With his first one -- the financial collapse that got him elected -- he tried to leverage it into a mammoth expansion of government, that led in turn to a mammoth resistance, to the rise of a new class of conservative heroes, and to a mammoth defeat in the House.
With the second -- the tsunami of debt rolling toward the country -- he is pretending it doesn't exist. In his State of the Union, he proposed still more spending, all on nonessentials.
Thirty-five minutes later, he (briefly) mentioned the deficit. Sensible liberal Ruth Marcus called it "a disturbing vacuum of leadership." Worse, she said, he undercut efforts by senators from both parties to rein in expenses.
"The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront the contradictions and educate Americans in the unpleasant realities of uncontrolled government," said Robert Samuelson. "He declined." Men of destiny try to pre-empt crises, not allow them to fester.
It was as if FDR gave a speech in 1940 on foreign affairs, and ignored Nazi Germany while he touted our friendly relations with Canada. This is not the way men of destiny act.
Obama is not transformational, and he will not be great. If he goes on like this, he will not even be adequate, but will go down in history as one of the soi-disant leaders who not only failed to master a crisis, but failed to admit one existed.
Indeed
A crisis is a bad thing to waste, Rahm Emanuel told him, but this is the second one in succession Obama has failed to finesse. With his first one -- the financial collapse that got him elected -- he tried to leverage it into a mammoth expansion of government, that led in turn to a mammoth resistance, to the rise of a new class of conservative heroes, and to a mammoth defeat in the House.
With the second -- the tsunami of debt rolling toward the country -- he is pretending it doesn't exist. In his State of the Union, he proposed still more spending, all on nonessentials.
Thirty-five minutes later, he (briefly) mentioned the deficit. Sensible liberal Ruth Marcus called it "a disturbing vacuum of leadership." Worse, she said, he undercut efforts by senators from both parties to rein in expenses.
"The State of the Union gave Obama the opportunity to confront the contradictions and educate Americans in the unpleasant realities of uncontrolled government," said Robert Samuelson. "He declined." Men of destiny try to pre-empt crises, not allow them to fester.
It was as if FDR gave a speech in 1940 on foreign affairs, and ignored Nazi Germany while he touted our friendly relations with Canada. This is not the way men of destiny act.
Obama is not transformational, and he will not be great. If he goes on like this, he will not even be adequate, but will go down in history as one of the soi-disant leaders who not only failed to master a crisis, but failed to admit one existed.
Indeed
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/02/obamas-moment-passes-him#ixzz1CvHfYpS5
"I need some help"
I ran into a woman the other day as I was walking in the West End amidst the snow squalls. She was heavy and shapeless with pale brown skin and the large, black freckles that mark the union of African and Celtic blood.
"I need some help, can you help me?"
"Maybe, what do you need?"
"I need twenny dollahs for a cab to take my things to the shelter - the man I'm living with - he's abusin' me and I gots to get out. Can you help me?" She pushed a tattered copy of a flier for a woman's shelter towards me - clearly she hadn't gotten it that day. Or that week.
I gestured towards my car: " I don't give money but I'll take you where you need to go and help you move"
"Oh I wouldn't want you to do that, he's awful mean. He does drugs and beats me and he would get angry if he saw you".
"Well I have lots of friends who can help"
"Oh he'd hurt them too"
"I'll take that risk"
It may sound strange, but as I've gotten older and lost my 'shine', I've become a little less concerned about personal safety and a little (a very little) more concerned about doing what's right - after all I've spent so much time in this life doing the wrong thing. Sometimes it leads me to take what in the past I would have called 'bad risks'. But not this time, because I had figured out her angle, her 'get'.
"Well maybe you could jus give me three dollahs for bus fare?" - she figured that maybe I'd buy her off for that. The snow was beginning to fall heavily now, filling her frizzy hair with glistening flakes.
