Sabbath
My Sabbath got slightly derailed yesterday. I had a lot of good stuff ready to put up so I posted it in the early hours of Saturday morning before I went to bed. There were posts here and also on TONGUE-TIED and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH.
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The Fear Vote
Bill O'Reilly
If the election were held tomorrow, Mitt Romney would be the next president of the United States. Why? Because many voters are afraid, that's why. And fearful people usually try to change their circumstances.
If you listen to talk radio or watch cable news, you'd think everyone was an ideologue, obsessed with party politics. But many, perhaps most, American voters are not wedged into a voting pattern. The same country that elected the conservative George W. Bush voted for the very liberal Barack Obama the next time around. It is perception that wins national elections.
Bush was perceived to be a terror warrior, and that's why he won a second term. Voters wanted payback for 9/11, and Bush, along with the fierce Dick Cheney, simply had more tough guy cred than Al Gore or John Kerry. At least that was the perception.
Obama isn't nearly as tough as Sen. John McCain, but by 2008, the faltering economy had overridden the terror threat, and the slick senator from Illinois promised hope and change, a return to prosperity and fairness. McCain promised "Country First." Nobody quite knew what that meant, and voters did want a change from the vicious recessionary economy, so Obama won.
Now, voters are scared that their jobs may disappear. They already see their retirement and educational funds evaporating, and most of us know folks who are desperate for money. So the economic fear is real, not perceived, and President Obama has done little to soothe the angst. He's still hoping his Big Government policies will stimulate the economy even as the TV flashes pictures of Greeks rioting in the streets.
Romney is not exactly John Kennedy, so Obama still has a chance to squeak out a victory in November. Romney must perform well in the debates and convince Americans that the president simply does not understand economics -- and that he has the magic capitalistic touch that will rebuild the empire. If the governor can stay out of foolish controversies and dodge the landmines the pro-Obama media will lay for him, he will be living larger than he lives now. The White House dwarfs even Romney's lavish beachside shack in La Jolla, Calif.
I believe Obama knows he's in trouble, and that's why he is courting his leftwing base so hard. He has to get all of them out on Election Day, and if that means "evolving" on gay marriage, so be it. Obama is a hardball player who will do everything he can to keep his job. There are not that many openings for messiahs these days in the private sector.
The election is about five months from now, and many things can happen in that time. But fear is a powerful emotion and not easily diminished. So the president should be afraid. Very afraid.
SOURCE
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Inequality has its benefits
John C. Goodman
The topic de jour on the political left is inequality. From President Obama to the editorial pages of The New York Times the message is the same: low taxes (especially on the wealthy) and deregulation are making the rich richer and the poor poorer. Their solution: more big government.
Here's the problem: nothing about this message is true. The George W. Bush tax cuts made after-tax incomes in the United States more equal, not less equal. Furthermore, all over the world low taxes, less regulation and limited government are associated with more income equality, not less. In addition, the greatest beneficiaries of economic freedom tend to be those at the bottom of the income ladder, not those at the top.
Because a lot of the work debunking left-wing myths about income inequality has been done by my colleagues at the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), I have had a special interest in these questions over the years. What I am about to summarize are the results of careful study and analysis by some of the nation's top economists. These are studies that are routinely ignored by those who parrot the standard liberal line about how unfair capitalism is.
Let's start with the Bush tax cuts. Stephen F. Austin State University economist Michael Stroup has analyzed their impact based on statistics gathered by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). As reported in an NCPA study, here is what he found:
* The Bush tax cuts (so hated by almost every left-wing columnist) led to a more progressive tax system — with the top 1% of the income distribution now paying about one third of all income taxes, while those in the bottom half saw their share of the tax burden cut in half (falling from 6.3% of income taxes to 3.5%).
* Further, those in the top 1% now pay a greater share of their income in taxes, while those at the bottom are paying a smaller share.
* Over time, pre-tax income in the United States has become more unequal; but the share of taxes paid by the rich has increased by more than their share of national income.
Incidentally, Stroup found that the tax system became more progressive throughout the 1990s as well – after the Bush (1990) tax increase, the Clinton (1993) tax increase and the Clinton (1970) decrease in the capital gains tax rate. But here is the message most voters never hear: Virtually every Republican tax cut — going all the way back to the early rate reductions under Ronald Reagan — left the tax system more progressive. One reason for that is that the Republican tax reform measures took millions of low-income families off the tax rolls. Even though high income taxpayers face lower rates than they once did, they are still shouldering a greater share of the overall tax burden.
As for the international evidence, the Frasier Institute of Canada has gathered an international team of economists to study and measure economic freedom in countries around the world and report annually. (Milton Friedman was an early participant in this project, as was yours truly.) Here are some recent findings:
* There is almost no relationship between the degree of economic freedom and the share of national income going to the poorest 10% of the population. (It’s 2.4% in the one-fifth of least free countries and 2.6% in the one-fifth of most free countries.)
* There is a huge difference in absolute income, however: Per capita income for the bottom 10% was only $1,061 in 2009 in the least free countries, but reached $8,735 in the most free.
By the way, economic freedom is also very important for the average person. In 2009, per capita income was $4,545 in the one-fifth of least free countries and a whopping $31,501 in the one-fifth of most free countries. In other words, the difference between living in a country with low taxes, low regulation and limited government versus living in a big government country is a nine-fold increase in income!
A final study of interest was produced by Gerald Scully, one of the finest economists of my generation who passed away a few years ago. Like Stroup, Scully used a general measure of overall inequality. In a seminal NCPA study he found that other things being equal:
* Freer economies enjoy higher rates of economic growth than less free ones.
