Washington, D.C. Becomes America’s Richest City

Obama’s $4 trillion army settles into its barracks

Things are tough all over… except for Washington, D.C. By vacuuming four trillion dollars out of the private economy, President Obama has brought a deficit-fueled boom to the seat of the national bureaucracy he loves. Bloomberg News does the honors as Silicon Valley is dethroned, and America’s new richest city is crowned:

Federal employees whose compensation averages more than $126,000 and the nation’s greatest concentration of lawyers helped Washington edge out San Jose as the wealthiest U.S. metropolitan area, government data show.

The U.S. capital has swapped top spots with Silicon Valley, according to recent Census Bureau figures, with the typical household in the Washington metro area earning $84,523 last year. The national median income for 2010 was $50,046.

This has not escaped the notice of those who concern themselves with income disparity, and they’re feeling a bit queasy about it:

The figures demonstrate how the nation’s political and financial classes are prospering as the economy struggles with unemployment above 9 percent and thousands of Americans protest in the streets against income disparity, said Kevin Zeese, director of Prosperity Agenda, a Baltimore-based advocacy group trying to narrow the divide between rich and poor.

“There’s a gap that’s isolating Washington from the reality of the rest of the country,” Zeese said. “They just get more and more out of touch.”

I’m all in favor of narrowing the divide between rich and poor myself, provided it’s done by making the poor richer. Flooding D.C. with six-figure bureaucrats until it turns into El Dorado is the exact opposite of that. The very policies that helped Obama surround himself with a suitably magnificent aristocracy are killing the poor. As money is siphoned out of the private sector, and the national debt accumulates with staggering interest payments, opportunity withers. Not coincidentally, Obama has brought the number of people living in poverty to record highs.

There is no more concise, and devastating, symbol of Obama’s failure than watching Washington, D.C. become the richest city in the nation, while Gross Domestic Product flounders and 9% unemployment drags on for years. Worst of all, whoever gets the job of cleaning up this mess will be accused of wanting to make unemployment worse, when they start sending those surplus $126,000 bureaucrats home.

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Big-government economic policies are impoverishing America



A majority of Americans disapprove of what President Obama has done in office. He promised hope and change but delivered disappointment and stagnation. The unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1 percent. The poverty rate is at 15.1 percent, tied for the worst performance since the Census started tracking numbers in 1959. White House policies of class warfare and redistribution are impoverishing America, and the public is starting to feel worked over.

While economic scorekeepers say the recession officially ended in June 2009, few Americans would say they’ve felt much relief. A new study by Gordon Green and John Coder of Sentier Research explains this phenomenon. They found inflation-adjusted median household income fell 6.7 percent from $53,518 in June 2009 to $49,909 in June 2011. That’s on top of the 3.2 percent drop that took place during the official recession period from December 2007 and June 2009. Altogether, the average household lost $5,400 in spending ability - a near 10 percent drop in the standard of living.

One reason for this is that people who have found jobs have had to settle for a pay cut. Princeton University’s Henry Faber found that, on average, when an employee lost a job and then got rehired during the recession, the new position paid 17.5 percent less than the old one. It’s no wonder that confidence levels are low, and Americans, even those with jobs, are being careful with spending.

Not surprisingly, the biggest decline was found in households where the head is unemployed. Their income fell more than 18 percent. During the recession, the average duration of unemployment increased from 16.6 weeks in December 2007 to a shade over 24 weeks by June 2009. That figure is now 40.5 weeks, the longest it has been in more than six decades. The longer a person is unemployed, the harder it is for him to find a job, as job skills erode and potential employers question whether it might be more prudent to hire someone else without big gaps in their work history.

Mr. Obama’s solution involves having the federal government declare the long-term unemployed a legally protected class. His American Jobs Act would subject businesses to frivolous lawsuits if they decide against hiring someone who has been jobless for an extended time. Doing so would serve as one more disincentive for companies to hire or hold interviews for open positions, making it even harder for the jobless to find work.

By passing the long-pending free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama this week, Congress took the first small steps toward improving the U.S. economic predicament. American agricultural exports are likely to be the largest beneficiaries, but various service sectors would also see a boost. The South Korea deal alone is expected to generate an increase in U.S. gross domestic product of $10-12 billion. That means more job creation.

Ultimately, Americans will not find their pocketbooks thickening so long as Uncle Sam strangles entrepreneurs with regulatory red tape. Companies need to have certainty that they will be able to keep the proceeds of their investments in the future before they will start hiring again and pay their employees more.

SOURCE

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So much for Obama's 'new era of open government'

A secret meeting on transparency in government was held by the Office of Information Policy in the Justice Department headed by the President’s attorney general, Eric Holder.

Justice Department documents made public Tuesday by Judicial Watch exposed an "accomplishment" of President Obama that his many admirers and enablers in the liberal mainstream media likely don't want to talk about: a secret meeting on transparency in government. It happened on Dec. 7, 2009, and was convened by the Office of Information Policy in the Justice Department headed by Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder. The meeting's purpose was to train Freedom of Information Act officers from federal agencies how to respond to FOIA requests, including tips on resolving disputes over what government documents can be made public.

Judicial Watch obtained a series of pre-conference emails in which Justice Department officials sought approval from White House media officials for closing the meeting to reporters. That the December meeting was closed was no isolated incident. In one of the emails, Melanie Pustay, OIP's director, said she has "always held parallel meetings, one for agency 'ees [i.e. government employees] and then one that is open." We can only wonder what Pustay tells government FOIA officers that she doesn't want journalists to hear.

It was Obama who said on his first day in the Oval Office that he wanted his subordinates in the executive branch to respond to FOIA requests "with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails." Apparently that memo didn't make it to the Justice Department's OIP, which oversees executive branch compliance with the FOIA. As Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton said, "only in Washington would political appointees think it appropriate to keep secret a government workshop on transparency."

Unfortunately, keeping the meeting secret isn't the only area in which the Obama administration's record on this issue has proven to be woefully short of what the president promised. In both the Fast and Furious and Solyndra scandals, for example, Obama appointees have held back thousands of documents legitimately sought by congressional investigators while defending their refusal with arguments coined by President Nixon.

Similarly, Obama's secretary of labor, Hilda Solis, has gutted transparency regulations that required labor unions to disclose information about the organizations' financial health, including union officers' total compensation packages. Also killed was a requirement to report on union trusts, which often function like offshore accounts for corporations in providing a means of hiding assets. And gone is a requirement that would have made unions report on "no-show" jobs -- positions for which the union is paid but nobody actually does the work. The biggest losers when unions are able to conceal such information are union members.

That is likely why, as The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday, a recent survey of union households for Americans for Limited Government found that "94 percent of the respondents agreed that 'union officials and executives should have to disclose their salaries and benefits connected to their official union office as a way of making them accountable to their members.' " When it comes to transparency, Obama sides with bureaucrats against taxpayers and union bosses against union members.

SOURCE

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How California Drives Away Jobs and Business

The Golden State continues to incubate cutting-edge companies in Silicon Valley, but then the successful firms expand elsewhere to avoid the state's tax and other burdens.

California has long been among America's most extensive taxers and regulators of business. But it had assets that seemed to offset its economic disincentives: a sunny climate, a world-class public university system that produced a talented local work force, sturdy infrastructure that often made doing business easier, and a record of spawning innovative companies.

No more. In surveys, executives regularly call California one of the country's most toxic business environments, while the state has become an easy target for economic development officials from other states looking to lure firms away.

In a 2004 survey of California executives by the consulting firm Bain & Company, half said they planned to halt job growth within the state. By 2011, according to a poll by a California coalition of businesses and industries, 84% of executives and owners said that if they weren't already in the state, they wouldn't consider starting up there, while 64% said the main reason they stayed was the difficulty of relocating their particular kind of business. For several years in a row, California has ranked dead last in Chief Executive magazine's poll about states' business environments.

Labor groups, environmentalists and some politicians jeer at these surveys. But the hard numbers tell a disturbing story.

From 1994 through 2008, the latest year for which data are available in the National Establishment Time Series database (a joint project of Walls & Associates and Dun and Bradstreet), California ranked 47th among the states in net jobs created through business relocation, losing 124,000 more jobs to other places than it gained from other places. Meanwhile, it generated just 285,000 more jobs from new businesses than it lost to business failures, placing 29th in the country—while first-place Florida gained 2.4 million net jobs. Demographer Wendell Cox has noted that close to none of those 285,000 net jobs were created between 2000 and 2008, meaning that start-ups haven't contributed to California employment for more than a decade.

The state continues to incubate cutting-edge companies in places like Silicon Valley, where investment remains vigorous, thanks in part to the area's muscular venture-capital industry. Yet its successful firms increasingly expand elsewhere.

In 2007, Google built a new generation of server farms in Oregon; the following year, Intel opened a $3 billion production facility near Phoenix. Earlier this year, eBay, based in San Jose, Calif., said it would add some 1,000 back-office jobs in Austin, Texas, over the next decade. Hank Nothhaft, former CEO of the San Jose-based micro-electronics firm Tessera, has estimated that Silicon Valley lost one-quarter of its computer, microchip and communications-equipment manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2008.