"No, you don't need a bus ride in this snow, you need someone to help you move, I'm willing to do the whole thing - here's my car"
I could see the gears turning in her mind: "All I wanted was some money and here I have a damn fool who wants to 'help' me. Why do I get all of the idiots?"
That's the way it is with us mortals. I am constantly plotting about how I'm going to get money 'if old so and so would just hire me to do this gig' and so on. But God tells me that what I really need is to rely on His grace and on the love of His saints, my brothers and sisters. Only then can I truly get what I need, including money. But we - the freckled woman and I - don't want real help, real love, we want the money that allows us to flee other people, to be 'self sufficient', to be alone. And it was evident on that snowy day that God wasn't going to let either of us do that.
Finally with a sigh of disgusted resignation she waved me off and trudged on in the snow.
"I'm sorry", I called out after her.
For helping.
"I need some help, can you help me?"
"Maybe, what do you need?"
"I need twenny dollahs for a cab to take my things to the shelter - the man I'm living with - he's abusin' me and I gots to get out. Can you help me?" She pushed a tattered copy of a flier for a woman's shelter towards me - clearly she hadn't gotten it that day. Or that week.
I gestured towards my car: " I don't give money but I'll take you where you need to go and help you move"
"Oh I wouldn't want you to do that, he's awful mean. He does drugs and beats me and he would get angry if he saw you".
"Well I have lots of friends who can help"
"Oh he'd hurt them too"
"I'll take that risk"
It may sound strange, but as I've gotten older and lost my 'shine', I've become a little less concerned about personal safety and a little (a very little) more concerned about doing what's right - after all I've spent so much time in this life doing the wrong thing. Sometimes it leads me to take what in the past I would have called 'bad risks'. But not this time, because I had figured out her angle, her 'get'.
"Well maybe you could jus give me three dollahs for bus fare?" - she figured that maybe I'd buy her off for that. The snow was beginning to fall heavily now, filling her frizzy hair with glistening flakes.
"No, you don't need a bus ride in this snow, you need someone to help you move, I'm willing to do the whole thing - here's my car"
I could see the gears turning in her mind: "All I wanted was some money and here I have a damn fool who wants to 'help' me. Why do I get all of the idiots?"
That's the way it is with us mortals. I am constantly plotting about how I'm going to get money 'if old so and so would just hire me to do this gig' and so on. But God tells me that what I really need is to rely on His grace and on the love of His saints, my brothers and sisters. Only then can I truly get what I need, including money. But we - the freckled woman and I - don't want real help, real love, we want the money that allows us to flee other people, to be 'self sufficient', to be alone. And it was evident on that snowy day that God wasn't going to let either of us do that.
Finally with a sigh of disgusted resignation she waved me off and trudged on in the snow.
"I'm sorry", I called out after her.
For helping.
Free markets don't have shortages.
But rigged ones do. Witness the growing generic cancer drug shortage in America. Hat tip instapundit.
Certainly, at hospitals. In fact, the shortage of injectable generics for cancer and other serious diseases is forcing many hospitals to scramble to locate meds or find alternatives. In some cases, the FDA has allowed imports, but the agency approval process has also meant fewer new available generics. “We think this is near a crisis situation,” Bona Benjamin, a director at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, a pharmacist trade group, tells The Wall Street Journal.
Numbers, of course, help tell the story. The FDA reports a record 178 drug shortages in 2010, up from 157 the year earlier and 55 five years ago. And here is the latest list. You’ll notice this is much shorter than the list indicating shortages that have been resolved (take a peek).
The problem, by the way, has been exacerbated by difficulties at Teva Pharmaceuticals and Hospira, which are two of the larger generic suppliers. Both, however, have received warning letters citing contamination and other problems (see here andhere). And Teva temporarily closed a plant in California last April to upgrade it, the paper notes, exacerbating shortages of chemotherapy drugs.
