Wednesday, August 24, 2011
It was not the war that cured the Great Depression
As evidenced by the fact that the big rise in output for private consumption occurred AFTER the war
World War II increased GDP, but more than 100% of the increase was devoted to munitions, building the Pentagon, employing teams of bureaucrats to control prices and government activity generally, much of it misguided. Gross Private Product decreased from $921 billion in 2005 dollars in 1940 to $427 billion in 1944, well below 1932’s level, showing that the private economy was badly squeezed. Then in 1946, while GDP decreased by 11%, GPP more than doubled to $1,309 billion. Readjustment was inflationary and disruptive, but it saw an astonishing increase in output and living standards.
The Keynesian thesis can be further demolished by looking at 1946 compared to 1938-40. At the tail end of the Great Depression, in November 1938, there was a massive turnover in the U.S. Congress, similar to the Tea Party revolt of 2010, in which the Republicans gained six Senate seats and an astonishing 72 House seats (9 more than in 2010). Although this did not give them a majority, it stopped dead the New Deal policies of heavy state spending and economic experimentation. GDP increased by 8% per annum between 1938 and 1940 and GPP increased even more rapidly, by 9.2% per annum.
This pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression, with 1940 GPP 10% above that of 1929, but left the economy far below capacity. If you apply the average 1929-2000 growth rate of 3.43% per annum to 1929’s GPP, you get a 1940 full employment GPP estimate of $1,203 billion in 2005 dollars, 31% above the actual figure. That suggests that without the war the 1938-40 boom would naturally have continued, perhaps slowing somewhat, until it ran up against resource constraints. Apply 1938-40’s actual growth rate to the next six years and you get a 1946 GPP of $1,558 billion, 19% above actual 1946 GPP. Applying the 1929-2000 growth rate to 1929 GPP gives you $1,473 billion in 1946, 13% above the actual level. 1947 and 1948 showed further GPP increases, but reduced actual GPP’s gap below full employment GPP only to 11%.
Bottom line: without the war, GPP would have continued recovering at a rapid rate after 1940, probably giving a higher GPP by 1946. Second bottom line: a combination of the Great Depression and the war, probably mostly the latter, depressed 1946’s GPP by around 10%-12% below the level it would naturally have reached in a free peaceful market.
Intuitively this makes sense. As policy was stabilized after 1938, the U.S. economy began recovering rapidly to its natural full-employment level. World War II depressed the private economy to a low level, but its effect was mostly temporary, with an astonishing bounce-back as peace returned. However, a combination of the Great Depression and the damage caused by the war caused the United States to lose about 10%-12% of its full-employment output by 1946-48 (catching up which long-term may have resulted in the exceptionally good economic performance of 1948-66.) The Keynesian story of World War II’s economic boost makes no sense; this one does.
More HERE
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Perry supports Israel
Over at Commentary, Alana Goodman profiles the lawyers responsible for stopping the second Gaza flotilla by cleverly threatening lawsuits against any entities involved in helping the flotilla. "Led by Nitsana Darshan-Leitner and her husband Avi Leitner, the legal center is pioneering a new strategy of Israeli-self defense: Pro-Israel Lawfare."
One of the means at their disposal was threatening lawsuits against the Americans participating in the flotilla. "[The] lawyers discovered American flotilla activists were potentially in violation of the Neutrality Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from taking part in a hostile act against an allied country. “So we approached the Attorney General of the United States to fix it. And we also got Gov. Rick Perry to write a letter to Eric Holder,” said Darshan-Leitner."
Why did the Israeli lawyer approach Perry, Goodman asks. Because as Darshan-Leitner explains, she met Perry on one of his trips to Israel and he told her he'd do anything to help her fight. Perry told Darshan-Leitner: "I love what you do. It’s amazing what you do. If you ever need help combating Israel’s enemies, I’m here to assist."
Perry was genuinely enthusiastic about combating Israel's enemies and certainly put his reputation where his mouth is by writing a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder about the matter. Fellow supporters of Israel may just have found the best presidential contender in Gov. Perry.
SOURCE
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A far-reaching decision in favor of freedom
The federal appeals court ruling that struck down the centerpiece of Obamacare has dealt a massive, possibly fatal, blow to the government-imposed health care system passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress over bitter public opposition.
The decision earlier this month by a divided, three-member panel in the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta, with the support of a judge named by President Clinton, condemned a central provision that will force uninsured Americans to buy health insurance or else face financial punishment.
The court said the mandate was an unconstitutional extension of government's excessive regulation of interstate commerce -- in this case, requiring people to purchase a private commercial product they may not need, want, or be able to afford.
The judges called the legislation President Obama proposed and signed into law March 22, 2010, "breathtaking in its expansive scope." And they didn't mean that as a compliment.
The national news media routinely, perhaps grudgingly, reported the court's decision, but in the days that followed seemed to dismiss the ruling as a one-day story with few lasting repercussions.
But the law, after all, was the authoritarian core of the president's social and economic agenda, one that he spent more than a year battling on Capitol Hill against a furious groundswell of grass-roots opposition that gave birth to the tea party revolution and sharply eroded his support among independents and senior citizens who feared the costly reforms would come at the expense of Medicare benefits.
The court didn't mince words, characterizing the new law's sweeping mandate as an unprecedented and dangerous assault on the fundamental rights and liberties of American citizens. That's why its criticisms deserve more attention than they have been given thus far. Like this one:
"This economic mandate represents a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority: the ability to compel Americans to purchase an expensive health insurance product they have elected not to buy, and to make them re-purchase that insurance product every month for their entire lives," the court ruled in its 2-1 decision.
The court said that if Congress can force Americans to buy, under penalty of law, health insurance plans under the guise of the Constitution's Commerce Clause, then they can compel us to purchase almost anything.
The appellate court said that if we let Congress to get away with this, then "there is no reason why Congress could not similarly compel Americans to insure against any number of unforeseeable but serious risks."
"Individuals subjected to this economic mandate have not made a voluntary choice to enter the stream of commerce, but instead are having that choice imposed upon them by the federal government," the judges said, adding that "we are unable to conceive of any product whose purchase Congress could not mandate under this line of argument."
Further strengthening their argument against the unrestricted reach of the Commerce Clause to sanction any and all regulation of our personal economic decision-making, the court set forth this self-evident constitutional barrier that it said Congress cannot violate:
"... what Congress cannot do under the overused Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die."
A key complaint by the court concerns the government's false claim that the financial charge it would levy on those who refuse to buy health insurance is actually just another tax, not a penalty.
"Not one of the courts which so far has ruled, no matter what the decisions, has agreed with the Obama administration that the penalty for not buying insurance is really a 'tax," said Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a Washington public-policy think tank that has spearheaded opposition to Obamacare.
"The government thinks calling it a tax is its home-free ticket. It's unlikely to work," she said in a recent analysis of the appeals court ruling.
The case that the appeals court decided against the government was filed in Florida by 26 states, along with the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation's small-business association whose members will be hit hard by $52 billion in new taxes under the health care law.
Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, testified before the House Budget Committee in February that Obamacare will result in 800,000 fewer jobs at a time when good-paying jobs are in short supply.
But something else is at stake here in a legal battle that will end up being decided by the highest court in the land. "As with so many other issues in this historic debate, it ultimately all comes down to freedom -- and whether it will be lost or preserved pending decisions by the Supreme Court and the voters next year," Turner writes.
The 11th Circuit Court's unflinchingly courageous ruling lays out the deeply disturbing reasons why Obamacare poses the single greatest threat to freedom by an all-powerful federal government.
SOURCE
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Obama Is a Robot That Needs Reprogramming
President Obama's legacy is shaping up to be a recurring cycle of rhetorical failures chasing policy failures, an endless, stupefying effort to convince us of the wisdom of pursuing -- again and again -- policies that have already failed.
This point is reinforced as we read reports about Obama's umpteenth luxurious golf outing while our economy and financial condition approach DEFCON 2 and Middle East turmoil continues apace.
From the superficial snippets we get from the liberal media, Obama doesn't seem to be too concerned with either domestic or foreign policy while on the links, but to the extent he allocates thought to either, he's contemplating his next speech more than deliberating over any substantive decisions.
From all appearances, he's not fretting over the grim jobs reports and hints of creeping inflation; he's not meditating or seeking advice about a new direction he could propose to navigate us out of this malaise.
He's thinking about his abysmal approval ratings, wondering how he can fob those off on President Bush, too. And he's thinking about how he can con the nation into permitting him to give us more doses of the same poisonous elixirs he crammed down our throats the first time.
If he really cared what the people think, he might try listening to them instead of just pretending to be on a listening tour. When an Iowan farmer tried to gently school him on the depressing effects of stifling governmental regulations, Obama cavalierly blew him off and launched into one of his canned monologues deriding income disparities and partisanship. He's got to be the closest thing to a robot ever to inhabit the Oval Office.
As an incorrigible and stunningly narrow-minded ideologue, Obama can't process information or ideas that don't conform to his presuppositions and predispositions. When his policies don't work, it must be because conditions were worse than he'd realized or he didn't go far enough. There is utterly no room for consideration of the possibility that his policies don't work.
So it was that last year when Obama returned from Martha's Vineyard, he didn't emerge revealing any hint of humility about the ongoing failure of his economic prescriptions. He didn't announce that economic realities had finally forced him to take a second look at the wisdom of his agenda.
Instead, he strode into Wisconsin and Ohio to unveil a "bold economic program," as if his $800 billion stimulus package hadn't been brassy enough. He called for "quickly" investing some $50 billion in roads, bridges and other public works projects and, of course, for his obligatory tax hikes for the evil "rich," who could always "afford to give back a little more."
I don't know why more people didn't outright ridicule this juvenile idea at the time. If not already, at what point will he have forfeited the privilege of being taken seriously about the economy? At a time when almost every thinking American was becoming increasingly horrified at the national debt, Obama was proposing that we increase it substantially more in pursuit of policies that had already failed. He never provided any glimpse into the bizarre thought process that had led him to believe that $50 billion could jump-start an economy when 16 times that amount had not.
In the past year, since Obama attempted that preposterous Stimulus II, the people have made it even clearer how opposed they are to his reckless Keynesian schemes, but he refuses to hear them. Just as with Obamacare, he has no intention of deviating from his programmed course. His only challenge is to repackage it -- and fool us into buying it in fewer than 54 speeches this time.
That's right. Believe it or not, in between holes, he's crafting a grand September speech, "mapping out a jobs package that he hopes can boost a sluggish economy and win over voters who are coming to doubt his leadership," according to the Los Angeles Times.
He's not about to propose that the government, to stimulate growth, relax its stranglehold on the private sector by loosening onerous regulations, easing the tax burden, and drastically reducing spending. Those do not compute.
He's going to propose -- in a different, perhaps more deceptive, form -- the same blueprint: government spending of borrowed money to "stimulate" growth. And he'll ratchet up his attack on Republicans, blaming them, along with his predecessor, for obstructing his ingenious reforms. To make his case, he will have to revise history to distort the fact that he had supermajorities in Congress long enough to get his way on the omnibus bill, the stimulus package and Obamacare and that they've all greatly exacerbated our financial crisis.
Obama's puerile predictability is pathetic, but even more so, it's tragic. If only there were a way to reprogram this robot.
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Huge rate of criminality among illegal immigrants
A generally unnoticed aspect of Obama's new deportation plan for illegals is the assertion by the Obama admin. that the immigration service has the capacity to deport serious criminals only. That's a heck of a lot of serious criminals! Around 400,000 in fact. It is graphic testimony to the high rate of criminality among illegals -- and it's not "racists" who are saying so. This could well be a foot-shot for the Left in the medium term.