A suffocating regulatory climate has a lot to do with the state's bad business numbers. Writing in the California Political Review this summer, Andrew Puzder, chief executive of California-based CKE Restaurants—which operates 3,000 eateries nationwide—called his company's home state "the most business-unfriendly state we operate in."

CKE, which runs Hardee's and Carl's Jr., has stopped opening restaurants in California, where the regulatory process can take up to two years. But it plans to open 300 in Texas, where the start-up time can be six weeks and opening costs $200,000 less than in California.

A 2009 study by two California State University finance professors estimated that regulation cost the state's businesses $493 billion annually, or nearly $135,000 per company. Sanjay Varshney and Dennis Tootelian estimated that the burden pushed California's overall employment down by 3.8 million jobs.

Ironically, green-promoting California is now even losing green manufacturing jobs.

Earlier this year Bing Energy, a fuel-cell maker, announced that it would relocate from Chico in San Bernardino County to Tallahassee, Fla., where it expected to hire nearly 250 workers. Solar Millennium, an energy company, canceled plans to build a facility in Ridgecrest, Calif.—an undertaking that would have created 700 temporary jobs and 75 permanent ones—after lengthy delays caused by state environmental reviews, including one on the project's impact on the Mojave ground squirrel. AQT Solar, an energy-cell maker based in Sunnyvale, will employ 1,000 people at a new 184,000-square-foot manufacturing plant—in South Carolina. Then there's Biocentric Energy Holdings, a Santa Ana energy company that moved to Salt Lake City; and Calisolar, a Santa Clara–based green-energy company building a factory in Ontario, Canada, that will employ 350 workers.

Again, no wonder: California taxes are high and hit employers and employees hard. While the highest individual income-tax bracket, 10.3%, applies to million-dollar earners, the second-highest, 9.3%, kicks in at $47,000. Even in high-tax New Jersey, the top bracket of 8.97% doesn't kick in until filers hit $500,000 in income. California also has a high corporate tax rate of 8.84%.

The state's legal environment is a mess, too. A so-called consumer rights law allows trial lawyers to sue firms for minor violations of California's complex labor and environmental regulations. After lawyers kept sending out threatening letters in mass mailings to thousands of small businesses, demanding payments in return for not suing over purported minor paperwork violations, outraged voters passed the Prop. 64 reform initiative in 2004. Yet that only forced suing attorneys to first show that they were representing plaintiffs who claimed to have been harmed.

California also allows plaintiffs to sue for damages over even minor violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act's architectural guidelines for accommodating the disabled. One plaintiff alone has sued 1,000 businesses, mostly restaurants, and won an average settlement of $4,000. Using an obscure provision of California labor law that requires stores to have enough seats for all employees, trial attorneys have filed about 100 lawsuits, claiming damages of up to $100 per employee, against chain retailers.

Today, California seems to be following the path first trod by New York state, which dominated the nation's economy through the early part of the 20th century, only to see massive outmigration of jobs and people, and subpar employment growth as its taxes and regulations rose.

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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Pitting us against each other

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party have led increasingly successful efforts to pit Americans against one another through the politics of hate and envy. Attacking CEO salaries, the president -- last year during his Midwest tour -- said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."

Let's look at CEO salaries, but before doing so, let's look at other salary disparities between those at the bottom and those at the top. According to Forbes' Celebrity 100 list for 2010, Oprah Winfrey earned $290 million. Even if her makeup person or cameraman earned $100,000, she earned thousands of times more than that. Is that fair?

Among other celebrities earning hundreds or thousands of times more than the people who work with them are Tyler Perry ($130 million), Jerry Bruckheimer ($113 million), Lady Gaga ($90 million) and Howard Stern ($76 million). According to Forbes, the top 10 celebrities, excluding athletes, earned an average salary of a little more than $100 million in 2010.

According to The Wall Street Journal Survey of CEO Compensation (November 2010), Gregory Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, earned $87 million, Oracle's Lawrence Ellison ($68 million) and rounding out the top 10 CEOs was McKesson's John Hammergren, earning $24 million. It turns out that the top 10 CEOs have an average salary of $43 million, which pales in comparison with America's top 10 celebrities, who earn an average salary of $100 million.

When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who's doing the demonizing? It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along.

Why demonize CEOs? My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it in his brand-new book, "The Thomas Sowell Reader." One of his readings, titled "Ivan and Boris -- and Us," starts off with a fable of two poor Russian peasants. Ivan finds a magic lamp and rubs it, and the jinni grants him one wish. As it turns out, Boris has a goat, but Ivan doesn't. Ivan's wish is for Boris' goat to die. That vision reflects the feelings of too many Americans. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American's bottom line.

For politicians, it's another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That's the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre's promoting hatred of the aristocracy that was the key to his acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had. In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. In each case, the power gained led to greater misery and bloodshed than anything the old regime could have done.

Let me be clear: I'm not equating America's liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses.

It's not about the amount of money people earn. If it were, politicians and leftists would be promoting jealousy, fear and hate toward multimillionaire Hollywood and celebrities and sports stars, such as LeBron James ($48 million), Tiger Woods ($75 million) and Peyton Manning ($38 million). But there is no way that politicians could take over the roles of Oprah Winfrey, Lady Gaga and LeBron James. That means celebrities can make any amount of money they want and it matters not one iota politically.

The Occupy Wall Street crowd shouldn't focus its anger at wealthy CEOs. A far more appropriate target would be the U.S. Congress.

SOURCE

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Wall Street Protesters Half Right

John Stossel

What's there to say about Occupy Wall Street? The answer isn't so simple. Some complain about taxpayer bailouts of businesses. Good for them. In a true free market, failing firms would go out of business. They couldn't turn to Washington for help.

But many protesters say they're against capitalism. Now things get confusing. What do they mean? If by "capitalism" they mean crony capitalism (let's call it crapitalism), a system in which favored business interests are supported by government, I'm against that, too.

But if they mean the free market, then they are fools. When allowed to work, the market has lifted more people out of the mud and misery of poverty than any government, ever.

The protesters are also upset about income disparity. Here again we should make distinctions. To the extent the country's income disparity is the result of crony capitalism, it's bad.

Yet even if America had a true free market, there would be income disparity. It's a byproduct of freedom. Some people are just more ambitious, more energetic and more driven, and some have that ineffable knack of sensing what consumers want. Think Steve Jobs.

But it shouldn't matter if the income gap between you and rich people grows. What should matter is that your living standard improves.

Your living standard many not have improved lately. Over the past decade, median income fell. But that's an aberration largely caused by the bursting of the real estate bubble. Despite Wall Street protesters' complaints about rich people gaining at the expense of the poor, the poorest fifth of Americans are 20 percent wealthier than they were when I was in college, and despite the recession, still richer than they were in 1993.

And income statistics don't tell the whole story. Thanks to the innovations of entrepreneurs, today in America, even poor people have clean water, TV sets, cars and flush toilets. Most live better than kings once lived -- better even than the middle class lived in 1970.

Some protesters say they hate the market process that makes that possible. They call rich people "robber barons." That term was used by American newspapers to smear tycoons like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller. But Vanderbilt and Rockefeller were neither robbers nor barons. They weren't barons because they weren't born rich. They weren't robbers because they didn't steal. They got rich by serving customers well. As Burton Folsom wrote in "The Myth of the Robber Barons," there were political entrepreneurs, who made their fortunes through government privilege, and market entrepreneurs, who pleased consumers.

Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were market entrepreneurs. Vanderbilt invented ways to make travel cheaper. He used bigger ships and served food onboard. People liked that, and the extra customers he attracted allowed him to lower costs. He cut the New York-Hartford fare from $8 to $1. That helped people.

Rockefeller was called a monopolist, but he wasn't one. He had 150 competitors -- including big companies like Texaco and Gulf. No one was ever forced to buy his oil. Rockefeller got rich by finding cheaper ways to get oil products to the market. His competitors vilified him because he "stole" their customers by lowering prices. Ignorant reporters repeated their complaints.

In truth, Rockefeller's price cuts made life better. Poor people used to go to bed when it got dark, but thanks to Rockefeller, they could afford fuel for lanterns and stay up and read at night. Rockefeller's "greed" may have even saved the whales. When he lowered the price of kerosene, he eliminated the need for whale oil, and the slaughter of whales suddenly stopped. Bet your kids won't read "Rockefeller saved the whales" in environmental studies class.

I have at least found some common ground with some Wall Street protest supporters. Joe Sibilia, who runs the website CSRWire (Corporate Social Responsibility), told me, "You can't have an environment where people are betting on financial instruments with the expectation that the government is going to bail them out."

So we agree that Wall Street bailouts are intolerable. Now we just have to teach our progressive friends that truly free markets work for the benefit of all.

SOURCE

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Obama does something right

The White House announced we're putting boots on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa. President Obama notified Congress that he's sending about 100 combat-equipped troops to advise African forces on how best to kill or capture (but hopefully kill) one of the truly hideous villains breathing today, Joseph Kony, and destroy his militia cult, the Lord's Resistance Army.

And Obama is absolutely right to do it.

The news was so sudden, unexpected and just plain odd that the reaction from both left and right has been hurried and confused. Many claims are simply wrong. For instance, the LRA is not a "Christian" militia. The LRA routinely burns down churches and slaughters the congregants, but usually not before raping and mutilating them.