This is actually not the real crisis. The real crisis is that so few new and generic equivalent drugs are being 'approved' by our 'public servants'. After a blaze of reform in the first Bush administration, the bureaucratic wheels have slowly, surely ground to a halt. 'ain't no gain to the bureaucracy in approving drugs, just risk. Of course I 'dedicated', 'sophisticated', 'committed' media will pin the blame on 'greedy drug makers' who won't work at a loss.
It goes without saying that state level regulation would be less onerous and because of state to state competition, would be less risk averse and more market focused.
Break it up, break it all up.
Lie of the Year?
Now that the individual mandate has been struck down by district courts perhaps its time to go back and ask where it came from? After all, Barack Obama explicitly disowned individual mandates so he could defeat Hilary Clinton in the primaries. Remember that?
"Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There's a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She'd have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don't have such a mandate because I don't think the problem is that people don't want health insurance, it's that they can't afford it," [then-Sen. Barack] Obama said in a Feb. 28, 2008 appearance on Ellen DeGeneres' television show. "So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it's one that she's tried to elevate, arguing that because I don't force people to buy health care that I'm not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn't."And then he got power and 'woops!' he implemented that which he had explicitly disavowed. He does a lot of that, doesn't he? As Jim Geraghty says: "All of Obama's promises have expiration dates. All of them". Lie of the year? I bet I know what Hillary thinks....
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Oddly enough, the Chinese didn't invent this
Innovation that makes a difference for people's lives is why we need to cut back the state and renew our liberty. Free nations give their citizens the space to innovate. Captive nations don't. Someone tell dictator bootlick Thomas Friedman. Hat tip Instapundit
FASTER, PLEASE: Spray-on Skin Is a Reality. “The skin gun is not science fiction—it’s a prototype medical device that literally sprays skin cells onto burn victims to re-grow skin. Old methods like skin grafts took weeks to heal; the skin gun needs about an hour. We’ve heard about the spray-on skin gun back in 2008 but we didn’t think it’d become this real, this useful, this fast. Though it is still technically in an experimental stage, the skin gun has already successfully treated over a dozen burn victims.” Note: Don’t follow the link if images of burn victims bother you. (Thanks to reader Douglas Oosting for the link.)
Perhaps we need some global warming - most of northern hemisphere covered in snow and ice
Al Gore: Call your service.
We're all terrorists now
Having a Federal government with too many responsibilities and too much money leads to remarkable silliness. Remind me why I need a DC based agency to protect me in Webster Groves, MO? Does Denmark have a Brussels based agency protecting them? If not, how can they possibly be protected?
This follows a long line of fusion center and DHS reports labeling broad swaths of the public as a threat to national security. The North Texas Fusion System labeled Muslim lobbyists as a potential threat; a DHS analyst in Wisconsin thought both pro- and anti-abortion activists were worrisome; a Pennsylvania homeland security contractor watched environmental activists, Tea Party groups, and a Second Amendment rally; the Maryland State Police put anti-death penalty and anti-war activists in a federal terrorism database; a fusion center in Missouri thought thatall third-party voters and Ron Paul supporters were a threat; and the Department of Homeland Security described half of the American political spectrum as “right wing extremists.”
Hat tip Instapundit
A conceptual chart does not define reality
Someone named Meredith Whitney is the latest in a long line of doomsayers to predict a downward spiral in America's (insert your category here - economic, political, social, foreign policy, technological, yadda yadda) fortunes. Yet one could just as easily replace her dark nouns with bright shiny ones like 'innovation', 'productivity', 'global growth', and 'risk taking'. Powerpoint is so flexible that way....
Someone said "nobody ever got rich betting against this country". He was right. Ignore La Whiney and believe in your country. We are still the future.
Someone said "nobody ever got rich betting against this country". He was right. Ignore La Whiney and believe in your country. We are still the future.
Only three hundred nine million nine hundred and ninety five thousand to go.