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Winston Churchill and two famous sayings
"A man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart; A man who is still a socialist at age 30 has no head".
Who said that? Most people attribute it to Winston but as far as I can tell it was first said by Georges Clemenceau, French Premier in WWI -- whose own career approximated the transition concerned. And he in turn was simply updating an earlier saying about monarchy versus Republicanism by Guizot.
More obscurely, I wonder about a saying attributed to Bismarck, the towering 19th century statesman who unified Germany and gave Europe over 40 years of peace thereafter. Bismarck is often quoted as saying that the next European war would arise over "Some damn-fool thing in the Balkans" - which it did of course. But did Bismarck actually say that? I have been able to trace it back only to Churchill as having quoted it.
German sites (e.g. here) have MANY collections of Bismarck quotes and nothing like it appears there. Bismarck did say that the Balkans were not worth the life of of a single German soldier (Der ganze Balkan ist nicht die gesunden Knochen eines einzigen pommerschen Grenadiers wert) so did Churchill embroider on that? I would be interested to hear if anyone knows anything more
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Hate on PBS
Gwen Ifill of PBS had a “panel of cultural and academic luminaries” at Martha’s Vineyard Performing Arts Center last Wednesday. Their purpose was to have an “effective racial dialogue” with one another.
As is typically the case when there is a “racial dialogue,” the panel was filled with like-minded liberals endlessly agreeing with each other and solving nothing. The participants included, among others, Gwen Ifill, New York Times columnists Charles Blow, and Anita Hill–who is apparently a “legal commentator.” Absent was a single conservative. Maybe an insightful conversation could have occurred if there were actually diverse thoughts present.
Instead they had Tim Wise, a supposed “anti-racist” author and speaker. Wise is popular among college leftists for his style and bold remarks. Some of those remarks, however, are possibly the most angry, hateful remarks any public figure has recently uttered. For example, Wise recently attacked not only Andrew Breitbart, but his family as well:
“[Andrew Breitbart]…I want that bastard destroyed. Now. [...] when I say I want him destroyed I am not kidding. I want to see him penniless, homeless, begging on the street for money to buy food [...] he can die on the street so far as I’m concerned [...] let you and your rich ass Brentwood family suffer”
Wise also falsely and embarrassingly accused Breitbart of approving of a cross burning, which was in reality directed at Breitbart and his friend. Wise then reiterated:
“this Tulane grad [Tim Wise] is committed to [Andrew Breitbart's] utter destruction …I mean, the kind of destruction that involves the complete evisceration of his entire career. I want him destroyed. Penniless. Starving. I have never detested anyone this much…but for him, I will make an exception.”
Yes, penniless, starving, the evisceration of Breitbart’s career, we get it. Good luck with that, Tim. His recent racial slur of Herman Cain would, in a just world, disqualify him from being a prominent “anti-racist” and being invited to these events. But it doesn’t; instead, he has two new books coming out which will probably become required reading in college campuses across the country, like his previous books.
The question is, will Gwen Ifill, PBS, and CNN give this man a platform like they have in the past to spread his ideas on “effective racial dialogue” and “reconciliation?”
It is a discredit to anyone who invites Tim Wise into a dialogue which is supposed to be about uncovering hatred and bigotry. This is, after all, the same Tim Wise that has said the following:
“Glenn Beck is no better than the Nazis he praises…and deserves the same fate.”
“[I am] annoyed by this obnoxious applause which air travelers are expected to offer military personnel in uniform”
“…that pathetic little racist nation [Israel] couldn’t survive one month without U.S. support…and Israel is the anti-semitic state[...]”
“the evidence is clear by now: the right wing are terrorist enablers, and should be preventatively detained.”
“the conservative right and all of it’s members are, at some level or another, racists, without a single exception…I dare anyone to prove me wrong…find me one such person who doesn’t believe that blacks, for instance, are either inherently or culturally defective relative to whites (both racist beliefs)…”
“Anyone who would vote for this bigoted, ignorant, uneducated fool [Michele Bachmann], is, themselves, a bigoted, ignorant, uneducated fool…NO exceptions…”
“there’s just no nice way to say this: Sarah Palin is a goddamned historically illiterate idiot, and anyone who likes her is too…”
“birthers should be medicated…forcibly. I mean this. It is not hyperbole. I believe in shoving pills down their throats to bring them back to something resembling sanity. I want to start with Donald Trump.”
“the GOP and their Democratic enablers are straight up evil…enemies of women, all women, and a collection of misogynistic rape-empowering jack holes…no exceptions. And if you support them on this, the critique applies to you…”
“Tea Party…why you so stoopid? It makes my head hurt, and makes me support things like preventative detention for morons”
“any conservative who doesn’t openly condemn these tea-bag racists should be considered every bit as vile and racist themselves.”
“The right wing is insane, filled with conspiracy mongering whack-a-doodles, whose penchant for dishonesty and evil lie-mongering has no equivalent. Period.”
“I want white Arizona brought to its knees right about now. Destroyed economically. Wiped out. Completely, except for those allies who are prepared to step up and fight the fascists who are waging war on black and brown folks. Speak now, or you are the enemy and should be treated as such…”
The bottom line is that Tim Wise shouldn’t be taken seriously, let alone asked to appear on PBS or CNN. Gwen Ifill shouldn’t be asking him for his insights, and shouldn’t want to be associated with such a hateful person.
SOURCE
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Honda creates new manufacturing jobs —in Mexico
Last week, Japanese automaker, Honda, announced a decision to spend $800 million to open another plant in North America to produce the exact kind of sub-compact vehicle that will help them meet the overly ambitious mileage guidelines laid out by the Obama Administration.
Honda has a long history of building plants in the United States with the first opening in 1979, and has even advertised their commitment to the American worker by featuring their Marysville, Ohio plant. In fact, Honda directly employs 25,000 Americans.
The new plant is scheduled to open in 2014, and would be a coup for any American state to get the jobs and tax revenues it will create.
Unfortunately, the plant is being built in Mexico, where Honda has two other production facilities. Yes, Mexico. The same Mexico where the very survival of the federal government is threatened by the drug cartels. The same Mexico that is notorious for a culture of graft both petty and large. The same Mexico where business executives need armed bodyguards for themselves and their families around the clock due to the threat of kidnapping.
That is where Honda decided to build a new automobile manufacturing plant over any of the 50 states in the United States.
While Honda is not saying why they chose a politically unstable, personally unsafe country over the United States, perhaps some clues can be found by looking at the two countries.
The Tax Foundation reports that Mexico ranks 9th in corporate taxes with an effective rate of 30 percent, and zero state taxes. When state taxes are taken into account, the United States on average is ranked as having the second highest taxes in the world just behind Japan. The U.S. federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent means that for every $1 million in profit generated at a Mexican production facility, Honda makes $50,000 more after taxes.
Honda has also had union troubles in the United States being targeted for organizing by the United Auto Workers in its Indiana facility. In 2007, Honda came under fire in a new manufacturing plant in Indiana, because they restricted hiring to residents from counties without heavy union presence.
Can there be any doubt that the UAW’s partnership with the federal government in both GM and Chrysler, played a role in their site selection.
Additionally, it could not have been lost on the Japanese corporation that the National Labor Relations Board has been bending over backward to direct not only traditional rules for union organizing, but have intervened against a U.S. corporation’s decision on where to locate a manufacturing facility.
Once again, it must be emphasized that I have not found a quote from Honda officials related to the cost basis of this decision, when you add up the significantly higher taxes, and the potentially dramatically higher labor costs due to the Obama Administration’s overt attempt to force unionization onto U.S. manufacturers, Honda’s choice is logical.
Take the risk of kidnappers, government collapse and petty corruption rather than the risk of spending $800 million on a plant that becomes immediately unprofitable due to higher taxes and federal government policies designed to disrupt your shining new shop floor with the thuggish UAW as a compulsory business partner.
When you look at the U.S. manufacturing environment through the mindset of a foreign manufacturer, and ask, why did they choose to not locate here, it becomes clear that if the President truly wants to make the U.S. competitive, he should be beating the drum for an across the board corporate tax rate deduction and put a leash on his organized labor pitbulls at the NLRB.
Ultimately, it is the American worker who is paying the price. Perhaps this explains why Mexico’s unemployment rate is at 4.9 percent, while the rate in the U.S. hovers at 9.1 percent.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Canada: Vancouver fruit stand too successful, forced to close: "City moves in to shut down popular vendor hawking local produce after he sells beyond volume allowed by licence. ... Smith shut his stand down on Sunday as instructed. 'We’re not going to fight with city hall,' he said."
DC: Three arrested on Capitol grounds for lemonade stand: "Selling lemonade is not a crime, but selling it on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol is, which is why, police say, three people were arrested Saturday for running a lemonade stand on Capitol grounds. ... 'Lemonade Freedom Day' earned support from thousands of people across the country, including dozens who wrote in on the Facebook page that they created stands for their kids to sell lemonade. The effort to 'liberate lemons' was intended as a challenge to a recent string of police actions that have shut down the hallmark childhood entrepreneurism."
CA: Data spill shows risk of online health records: "Until recently, medical files belonging to nearly 300,000 Californians sat unsecured on the Internet for the entire world to see. There were insurance forms, Social Security numbers and doctors' notes. Among the files were summaries that spelled out, in painstaking detail, a trucker's crushed fingers, a maintenance worker's broken ribs and one man's bout with sexual dysfunction. At a time of mounting computer hacking threats, the incident offers an alarming glimpse at privacy risks as the nation moves steadily into an era in which every American's sensitive medical information will be digitized."
How to win friends and influence people: "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is planning to nearly quadruple the size of his $12 million California beachfront mansion. The former Massachusetts governor is planning to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot home facing the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla, Calif., and replace it with an 11,062-square-foot home, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune"
The persistence of fiscal fantasy: "The good news is that the idea of serious spending restraint has more support than ever before. The bad news is that getting people to support the concept is easy. The hard part is getting beyond the concept, and there is no sign so far of doing that."
Blatant media lies: "Most media bias is certainly subtle. However, this article by The Associated Press is seething in liberal bias and intentionally tries to tar tax-cutting Republicans by accusing them of wanting to raise taxes while at the same time praising President Barack Obama for wanting to cut taxes. Reporter Charles Babington is either a liberal partisan hack who can’t seem to see his own bias or someone who truly doesn’t understand what the heck he is writing about"
Deregulate the practice of law to promote justice and create jobs: "Legislatures also need to simplify court procedures that make it impossible for ordinary people to seek redress in cases that aren’t big enough to afford hiring a lawyer, leaving cheated people with little redress when they are ripped off to the tune of $5,000 to $15,000. People can represent themselves in small-claims courts, which have simplified procedures, but in many states, such courts can hear only the tiniest legal claims, like those seeking less than $5,000."
Far-Left Amnesty again: "The Jerusalem-based human rights watchdog organization NGO Monitor sharply criticized Amnesty International’s response to last week’s Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers, which resulted in the killing of eight Israelis and scores of wounded. Prof. Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor president, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that “instead of issuing a strong condemnation of the August 18 Palestinian terror attacks, Amnesty International’s statement draws a false equivalence between cold-blooded murder and self defense that targeted those responsible.” He added that “from Amnesty’s statement, one has no idea that terrorists walked up to a car and brutally murdered the four passengers."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Monday, August 22, 2011
When 'inconsequential' means 'better'
by Jeff Jacoby
TO MANY LIBERALS, Rick Perry's audacious pledge to make Washington, DC, as "inconsequential in your life as I can" is tantamount to a pledge to bring back the Dark Ages.