Kony is a classic example of the charismatic terrorist cult leader. He blends indigenous witchcraft with bits of Christianity and Islam (soldiers pray the rosary and bow to Mecca) to brainwash his uneducated, terrified flock of hostages and child soldiers, many of whom were forced to murder their own parents.

Here's a graphic passage from a 2006 report from Christianity Today on the LRA:

"Under threat of death, LRA child soldiers attack villages, shooting and cutting off people's lips, ears, hands, feet, or breasts, at times force-feeding the severed body parts to victims' families. Some cut open the bellies of pregnant women and tear their babies out. Men and women are gang-raped. As a warning to those who might report them to Ugandan authorities, they bore holes in the lips of victims and padlock them shut. Victims are burned alive or beaten to death with machetes and clubs. The murderous task is considered properly executed only when the victim is mutilated beyond recognition."

It's also worth noting that Obama is acting in compliance with a bill unanimously passed by both houses of Congress in 2009, which called for the president to take steps to "mitigate and eliminate the threat to civilians and regional stability posed by the Lord's Resistance Army."

More HERE

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A Soviet future is closer than you might think

The most amazing aspects of the accelerating American submission to the state are: 1) how matter-of-fact we are in contemplating massive government interventions, such as President Barack Obama's latest stimulus "jobs" plan, and 2) how virtually no one notices the blatant Marxist overtones. When someone does, a la "Joe the Plumber" at the end of the 2008 campaign season, he or she is mocked off the stage.

President Obama demonstrated how this is done in January 2010 when, during an unusual White House meeting with congressional Republicans about his pending health-care legislation - another massive government intervention into the private sector - he declared: "If you were to listen to the debate, and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you'd think this thing was some Bolshevik plot."

I remember cringing when a smattering of applause arose from the GOP ranks, as though some Republicans actually believed the president had delivered a punch line revealing the absurdity of considering "Obamacare" a government apparatus for seizing control of the lives of citizens - which it is. And that's no joke.

I wish any Republican had replied: "Not necessarily a 'plot,' sir, but a program that is indeed 'Bolshevik' in conception, design and purpose nonetheless. Government control of private sector activity, as the American people well know (or should), is aptly described as 'Bolshevik' - or Marxist, socialist, collectivist, statist and, for that matter, fascist, too. Indeed, nationalized health care was one of the first programs enacted by the Bolsheviks after they seized power in 1917."

But, no. Among the many deep psychological factors repressing such a factually devastating response is pure historical ignorance. This isn't entirely our fault. That is, the truth about Bolshevism and closely related creeds barely makes it into our curricula - another Bolshevik plot, if you ask me. Indeed, the shocking intelligence history of communist plotters who secretly sabotaged our government barely dents our understanding of history even now, some 20 years after secret archives in Moscow and Washington opened, somewhat, to disgorge incontrovertible proof of pro-Soviet agents operating in the highest reaches of power.

But if nationalized health care is a demonstrably Bolshevik program, "stimulus spending" is what you might call a genuine Bolshevik plot. Why? One of the Kremlin's greatest agents you probably never heard of played a leading role in introducing stimulus spending as a macroeconomic policy for the first time in U.S. history during the Franklin D. Roosevelt years.

The agent's name was Lauchlin Currie, and, as M. Stanton Evans writes in his indispensable 2007 book "Blacklisted by History," he ranks "among the most influential Soviet agents ever in the U.S. government, if only by virtue of his portfolio in the White House dealing with affairs of China." Currie, an administrative assistant to FDR, was instrumental in the U.S.-government-wide communist plot to turn China red.

But that's not all he did. Currie pops up in nine KGB cables translated by American cryptographers in what is known as the Venona Project, which became public in 1995. From these and other archival sources we have learned that Currie passed secret documents and shared sensitive political intelligence with Soviet spymasters. Equally as damaging, Currie used his stature as a senior Roosevelt aide to shut down investigations into the activities of other American traitors operating inside government.

While I haven't seen mention of Currie's economic activities in KGB documents, how does stimulus spending sound now on discovering that this bona fide Soviet agent was its leading proponent? In "Roosevelt, the Great Depression and the Economics of Recovery" (University of Virginia Press, 2005), Elliot Rosen, professor emeritus of history at Rutgers, writes: "The initial rationale for public expenditure as a stimulus to the economy was provided by Currie, who won a wide and influential audience in the Roosevelt administration." As assistant research director for the Federal Reserve, his position before moving to the White House, "Currie provided an economic rationale" for deficit spending. "Wartime aside," Rosen writes, "no precedent existed for budget unbalance." Not surprisingly, another Currie project was to push for the "abandonment of the concept of annual budget balance."

So that's where balanced budgets went, and stimulus spending came from. Think of it: One agent of communist influence in high places, and the U.S. economy was revolutionized.

If only Americans could learn to recognize a Bolshevik plot when they see one.

SOURCE

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Mormons and evangelicals getting on better these days

The newfound dialogue between Mormons and Evangelicals has left the melee in favor of the gentleman's war. While it can get messy and sticky at times, the general tenor of the battle seems wholly improved and marks a significant thaw in their relations.

For example, in his chapter on Mormon theology, Mosser notes: "One has failed to appreciate Mormonism's distinctiveness if one can classify it as Christian without qualifications." I believe this is a definition that most Mormons would agree with.

And the dialogue continues. Just this month, Stephen Webb, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Wabash College published an extraordinary article examining the Mormon faith. He writes: "Mormonism can be a controversial topic for many non-Mormon Christians, but I have come to the conclusion that no theology has ever managed to capture the essential sameness of Jesus with us in a more striking way."

Much 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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More skepticism about the death of Hitler

You can read here an overview of another book that claims Hitler did not die in Berlin but escaped to Argentina. I said in my previous post on the subject that I have my own reasons -- founded on my own close study of Hitler's history and psychology -- for not believing that.

I am beginning to wonder however -- not because of the new book but because of the response to it. The critics of the book say that it is a "consensus" of the experts that Hitler died in Berlin and the publisher should be ashamed for publishing such a book. That is so close to what defenders of the global warming hoax say that my skeptical antennae begin to twitch.

Moreover they admit that the alleged fragment of Hitler's skull held by the Russians is not in fact Hitler's and that there was a great deal of confusion in Hitler's bunkler at the time of the Russian surge into Berlin.

The only "proof" they offer that Hitler died in his Berlin bunker is the testimony from one of Hitler's closest aides who says that he saw Hitler dead there. The possibility that one of Hitler's aides might have lied to protect his boss has apparently not occurred to them.

I think I will now have to say that I am agnostic on the matter.

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Occupy This!

Hey Wall Street “occupiers.” What do you suppose would happen to the United States if the rest of us – I’ll call us “the other 99.99%” – started behaving like you?

Will you allow this question to “occupy” your minds for a moment? Seriously, what would happen to our country if we all chose to do nothing but take up space on “public” property (or even on other people’s private property as some of you have done), consume resources at other people’s expense, and spend several days in a row not producing things? Have you even thought of what might happen, if the rest of us followed your “example?”

Participants in the nationwide “occupy” movement would probably be shocked to know this. But the fact is, their oh-so-important demonstrations are able to occur as they do because the majority of us in America do not think and act the way they do. In fact, to be even more precise, their choices are enabled in no small part by – gasp!- American-styled Capitalism! Yet just as those who burn the U.S. flag fail to understand that the object they desecrate is emblematic of the freedom they exercise, the occupiers fail to see that the “C-word” which they loathe is precisely what makes their occupying possible.

Consider the property on which the demonstrations are occurring. Most of them have happened on public property – city streets, public parks, and so forth – while some of the protestations have migrated on to privately-owned commercial and residential property. In either case, the demonstrations have occurred on property that belongs to somebody - property that has been purchased with money, and that is “owned” by some group or individual.

The occupiers seem to convey a vague belief that land just simply “exists,” and it rightly belongs to “everybody.” Yet if they were only interested in “land” on which to hang-out, then they could just as easily gather in the virgin forests of upstate New York or the un-refined terrain of the rural Nevada desert.

But that’s not what the occupiers are doing. Oh, no, they’re enjoying the modern comforts and conveniences of developed land – land entailing well-built and maintained streets and sidewalks, and nicely manicured lawns – all of which were created by somebody else’s labor and purchased with that dreaded thing called money.

And guess what, occupiers? The labor that built the streets and walkways, the education that prepared the laborers, and the capital that purchased the land and paid for the labor, were all brought about by capitalism and our free-market enterprise system. Even if you’re on “government property,” the government bought it with tax dollars that were generated in our free-market economic system.

Speaking of labor - how would you like it, occupiers, if both government and private-sector workers in and around your demonstrations chose to join you, rather than to continue working at their jobs and continue serving you? Imagine, for example, if the NYPD officers assigned to patrol Wall Street – no doubt dismissed as “oppressors” or “the man” by the occupiers but who nonetheless keep the demonstrators safe – were to stop working at their jobs, and chose instead to become occupiers themselves. Might you, occupiers, become a bit inconvenienced, or maybe even endangered?

And what if the workers and managers at the local Starbucks, McDonald’s, and other service businesses chose to protest with you, and allowed their stores to remain closed? Might that create a little problem, occupiers?