The Flag counter tells me that over 5,000 unique Americans have visited this blog over the last year. I now get around 75 new unique visitors a day (excluding the deeply disturbed few who come more than once). At this rate all Americans will have visited my site......never. I've also had about 750 visit me from other nations.
So thanks to all you: the few, the proud, but mostly the bored: my readers.
So thanks to all you: the few, the proud, but mostly the bored: my readers.
Sociology Reeves Family Style
My 14 year old daughter Amelia and two of her friends shoveled (let me repeat, didn't 'help' by standing around complaining, but SHOVELED) the drive. Not fluffy snow but tons of gnarly, icy sleet. In 15 degree weather (wind chill 0).
Never underestimate the fierce determination of women to shop after two days trapped inside.
Jobless Recovery or Productivity Revolution?
Both. Read this:
One benefit of the long and painful recession is that companies and organizations have figured out how to become more efficient and “do more with less,” and that is reflected in the fact that GDP per U.S. worker went from $91,365 (in 2005 dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2007 to $96,231 in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase in worker productivity of 5.32 percent. Perhaps those impressive gains in labor productivity over the last several years help explain why we are now experiencing a “jobless recovery” with a stubbornly high unemployment rate—companies have been able to expand output without hiring very many, if any, additional workers.
We're producing more with fewer workers. This is a good thing if it is driven by markets. Unfortunately this has been driven not by markets but by state regulation and fear thereof. France has very productive workers, just very few of them. This is because France (and increasingly the US) makes employing workers expensive. This results in employers economizing on employees by investing heavily in technology and excluding the youngest and least productive workers from the workforce. The result is lots of productivity with lots of un- and underemployment.
In the past the US' unregulated economy delivered both high productivity and high employment. The fact that we are only able to achieve one is a logical consequence of shifting from free market to corporatist economic policy. Becoming France is not an achievement. It is a disaster.
One benefit of the long and painful recession is that companies and organizations have figured out how to become more efficient and “do more with less,” and that is reflected in the fact that GDP per U.S. worker went from $91,365 (in 2005 dollars) in the fourth quarter of 2007 to $96,231 in the fourth quarter of 2010, an increase in worker productivity of 5.32 percent. Perhaps those impressive gains in labor productivity over the last several years help explain why we are now experiencing a “jobless recovery” with a stubbornly high unemployment rate—companies have been able to expand output without hiring very many, if any, additional workers.
We're producing more with fewer workers. This is a good thing if it is driven by markets. Unfortunately this has been driven not by markets but by state regulation and fear thereof. France has very productive workers, just very few of them. This is because France (and increasingly the US) makes employing workers expensive. This results in employers economizing on employees by investing heavily in technology and excluding the youngest and least productive workers from the workforce. The result is lots of productivity with lots of un- and underemployment.
In the past the US' unregulated economy delivered both high productivity and high employment. The fact that we are only able to achieve one is a logical consequence of shifting from free market to corporatist economic policy. Becoming France is not an achievement. It is a disaster.
Why is Wall Street so addicted to elite colleges?
I used to run recruiting (in addition to my day job) for a global consulting house. We recruited at 20 schools but preferred to hire from the top 5 or 6. The big reasons? First there were proportionately more good candidates at the best schools so screening efforts were lower. Second the best schools had the older, more polished candidates. One of the biggest drivers of 'B School Excellence' is the average number of years of experience the entering students had - at HBS it's really high. This tends to be an attractive trait for those who are spending a lot of money on talent and who are exposing that talent to high level client executives early on.
All in all, the study makes sense from my point of view. And the fundamental critique: why trust college admissions offices to make your decisions for you also makes sense. This is just an easy, low risk way to find bright, hard working talent that won't embarrass you. But it's not particularly egalitarian in its conception.
Hat tip instapundit
The snobbery is very precise: you have to go to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and, perhaps, Wharton. And the reason for this is not the belief that these schools provide the best education—in fact, many of those evaluating job candidates were critical of the education offered by these schools. Rather, it seems that the elite firms are simply using getting into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Standford and Wharton as a proxy for intelligence.