Commenting on Twitter as the Texas governor announced his presidential candidacy last weekend, longtime Washington journalist Howard Kurtz wondered: "Perry wants to make DC 'inconsequential in your life.' Does that include Medicare, Soc Sec, vets' programs, air safety, FDA?" Former Bobby Kennedy aide Jeff Greenfield, calling Perry's words "nothing short of astonishing," ran through a litany of Washington's contributions to American life -- from railroads, interstate highways, and the Hoover dam to land-grant colleges, civil rights, and subsidized mortgages -- and marveled at the depth of the right's "disdain for all things Washington."
Libertarians and conservatives believe what the Founders believed: that that government is best which governs least. "Society in every state is a blessing," wrote Thomas Paine, "but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil."
But it isn't highways or veterans' programs or minority voting rights that conservatives find so objectionable about Washington. When Perry speaks of making the nation's capital "inconsequential," he isn't proposing to dismantle the Hoover Dam. Hard as it may be for liberals to accept, the Republican base isn't motivated by blind loathing of the federal government, or by a nihilistic urge to wipe out the good that Washington has accomplished.
What conservatives believe, rather, is what America's Founders believed: that that government is best which governs least, and that human freedom and dignity are likeliest to thrive not when power is centralized and remote, but when it is diffuse, local, and modest.
"It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1821. In part that is because central planners and regulators rarely know enough to be sure of the impact their decisions will have on the innumerable individuals, communities, and enterprises affected by them "Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap," Jefferson dryly remarked, "we should soon want bread." The Beltway blunders of our own era -- from the subprime mortgage meltdown to Cash-for-Clunkers to minimum-wage laws that drive up unemployment -- would not have surprised him.
But that isn't the only reason that shrinking Washington and decentralizing power promotes better government. While curbing the federal behemoth is important in its own right, it is indispensable to the moral health of a nation rooted in the conviction that men and women can govern themselves. Our social arrangements tend to work best when they are organized at the lowest possible level, closest to concrete, day-to-day experience. Only as a last resort should we seek to transfer power upward, from individuals and families to city hall, or from city hall to the statehouse, or from the statehouse to Washington, DC. This is the principle of subsidiarity that historically underpinned American federalism.
Once it was commonly understood by Americans that the best way to get things done was usually to do them privately. In his classic study of democracy in the young United States, Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the American propensity to form voluntary organizations for nearly every purpose.
"Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly form associations," an impressed Alexis do Tocqueville wrote in 1835. "They have not only commercial and manufacturing companies . . . but associations of a thousand other kinds -- religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. . . . Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be sure to find an association."
But as government grows larger and more powerful, it crowds out private action. It replaces local, familiar, and organic institutions with remote bureaucratic ones. As state and federal governments swell, taking over functions that used to be left to individuals and voluntary organizations, communities are weakened. Increasingly citizens are taught to rely on government, rather than on themselves or their neighbors. They develop a sense of entitlement, and entitlement in turn fuels selfishness. Other people's needs come to be seen as the government's responsibility. Government gets bigger and bigger -- and citizens get smaller and smaller.
Of course some functions can only be performed at the national level. But Washington does far more than it should, in so many ways treating Americans like children who cannot be trusted to run their own lives. The effect of that infantilization has been an erosion in the virtues without which no free society can thrive: Work, honesty, discipline, gratitude, moderation, thrift, initiative.
The way to undo that erosion? We can start by making Washington more inconsequential.
SOURCE
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Progressive Intolerance
Talking to themselves
Television pundits increasingly express an attitude that is at once arrogant and ignorant: The people who oppose Keynesian economics – specifically a massive increase in government deficit spending to create jobs and jumpstart the economy – are the same kind of people who also believe that the earth is only several thousand years old (rather than 4.5 billion), that evolution is bunk, and that science is something to be feared on principle. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews takes the strongest version of this position. To him even skepticism about catastrophic climate change is a sign of hostility to science, although a good number of scientists are skeptical.
It may not seem worth the time to expose the fallacies of cable television’s talking heads, but since they are the source of what so many people “know” about public policy, the time is well spent.
TV hosts like Matthews of course are not authorities on economics (though he did some graduate work in the subject), so when they judge Keynesianism as the only truly scientific economics, they mean two things: That is what a Keynesian taught them in school and that is what all their Keynesian friend-guests assure them is the case. Since they never invite a non-Keynesian economist on their shows (Republican consultants don’t count), they insulate themselves against all informed dissent from their faith. Considering this policy against head-to-head discussion, who’s got the antiscientific attitude?
Simply Ignored
If someone doesn’t fit their mold, he or she is ignored or vilified. I know many people who (like me) reject Keynesian economics (and are skeptical about catastrophic climate change) while embracing science. (Yet we realize that scientists have the same the foibles and temptations we all are prone to, such as confirmation bias and career ambitions.) But Matthews & Co. say there are no such people. The pundits can’t even acknowledge good faith in their opponents.
This explains the intolerance shown those who refuse to agree that in a recession government spending is indispensable to raising aggregate demand and restoring economic growth. (Conservatives are not necessarily better. See my article on conservative Keynesians.)
If you point out that every dollar government spends, whether obtained through taxation or borrowing, is dollar removed from the private sector, the Keynesian pundit might agree but point out that business is not investing and consumers are not spending – so what’s lost? The other night Matthews suggested that business may be sitting on its $2 trillion in cash in order to damage Obama’s presidency. So to Keynes’s animal spirits Matthews adds animosity to Obama in explaining why the economy is at a virtual standstill.
The pundits’ blinders keep them from a broader perspective. Since all they know is the most vulgar rendition of Keynesian economics (Keynes wasn’t quite as bad as the Keynesians, writes Mario Rizzo), they have no idea that two distinct factors now prevent economic growth. First, the boom (without which there’s no bust) was created by monetary, housing, and financial policies that to a great extent still exist. Government officials are trying to resurrect the housing industry, indicating that the ruling elite still does not realize that the industry’s pre-bust condition was the artificial result of misguided interventions. Fed-depressed interest rates and easy-housing programs induced widespread malinvestment – investments unjustified by real underlying conditions – which have to be liquidated before economic growth can resume. Liquidation requires the costly but necessary adaption and transfer of resources and labor to purposes for which there is genuine demand. This correction cannot take place if political responses to the recession get in the way.
“Regime Uncertainty”
Second (as if that weren’t enough), the government has created significant new uncertainties that chill the investment climate. (This is what Robert Higgs calls “regime uncertainty.”) Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank law mandate the writing of hundreds of new rules governing employer-based health insurance and financial transactions. Why would anyone risk money in a new venture with so many yet-to-be-filled gaps in the regulatory environment? A government regulatory regime is bad enough; one that can change at any moment is far worse.
Finally, the pundits are blind to the fact that government can’t create real jobs. Let’s be clear what this means. It’s not that government can’t pay people to do things. It does that all the time! But in economic terms, a job is not merely exertion in return for a pay check. It’s much more: activity that transforms resources from a less-valued form to a more-valued form in the eyes of consumers. For the sake of irony, I’ll quote Karl Marx: “A thing cannot have value, if it is not a useful article. If it is not useful, then the labor it contains is also useless, does not count as labor and hence does not create value” (Capital, volume 1, emphasis added).
Keynesian pundits insist that a stimulus program to pay workers billions of dollars to repair schools, roads, and bridges would qualify as productive because people value those things. What’s missed is that we live in a world of scarcity and tradeoffs, and that we always make choices at the margin. Repairing a school may sound good in a vacuum (Which school? How elaborate a repair?), but not so good when something more valuable must be given up in exchange.
Market Prices
We all make similar tradeoffs in the marketplace all the time, and we can do so intelligently because goods and services have prices. Prices enable each of us to engage in economic calculation, that is, to make rational tradeoffs aimed at obtaining higher values (subjectively appraised) in exchange for lower values.
But government-produced goods and services are not priced and sold in the market. Instead, government collects its revenues by threat of force, and politicians and bureaucrats dispose of them ostensibly in the interest of the people but more likely in the career interest of those same politicians and bureaucrats. (The New Deal is a perfect example.) Without prices and free exchange — without entrepreneurship – we cannot know if what government produces is worth the alternative goods and services never produced. (We can say that the freedom lost is not worth the cost.) Putting the infrastructure into a marketplace void of privilege and subsidy would thus make economic sense. Politicians only notice the deterioration during recessions anyway.
The Keynesian pundits, then, are wrong on all counts. The government need not be the spender of last resort because 1) producers and consumers would spend just fine if it would get out of their way, and 2) the government can’t be relied on to create, rather than destroy, value in its use of scarce resources.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Wall Street aristocracy got $1.2 trillion in bailout loans: "Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress."
Coast Guard waste: "Nearly a decade into a 25-year, $24.2 billion overhaul intended to add or upgrade more than 250 vessels to its aging fleet, the Coast Guard has two new ships to show after spending $7 billion-plus. Now it's facing an uphill battle persuading a budget-conscious Congress to keep pouring money into a project plagued by management problems and cost overruns"
SSI disability insurance on brink of insolvency: "Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency. Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs."
Forget corporate jets. Government limousines show they’re stealing you blind: "President Obama has made a big deal out of corporate jets. Apparently they are a symbol not of success but of greed. Yet even as the private jet marked has lagged with the ongoing recession, President Obama’s own employees in his administration have significantly increased the number of limousines available for their travel."
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Texas job machine
Texas Gov. Rick Perry electrified liberal and conservative pundits by entering the GOP presidential primary. But both will be disappointed. Liberals because Perry’s economic record — his main selling point — is more defensible than they want to believe, and conservatives because it is less than they do.
Compared with the rest of the country, Texas has been a job-creating machine. After Perry assumed office in 2000, Texas gained more than a million jobs, while the nation lost 1.5 million. Nearly 40 percent of all new jobs since the recession officially ended have been created in Texas. “We are home to one in 10 Americans, but four of 10 jobs are in our state,” boasts Perry.
He attributes the job spurt to his commitment to low taxes, business-friendly regulations, controlling government spending and tort reform. His liberal detractors credit the sun, the moon and the tides.
They claim that Texas’ job growth has little to do with Perry’s policies and more to do with Texas’ vast reserves of oil, the growing demand for which triggered an economic boom. But by that logic, California should be a jobs mecca, as it is the country’s third-largest oil producer after Texas and Alaska. What’s more, California is blessed with fertile soil and other natural resources that Texas lacks. Yet Texas has added 165,000 jobs in the last three years and California has lost 1.2 million.
The inconvenient truth is that the jobs boom in Texas has something to do with its being No. 1 in ease of doing business — and the job bust in California has a great deal to do with it being last. Indeed, in the first four months of this year, 70 businesses shut their doors in the Golden State, with 14 of them making a beeline for Texas.
What’s true for businesses also is true for workers. Liberals sneer that many of Texas’ new jobs pay minimum wage without benefits — jobs that no self-respecting American should have to accept, especially given the pathetic social services Texas provides. This may be true, but the 1,100 or so Americans who move to Texas daily don’t give a fig.
Texas ranks rock-bottom in per capita social spending. But it also has one of the lightest personal tax burdens in the country and a low cost of living, which are hugely attractive to out-of-work Americans. Their flocking to the state has bumped up Texas’ unemployment rate to 8 percent, prompting Rachel Maddow to jeer on the air that Perry’s jobs record is not a whole lot better than many other states. What she refuses to see is that while in those states high unemployment is due to anemic job growth, in Texas it is due to robust population growth. If anything, Texas offers proof that people prefer jobs, even low-paying ones, to lavish social benefits — repudiating the liberal tax-and-spend economic model.