Or what if the owners and operators of these for-profit capitalistic enterprises actually became as greedy and evil as you characterize them to be, occupiers, and they started denying you entrance in to their facilities? What if you could no longer do your potty breaks and your after-the-overnighter-in-the-park wash ups in their restrooms that are paid-for with the wealth of the business owners?

The occupy movement appears as though it will be with us for the foreseeable future. And perhaps the only thing worse than the selfish, narcissistic, vacuous behavior and rhetoric of the occupiers is the fact that our President and members of his party in Congress have given their blessing to it all.

The good news is that a majority of us Americans do not speak and behave as the occupiers do. We choose to both consume, and to produce, and we choose to think as well as to feel. We understand the basic tenet of capitalism, that one earns a day’s pay by doing a day’s work.

We also realize that if too many people choose only to consume and live off the largesse of others, then our nation is doomed. And as the late, great “one percenter” Steve Jobs might say, a majority of us choose to “think different.”

SOURCE

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Tea Party Represents America, Not Occupy Wall Street

For years, I have been impressed with this young man I see working at Walmart retrieving shopping carts in the parking lot. He is challenged, I suspect from birth, with physical issues involving an arm and a leg. I saw him leaving work one evening in his car. While I do not know his living situation, I do know he has a job and drives what I assume is his own car.

Looking at this young man hobbling around doing his job, one could think, “Why isn't this poor soul home collecting disability?” He obviously prefers the dignity which accompanies earning his own money. Thus, the reason for my utmost respect for him.

Then, I look at the Occupy Wall Street despicable mobs; spoiled brat college students, America hating Marxists, paid professional protesters and plain old lazy bottom feeders, all demanding freebies while claiming ownership of the fruit of other folk's labor. And the left expects me to respect and sympathize with these parasites.

The liberal media, the left and the Obama administration are trying to convince us these ignorant arrogant Occupy Wall Street knuckleheads represent the thinking of most Americans. If their premise were true, we would be in deep, deep trouble as a nation. Fortunately, these mobs are NOT a majority.

Like parents who are in denial protecting a juvenile delinquent child, the left is doing everything in their power to portray these violent, destructive, anti-Semitic and ungodly Occupy Wall Street thugs in a positive light. Meanwhile, the left remains relentless in their quest to slander the tea party with false undocumented accusations of racism and violence.

The Tea Party movement which is driven by “We The People” is the polar opposite of the George Soros and far left organizations funded Occupy Wall Street assault on Capitalism and America. How dare they compare their low rent “trashy movement” to the dignified Tea Party.

As a Tea Party activist/performer who has traveled on five Tea Party Express national bus tours, I have attended over 300 tea parties. I can assure you the well-informed, hard working and decent people who attend tea parties represent the thinking of a majority of Americans, not the Occupy Wall Street mobs.

While Occupy Wall Street participants trash, vandalize and disrespect public parks and government buildings, we tea party patriots leave our rally sites the way we found them or cleaner. The Tea Party is inspired by love for America and a desire to follow our Constitution. It is also in rebellion of political correctness and about restoring values and principles which have made America great. Tea Party goals are far superior to Occupy Wall Street which proclaims, “You rich guys have too much and we're takin' it!”

Occupy Wall Street is nothing more than a vile orgy of class envy, covetousness and hatred of achievers. You Occupy losers need to get a clue, a life and a job!

SOURCE

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Hitler's predecessors were American do-gooders and "scientists"

Below is an editorial from the 1911 "Scientific American". It sounds very reasonable but that makes it an even better example of the deplorable "unintended consequences" of government interventionism

ADA JUKE is known to anthropologists as the "mother of criminals." From her there were directly descended one thousand two hundred persons. Of these, one thousand were criminals, paupers, inebriates, insane, or on the streets. That heritage of crime, disease, inefficiency and immorality cost the State of New York about a million and a quarter dollars for maintenance directly. What the indirect loss was in property stolen, in injury to life and limb, no one can estimate.

Suppose that Ada Juke or her immediate children had been prevented from perpetuating the Juke family. Not only would the State have been spared the necessity of supporting one thousand defective persons, morally and physically incapable of performing the functions of citizenship, but American manhood would have been considerably better off, and society would have been free from one taint at least.

Instances such as these are not isolated. Ever since the late Sir Francis Galton? gave us his science of Eugenics, which in its most literal sense means "good breeding," the scientific students of mankind, the directors of insane asylums and hospitals, criminologists the world over, have been compiling statistics to show not only the danger of permitting the marriage of criminals, lunatics, and the physically unfit, but the effect upon" mankind. Thus, Prof. Karl Pearson?, Galton's ablest disciple, has driven home the necessity of the scientific study of the human race in many a telling statistical comparison and monograph. He has shown that in Great Britain 25 per cent of the, population (and that the undesirable element in England) is producing 50 per cent of English children, and that if this goes on unchecked, national deterioration and degeneracy must inevitably result.

Galton originally worked only with statistics, and in his capable hands, they proved a powerful weapon. After he had enunciated the principles of Eugenics, Mendel's law of heredity was revived and applied to the problem. Imperfectly understood as that law may be as yet, nevertheless it enables us to prophesy with considerable accuracy what the offspring of animals, plants and human beings may be, not only in the next generation, but in generations to come. Mendelian principles have no doubt long been followed by professional animal breeders in an empirical way, but only within recent years have enough data been accumulated to show that they apply with equal force to human beings.

We know enough about the laws of heredity, we have enough statistics from insane asylums and prisons, we have enough genealogies, to show that, although we may not be able directly to improve the human race as we improve the breed of guinea pigs, rabbits or cows, because of the rebellious spirit of mankind, yet the time has come when the lawmaker should join hands with the scientist, and at least check the propagation of the unfit. Prizes have been offered to crack trotters for beating their own record, $10,000 for a fifth of a second, all for the purpose of evolving a precious two-minute horse. Yet we hear of no prizes which are offered for that much worthier object, the physically and intellectually perfect man.

Fortunately the need of intelligent legislation on the subject is being driven home by scientific men and Eugenic associations here and abroad. The Eugenics laboratory founded by Sir Francis Galton and the American Breeders' Association have done much to clear away the popular prejudices inevitably encountered in such educational work and to prepare the ground for legislative action. Some States have already passed laws that show an appreciation of the situation.

The proper attitude to be taken toward the perpetuation of poor types is that which has been attributed to Huxley. "We are sorry for you," he is reported to have said; "we will do our best for you (and in so doing we elevate ourselves, since mercy blesses him that gives and him that takes), but we deny you the right to parentage. You may live, but you must not propagate."

The absurdity of legislation to cure social evils without scientific facts to base that legislation upon, is no more apparent than in the disposal of the insane. In Wethams's "Family and the Nation," it is stated: "According to the mid-Victorian concept, a man was either sane or insane-quite mad or completely cured. How he became mad, how completely he was cured, were not taken into consideration." It is not enough to take care of an insane man. To discharge him after a period of a few months or a few years and brand him as cured, when his whole family history points to the fact. that he is a hereditary epileptic or lunatic, and to place no barriers in his path when he attempts to marry, is statesmanship of the poorest order.

If the Eugenist has his way, "well-born" will acquire a new meaning. It will not cease to mean descent from a proud and noble race that has accomplished great things in the past, but it will also mean that the stock descended from that race is composed of men and women who will live up to its traditions, who will have that perfect physique and stable mental organization which Maudsley, that most literary and philosophical of psychiatrists, calls "the highest sanity."

SOURCE

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Some "civilty" from an aging Leftist film-star

Susan Sarandon has been slammed for calling the Pope a Nazi. The 65-year-old American actress made the comment about Pope Benedict XVI over the weekend during an appearance at the Bay Street Theatre in New York while talking about her 1995 film Dead Man Walking. She said she had sent a copy of the book it was based on to the Pope, but then clarified which one she was talking about.

"The last one, not this Nazi one we have now," she told interviewer Bob Balaban. When he showed his disapproval of her comments Sarandon allegedly then repeated the comment drawing laughter from the crowd.

But Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League told TMZ that the comments made by the Thelma & Louise star were "obscene". "Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) was conscripted into the Nazi Youth the way every other 14-year-old German boy was at the time," Donohue explained. "Unlike most others, he not only refused to go to the compulsory meetings - he actually deserted the Hitler Youth. Which is precisely why Jews today regard him as a friend, not as an enemy. "In short, what Sarandon said is positively obscene."

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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More academic evidence of the importance of genes and the UNIMPORTANCE of your home environment

"Human values: Genetic and environmental effects on five lexically derived domains and their facets"

By Walter Renner et al.

Abstract

Whereas a substantial genetic component of Conservatism and Religiosity is well documented, there is little evidence with respect to the behavior genetics of other aspects of human values. A sample of 157 monozygotic and 74 dizygotic twins reared together received the Austrian Value Questionnaire (AVQ), which measures a broad variety of value domains and their facets, found by the lexical approach in the German language. Family resemblance of Intellectualism, Harmony, Materialism, and Conservatism was best explained by additive or dominance genetic and non-shared environmental effects, whereas the influence of the environment shared by twins was negligible. In contrast, Religiosity was transmitted by additive genetic, shared and non-shared environmental influences. At the level of facets, the Intellectualism and Harmony showed a homogenous etiology while Religiosity, Materialism, and Conservatism were etiologically heterogeneous.