All in all, the study makes sense from my point of view. And the fundamental critique: why trust college admissions offices to make your decisions for you also makes sense. This is just an easy, low risk way to find bright, hard working talent that won't embarrass you. But it's not particularly egalitarian in its conception.
Hat tip instapundit
It just gets worse and worse - job loss severity
Job loss severity continues to look like a Great Depression curve, not a postwar one. Not surprising given that the powers that be took a GD approach to the problem. Hat tip Reason.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
We rock
Saint Louis has developed a fearsome reputation as a Tea Party hotbed. I am so proud.
Democrats announced earlier today that they’d be holding their 2012 national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. Apparently St. Louis was in the running to get the convention, but according to Dave Canatenese at Politico Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill campaigned against bringing the convention there saying it would certainly be targeted by protesters:
Ms. McCaskill, one of the president’s closest friends in the Senate, took her concerns directly to the White House, according to party leaders familiar with the selection process. She argued that her re-election could be complicated if the convention was held in St. Louis, because the Democratic gathering will almost certainly attract protesters and compete for fund-raising.
St. Louis has an extremely active tea party movement (in which blogger Jim Hoft is active), and McCaskill has been plagued by their protests for some time now.
If this is why Democrats moved their convention from St. Louis to Charlotte, it’s a real coup for the movement and its influence.
Democrats, if this account is accurate, are literally running scared.
What hath Obama wrought in Missouri?
I was perusing the Missouri state house and senate results today (blizzards do that) and I was shocked by what I found: Republicans control 26 of 34 State Senate seats....that's 26 to 8 for the Rs. In the State House, they control 106 of 163...that's 106 to 57. In the US Senate race the Democrat lost every county except Jackson (KC), and St. Louis City and county. Outside of the older, shrinking urban areas the Democrat party has for all intents and purposes ceased to exist. This is in Missouri, a state that was historically Democrat even during the Civil War.
It certainly shows what incompetent leftist leadership can do for you. And it gives me a lot of hope for change.
It certainly shows what incompetent leftist leadership can do for you. And it gives me a lot of hope for change.
Egyptian Debunking
There is a lot of foofera going on about why the Egyptians are revolting after 30 years of Hosni Mubarak Rule. The principal message is that Egyptians are tired of their poverty - the autocratic Mubarak and his family have looted the country so on and so forth. This is the common refrain of westerners when they are confronted with a crisis of legitimacy in a less developed country. The problem isn't that the Egyptians aren't relatively poor because they are, or that the Mubaraks aren't corrupt. The problem is that those facts don't explain why these events are happening now. According to Wikipedia and the CIA Factbook, when Hosni Mubarak took over per capita real Egyptian GDP was around $1,350. Today? $6,200 per capita. Real output has risen over 4.5 times - if the US government had done as well.....well lets just say we wouldn't be in the pickle we are now.
Indeed Tunisia also had a record of successful autocratic rule as has currently shaky Jordan. And all of these countries have had more success in freeing their economies and accelerating growth in the last ten years. Government has gotten better and has enabled the economy to deliver more. So why are they blowing up now?
Rising expectations. Really poor countries have very few educated and informed citizens and therefore are relatively easy to control - intimidate the intelligensia, coopt the merchants, control the army and you've got yourself a nice little autocracy with your own plane, designer uniforms and those cool sunglasses they all wear. But start getting a largish, prosperous middle class chock full of education, and independence and you set off a storm of rising expectations. Couple that with a media revolution which has made satellite TV and internet ubiquitous in the Arab world and you have all the ingredients for an "envy" revolution. Egyptians are no longer looking at how well they are doing this year vs. ten years ago, they are looking at how well they are doing versus other nations. And they feel humiliated. This need to not only be more prosperous than last year but to have pride in one's nation is what is driving the demands for change. The old autocrats have become embarrassing and therefore have outlived their usefulness.