However, if liberals underestimate Perry’s jobs record, conservatives overestimate his fiscal record. Perry boasts that he has plugged the recession-induced hole in the state budget three times without raising taxes. Still, for the 11 years Perry has been in office, overall government spending has gone up by 4.2 percent every two years, compared with 2.3 percent under George W. Bush, after controlling for inflation and population growth. Perry’s supporters dismiss that comparison, noting that nearly half of this spending is tied up in federal programs he can’t control. The general revenue spending that he does control, they claim, has gone down for the first time since World War II.
But if Texas has lost control over its budget, the blame lies with Perry — and his Republican legislature — both of whom have aggressively scavenged for federal grant dollars. Indeed, Perry has habitually touted the great subsidies he has extracted from Uncle Sam for state programs ranging from homeland security to disaster relief. Even as Perry condemned President Obama’s stimulus and bailout package, he actively courted these funds, plugging the $6 billion hole in his previous budget almost entirely with stimulus money.
Perry’s problems extend beyond his mediocre fiscal performance. He also has a crony-capitalism problem. Grants from two funds he created, ostensibly to seed tech startups and lure companies, found their way into the pockets of his campaign contributors. This won’t go down well with voters weary of government waste and abuse, especially since Perry had final authority over the funds, and not an independent agency as is usually the case. Worse, Perry refused to axe these programs even to plug the deficit.
There is something else that ought to miff Perry’s conservative base about these funds: They legitimize an “industrial policy” economic approach that empowers government to pick economic winners and losers. Indeed, Perry defends these programs on grounds that they helped create jobs. But if he can use government money to generate jobs in Texas, can he credibly oppose Obama using stimulus money to generate jobs around the country?
With President Obama out of ideas for an out-of-work nation, Perry’s strong jobs record will appeal to voters. His challenge won’t be convincing them that he has the right ideas — it will be convincing them he has the scruples to make the right calls.
SOURCE. See also here for an answer to Leftist attempts to downplay Texas job growth.
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Liberalism's "New" Strategy: The Same Old Lies
Perhaps the most profound quality common to liberals is their ability to keep straight faces (or even look gravely serious) while spewing the most hysterical and laughable lies. In this manner we have heard them in recent years frantically pontificating about how “global warming” would surely end life on this planet as we know it, unless of course they were allowed to grow government, encroach on our time honored freedoms, and raise our taxes.
Similarly, we have been forced to endure their shameless sanctimony as they lectured real America on the topic of “civility,” which ultimately means that conservatives rightly ought to remain silent while they grow government, encroach on our freedoms, and raise taxes. And whenever any real opposition arises, they revert to demands for “bipartisanship,” which means that our side should collaborate with them as they seek to grow government, encroach on freedom, and raise taxes.
In recent months, this campaign has gone into high gear. Clearly, despite all pretense of being confident in the Democrat agenda and its unfailing popularity with the American people, leftists remain shell-shocked in the wake of last November’s conservative electoral landslide. And with each ensuing public opinion poll showing another drop in their standing among the people of the Heartland, and similar numbers indicating that their esteemed leader, Barack Obama is fast losing ground with the electorate, panic is spreading among liberals who, only a few years back, believed that the nation’s future was completely theirs to commandeer and reconstruct.
Of particular alarm and frustration to them has been the grassroots movement popularly dubbed the Tea Party. Reflecting an authentic and devoted groundswell of common citizenry who, previously having remained detached from the distasteful confrontations of the political arena, its members now realize that continued indifference is a luxury they can no longer afford. By continued passivity, the nation they knew and cherished is being wrested from them and must be retaken if the promises of its future are to be restored to their former luster.
Throughout much of 2009 and early 2010, the liberal Democrat/media cabal believed it could dilute and undermine the Tea Party by merely ignoring it. Yet as Election Day 2010 approached, and legitimate polling data increasingly indicated that the Democrats were destined to lose big come November, opposition to the movement became more brazen and vitriolic. Post election, every conceivable “analysis” was presented as cold hard “fact,” depicting the political tsunami as overblown, and citing such anomalies as the California, Nevada, and Delaware Senate races, in which Democrats won, as proof that America still leaned hard-left. The massive Tea Party gatherings in Washington and elsewhere in the nation were ostensibly a flash in the pan, and would soon dissipate.
Yet as the nation enters into the 2012 election cycle, it is increasingly clear that the liberal Democrats are both aware of the continued presence and growing influence of the movement, and petrified by everything that it represents. So, they have predictably returned to their political playbook and resorted to the standard tactics by which they have often neutralized opponents in the past. Not surprisingly, this assault embodies all of the typical and despicable ploys that so characterize liberalism in general. But the latest efforts reveal that as a result of their panic, they are vastly overplaying their hand. And in so doing, the effort will surely backfire.
Consider the transparently frenzied attempts to exploit every potential crisis engulfing the nation, and even the world, as an opportunity to impugn the Tea Party. It is beyond absurd to contend that a groundswell of American patriots objecting to their government’s wanton spending binges and extra-constitutional legislating is somehow culpable for everything from the mayhem of a deranged murderer in Tucson, to the downgrading of America’s bond rating, to the riots in London. Nevertheless, such indictments, and even more, are regularly leveled by liberals with straight faces.
The chronically buffoonish Senator John Kerry (D.-MA) echoed this nonsense, referring to the bond rating fiasco as the “Tea Party Downgrade.” Previously, he asserted, with apparent solemnity, that Tea Party statements and concerns “don’t deserve equal time” in the media since they do not pass his standard for being “legitimate.”
Vice President Joe Biden derided the involvement of Tea Party activists in the recent debt-ceiling battle, accusing them of “acting like terrorists.” Such a characterization is particularly despicable coming from an administration that refuses to apply such a label to Muslim men known for brutal murders of Western non-Muslims.
Increasingly, the venomous leftist hyperbole exceeds any boundaries of reason or believability, and appears on its face to be so shrill and excessive that it no longer inflicts any damage on its intended targets, but instead reflects the psychosis of it authors. Thus, such ferocious invectives as Missouri Democrat Emmanuel Cleaver’s “Satan sandwich” and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s characterization of the debt debate as a “Washington Chainsaw Massacre” now border on the comedic.
In what may at first seem like an extreme contradiction from all of the allegation of Tea Party murder and mayhem, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-NV) on August 14 repeated his “observation” that the Tea Party is in retreat, and that “They will lose a number of [Congressional] seats next year.” In this he echoed an earlier premature obituary from January, in which he enthusiastically proclaimed, “The Tea Party is dying.”
It may appear that such divergent assessments of the Tea Party are at total odds with each other. On the one hand it is dissipating into oblivion, yet it has the power to destroy the U.S. economy. However, the underlying motivation for such radically dissimilar critiques is quite consistent. Though totally incongruous if taken literally, they are in fact separate fronts of a common attack. And the nature of that onslaught can be studied in the pages of Saul Alinsky’s Marxist/Leninist grail “Rules for Radicals.” When seen through the dark prism of Alinsky’s subversive philosophy, the continuity of the anti-Tea Party agenda becomes crystal clear. Marginalize it under any circumstances, employing any lie necessary to achieve the goal.
However, the people of Real America are no longer susceptible to such tactics, but are informed and aware of the methods and motives of those leftists who employ them. And the shrill tenor of liberal caterwauling against the conservative grassroots carries with it an underlying message. The empty promises of liberalism are finally facing a day of reckoning. The gig is up and the left, in abject terror, knows it.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Europe’s woes no excuse for abysmal US growth: "Today, once again, the market is crashing largely due to events in the European Union. President Obama and other policy makers wring their collective hands and say: 'It’s not our fault. Our options are limited in preventing the European contagion.' But Europe’s woes should not be an excuse. If anything, they present an opportunity to for the U.S. to capture the capital that is fleeing there, which would fuel job and business growth on our shores."
FDR’s advisers knew what Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman don’t: "One persistent myth that libertarians and other free-market types have to unmask is that President Herbert Hoover’s belief in laissez faire was responsible for dramatically worsening what became the Great Depression. The myth that Hoover stood around and did nothing while the economy collapsed gets repeated ad nauseum in the media by pundits including everyone from Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman to, most recently, MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow."
Please help Lt. Dan Choi: "I have some troubling news about Don't Ask, Don't Tell activist Lt. Dan Choi. Dan currently faces up to 6 months in prison for protesting DADT in front of the White House. He will be the first person in nearly a century to be put on trial over an arcane law written for and last used to silence important women suffragists. But apparently that wasn't enough for the Obama administration to vent their frustration with him."
The huddled masses leaving en masse: "The US Census data show that over the last decade, about 1.6 million New Yorkers moved out of the state. The biggest chunk of these emigres was from the city itself: 70% of New Yorkers moving out of state were from NYC, and another 10% were from Westchester and Nassau Counties, which are essentially suburbs of NYC. These losses were offset in part by an influx of 900,000 foreign immigrants. But there was still a net loss of nearly 700,000 residents, and the number of foreign immigrants was the lowest in about four decades."
A day that should live in infamy: "Today is the 40th anniversary of President Nixon's announcement of price controls on the American economy. He imposed an immediate freeze on all wages and prices that lasted for 90 days. Then he went through the various phases of control, leading to decontrol by 1974. With one main exception: oil and gasoline. Controls remained on oil and gasoline and these controls led to a lot of damage."
Report: Huge rise in unwed parents: "The number of US parents who live together without marrying has increased twelvefold since 1970, according to a report released yesterday that says children now are more likely to have unmarried parents than divorced parents. The report was published by the National Marriage Project, an initiative at the University of Virginia, and the Institute for American Values, two partisan groups that advocate for strengthening the institution of marriage."
An illiberal liberal: "Brad DeLong writes that 'America’s best hope for sane technocratic governance required the elimination of the Republican Party from our political system as rapidly as possible.' There are two things wrong with that statement. One is that he wants a technocratic government. Top-down. Orderly. Planned. But we live in a bottom-up world. Everything from language to Wikipedia to the economy itself is is a spontaneous order. They grow and evolve despite, not because of, direction from above. The most beautiful designs have no designer."
Housing, the hidden entitlement: "Amid all the clamor about entitlement reform during the struggle to raise the debt ceiling, one enormous cost -- and potential source of future savings -- largely escaped scrutiny: the billions of dollars the United States spends to support the mortgage market. ... Today, the government backs 95 percent of new loans, leaving taxpayers more exposed than ever"
Pentagon: Army poorly tested armor inserts: "The Army improperly tested new bullet-blocking plates for body armor and cannot be certain that 5 million pieces of the critical battlefield equipment meet the standards to protect U.S. troops, the Defense Department's inspector general found. The Pentagon report focused on seven Army contracts for the plates, known as ballistic inserts, awarded between 2004 and 2006 and totaling $2.5 billion."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry electrified liberal and conservative pundits by entering the GOP presidential primary. But both will be disappointed. Liberals because Perry’s economic record — his main selling point — is more defensible than they want to believe, and conservatives because it is less than they do.
Compared with the rest of the country, Texas has been a job-creating machine. After Perry assumed office in 2000, Texas gained more than a million jobs, while the nation lost 1.5 million. Nearly 40 percent of all new jobs since the recession officially ended have been created in Texas. “We are home to one in 10 Americans, but four of 10 jobs are in our state,” boasts Perry.
He attributes the job spurt to his commitment to low taxes, business-friendly regulations, controlling government spending and tort reform. His liberal detractors credit the sun, the moon and the tides.