Personality and Individual Differences. In Press, Corrected Proof - doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.09.003

Aren't you glad that there's someone around to translate that academic Double-Dutch for you?

Note initially that after decades of research it is now generally accepted that both political and religious ideology is substantially determined by your genes. You didn't CHOOSE to be a Conservative or religious: You were BORN that way. That still grates on the teeth of most people but that is what the inheritance research has repeatedly shown. Exactly WHAT is inherited which makes you a Leftist is still not pinned down but my bet is that it is a tendency to be miserable. Happiness is definitely a stable trait and conservatives are certainly happier, which again shows up repeatedly in research.

But that is all prelude. The reseachers above werre looking for OTHER things that might be genetically inherited. They found that traits of Intellectualism, Harmony, Materialism, and Conservatism were all determined heavily by genetics but hardly at all by the environment. Religiosity, however, was to a degree influenced by your environment. Pretty simple, really -- even if runs against almost everybody's preconceptions.

You now see why elections are won or lost according to how well the candidate appeals to the voter in the middle. Most of us are born conservative (happy) or Leftist (miserable) and can't be changed from that. It's only the minority who are half way between happy and miserable who can be swung. Background on previous research in the area here

Clarifying note: It is your tendency to be religious in general that is inherited, not your particular religion.

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ObamaCare Starts to Unravel

The real story behind the Class program failure, and what to do now

Now that one of ObamaCare's major new benefit programs has been scrapped, liberals are trying to make stone soup by claiming that the Obama Administration merely committed an act of "good government." They claim that when this long-term care insurance program proved to be unworkable, the Administration conceded as much, and now it's gone. So let's review the evidence, not least because it so perfectly illustrates the recklessness that produced the Affordable Care Act.

When Democrats were pasting it together in 2009 and 2010, the immediate attraction of the program known by the acronym Class was that its finances could be gamed to create the illusion that a new entitlement would reduce the deficit. Ending the complicated Class budget gimmick erases the better part of ObamaCare's purported "savings," but it's also worth focusing on the program's long-run political goals.

For decades Democrats have been trying to put government on the hook for middle-class costs like home health services ($1,800 a month on average) and nursing homes ($70,000 to $80,000 per year). On paper, Class was supposed to be like normal insurance, funding benefits through premiums with no subsidy. But since the budget gimmick and the program's larger structure meant that premiums could never cover benefits, Democrats were trying to force a future Congress to prevent a Class bankruptcy using taxpayer dollars.

As the costs to the federal fisc continued to climb, the Democratic gambit was that Class would gradually morph into another part of Medicare. Insurance depends on younger, healthier people signing up to cross-subsidize the older and sicker, but under the Class program as written almost all of its enrollees would soon also be beneficiaries.

So to fix this "adverse selection," the plan was for Congress to eventually make participation mandatory, with the so-called premiums converted into another payroll tax and the benefits into another entitlement. Former White House budget director Peter Orszag has been writing that the long-term care insurance market can't function without a mandate, while HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declined to rule one out at a Senate hearing in February. Now they tell us.

The only reason the Health and Human Services Department pre-emptively called off this scheme is that former New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg succeeded in inserting a proviso that required the Class program's reality to match Democratic promises as a matter of law. If HHS couldn't provide "an actuarial analysis of the 75-year costs of the program that ensures solvency throughout such 75-year period," it couldn't be legally implemented.

In other words, HHS had to prove that the Class program wouldn't go broke the way it was designed to—and actuarial analysis is a matter of math, not politics. In a 48-page report that HHS submitted to Congress Friday, the department concedes that it is literally impossible to create any kind of long-term care program under the law's statutory text in which revenues match expenditures. Such a plan would cost as much as $3,000 per month, which no one would ever buy.

The HHS gnomes even considered "features deviating from or going beyond a plain reading of the statutory language" that its lawyers didn't think could pass legal muster, and they still couldn't avoid violating the known laws of mathematics despite 19 months of trying. HHS lawyers also said the government would have to warn enrollees that the promised benefits weren't contracts and could be abrogated to "dispel any claims that the Class program had misled the public or had encouraged reliance on its programs under false pretenses."

Those pretenses have been obvious all along, with outside analysts and internal Administration experts saying Class wasn't viable. President Obama was a mask of indifference with no response when Paul Ryan took Class apart at the 2010 White House health summit. Democrats included it anyway, but now that the Administration itself has vindicated its critics, Republicans have a new political opportunity to make real health-care legislative progress.

At a minimum the GOP could begin by repealing the Class program altogether, since its legal authority is still intact. "One should never leave a partly loaded gun on the table, even if most of the chambers are empty or just house blanks," writes the American Enterprise Institute's Tom Miller. He also suggests attaching a few of the more destructive provisions and forcing Democrats to defend them, such as Mr. Orszag's Independent Payment Advisory Board of 15 political appointees who have broad unaccountable powers to control health-care markets and health care.

Our suggestion is for a Gregg-like amendment that applies to the entire health law and not simply Class. If reality can't match the rhetoric that accompanied the bill—about fiscal responsibility, bending the cost curve, keeping your health care if you like your health care and all the other false promises—then, legally, it should be repealed like Class. Call it a truth-in-advertising clause. ObamaCare would collapse in a heartbeat.

SOURCE

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Change at the Top Creates Jobs at the Bottom

“When paperwork gets in the way of benefits, that’s a problem.”

So said John Bemis, Secretary-designate of New Mexico’s Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, appointed by Governor Susana Martinez. What is significant about Bemis’ comment, made during a presentation in front of the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s Annual meeting on October 3, is that it represents a total change in attitude from the previous administration and is indicative of the difference one person—at the top—can make.

The change in attitude in NM presents a case study from which the rest of the US would be wise to learn.

Governor Richardson’s approach was very much like President Obama’s. He added regulations and appointed people to positions of leadership who made doing business in the state difficult—especially in regard to natural resource management. As a result, businesses moved to other states and revenues suffered.

While some people think one person can't make that much of a difference, NM is proving that couldn't be farther from the truth. A culture of growth and prosperity starts with attitudes at the top.

Governor Martinez was elected in 2010. She appointed her people to head up the various agencies—including John Bemis at the Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. The rules didn’t change; instead the new leadership reevaluated their application. Rather than dictating just because she can, Governor Martinez has chosen to focus where she can get the most bang for the buck. For example, the limited resources of the Oil Conservation Division can now be directed toward actual environmental issues, rather than enforcing paperwork.

As a result of the change in attitude at the top, industry is more enthusiastic about doing business in the state. As I usually do during August, September and October, I participated in three state-wide events; the annual meetings of the Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico, New Mexico Mining Association, and New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. The contrast from previous years in the outlook of the participants was startling. They are excited about the possibilities! Instead of the regulations being used like a hammer to beat down all development, departments are now looking to help folks work within the regulations. If the regulations are excessively punitive or inappropriate, industry is encouraged to submit proposed changes—which they’ve done and which are being considered. Things are picking up in New Mexico.

Across the US, we have much the same problem as New Mexico did. We have excessive regulations, businesses are leaving, and revenues are suffering. The leadership has the power to reverse the trend. We’ve seen it in New Mexico. We saw it in August when President Obama instructed the EPA to delay the ozone regulations—which would have been one of the costliest in the history of the US as hundreds of counties would be instantly out of compliance for things as simple as fireworks displays.

The EPA has more tricks up its sleeve, and President Obama’s pick to head up the EPA, Lisa Jackson, has no intention of slowing down.

On October 10, an unprecedented group of Attorney Generals from 25 different states, joined together to ask Secretary Jackson to postpone implementation of the Utility MACT rule because it threatens to endanger electric reliability, eliminate jobs, and saddle consumers with significantly higher costs. The next day, the EPA issued a statement declaring that the rule would be implemented as planned on November 16. The MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) rule condenses potential future coal-fueled power plant improvements and upgrades into an unachievable timeline. As a result of the Utility MACT rule, electricity providers already have outlined which coal-fueled power plants will be shut down. The remaining plants will have to spend billions for the required overhauls for marginal or questionable benefits to public health.

As he did in early September with the ozone regulations, President Obama has the power to tell Secretary Jackson to slow down, delay, or stop altogether. However, without intense public pressure, he is unlikely to do anything. The Utility MACT rule is just one of the expensive rules flowing down from the EPA that will cause America to lose important and cost-effective energy that is essential to economic growth. The higher costs will be passed on to the already struggling businesses and households.

It is actions like the EPA’s complete disregard for the public’s outcry, as expressed by the 25 attorney generals, that has pushed Congress to attempt to limit these excessive regulations through the EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011 (HR 2250) passed by the House on October 13—which President Obama says he’ll veto should it make it through the Senate.

The one person at the top makes the difference.

Another example is the Wilderness and Roadless Area Relief Act (HR 1581), which aims to legislatively push what the one person at the top won’t do.