But what is or at least should be frightening to Egyptians, Tunisians and Jordanians is the very real possibility that by throwing out 'old but dirty faithful' they will get something worse.
Just ask the Iranians.
Indeed Tunisia also had a record of successful autocratic rule as has currently shaky Jordan. And all of these countries have had more success in freeing their economies and accelerating growth in the last ten years. Government has gotten better and has enabled the economy to deliver more. So why are they blowing up now?
Rising expectations. Really poor countries have very few educated and informed citizens and therefore are relatively easy to control - intimidate the intelligensia, coopt the merchants, control the army and you've got yourself a nice little autocracy with your own plane, designer uniforms and those cool sunglasses they all wear. But start getting a largish, prosperous middle class chock full of education, and independence and you set off a storm of rising expectations. Couple that with a media revolution which has made satellite TV and internet ubiquitous in the Arab world and you have all the ingredients for an "envy" revolution. Egyptians are no longer looking at how well they are doing this year vs. ten years ago, they are looking at how well they are doing versus other nations. And they feel humiliated. This need to not only be more prosperous than last year but to have pride in one's nation is what is driving the demands for change. The old autocrats have become embarrassing and therefore have outlived their usefulness.
But what is or at least should be frightening to Egyptians, Tunisians and Jordanians is the very real possibility that by throwing out 'old but dirty faithful' they will get something worse.
Just ask the Iranians.
Severability clause? They blew the Severability clause?
All complex legislation (or indeed any large scale endeavor) is subject to the potential invalidation of one or more of its provisions - complexity guarantees mistakes. Therefore, the wise legislator bungs a "Severability" clause into every bill. This clause essentially says: "invalidation of any part of this legislation does not invalidate the whole". That way the proponents can go back and fix the offending bits without blowing up the entire bill and having to start over. Pretty standard stuff, really. And something that one would assume that a bunch of Hope and Change filled Harvard lawyers would have learned at their mother lawyer's knee.
Yet the Obami blew it. Didn't put in the clause. Furthermore they made the argument that without the offending passage relating to the individual mandate, the entire 2,700 page train wreck wouldn't work. Let me repeat that: not only did they not put in the little 'protecto-clause', they announced to the world that invalidating the most constitutionally vulnerable provisions would blow the whole thing up. Which is the equivalent of putting a huge kick me sign on Obama's keister. So surprise, surprise! the entire thing was thrown out.
The question I have is this: how did they know? I mean, how did they know that 'it' wouldn't work without the individual mandate? Given that no one had read the thing and therefore no one understood it, how could they have know what would or would not make it work? And why then, since they didn't understand their own bill, did they make such a definitive argument effectively daring the judge to toss the whole mess?
And of course, given all of the spurious self dealing BS encompassed in the 2,700 pages, how could they have forgotten to toss in a simple severability clause?
These cats aren't just left wing power freaks, they're incompetent left wing power freaks. Such are the wages of a lifetime of unchallenged arrogance.
Yet the Obami blew it. Didn't put in the clause. Furthermore they made the argument that without the offending passage relating to the individual mandate, the entire 2,700 page train wreck wouldn't work. Let me repeat that: not only did they not put in the little 'protecto-clause', they announced to the world that invalidating the most constitutionally vulnerable provisions would blow the whole thing up. Which is the equivalent of putting a huge kick me sign on Obama's keister. So surprise, surprise! the entire thing was thrown out.
The question I have is this: how did they know? I mean, how did they know that 'it' wouldn't work without the individual mandate? Given that no one had read the thing and therefore no one understood it, how could they have know what would or would not make it work? And why then, since they didn't understand their own bill, did they make such a definitive argument effectively daring the judge to toss the whole mess?
And of course, given all of the spurious self dealing BS encompassed in the 2,700 pages, how could they have forgotten to toss in a simple severability clause?