They claim that Texas’ job growth has little to do with Perry’s policies and more to do with Texas’ vast reserves of oil, the growing demand for which triggered an economic boom. But by that logic, California should be a jobs mecca, as it is the country’s third-largest oil producer after Texas and Alaska. What’s more, California is blessed with fertile soil and other natural resources that Texas lacks. Yet Texas has added 165,000 jobs in the last three years and California has lost 1.2 million.
The inconvenient truth is that the jobs boom in Texas has something to do with its being No. 1 in ease of doing business — and the job bust in California has a great deal to do with it being last. Indeed, in the first four months of this year, 70 businesses shut their doors in the Golden State, with 14 of them making a beeline for Texas.
What’s true for businesses also is true for workers. Liberals sneer that many of Texas’ new jobs pay minimum wage without benefits — jobs that no self-respecting American should have to accept, especially given the pathetic social services Texas provides. This may be true, but the 1,100 or so Americans who move to Texas daily don’t give a fig.
Texas ranks rock-bottom in per capita social spending. But it also has one of the lightest personal tax burdens in the country and a low cost of living, which are hugely attractive to out-of-work Americans. Their flocking to the state has bumped up Texas’ unemployment rate to 8 percent, prompting Rachel Maddow to jeer on the air that Perry’s jobs record is not a whole lot better than many other states. What she refuses to see is that while in those states high unemployment is due to anemic job growth, in Texas it is due to robust population growth. If anything, Texas offers proof that people prefer jobs, even low-paying ones, to lavish social benefits — repudiating the liberal tax-and-spend economic model.
However, if liberals underestimate Perry’s jobs record, conservatives overestimate his fiscal record. Perry boasts that he has plugged the recession-induced hole in the state budget three times without raising taxes. Still, for the 11 years Perry has been in office, overall government spending has gone up by 4.2 percent every two years, compared with 2.3 percent under George W. Bush, after controlling for inflation and population growth. Perry’s supporters dismiss that comparison, noting that nearly half of this spending is tied up in federal programs he can’t control. The general revenue spending that he does control, they claim, has gone down for the first time since World War II.
But if Texas has lost control over its budget, the blame lies with Perry — and his Republican legislature — both of whom have aggressively scavenged for federal grant dollars. Indeed, Perry has habitually touted the great subsidies he has extracted from Uncle Sam for state programs ranging from homeland security to disaster relief. Even as Perry condemned President Obama’s stimulus and bailout package, he actively courted these funds, plugging the $6 billion hole in his previous budget almost entirely with stimulus money.
Perry’s problems extend beyond his mediocre fiscal performance. He also has a crony-capitalism problem. Grants from two funds he created, ostensibly to seed tech startups and lure companies, found their way into the pockets of his campaign contributors. This won’t go down well with voters weary of government waste and abuse, especially since Perry had final authority over the funds, and not an independent agency as is usually the case. Worse, Perry refused to axe these programs even to plug the deficit.
There is something else that ought to miff Perry’s conservative base about these funds: They legitimize an “industrial policy” economic approach that empowers government to pick economic winners and losers. Indeed, Perry defends these programs on grounds that they helped create jobs. But if he can use government money to generate jobs in Texas, can he credibly oppose Obama using stimulus money to generate jobs around the country?
With President Obama out of ideas for an out-of-work nation, Perry’s strong jobs record will appeal to voters. His challenge won’t be convincing them that he has the right ideas — it will be convincing them he has the scruples to make the right calls.
SOURCE. See also here for an answer to Leftist attempts to downplay Texas job growth.
*************************
Liberalism's "New" Strategy: The Same Old Lies
Perhaps the most profound quality common to liberals is their ability to keep straight faces (or even look gravely serious) while spewing the most hysterical and laughable lies. In this manner we have heard them in recent years frantically pontificating about how “global warming” would surely end life on this planet as we know it, unless of course they were allowed to grow government, encroach on our time honored freedoms, and raise our taxes.
Similarly, we have been forced to endure their shameless sanctimony as they lectured real America on the topic of “civility,” which ultimately means that conservatives rightly ought to remain silent while they grow government, encroach on our freedoms, and raise taxes. And whenever any real opposition arises, they revert to demands for “bipartisanship,” which means that our side should collaborate with them as they seek to grow government, encroach on freedom, and raise taxes.
In recent months, this campaign has gone into high gear. Clearly, despite all pretense of being confident in the Democrat agenda and its unfailing popularity with the American people, leftists remain shell-shocked in the wake of last November’s conservative electoral landslide. And with each ensuing public opinion poll showing another drop in their standing among the people of the Heartland, and similar numbers indicating that their esteemed leader, Barack Obama is fast losing ground with the electorate, panic is spreading among liberals who, only a few years back, believed that the nation’s future was completely theirs to commandeer and reconstruct.
Of particular alarm and frustration to them has been the grassroots movement popularly dubbed the Tea Party. Reflecting an authentic and devoted groundswell of common citizenry who, previously having remained detached from the distasteful confrontations of the political arena, its members now realize that continued indifference is a luxury they can no longer afford. By continued passivity, the nation they knew and cherished is being wrested from them and must be retaken if the promises of its future are to be restored to their former luster.
Throughout much of 2009 and early 2010, the liberal Democrat/media cabal believed it could dilute and undermine the Tea Party by merely ignoring it. Yet as Election Day 2010 approached, and legitimate polling data increasingly indicated that the Democrats were destined to lose big come November, opposition to the movement became more brazen and vitriolic. Post election, every conceivable “analysis” was presented as cold hard “fact,” depicting the political tsunami as overblown, and citing such anomalies as the California, Nevada, and Delaware Senate races, in which Democrats won, as proof that America still leaned hard-left. The massive Tea Party gatherings in Washington and elsewhere in the nation were ostensibly a flash in the pan, and would soon dissipate.
Yet as the nation enters into the 2012 election cycle, it is increasingly clear that the liberal Democrats are both aware of the continued presence and growing influence of the movement, and petrified by everything that it represents. So, they have predictably returned to their political playbook and resorted to the standard tactics by which they have often neutralized opponents in the past. Not surprisingly, this assault embodies all of the typical and despicable ploys that so characterize liberalism in general. But the latest efforts reveal that as a result of their panic, they are vastly overplaying their hand. And in so doing, the effort will surely backfire.
Consider the transparently frenzied attempts to exploit every potential crisis engulfing the nation, and even the world, as an opportunity to impugn the Tea Party. It is beyond absurd to contend that a groundswell of American patriots objecting to their government’s wanton spending binges and extra-constitutional legislating is somehow culpable for everything from the mayhem of a deranged murderer in Tucson, to the downgrading of America’s bond rating, to the riots in London. Nevertheless, such indictments, and even more, are regularly leveled by liberals with straight faces.
The chronically buffoonish Senator John Kerry (D.-MA) echoed this nonsense, referring to the bond rating fiasco as the “Tea Party Downgrade.” Previously, he asserted, with apparent solemnity, that Tea Party statements and concerns “don’t deserve equal time” in the media since they do not pass his standard for being “legitimate.”
Vice President Joe Biden derided the involvement of Tea Party activists in the recent debt-ceiling battle, accusing them of “acting like terrorists.” Such a characterization is particularly despicable coming from an administration that refuses to apply such a label to Muslim men known for brutal murders of Western non-Muslims.
Increasingly, the venomous leftist hyperbole exceeds any boundaries of reason or believability, and appears on its face to be so shrill and excessive that it no longer inflicts any damage on its intended targets, but instead reflects the psychosis of it authors. Thus, such ferocious invectives as Missouri Democrat Emmanuel Cleaver’s “Satan sandwich” and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s characterization of the debt debate as a “Washington Chainsaw Massacre” now border on the comedic.
In what may at first seem like an extreme contradiction from all of the allegation of Tea Party murder and mayhem, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-NV) on August 14 repeated his “observation” that the Tea Party is in retreat, and that “They will lose a number of [Congressional] seats next year.” In this he echoed an earlier premature obituary from January, in which he enthusiastically proclaimed, “The Tea Party is dying.”
It may appear that such divergent assessments of the Tea Party are at total odds with each other. On the one hand it is dissipating into oblivion, yet it has the power to destroy the U.S. economy. However, the underlying motivation for such radically dissimilar critiques is quite consistent. Though totally incongruous if taken literally, they are in fact separate fronts of a common attack. And the nature of that onslaught can be studied in the pages of Saul Alinsky’s Marxist/Leninist grail “Rules for Radicals.” When seen through the dark prism of Alinsky’s subversive philosophy, the continuity of the anti-Tea Party agenda becomes crystal clear. Marginalize it under any circumstances, employing any lie necessary to achieve the goal.
However, the people of Real America are no longer susceptible to such tactics, but are informed and aware of the methods and motives of those leftists who employ them. And the shrill tenor of liberal caterwauling against the conservative grassroots carries with it an underlying message. The empty promises of liberalism are finally facing a day of reckoning. The gig is up and the left, in abject terror, knows it.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Europe’s woes no excuse for abysmal US growth: "Today, once again, the market is crashing largely due to events in the European Union. President Obama and other policy makers wring their collective hands and say: 'It’s not our fault. Our options are limited in preventing the European contagion.' But Europe’s woes should not be an excuse. If anything, they present an opportunity to for the U.S. to capture the capital that is fleeing there, which would fuel job and business growth on our shores."
FDR’s advisers knew what Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman don’t: "One persistent myth that libertarians and other free-market types have to unmask is that President Herbert Hoover’s belief in laissez faire was responsible for dramatically worsening what became the Great Depression. The myth that Hoover stood around and did nothing while the economy collapsed gets repeated ad nauseum in the media by pundits including everyone from Nobel Prize winners like Paul Krugman to, most recently, MSNBC talk-show host Rachel Maddow."
Please help Lt. Dan Choi: "I have some troubling news about Don't Ask, Don't Tell activist Lt. Dan Choi. Dan currently faces up to 6 months in prison for protesting DADT in front of the White House. He will be the first person in nearly a century to be put on trial over an arcane law written for and last used to silence important women suffragists. But apparently that wasn't enough for the Obama administration to vent their frustration with him."
The huddled masses leaving en masse: "The US Census data show that over the last decade, about 1.6 million New Yorkers moved out of the state. The biggest chunk of these emigres was from the city itself: 70% of New Yorkers moving out of state were from NYC, and another 10% were from Westchester and Nassau Counties, which are essentially suburbs of NYC. These losses were offset in part by an influx of 900,000 foreign immigrants. But there was still a net loss of nearly 700,000 residents, and the number of foreign immigrants was the lowest in about four decades."
A day that should live in infamy: "Today is the 40th anniversary of President Nixon's announcement of price controls on the American economy. He imposed an immediate freeze on all wages and prices that lasted for 90 days. Then he went through the various phases of control, leading to decontrol by 1974. With one main exception: oil and gasoline. Controls remained on oil and gasoline and these controls led to a lot of damage."
Report: Huge rise in unwed parents: "The number of US parents who live together without marrying has increased twelvefold since 1970, according to a report released yesterday that says children now are more likely to have unmarried parents than divorced parents. The report was published by the National Marriage Project, an initiative at the University of Virginia, and the Institute for American Values, two partisan groups that advocate for strengthening the institution of marriage."
An illiberal liberal: "Brad DeLong writes that 'America’s best hope for sane technocratic governance required the elimination of the Republican Party from our political system as rapidly as possible.' There are two things wrong with that statement. One is that he wants a technocratic government. Top-down. Orderly. Planned. But we live in a bottom-up world. Everything from language to Wikipedia to the economy itself is is a spontaneous order. They grow and evolve despite, not because of, direction from above. The most beautiful designs have no designer."