There are 43 million acres of federal lands that for decades have been managed as “wilderness”—meaning that potential grazing and resource development is limited, firefighting efforts are thwarted, and recreation and tourism are restricted—despite the fact that these areas have already been studied and determined to be unsuitable for wilderness. The BLM and the Forest Service has recommended that the restrictive management practices be lifted. Instead of encouraging Congress to do so, President Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued an order to lock up more lands with a new label: “Wild Lands”—conflicting with the Wilderness Act which states that only Congress has the right to designate wilderness areas.

The Wilderness and Roadless Area Relief Act will remove these lands from limbo and opens them up for multiple uses, while giving local communities a voice in how the lands are managed. Unfortunately, based on their record, the people at the top are unlikely to support the recommendations of the BLM and Forest Service. They will probably choose to keep these lands locked up, blocking economic development and job creation.

However, remember, President Obama did order Secretary Jackson to delay implementation of the ozone rules. We can be confident that he didn’t do this because he one day had an epiphany and realized that the regulations were too harsh. He backed down because public pressure was so intense that it became clear his support of the expensive rule threatened his re-election.

Ideally, the public pressure changes the behavior of people at the top—absent that, like we did in New Mexico—we change the people at the top.

Because, one person can make a difference.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

NASA buys flights on Virgin Galactic’s private spaceship: "The space tourism company Virgin Galactic has struck a deal with NASA worth up to $4.5 million for research flights on the company's new private spaceliner SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic officials announced Oct. 13. Under the deal, NASA will charter up to three flights on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, an air-launched spacecraft designed to carry eight people on trips to suborbital space."

How to lie with statistics: Tax rates: "A good deal of the recent rhetoric in support of Democratic proposals for raising taxes is designed to make it sound as though rich people pay federal taxes at a lower rate than everyone else. That, as one can easily check by looking at the published figures from the Congressional Budget Office, is not only false but wildly false."

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)

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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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Democrats, the Media and the Heart of the "Occupy" Movement

The OWS movement seems to have at its heart old-fashioned Leftist ideas of class war and anti-capitalism -- indicating the intellectual poverty of the protesters. They did have a perfectly reasonable starting point for their anger -- the huge sums that have been taken home by bankers and Wall St operators even while America as a whole was falling into an economic pit. The protesters seemed to see that as a failure of capitalism.

It is the opposite. The cause is a refusal of government to let capitalism do its work. Most of Wall st would be bankrupt and unable to pay millions to anyone if George Bush and particularly Obama had simply sat on their hands and let the whole gang of crooks go broke. Instead they provided gargantuan handouts to rescue these failed capitalists. It is at the White House that the protesters should be congregating. Sadly, a movement that at first seems to have had an element of sponaneity is now firmly in the grip of the far-Left so there is little hope of that

"What do they want?" is a common refrain in the media these days. Left-wing talking heads and progressive TV hosts are still scrambling to figure out exactly what the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd is up to. But this lack of knowledge hasn't stopped nearly every person on the Left of the political spectrum from offering full-throated support for the unwashed, unruly rabble. But who, or what, are they supporting?

It's been a month since the first group of professional protesting leftists squatted on a patch of private property in lower Manhattan, pitched a tent and started their drum circle. What we knew about them then is about what we know about them now - they're angry.

There has been no mainstream media investigation of who these people are, how this came about or what they want beyond the superficial "They're young, disaffected and worried about the future." That's all well and good, but it's not even in the same ZIP code as reality.

Normally, politicians would have to vet a potential endorsee before they'd ever consider offering anything beyond tepid support. Such is not the case here. In a press conference, President Obama sympathized with the protestors and said he understood their frustration. Exactly what frustration remains encased in a thicker fog than the cloud of body odor hovering over Zuccotti Park.

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi understands them too. She took her support a step further by offering a "God bless them" when asked what she thought. But what was she blessing?

Any look at this mob from anything lower than a helicopter flyover reveals a dark, dangerous, radical and anti-Semitic side. Meet "occupier" Patricia McAllister. Patricia works for the Los Angeles Unified School District. She also hates Jews. She told Reason.tv, "I think that the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government, they need to be run out of this country."

Even more disturbing than what Patricia said was the calm demeanor in which she said it. Anti-Semitic hatred flows casually, openly and freely at these events. She seemed somewhat concerned she might be overheard by someone who would take offense, that the person interviewing her might have a problem with it. But she had no worry whatsoever what she was saying might be anything other than fact. This woman is involved in some way with educating children.

Former Obama administration "Green Jobs" czar Van Jones, who resigned after his 9/11 truther and communist sympathies came to light, called for the American people to "stand in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street." Would you stand with Patricia McAllister? Apparently Mr. Jones would.

But Jones and McAllister won't be alone. There are plenty of radicals and racists willing to stand up and be counted because they're safe in the knowledge the hatred they exhale will not be covered by their fellow travelers in the media. Did you hear about Democrat Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky marching with communists? The pamphlets being passed out with calls to destroy Israel? The speaker decrying calls for non-violence, calling for French Revolution-type actions to cheers?

No? Weird. How about Lisa Fithian, the professional radical anarchist who is helping run these events? No? Seriously?

That's because, aside from a few brave souls like my friend Andrew Breitbart and his "Big" websites, no one is covering these people the way they did the Tea Party. Reporters were dispersed into the massive crowds to find the most absurdly dressed people carrying fringe signs, then presented them as the norm. In any large group you're going to find some kooks-that's just the law of averages. But the media willingly portrayed them as representative of the whole.

Remember the Obama-with-Hilter mustache pictures from the Tea Party events? It was clear they belong to left-wing fringe perpetual candidate Lyndon LaRouche's supporters, yet they were portrayed as Tea Party members. Even LaRouche supporters admit they found that odd.

Or the bogus charge that the N-word was hurled at black Members of Congress as they walked through a crowd on their way to cast their ObamaCare vote? That's still accepted as gospel to the Left despite the fact that a $100k reward for proof it happened remains unclaimed.

Instead of the truth, instead of questions, we get cheerleading and cherry-picked camera angles showing perfectly lit, perfectly well behaved, smiling people. You'll never see the fringe, the loons and the unstable on CNN or MSNBC, aside from the hosts. They're too busy demanding conservatives admit these protests are "resonating" with people (in the newsroom at least) or saying they need another "Kent State moment," only this time without the deaths. These are paid professionals.

The Media Research Center did a study of the "Big Three" networks and found that in its short life, not only did the "Occupy" crowd get more coverage over a two-week period than the Tea Party did over a nine-month period, but that coverage was significantly more positive.

Not being content with owning the spin machines, they've even cooked up flawed polling to bolster their case. Shocking, I know.

The best thing about the Internet is that we are no longer dependent upon these corrupt information brokers to be informed. Not to sound all X-Files-y on you, but the truth is out there...you just have to find it. Unfortunately, far too many of our fellow citizens still receive their "news" through the filter of this corrupt machine. But that number is shrinking every day. If this "occupation" has any redeeming quality, perhaps it will be to force even more people who seem willing to take the "Red Pill" to, instead, see the world for what it really is.

SOURCE

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Damn Those Stubborn American Consumers!

Here I shamelessly, again, steal a brilliant tactic from Carpe Diem‘s Mark Perry: I edit what is roughly the first half of a news report in ways that do not alter its factual accuracy but, hopefully, that reveal the dangers lurking in familiar yet flawed modes of thinking. This report is on Americans’ trade with the Chinese:

The Obama administration, under fire for not taking a harder line on China over its currency on American consumers who stubbornly take advantage of good deals offered by Chinese sellers and, allegedly, made even more attractive by Beijing’s monetary policy appears set to move against the Asia export powerhouse on other fronts these politically unorganized Americans as next year’s U.S. elections approach.

The United States is likely to launch fresh challenges against China American consumers at the World Trade Organization, probably stoking tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

“I expect the United States will be bringing more cases against China in the coming year,” said James Bacchus, who as a former WTO appellate judge used to sit in judgment of international trade disputes.

Already firmly in campaign mode, President Barack Obama recently boasted of taking a tougher line on trade economic change, including consumers’ decisions to change how they spend their own money than his predecessors. In particular, American consumers’ voluntary choices to buy more goods and services from China, its currency and other trade issues have already become a big issue in the election campaigning.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has ratcheted up his criticism of China American consumers’ choices despite his party’s traditionally pro-free trade stance.

“If you are not willing to stand up to China, you will get run over by China, and that’s what’s happened for 20 years,” the former Massachusetts governor said on Tuesday – apparently suffering the bizarre delusion that lower-priced inputs and consumer goods and services harm the U.S. economy.

He was speaking shortly after the U.S. Senate passed legislation to crack down on Chinese currency American-consumers’ practices that U.S. lawmakers legislation-makers blame for millions of lost jobs.

Sensitive to how the criticism of China plays with U.S. voters, Obama has not yet explicitly said he would veto the bill. In any case, the legislation is unlikely to pass the House of Representatives where Republican leaders have voiced concern that it might breach WTO rules and could spark a trade war which would damage U.S. corporations. Even non-Romneyite GOP politicians remain oblivious to the fact that trade is ultimately to be judged by how well it promotes consumption opportunities and not by how well it does, or does not, enhance the bottom line of corporations.

But Obama is likely to want to show voters his mettle on trade issues consumer sovereignty and trade experts say he has plenty of options to pursue which, unlike the Senate currency bill, are likely to conform with WTO rules.