These cats aren't just left wing power freaks, they're incompetent left wing power freaks. Such are the wages of a lifetime of unchallenged arrogance.
Nanny Bloomberg once again illustrates why 'liberalism' is discredited and dying
NYC is choked with snow, uncollected garbage and uncontrolled bed bugs. It's infrastructure is crumbling and its schools are bad. So what is it's mayor spending his time on? Illegal gun stings 3,000 miles away in Arizona. Arizona, ladies and gentlemen.
I suppose it is a lot easier to dump on other people than to do one's own job. And I thought Bloomie was brighter than this.
I suppose it is a lot easier to dump on other people than to do one's own job. And I thought Bloomie was brighter than this.
Another reason why the great state expansion (and then collapse) is going to be so devastating
Our big blue cities, having alienated productive citizens with high taxes, regulations and hostility to the traditional culture are now almost totally dependent upon the state for employment and economic survival. Now with the state bankrupt, the policy insensitive sources of employment that they've relied upon are set for a radical reduction. Detroit is merely the most extreme example of this reliance. Be prepared for bankruptcy after bankruptcy among our so called 'great' cities. Hat tip carpe deim
Why does GE pay 3.6 percent tax rate and Walmart a 33 percent one?
Well for starters, GE is allied with those that hold state power and with its green initiatives and whatnot does their bidding. It isn't for nothing that GE CEO Jeff Immelt is Barack Obama's favorite business executive. By contrast Walmart merely serves the proles, improving their lives with lower prices and where's the power value in that? Indeed Walmart, far more than any governmental or charitable institution, is responsible for the improved standard of living among the least of us.
And our elites hate competition. Hat tip Taxprofblog.
And our elites hate competition. Hat tip Taxprofblog.
Science and God
This is an interesting article about scientists and religious belief. It turns out that Richard Dawkins' claim that most scientists are atheists is not true. But the author goes even further and challenges the basic premise that scientists are more qualified to opine on the transcendent than mere mortals. The money graf:
I also point out that the article is written in the resolutely leftist Guardian of London - it is almost inconceivable that such an intellectually balanced article on Christian faith could be written in one of our main stream media outlets.
Well worth a read. Hat tip www.realclearreligion.org
My friend Robbie Griggs points out that this has all been said more eloquently before:
Should we read anything into this? One over-hasty conclusion, a good example of what Sir Sir Humphrey Appleby called "minister's logic", is that it hammers another nail into God's coffin. Thus: 1) Elite scientists know more about the way the world works than other people. 2) A disproportionate number of elite scientists don't believe in God. 3) Therefore God (probably) doesn't exist.
What is interesting about this argument is not so much the questionable inference, as the questionable first premise. Our conviction that scientists, elite or otherwise, are somehow better qualified to discern the nature of reality is dubious. Elite scientists undoubtedly know vastly more about their subject than other people. But to imagine that that makes them somehow better qualified to adjudicate on big-picture questions is like saying because I know my home town like the back of my hand, I am well-equipped to lecture on European geography.
The author goes on to speculate that Christians, in particular are probably 'less intelligent' on average than non-believers because Christ and the religion he founded were resolutely anti-elitist, targeting the least of them. Yet this contains within it another questionable premise: that intelligence encompasses the ability to access the physical world but not the metaphysical one. After all, who is in a better position to understand true reality: someone who comprehends 1% of physical reality but does not know its source or someone who comprehends 0.8% of that reality but knows its maker and ruler? Is it better to be clever or have connection to the source of all knowledge?I also point out that the article is written in the resolutely leftist Guardian of London - it is almost inconceivable that such an intellectually balanced article on Christian faith could be written in one of our main stream media outlets.
Well worth a read. Hat tip www.realclearreligion.org
My friend Robbie Griggs points out that this has all been said more eloquently before:
1 Corinthians 1:26-31 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord."
Nuf said.
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