Housing, the hidden entitlement: "Amid all the clamor about entitlement reform during the struggle to raise the debt ceiling, one enormous cost -- and potential source of future savings -- largely escaped scrutiny: the billions of dollars the United States spends to support the mortgage market. ... Today, the government backs 95 percent of new loans, leaving taxpayers more exposed than ever"
Pentagon: Army poorly tested armor inserts: "The Army improperly tested new bullet-blocking plates for body armor and cannot be certain that 5 million pieces of the critical battlefield equipment meet the standards to protect U.S. troops, the Defense Department's inspector general found. The Pentagon report focused on seven Army contracts for the plates, known as ballistic inserts, awarded between 2004 and 2006 and totaling $2.5 billion."
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Saturday, August 20, 2011
Media Conceal True Nature of “Flash Mob” Racial Violence
Relying on documents made available exclusively through a Freedom of Information Act request, we can add another face to the growing picture of racial “flash mob” violence in America. It is a face that the media have concealed from public view.
This writer was forced to use the local Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ascertain the facts about the racial identity of one of the victims of these attacks. The media concealed the identity of the white victim apparently because of misguided racial sensitivity.
What makes this even more startling is that it is just one of many examples of racial mob violence occurring around the country, without any comment from national figures such as President Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder. But if whites were attacking blacks in this manner, you can bet it would have already have become a national story worthy of comment from national political figures.
Consider these incidents:
* At the Wisconsin State fair, groups of black teens numbering anywhere from 25 to 100 “were targeting anyone who was white or appeared to look white,” and beating them, according to the local police chief. At least 18 people were injured, and 30 have been arrested.
* In Denver, couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats.
* A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. He was attacked at random while jogging.
* A young white man named Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne, NJ.
* Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten to the ground and stomped in separate Philadelphia flash mobs.
* “Every weekend in July,” according to local news, “police have battled large, flash-mob beatings and vandalism” in Greensboro, NC.
* In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of young blacks walking through the streets, “shouting profanities and racial epithets,” and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends.
* A young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten by a black mob in Milwaukee who remarked “Oh, white girl bleeds a lot.”
The similarities among these attacks point to a trend: First of all, these are not run-of-the-mill crimes. They typically involve group attacks against defenseless, random victims who have no means to resist and did nothing to provoke their attackers. These flash mobs often stomp their victims even after they are down, as most of the news reports describe.
Then there are the racial similarities: The attackers are invariably black. Philadelphia’s mayor conceded as much when he condemned flash mobs, addressing the rioters with the charge, “You damaged your own race.” The victims are usually not black.
Several qualifications are in order: It is clear that only a small number of black teens take part in these attacks. Blacks are more likely to be victims of violent crime than any other group due to black-on-black crime. Also, interracial crime is a fraction of all crime, and hate crime is an even smaller fraction of that.
Nonetheless, these flash mobs are a social problem that needs to be addressed. If the races were reversed, we would be witnessing an outpouring of guilt of biblical proportions. Instead, the victims are white and we get an outpouring of ignominious silence. So far, precious few leaders in academia, politics, the legal system, or the media have spoken out directly against this troubling trend.
Far from being isolated incidents, violent flash mobs are part of an emerging social problem that turns the traditional story of American racism on its head. If opinion makers reported accurately about these flash mobs, most Americans would probably alter their views about racism and conclude that these flash mobs are the worst form of racial violence in our nation today. Not all of the flash mobs meet the strict criteria of a hate crime. However, they do represent a growing wave of racial violence.
The national media should acknowledge what a serious and potentially widespread social problem they are, but instead the press has concealed the racial aspect of this problem.
To take one particular example, in Chicago on June 14 of this year, the local media reported on a 15-year-old, without identifying his race, who was attacked and robbed by “a group of seven male teens,” all “black.” In a summer filled with mob violence, this story registered as another small blip in an alarming trend that has emerged across the country. However, the June 14 robbery was more troubling than most of the other flash mob attacks: One of the attackers that day had a gun.
Following their official policy of self-imposed PC censorship, the local media didn’t mention the race of the victim. Thankfully, the Chicago Police Department replied to my Freedom of Information Act request and provided that information in a redacted version of the incident report. It should not surprise anyone that the victim on June 14 was white. (These FOIA documents are attached to this column).
I can hear the chorus of complaints asking, “Why does race matter?” That question is usually asked with a tone of consternation, as if the person asking the question has determined that race must not matter and is refusing to consider race.
‘It’s not about race!’ some will say. People are people, and crime is about bad people doing bad things—or good, poor people whose social conditions drove them to beat people.
But these mob attacks are most certainly about race, and there is only one specific type of person committing these attacks. In Chicago, and around the country, flash mob attacks have been committed by blacks, apparently without exception.
Not every interracial crime has racial significance. Sometimes a fight is just a fight, a robbery is just a robbery, a mob is just a mob. But when there is a trend of racial victimization and a stark racial component in the participants of the attacks, then there is racial significance. We are fully justified to be concerned with the racial aspect of flash mobs, given the larger context of the flash mob phenomenon in Chicago—to take only one example—this year.
The flash mobs in Chicago began with flash mob robberies in January when groups of teens shoplifted at three separate stores along Michigan Avenue. In February, Loyola University warned students and staffers about “flash mob offenders” stealing items from nearby stores. In April 2011, a group of 70 “youths” ransacked a McDonald’s and “created a disturbance” according to a news report.
Then, on Memorial Day weekend, the cultural enrichment turned ugly. A witness told Chicago’s NBC local affiliate that mobs of “animals,” as the witness described them, “were being rude and abusive and throwing trash around and defecating…” Other witnesses reported that “gangbangers” were pushing people off their bikes.
In June, the attackers showed up armed. In robberies on June 5, between eight and 15 teens boarded a bus without paying and “began hitting people,” according to the Chicago Tribune. Three of those teens were charged with armed robbery, one with unlawful use of a weapon.
The most publicized flash mob attacks took place when five non-blacks were attacked in one hour by a pack of 20 teens on the North Side. As of June 13, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that over 30 people had been arrested in the various mob attacks that month. Then, on June 14, the white 15-year-old was robbed at gunpoint by a group of blacks.
Not far away, the flash mobs could have reached an awful crescendo in Peoria. On June 24, a mob of at least 50 blacks teens were stopping traffic in the street, and “running wildly through yards and porches” in a quiet suburban neighborhood in what one witness described as a “show of force.” Another witness says that a black teen yelled out, “We’re gonna kill all the white people. This is our neighborhood.” In this context, a reasonable reporter would be acting appropriately to include the race of victims and attackers in group attacks.
However, when it comes to black-on-white crime, as Chicago Tribune editor Gerald Kern publicly admitted, “We do not reference race unless it is a fact that is central to telling the story.” In other words, the Tribune will not reference race. How will we know if a fact is central to a story unless we have context? We’ll never have context to understand racial violence if the media conceal racial facts. If we’re not told the race of victims and attackers, we can’t observe a pattern of behavior, and we will have no idea whether race is central to a story. The Tribune’s reporting is thus an Orwellian void that leaves us all less informed, and less safe.
But this is not unique. The Washington Post, New York Times, and L.A. Times join the Tribune in admitting that they have, in effect, a policy of not reporting race.
Whether or not a fact is “central to a story” is naturally a value judgment that says as much about the ideology of an editor as it does about the facts of a story. Needless to say, when the race of mob violence victims is white, a liberal editor will usually not find that fact “central” to a story.
White victimization in racial violence is an inconvenient fact for those who are dedicated to social justice, a dogma based on faith in perpetual white guilt. Journalism departments play their part in maintaining the dogma. We’re not going to remain addled with white guilt if we fully acknowledge anti-white crime. So liberals downplay white victims to maintain their traditional belief in monolithic white racism, the one tradition that liberals believe in maintaining.
If we are truly committed to “social justice,” however, we must acknowledge that concealing the facts about racial violence and other social problems leaves us endangered and intellectually impoverished. Refusing to face facts will inhibit finding a solution to the problem, and virtually guarantee that the problem will only get worse.
SOURCE
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Obama helped spark the black mob attacks
Lloyd Marcus
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, said, "The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang." In other words, leadership flows from the top down.
Folks, I believe human beings are responsible for their behavior. However, as America's first black president, fair or unfair, Obama's presidency comes with enormous responsibility in terms of its influence on black youths. This is why it is so unfortunate that American black youths' ultimate role model is a characterless, race-baiting political hack.
While I am not saying president Obama is responsible for the epidemic of black youth flash-mob attacks on whites around our country, his race-baiting has to be a contributing factor.
Obama and his minions have despicably created racial tension for political gain -- accusing all who opposed his hostile takeover of our health care system of racism.
Clearly, the Obama administration's game plan for his presidency is to use race as a bludgeon whenever anyone opposes an Obama agenda item. Obama obviously considers the loss of harmony between black and white Americans to be acceptable collateral damage.
Here are a few examples of race exploitation by Obama and company which could be fueling rage in black youths.
Let's begin with ObamaCare. Several Democrats suggested that race was a factor in opposition to ObamaCare. Former President Jimmy Carter led the charge saying, "[A]n overwhelming portion of those who demonstrate against Obama are doing so because the president is a black man." In essence, President Carter was telling black youths, "Many Americans are racist and against you." Do you think Carter's statement may have inspired black anger?
Then, there was the black professor Gates vs. the Cambridge Police incident. Before knowing the facts, President Obama declared the white decorated arresting officer guilty of racial profiling, saying the police "acted stupidly." Obama continued, "[W]hat I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."
Good Lord, the black president of the United States parroted the mantra of black gangsta rappers: "if you are black, the white po-po [police] are out to get you." I find it extraordinary that Obama did not anticipate the catastrophic negative impact his proclamation would have on the relationship between black urban youths and white law enforcement.
Would a man who values racial harmony say such a divisive thing, even if he suspected it to be true? Obama is the president of the United States, for crying out load. His words carry tremendous power and influence, particularly among black youths.
Obama's indictment of the nation's police was to cover his butt for assuming the Cambridge police was guilty of racism before knowing the facts of the incident -- thus confirming that Obama cares about only himself.
The Tea Party is a constant extremely annoying thorn in the side of Obama in implementing his fundamental transformation of America. This is why Obama has launched a campaign to bludgeon the Tea Party to death with false accusations of racism.
Obama said, "[R]ace is still a problem." He stated race to be a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, "especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent Tea Party movement." Obama added, "[A] subterranean agenda in the anti-Obama movement -- a racially biased one -- that was unfortunate."
Again, imagine how black youths process Obama's I'm-a-victim-of-racist-white-folks rhetoric.
Obama played the race card again in the Arizona immigration law debate. The Arizona immigration law was birthed out of frustration with the Obama administration's refusal to enforce federal immigration law. Arizonians suffer from epidemic levels of drug-trafficking, murders, and violent kidnapping by illegals. To court the Hispanic vote, Obama deemed Arizona's law racist.
Here's another example of Team Obama throwing race into the mix. Several black Democrat pundits andCongressional Black Caucus member Shelia Jackson Lee said that Republicans were rejecting raising the debt ceiling because Obama is black.
So, has the Obama administration's shameful disregard for preserving harmonious race relations inspired racial tension leading to black youths beating up whites? Well, let's just say, unquestionably, that Obama's Chicago thug vibe resonates.
Black conservative Kenneth Gladney was beaten and sent to the emergency room by SEIU thugs shortly after Obama sent a clarion call to his supporters to "[h]it back twice as hard." Obama encouraged Latinos to "punish our enemies."