New government data on Thursday that showed the U.S. trade deficit capital-account surplus with China hit a record $29 billion in August and is also likely to set a record for the year could add to the pressure on Obama to act to stop the Chinese and other foreigners from investing so much in America.

Last week, U.S. trade officials notified the WTO of some 200 Chinese government subsidy programs and scolded Beijing for not halting its self-destructive actions of taxing its own people to make non-Chinese people, including Americans, richer. taking the action itself as required under WTO rules.

U.S. officials at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva also recently took China to task over agricultural policies much like the policies that Uncle Sam himself has hypocritically and harmfully employed for decades that they said unfairly discriminated against foreign suppliers.

SOURCE

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Perry still in there fighting

MANCHESTER, NH - Rick Perry's Granite State headquarters has the feel of a typical campaign office: Red, white, and blue "Perry - President" placards line the walls, young staffers tap away incessantly on keyboards and Blackberries, and dry erase boards are crowded with maps of the state, important dates, and key endorsements. The Texas Governor may have just sustained a series of extraordinary blows in national polling, but you wouldn't know it from the demeanor of his staffers. The fight goes on, even in rival Mitt Romney's regional backyard.

Unsurprisingly, several staffers I spoke with are upbeat about Perry's latest debate performance at Dartmouth College. The word "solid" comes up more than once. "It's what we needed," one aide says, expressing relief that Perry "wasn't a pinanta this time," unlike in previous debates. They're also quick to point out that debates are only one small element of a candidate's overall appeal. Their man, they say, is much more dynamic in person and on the stump, which is why the campaign plans to get Perry in front of as many voters as possible before the first votes are cast in Iowa and New Hampshire. "We've adopted a marathon strategy," one staffer explains. They certainly have the resources to take the long view; Perry raked in over $17 million in under 50 days last quarter.

Paul Young, the former New Hampshire GOP chair who now works for Perry's campaign, says his team is fighting to overcome some distinct advantages enjoyed by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney -- who leads comfortably in most statewide polls. "[Mitt] has been here campaigning for years, really. Compared to him, everyone else is getting in late. Especially us." Young echoes the sentiment that debates are not the end-all-be-all of a candidate's ability or electability. "Rick clearly connects in person. In that sense, he's Clintonesque or Reaganesque in his ability to work a room and make real, personal connections with people. We want to play to that strength," Young says, adding that Perry is "getting better" at debating.

Aside from an emphasis on retail politics, Team Perry continues to tout the Governor's record in Texas as a major selling point. "Every time [Gov. Perry] comes to New Hampshire and talks about what he's accomplished in Texas, we sign up literally hundreds of people to be part of this campaign," another aide explains. Asked if Perry's thoroughly Texan flair might limit his appeal with infamously reserved New Englanders, Perry aides insist they aren't concerned. The real "uphill battle," they say, involves the calendar and basic logistical blocking and tackling. Revisiting a recurring theme, they outline the challenge of competing with Romney's campaign infrastructure that has been operating in one way or another for at least four years.

"It's August 13th 2011 (Perry's launch date) vs. 2007," Young says. Indeed. Every day counts, which helps explain why the Perry camp seems aggrieved by rumors that New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary could vault ahead to as early as December 6th. "That wouldn't be ideal," Young deadpans, in a piece of classic New England understatement.

Nevertheless, Perry's campaign professes optimism in the face of multiple state polls showing Romney holding dominant leads. Staffers direct me to a recent WMUR poll, which put Romney ahead of his closest rival (Herman Cain) by 25 points. "The numbers look great for Mitt, but if you look a little closer, you'll notice that 89 percent of respondents say they're not `dead set' on their pick," an aide notes. "[Romney] has been here for five years. Why is his support so soft?"

Prior to the Dartmouth debate, the Romney campaign got a boost by unveiling a marquee endorsement from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Perry's New Hampshire team seems neither surprised, nor impressed, by the alliance. "Endorsements only go so far," Young says. "Policy positions and results matter more." Another staffer shrugs, "Romney and Christie are both Northeastern moderates. Christie could end up being a liability [for Romney], actually. He's soft on guns, soft on life.the only thing he's strong on is his own voice."

Perry aides say they're not interested in sweating day-to-day horserace developments, and vow not to fall victim to media pressure. Some pundits wondered if Perry would reveal his own big-name endorsement to counter Romney's Christie nod. Others have asked why Perry hasn't released a specific jobs plan yet. "We're rolling out the features of our campaign on our own terms," I'm told. "We don't need the media telling us how to run our campaign - no offense to your profession." In other words, more endorsements are in the pipeline, and the jobs plan will be introduced on the campaign's preferred timetable. "We're going to have our economic plan out faster than it took Romney or Cain from the time they announced," Young confirms. He says phase one of Perry's jobs plan will be released next week, and the full package will be made public by the end of the year.

SOURCE

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Obama's Pennsylvania Problem

Obama has a Pennsylvania problem, particularly with working-class Democrats and women who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008’s primary. He eventually won them over (along with young people and blacks), beating Republican John McCain by nearly 10 points.

Today, not so much – and much of that is based on trust. Candidates know they can evoke strong negative feelings and still win back voters. But lose the voters’ trust, and that is nearly impossible to recover.

“A lot of working-class and middle-class Democrats in Pennsylvania see candidates through the prism of their values,” said one party strategist who is working to win back distrustful voters for Obama. This time, he admits, the task “is more of a challenge.”

Actually, Obama has trouble all around, according to Mark Rozell, public policy professor at George Mason University: “The liberal core is unhappy with his policies and won't turn out for him as solidly as in 2008, and … independents and so-called Reagan Democrats are abandoning him in large numbers.” Signs of discontent are seen even among African-Americans.

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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The Jobs/Apple religion

It had a lot in common with Leftism and Environmentalism: It allowed undistinguished people to feel superior. But it was much preferable to Leftism and Environmentalism. I much prefer Steve Jobs to Al Gore or Barack Obama. Jobs DID create things while Gore is just a fat parasite and Obama is just a numbskull with a nice voice and a dark skin -- JR

By Wesley Pruden

Steve Jobs was a genius. No one could doubt that. His genius lay not in technology, as most of the obituaries and eulogies reckoned, but as master of hype, hope and marketing.

He was the secular prophet for the secular age, preaching the gospel of the technology that offers salvation, but only a salvation of better and more beautiful machines. The only higher power he believed in lies hidden somewhere in the power of more RAM, more powerful chips and in the perfectibility of an earthly operating system.

Atheist he may have been (though no one knows what he thought in the moments just before he slipped quietly into the awful and infinite mystery of death), but the mystique of Apple, which he never quit trying to perfect and extend, had all the trappings of religious faith for a secular age.

He thought about faith a lot. Shortly after he was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2003, he was invited to give the commencement address at Stanford. Mortality was much on his mind, as such thoughts naturally are for an ailing serious man. "No one wants to die," he told the students assembled on the lawn at Palo Alto. "Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent, it clears out the old to make way for the new."

This was not new stuff, not even from the oracle of the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Socrates and Buddha said it better. But when he died at 56, the full force and appeal of an organized religion spread across the land. Thousands of iPod and iPad owners descended on Apple stores to turn them into sidewalk shrines and temples. Many dropped to their knees, some folding their hands in the universal pose of supplication to the heavens, to offer prayers to . . . well, it wasn't quite clear to whom. Perhaps to an unseen motherboard.

Wondrous as Mr. Jobs' machines are, there's an arrogance about Apple that turns infidels -- the unfortunate skeptics armed only with a PC from Dell or Sony -- into puzzled seekers, like curious Christians trying to plumb the violent contradictions of the Koran.

A customer puts down his $500 for an iPad and the only instructions he gets is the assurance that "it's intuitive, you'll understand how to use it." Nobody gets an owner's manual, and unless the customer has been using one of the wondrous machines that preceded his iPad -- someone who already knows the rituals of the tribe, the secret handshakes, the words to the strange hymns, the baptismal rites -- he'll want to throw his new toy into the street to be punished under the wheels of traffic. Only slowly, like a Mason suffering through 33 degrees, does Mr. Jobs' wondrous machine reveal its riches.

Nevertheless, it's difficult to argue with success, and Steve Jobs won his success the hard way, by giving his vision its working clothes and protecting it from the hewers of wood and chippers of stone who couldn't understand what Mr. Jobs was talking about when he described the destination of his machines as "the place where technology meets art."

He recognized the Internet for what it is, an "amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property," and figured out how to exploit it all with the personal computer and the machines that flowed afterward from his amazing imagination.

He was the ultimate capitalist, driven to get all the profits that his imagination, vision and business smarts entitled him to, but his legacy to the corporate world is limited. Without the vision, the value even of hard work is limited. He was contemptuous of the toys of the mind so precious to the graduate of the business school.

He regarded consultants and focus groups as well-meaning wastes of time and money. Or worse. "We figure out what we want," he told Rolling Stone in 2003. "And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do. So you can't go out and ask people what's the next big thing."

He was fond of recalling Henry Ford's story of inventing the automobile: "If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me 'a faster horse.'" He understood, and exploited, the moral of the story.

SOURCE

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A Leftist Creation Myth

Governments are worse than no good at “creating jobs.”