It is not a stretch to suggest that highly impressionable black youths might retaliate against a white America perceived to be dissing their African-American idol.
SOURCE
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Obama economy approval slumps to 26pc
THE number of Americans who approve of President Barack Obama's handling of the sour US economy has slumped to an all-time low for him of 26 per cent, according to a poll released today.
The respected Gallup organisation's findings showed the embattled president down 11 points since mid-May on an issue sure to define his quest for a fresh term in the November 2012 elections.
Mr Obama also won low approval ratings for his handling of the runaway US federal budget deficit, at 24 per cent, while just 29 per cent approved of his record on job creation while unemployment is more than nine per cent.
More HERE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Friday, August 19, 2011
Nazis were not evil, they were 'social climbers', claims leading German historian
There is some truth in the ideas below but the psychologizing is pure speculation. What is true is that Hitler was personally very popular. He was seen as a fatherly lover of his people -- which is how he presented himself. And his antisemitism was completely normal worldwide in the prewar era.
The politics of envy always has a large following and the extraordinarily prominent position of Jews in prewar public life in Germany made them a natural target for envy.
There is of course much more to it but those two facts alone are just about enough to explain the holocaust without trashy assertions about inferiority complexes etc.
It does grieve me however that Jews have learnt so little since then. Once again many tend to seek out prominent positions in public life. It's like painting a target on their own backs
A peculiar German inferiority complex allied to a lust to 'get on' led to the country’s collective moral collapse which allowed the Holocaust of six million Jews to happen, a new book in Germany claims.
Götz Aly, an esteemed historian and social commentator, says their berserk social climbing led the ordinary people, far removed from the extermination camp system, to partake in the plunder of the Jews without troubling their consciences.
His book Why The Germans? Why The Jews? comes at a time when Germany is once more in the crosshairs of critics across the continent as the euro crisis lurches from bad to worse.
It is portrayed as bullying, domineering and inflexible as it tries to impose rigid, German-style rules on nations which do not share its social, political and economic ethics.
Most important Aly gets away from the 'evil Nazi' comfort zone that so many postwar Germans have wallowed in. The central thesis of his book is that the Holocaust happened “because people like you and me allowed it to.” And he says it can happen again.
It was the middle class fear of coming down in the world following defeat in WWI, the hyper-inflation and joblessness of the Weimar years, that allowed people to blind themselves to the excesses of the Nazis as they pledged to restore Germany to greatness.
Those who would pay the most for that greatness were the Jews; the culprits, said Hitler, behind the war.
Social climbing became an almost impossible thing during the jobless, moneyless days of the Weimar Republic: the Nazis brought it back into vogue with uniforms, work and, ultimately, plunder.
Massive auctions were staged every week throughout the lifespan of the Third Reich in Hamburg and several other cities of stolen Jewish goods. Massive ships docked regularly at the city’s port bringing furniture, silver, furs, tapestries, rugs and glassware that had been taken from Jews in the occupied countries.
'The Social Democrats and the trades unions wanted property too,' said Aly. 'The ‘bad one’ was the Jew in all this.'
Therefore, the common man reasoned, it was no bad thing for his or herself to advance themselves at the cost of this societal bogeyman.
The Nazis ignored the fact that Jews - making up less than one per cent of the population of Germany - had since around 1900 excelled in schools and universities, graduating at a rate eight times that of Christians.
They merely played up the fact that they took all the jobs, thus provoking yet more envy as they secured positions in high paying professions such as medicine and law.
He offers up the example of his own grandfather, Friedrich Schneider, one of the five million unemployed in 1926 who joined Hitler’s fledgling Nazi party because he believed, like so many others, that he would once more be able to “get on” if it was in power. 'He was one small part,' he said, 'of that whole of Germany that went on the way to violence and destructive rule.'
Aly also says coupled with the German envy complex was a deep-seated fear of true freedom; it had not existed under the Kaiser and democracy under the Weimar Republic had brought the country to its knees.
The Nazis, he said, were a catchment basin for socially envious people and people with inferiority complexes. He went on: 'I see in the Germans a substantial self conditioning for the murder of the Jews that developed from these feelings of national inferiority.
'The Holocaust can repeat itself. One should not believe that the anti-Semites of yesterday are completely different human beings to the ones of today.'
SOURCE
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Obama throws open the immigration doors to all but serious criminals
This is near-complete amnesty and a coup against Congress
In a surprise announcement, the Obama administration said it will review the deportation cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants and might allow many of them to stay in the U.S., a decision that angered immigration hard-liners and pleased Hispanic advocacy groups.
Under the plan, federal authorities will review individually all cases of immigrants currently in deportation proceedings. Those who haven't committed crimes and who aren't considered a threat to public safety will have a chance to stay in the U.S. and to later apply for a work permit.
The shift could help counter growing discontent among Hispanic voters and immigration advocacy groups about record deportations; audits of businesses that have pushed undocumented workers underground; and the lack of progress toward overhauling the immigration system under President Barack Obama.
The announcement comes as several states seek to pass laws to crack down on illegal immigrants, including millions who flocked to the U.S. before the recession to take blue-collar jobs in construction, agriculture and hospitality.
A senior administration official described the move as an effort to better use limited immigration-enforcement resources and to alleviate pressure on overburdened immigration courts. The idea, this person said, is to "identify low-priority cases…and administratively close the case so they no longer clog the system." The official added that such cases could be reopened by the government at any time.
While the announcement doesn't address illegal immigrants who aren't involved in deportation proceedings, it could benefit them indirectly. "They will be less likely to enter the caseload to begin with, so we can focus on folks in the caseload who are high priority," said the administration official.
Critics described the decision as a step by the administration toward offering amnesty for illegal immigrants. "The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), head of the House Judiciary Committee.
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies against legalization, said: "In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter—subject only to those who commit violent felonies after arrival."
Others welcomed the move. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, described it as a "step forward" and a "sound policy decision that uses valuable law-enforcement resources to remove those who once caused harm but keeps contributing members of the immigrant community here."
The majority of agricultural workers are in the U.S. illegally. "We hope this is a move toward an immigration solution that works for agriculture," said Jason Resnick, general counsel of Western Growers, a California-based association that represents produce growers. "Even in this time of great unemployment, we are not seeing domestic workers apply for jobs."
Ordinarily, illegal immigrants can't get work permits, and most never apply for fear of opening themselves up to deportation. The new plan would enable some to get permits, said the administration official, who didn't elaborate other than to say decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada) outlining the plan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that an interagency working group would execute a "case-by-case review of all individuals currently in removal proceedings to ensure that they constitute our highest priorities."
Administration officials said low-priority cases likely to be shelved include individuals brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, undocumented spouses of U.S. military personnel and immigrants who have no criminal record.
"This process will allow additional federal enforcement resources to be focused on border security and the removal of public safety threats," Ms. Napolitano said in the letter.
Current immigration policy aims to deport illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, but critics say it is snaring too many immigrants who have committed only minor offenses, like traffic violations, or who have called the police to report a crime. Controversy over a key element of the policy, the Secure Communities program, is threatening the president's relations with the Hispanic community.
This week, there have been protests in several cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, prompted by the surge in deportations and administration plans to expand the program.
More than 390,000 people were removed from the U.S. in each of the last two years, surpassing previous years. Immigration courts are so jammed it can often take more than a year for a judge to rule on a deportation case.
U.S. immigration policy has eclipsed the economy and jobs as the top issue for Hispanic voters, according to a national poll released in June. To Hispanic voters, Mr. Obama has touted his support for an immigration overhaul that would put illegal immigrants on the path to legalization, and has bemoaned a lack of support from Republicans.
The immigration issue is a critical one for Mr. Obama as he prepares for reelection. He won 67% of the Hispanic vote in 2008. Republicans are unlikely to significantly increase their share of the Hispanic vote, but Mr. Obama needs Latinos to turn out in large numbers.
SOURCE
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The past is another more courteous country
Book review of "EVERYMAN'S ENGLAND" BY VICTOR CANNING
Review by Val Hennessy:
Talk about the past being another country. Even the recent past. My nonagenarian mother and her contemporaries will certainly recognise, with regretful shakes of their heads, the England depicted by Victor Canning in these elegiac essays commissioned in the 1930s by the Daily Mail. But, for the rest of us, he could be describing another planet.
His England is a place where weekend cinemas are packed to bursting with enthusiastic film fans all cheerfully whistling, shouting and applauding the action.
The main street of a town in the Fens throngs, on Saturday nights, with a good-natured ‘slow-moving, joking, flirting, healthy mob’, dressed in their best, farm-labourers and their girls congregating ‘to forget the toil of the week ... to seek colour, warmth and laughter’.
From the doorway of every inn comes the plunk and tinkle of pianos and the group chorusings of mawkish ballads. By 11.30pm everyone has hurried home to bed, and the streets are deserted.
Hey ho! No vomiting, fornicating, brawling and scantily-attired, knock-kneed, boozed-up girls baring their bottoms. Those were the days...
Canning finds beauty everywhere, but never sentimentalises, and is consistently honest enough to highlight poverty and social inequality.
In Maryport in Cumbria, where the silent pit heads signal the decline of the mining industry, he discovers unemployed men foraging for small fragments of coal on the snow-covered shingle. A morning’s foraging will fill half a sack, to be hauled back to keep fires going in homes where fires are luxuries. Yet there is laughter too, and ‘the happy clatter of clogs’ from children playing in the streets.
In sooty Halifax, a town ‘which has wrung dignity and beauty from chimney stacks, gasometers, canals and mills’, the doorsteps and windows are spotless, and proud working men tog up at weekends in bowler hats, white collars and navy-blue suits.
In the Cotswolds Canning describes the soft patina of lichen and moss on walls, and senses the pride taken in ‘houses built to last ... reflecting the spirit of the master craftsmen who made them’, and in Norfolk he gets talking to an ancient sea salt who had joined the Navy when ‘sails and bare feet and a penny a week for boys made Britain mistress of the seas’.
In Rutland Canning describes an incident which is unthinkable in modern Britain. Exhausted after a long ramble, he knocks on a cottage door to ask for water.
A jolly, motherly sort invites him inside to freshen up, then sits him on the porch amongst the hollyhocks and roses, offers him tea and, referring to her husband who is out hedging and ditching, explains: ‘The master does the kitchen garden and I look after the flowers’. ‘Master’ indeed! What distant times!
His best anecdote concerns the hilarious men-only bathing rules at Parson’s Pleasure on the river Cherwell. Mixed bathing was forbidden due to the tradition that men bathed naked there.
In this male Arcadia (and I think Canning misses a significant social situation here, in his innocence) Oxford dons and undergraduates would loll about ‘clad only in spectacles and a copy of Plato’s Socratic Discourses’.
Any approaching punt steered solely by women would be halted; the punt would be taken through the bathing enclosure by an attendant, and the women were made to avert their eyes as they walked along a special footpath to rejoin it. Forgetful females were known to disobey the rules, causing a mad scramble as naked dons flattened themselves behind tufts of grass or scuttled for cover amongst the willows.
It is astonishing to remember that Canning’s pilgrimage to ‘understand the intricate pattern and appreciate the colour of the fabric of English life’ was made within living memory.
His gentle adventures will probably seem boring, if not ludicrous, to post-war generations who travel more often to exotic, far-flung foreign hot spots than to the towns and villages of England.
Canning travelled through a law-abiding, slow-paced, courteous country where a stranger in town (Canning) would address a passing resident like this: ‘Good day to you, sir. Would it be a breach of good manners if I was to ask you to oblige me by telling me a little history of this town?...’
Good-manners, and respect, yes. It certainly was another country... No obscene gestures, filthy language, feral yoof on the rampage or lawless, mindless morons burning and looting for the hell of it. And if I’m beginning to sound like my mum, I make no apologies...
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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There is some truth in the ideas below but the psychologizing is pure speculation. What is true is that Hitler was personally very popular. He was seen as a fatherly lover of his people -- which is how he presented himself. And his antisemitism was completely normal worldwide in the prewar era.
The politics of envy always has a large following and the extraordinarily prominent position of Jews in prewar public life in Germany made them a natural target for envy.
There is of course much more to it but those two facts alone are just about enough to explain the holocaust without trashy assertions about inferiority complexes etc.
It does grieve me however that Jews have learnt so little since then. Once again many tend to seek out prominent positions in public life. It's like painting a target on their own backs
A peculiar German inferiority complex allied to a lust to 'get on' led to the country’s collective moral collapse which allowed the Holocaust of six million Jews to happen, a new book in Germany claims.
Götz Aly, an esteemed historian and social commentator, says their berserk social climbing led the ordinary people, far removed from the extermination camp system, to partake in the plunder of the Jews without troubling their consciences.
His book Why The Germans? Why The Jews? comes at a time when Germany is once more in the crosshairs of critics across the continent as the euro crisis lurches from bad to worse.
It is portrayed as bullying, domineering and inflexible as it tries to impose rigid, German-style rules on nations which do not share its social, political and economic ethics.
Most important Aly gets away from the 'evil Nazi' comfort zone that so many postwar Germans have wallowed in. The central thesis of his book is that the Holocaust happened “because people like you and me allowed it to.” And he says it can happen again.
It was the middle class fear of coming down in the world following defeat in WWI, the hyper-inflation and joblessness of the Weimar years, that allowed people to blind themselves to the excesses of the Nazis as they pledged to restore Germany to greatness.
Those who would pay the most for that greatness were the Jews; the culprits, said Hitler, behind the war.
Social climbing became an almost impossible thing during the jobless, moneyless days of the Weimar Republic: the Nazis brought it back into vogue with uniforms, work and, ultimately, plunder.
Massive auctions were staged every week throughout the lifespan of the Third Reich in Hamburg and several other cities of stolen Jewish goods. Massive ships docked regularly at the city’s port bringing furniture, silver, furs, tapestries, rugs and glassware that had been taken from Jews in the occupied countries.
'The Social Democrats and the trades unions wanted property too,' said Aly. 'The ‘bad one’ was the Jew in all this.'
Therefore, the common man reasoned, it was no bad thing for his or herself to advance themselves at the cost of this societal bogeyman.
The Nazis ignored the fact that Jews - making up less than one per cent of the population of Germany - had since around 1900 excelled in schools and universities, graduating at a rate eight times that of Christians.
They merely played up the fact that they took all the jobs, thus provoking yet more envy as they secured positions in high paying professions such as medicine and law.
He offers up the example of his own grandfather, Friedrich Schneider, one of the five million unemployed in 1926 who joined Hitler’s fledgling Nazi party because he believed, like so many others, that he would once more be able to “get on” if it was in power. 'He was one small part,' he said, 'of that whole of Germany that went on the way to violence and destructive rule.'
Aly also says coupled with the German envy complex was a deep-seated fear of true freedom; it had not existed under the Kaiser and democracy under the Weimar Republic had brought the country to its knees.
The Nazis, he said, were a catchment basin for socially envious people and people with inferiority complexes. He went on: 'I see in the Germans a substantial self conditioning for the murder of the Jews that developed from these feelings of national inferiority.
'The Holocaust can repeat itself. One should not believe that the anti-Semites of yesterday are completely different human beings to the ones of today.'
SOURCE
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Obama throws open the immigration doors to all but serious criminals
This is near-complete amnesty and a coup against Congress
In a surprise announcement, the Obama administration said it will review the deportation cases of 300,000 illegal immigrants and might allow many of them to stay in the U.S., a decision that angered immigration hard-liners and pleased Hispanic advocacy groups.
Under the plan, federal authorities will review individually all cases of immigrants currently in deportation proceedings. Those who haven't committed crimes and who aren't considered a threat to public safety will have a chance to stay in the U.S. and to later apply for a work permit.
The shift could help counter growing discontent among Hispanic voters and immigration advocacy groups about record deportations; audits of businesses that have pushed undocumented workers underground; and the lack of progress toward overhauling the immigration system under President Barack Obama.
The announcement comes as several states seek to pass laws to crack down on illegal immigrants, including millions who flocked to the U.S. before the recession to take blue-collar jobs in construction, agriculture and hospitality.
A senior administration official described the move as an effort to better use limited immigration-enforcement resources and to alleviate pressure on overburdened immigration courts. The idea, this person said, is to "identify low-priority cases…and administratively close the case so they no longer clog the system." The official added that such cases could be reopened by the government at any time.
While the announcement doesn't address illegal immigrants who aren't involved in deportation proceedings, it could benefit them indirectly. "They will be less likely to enter the caseload to begin with, so we can focus on folks in the caseload who are high priority," said the administration official.
Critics described the decision as a step by the administration toward offering amnesty for illegal immigrants. "The Obama administration should enforce immigration laws, not look for ways to ignore them," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), head of the House Judiciary Committee.
Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which lobbies against legalization, said: "In essence, the administration has declared that U.S. immigration is now virtually unlimited to anyone willing to try to enter—subject only to those who commit violent felonies after arrival."
Others welcomed the move. Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, a nonpartisan advocacy organization, described it as a "step forward" and a "sound policy decision that uses valuable law-enforcement resources to remove those who once caused harm but keeps contributing members of the immigrant community here."
The majority of agricultural workers are in the U.S. illegally. "We hope this is a move toward an immigration solution that works for agriculture," said Jason Resnick, general counsel of Western Growers, a California-based association that represents produce growers. "Even in this time of great unemployment, we are not seeing domestic workers apply for jobs."
Ordinarily, illegal immigrants can't get work permits, and most never apply for fear of opening themselves up to deportation. The new plan would enable some to get permits, said the administration official, who didn't elaborate other than to say decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis
In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nevada) outlining the plan, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that an interagency working group would execute a "case-by-case review of all individuals currently in removal proceedings to ensure that they constitute our highest priorities."
Administration officials said low-priority cases likely to be shelved include individuals brought to the U.S. as children by their parents, undocumented spouses of U.S. military personnel and immigrants who have no criminal record.
"This process will allow additional federal enforcement resources to be focused on border security and the removal of public safety threats," Ms. Napolitano said in the letter.
Current immigration policy aims to deport illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes, but critics say it is snaring too many immigrants who have committed only minor offenses, like traffic violations, or who have called the police to report a crime. Controversy over a key element of the policy, the Secure Communities program, is threatening the president's relations with the Hispanic community.
This week, there have been protests in several cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, prompted by the surge in deportations and administration plans to expand the program.
More than 390,000 people were removed from the U.S. in each of the last two years, surpassing previous years. Immigration courts are so jammed it can often take more than a year for a judge to rule on a deportation case.
U.S. immigration policy has eclipsed the economy and jobs as the top issue for Hispanic voters, according to a national poll released in June. To Hispanic voters, Mr. Obama has touted his support for an immigration overhaul that would put illegal immigrants on the path to legalization, and has bemoaned a lack of support from Republicans.
The immigration issue is a critical one for Mr. Obama as he prepares for reelection. He won 67% of the Hispanic vote in 2008. Republicans are unlikely to significantly increase their share of the Hispanic vote, but Mr. Obama needs Latinos to turn out in large numbers.
SOURCE
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The past is another more courteous country
Book review of "EVERYMAN'S ENGLAND" BY VICTOR CANNING
Review by Val Hennessy:
Talk about the past being another country. Even the recent past. My nonagenarian mother and her contemporaries will certainly recognise, with regretful shakes of their heads, the England depicted by Victor Canning in these elegiac essays commissioned in the 1930s by the Daily Mail. But, for the rest of us, he could be describing another planet.
His England is a place where weekend cinemas are packed to bursting with enthusiastic film fans all cheerfully whistling, shouting and applauding the action.
The main street of a town in the Fens throngs, on Saturday nights, with a good-natured ‘slow-moving, joking, flirting, healthy mob’, dressed in their best, farm-labourers and their girls congregating ‘to forget the toil of the week ... to seek colour, warmth and laughter’.
From the doorway of every inn comes the plunk and tinkle of pianos and the group chorusings of mawkish ballads. By 11.30pm everyone has hurried home to bed, and the streets are deserted.
Hey ho! No vomiting, fornicating, brawling and scantily-attired, knock-kneed, boozed-up girls baring their bottoms. Those were the days...
Canning finds beauty everywhere, but never sentimentalises, and is consistently honest enough to highlight poverty and social inequality.
In Maryport in Cumbria, where the silent pit heads signal the decline of the mining industry, he discovers unemployed men foraging for small fragments of coal on the snow-covered shingle. A morning’s foraging will fill half a sack, to be hauled back to keep fires going in homes where fires are luxuries. Yet there is laughter too, and ‘the happy clatter of clogs’ from children playing in the streets.
In sooty Halifax, a town ‘which has wrung dignity and beauty from chimney stacks, gasometers, canals and mills’, the doorsteps and windows are spotless, and proud working men tog up at weekends in bowler hats, white collars and navy-blue suits.
In the Cotswolds Canning describes the soft patina of lichen and moss on walls, and senses the pride taken in ‘houses built to last ... reflecting the spirit of the master craftsmen who made them’, and in Norfolk he gets talking to an ancient sea salt who had joined the Navy when ‘sails and bare feet and a penny a week for boys made Britain mistress of the seas’.
In Rutland Canning describes an incident which is unthinkable in modern Britain. Exhausted after a long ramble, he knocks on a cottage door to ask for water.
A jolly, motherly sort invites him inside to freshen up, then sits him on the porch amongst the hollyhocks and roses, offers him tea and, referring to her husband who is out hedging and ditching, explains: ‘The master does the kitchen garden and I look after the flowers’. ‘Master’ indeed! What distant times!
His best anecdote concerns the hilarious men-only bathing rules at Parson’s Pleasure on the river Cherwell. Mixed bathing was forbidden due to the tradition that men bathed naked there.
In this male Arcadia (and I think Canning misses a significant social situation here, in his innocence) Oxford dons and undergraduates would loll about ‘clad only in spectacles and a copy of Plato’s Socratic Discourses’.
Any approaching punt steered solely by women would be halted; the punt would be taken through the bathing enclosure by an attendant, and the women were made to avert their eyes as they walked along a special footpath to rejoin it. Forgetful females were known to disobey the rules, causing a mad scramble as naked dons flattened themselves behind tufts of grass or scuttled for cover amongst the willows.
It is astonishing to remember that Canning’s pilgrimage to ‘understand the intricate pattern and appreciate the colour of the fabric of English life’ was made within living memory.
His gentle adventures will probably seem boring, if not ludicrous, to post-war generations who travel more often to exotic, far-flung foreign hot spots than to the towns and villages of England.
Canning travelled through a law-abiding, slow-paced, courteous country where a stranger in town (Canning) would address a passing resident like this: ‘Good day to you, sir. Would it be a breach of good manners if I was to ask you to oblige me by telling me a little history of this town?...’
Good-manners, and respect, yes. It certainly was another country... No obscene gestures, filthy language, feral yoof on the rampage or lawless, mindless morons burning and looting for the hell of it. And if I’m beginning to sound like my mum, I make no apologies...
SOURCE
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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