A week before President Barack Obama was scheduled to deliver yet another big-think proposal to Get America Working Again, reality intervened with a well-timed smack upside the head: Solyndra, a California solar panel company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Back in May 2010, as part of the run-up to what the administration was then touting as “Recovery Summer,” Obama used Solyndra as a poster child for both the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and his long-stated promise to create millions of “green jobs.” During a visit to the company’s factory in Fremont, he declared: “We invested…in clean energy because not only would this spur hiring by businesses but it creates jobs in sectors with incredible potential to propel our economy for years, for decades to come. And we can see the positive impacts right here at Solyndra. Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot, but through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans. Since ground was broken last fall, more than 3,000 construction workers have been employed building this plant.…When it’s completed in a few months, Solyndra expects to hire 1,000 workers to manufacture solar panels and sell them across the country and around the world. And this in turn will generate business for companies around our country who will create jobs supplying this factory with parts and materials.”

Or not. Solyndra’s $535 million failure was not an unlucky one-off. According to Environmental Protection Agency numbers cited by Investor’s Business Daily in August, the Recovery Act’s $7.2 billion in “clean tech” money had “created or retained” a pathetic 7,140 jobs, at a cost of about $1 million each. According to the Department of Energy’s inspector general, one reason for this paltry payoff is the wage and regulatory provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Buy American Act.

In sum: The government scooped up hundreds of billions from taxpayers, redistributed it in the name of creating jobs, then attached a series of requirements that made job creation much more expensive and therefore unlikely. The predictably miserable results (go to reason.com and conduct searches on “green jobs” and “multiplier” to see just how predictable they were) should have, but did not, shame a broad swath of the political class into a long-overdue facing of facts: Governments the world over are worse than no good at “creating jobs.”

That much is clear when we compare the job creationists’ rhetoric to their results. Every day on the campaign trail, then-candidate Obama promised to create 5 million “green jobs” during the next 10 years. In January 2009, the White House predicted that the stimulus it was finalizing would create up to 4.1 million jobs. (In a depressing bit of symmetry, the economy ended up losing 4.7 million nonfarm payroll jobs in 2009, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing the greatest rate of decline since 1945.)

In February 2010, then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed that the soon-to-pass Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would “create 4 million jobs, 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” The last time Washington, D.C., was in a frenzy to “create jobs,” while passing an already-forgotten jobs bill in the summer of 2010, Pelosi promised this latest dollop of $26 billion would create or save 300,000 more.

And these are just the job-focused bills. The general idea of using government spending to stimulate aggregate demand, particularly during economic down times, ruled official Washington for a solid decade, starting with George W. Bush’s inauguration and ending last summer with the Tea Party–influenced debt ceiling deal, which marked the first time in recent memory elected officials stood athwart spending and yelled “stop!” The results of this Keynesian stimulus (and anti-Keynesian profligate spending during good times) should speak for themselves: Fewer able-bodied Americans are employed as a percentage of the potential work force than at any time since 1983.

Such persistence in the face of repeated failure suggests that some powerful myths continue to hold sway among politicians and many of the people they represent. Among the most stubborn of these is the notion that passing a bill to fix a problem is the same as actually fixing the problem. This assumption—which reaches its illogical conclusion during times of national panic, when do-something busybodies like Michael Bloomberg will say that it doesn’t matter what Washington does, it just needs to do something—is oblivious to the law of unintended consequences, to the reality of corporatist lobbying, and to the limitations of government power.

The 2010 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in the name of ending “too big to fail,” actually paved the way for the next round of financial bailouts. Obama-Care, supposedly rammed down the throats of health care “special interests,” was actually rammed down the throats of Americans at the behest of those special interests. The Troubled Assets Relief Program, sold by then-President George W. Bush as a way to prevent bank failures, stock market losses, housing devaluations, home foreclosures, credit tightness, business failure, job losses, and recession, failed utterly at preventing anything on that list.

A curious flip side to the myth of government omnipotence is near-complete incuriosity about government side effects. That is, people remain convinced that the state can and should look a problem squarely in the eye and fix it, but they are rarely moved by daily examples of the harm caused by earlier fixes.

Just before Solyndra announced its bankruptcy, armed federal agents stormed three factories and the corporate headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corporation, seizing guitars and raw materials, forcing employees out into the street, and shutting down production for a day. Why? Because of a century-old law called the Lacey Act, which prohibits the import of wildlife and plant products that were obtained illegally overseas. India, where some of Gibson’s raw materials originate, bans the export of unfinished wood.

Overzealous enforcement of job-killing laws is the rule, not the exception, under Obama. His Department of Justice has shown much more enthusiasm than his predecessor’s in conducting workplace raids to enforce immigration, drug, and even milk pasteurization laws. Politicians and the public support such relentless meddling without pausing much to consider the deleterious effects on employment. As I write, the California Senate is on the verge of passing a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that would, among many other onerous things, require parents to provide nannies with breaks every two hours and fill out ridiculously complicated time cards for the government to peruse.

In a sense, every bill is a jobs bill, except for the ones labeled as such. Every business regulation, every intrusion between employer and employee, dampens the incentives to create more jobs. Sucking up tax money and spitting it out at politically chosen recipients is another net drag on the economy.

‘Jobs’ are deals between workers and employers, and so ‘creating’ them out of unwilling parties is impossible. The state, though, can outlaw deals, and has.”

Until that insight sinks in, it will be a long time before America gets back to work.

SOURCE

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Obama’s Solyndra Talking Cure Fails

The scandal over Solyndra, a Fremont, California-based maker of tube-shaped solar panels, has only gotten worse since President Barack Obama tried to defend his command-economy principles to a polite press corps last week. Shortly after Obama's lackluster press conference on Thursday, Jonathan Silver, administrator of the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program, announced he was leaving his powerful and prestigious federal government job for the opportunity to become a “distinguished visiting fellow” at the Third Way think tank.

Human sacrifice is the food of politics, so career crashes like these are to be expected. Note that Silver has now been sacrificed twice—first in having to testify over a loan that was made two months before he took office, and now as the preliminary to Chu’s highly probable departure.

But Solyndra has been remarkably lethal for a hubbub that only surfaced because House Republicans made an issue of it. Whether you believe Americans are not interested in Solyndra, have not heard enough about it from the establishment media, or are too smart to be fooled by a “faux scandal,” one thing stands out: Like the originally marginal Occupy Wall Street movement, Solyndra keeps getting bigger the more it is belittled.

It also continues to generate side troubles. Human Events' Neil W. McCabe reported Wednesday on another green energy company with close ties to Golden State Democrats that has lately come into a big federal loan. You may not share McCabe's judgment that San Jose-based SunPower will be "twice as bad" as Solyndra or his confidence that the company is doomed. But the drumbeat of publicly funded green-job disappointments is turning what had been the president's signature industrial policy into a grinding, extended walk of shame.

As the bad news continues to pile up, Obama is consistent in his notion that it's possible to make the problem go away with sugary words. At his press conference last week, the president gave his most complete response on Solyndra to date, but the responses were nothing new

Obama’s speech misfired in other ways. His jingoistic jabs at Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Florida), who heads up oversight for the Energy Committee, set Stearns up for an obvious rejoinder.

“If President Obama believes that we should borrow billions of dollars from China to subsidize American businesses trying to compete with China then he doesn’t understand this country’s economic system,” Stearns said in a statement. “We should not be picking winners and losers, which is a fundamental flaw in his stimulus scheme.”

Obama also tried to create distance between himself and the company by saying the loan guarantee program “predates” him. This is unlikely to stick given Obama’s famous photo opp at Solyndra’s swanky headquarters and the Bush Administration’s decision to pass on the company’s loan application.

This was the special weakness of Obama’s explanation. In nearly 1,300 words [pdf] he barely went beyond the widely ridiculed couple of sentences he muttered in an earlier Good Morning America appearance. The content merely reiterated a month’s worth of unsuccessful efforts to blame Bush, China, and capitalism. If he thinks creatively enough, Obama might find some new targets: The recent revelation of how much money California green energy companies have managed to grab from the loan program at least holds out the possibility of claiming it was all Prop 13’s fault. But the stubborn fact remains that the Nobel-winning president’s Nobel-winning energy secretary chose to throw $528 million at a company closely tied to one of his billionaire campaign donors.

If that were the sum of the troubles—or if Obama had launched this charm offensive a month ago—the cloud might have passed with only a loss of a few kW in output. But the president has been relentlessly evasive. He has deployed his police in a manner that obstructs the Congress in its own investigation. He ignored his own staffers who doubted both the viability of the company and the public relations “optics” of an abundantly photographed presidential visit to Solyndra last year. Prior to the company’s implosion, the president’s Energy Department was on track to lend it another $469 million, and his minions showed an outrageously cavalier attitude toward the stewardship of your tax money.

In a perverse way, Obama might be better off if the second loan of $469 million had gone through. At a billion dollars the Solyndra loss might have become just another unfathomable statistic to a nation already dazed by the many trillions that have been wasted in the past few years. But when it’s half a billion, you can almost get your mind around it. Solyndra continues to grow as a scandal not because the stakes are high but because they are revealing. It will also continue to radiate political obstructions to whatever Obama's agenda is these days.

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)

****************************

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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