* Economic growth increases income inequality, but the effect is small.
* Overall, the increase in inequality from economic growth is outweighed by the reduction in inequality caused by greater economic freedom — creating a net benefit to lower income groups.
Here is the bottom line: economies with the greatest degree of economic freedom not only produce higher incomes for the average family, they also produce a more equal distribution of income than would otherwise have been the case.
SOURCE
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California Vote Deals Blow To Public Sector Unions
The news out of Wisconsin on Tuesday shook the world of politics. Less noticed but perhaps just as startling were the seismic results out of California, where two cities shook up their public unions.
Voters in San Diego (the nation's 8th-largest city) and San Jose (the 10th-largest) overwhelmingly approved big cuts to city workers' retirement benefits.
The size of the cities and the sweeping nature of the results will no doubt lead to similar challenges - not just in debt-strapped California, but across the nation.
That this would take place in the bluer-than-blue Golden State no doubt comes as a shock to public employee unions that have used their insider political clout to quietly fleece California taxpayers for decades. But it's now a bipartisan issue. In San Diego, two-thirds of voters voted for Proposition B, which trimmed benefits mainly for new city hires.
As the Associated Press reported, this came as the city's payments into its pension fund soared from $43 million in 1999 to $231.2 million this year, gobbling up 20% of the city's total spending.
San Jose, meanwhile, saw its pension payments jump from $73 million in 2001 to $245 million this year, more than a quarter of the city's entire budget. Some 70% of voters approved the plan - again, huge bipartisanship. At last it has sunk in: Overly generous spending on public employee benefits is killing California's cities.
San Diego is a case in point:"As the pension payments grew," the AP reports, "San Diego's 1.3 million residents saw roads deteriorate and libraries and recreation centers cut hours. For a while, some fire stations had to share engines and trucks."
Yet, following this defeat, union officials say they'll challenge the outcome in court. Well, let them.
San Diego and San Jose are emblematic of the tidal wave of pension liabilities faced by cities across California - and, indeed, the U.S. It's unsustainable.
Politicians took money and votes from public unions in exchange for ridiculously generous pay and benefits. They figured that sucker taxpayers would just pay the bill later - long after they were out of office.
SOURCE
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Greek chief tax inspector says Christine Lagarde right to criticise evasion
Christine Lagarde was right to highlight the tax-dodging that costs Greece up to €45 billion a year, twice the sum the country needs to pay off its debts, the Greek chief tax inspector has admitted.
The head of the IMF sparked outrage in Greece two weeks ago after she suggested that it was “payback” time for Greeks who had worsened their country's finances by evading taxes.
But Nikos Lekkas, the head of the Greek tax inspectorate, the SDOE, has backed Mrs Lagarde and insisted that Greece could easily pay off its debts if taxes due for payment were paid into the Greek state's coffers.
”Tax evasion in Greece has reached 12 to 15 per cent of the gross national product,” he told Germany's Die Welt newspaper. “That is €40 to €45bn per year. If we could recover even half of that, Greece would have solved the problem. Our politicians have begun to understand that.”
Mr Lekkas expressed particular concern over 500 cases involving suspected tax evasion by Greek politicians, from different political parties and delays by banks to provide information on accounts, by which time the money “is probably gone”.
”Currently, I am sorry to say that there is not a good cooperation with the banks,” he said. “In over 5,000 cases, we have requested to inspect the accounts of suspects. Only in 214 cases were we successful.”
The tax inspector has warned the government that if the Greek elite remains unpunished for tax evasion amid the “systemic corruption that permeates the whole of society” then “there will be a social explosion.”
SOURCE
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Mass killer Breivik may have rare forms of Aspergers and Tourette’s syndromes, says Norway's leading psychiatrist
Good testimony to the idiocy of psychiatry: Maybe Breivik is diabetic, hypertensive and suffering from peanut allergy too. A grab-bag of diagnoses makes no sense. It is undoubted that Breivik is a bit narcissistic but so are most politicians. And there has been NO evidence of Tourettes, a very noticeable disdorder. And if writing a lot and having a good memory makes you mad then I am as mad as a hatter.
Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik has a rare, high-functioning form of Asperger's that has left him incapable of empathy or real friendship, one of Norway's most prominent psychiatrists has told a court in Oslo.
Professor Ulrik Fredrik Malt of Olso University told the court: 'It is plausible that there is Asperger's, Tourette's, and a narcissistic personality disorder.'
As evidence, he cited the lack of emotion Breivik showed when discussing those he killed, his impressive memory for details, his obsession with numbers, his hypergraphia [obsessive writing], and his monotonous tone of voice. All of these, he said, were evidence of 'functional disorders of the brain lobes'.
Breivik angrily interrupted Professor Malt's testimony, complaining that his claims were 'insulting' and 'abusive'.
But when given the opportunity to comment at the end of the day, he was cooly ironic. He said: 'I would like to congratulate Professor Malt for his well-executed character assassination. 'In the beginning I was quite offended, but in the end I thought it was pretty funny. The premises outlined are not true.'
The 33-year-old extremist has instructed his lawyers to fight for him to be declared sane, even though this would mean he spends the next 21 years in prison, rather than in a secure mental hospital.
As he has confessed to killing 77 people during his massacre last July, his sanity is the key question at the trial.
Professor Malt argued that Breivik did not appear to suffer from the absurd, bizarre delusions or hallucinations normal for a schizophrenic, so he did not agree with the conclusions of the first psychiatic report received by the court, which concluded he was insane.
But he agreed that Breivik could not be treated as responsible for his actions, contradicting a second psychiatric report, which argued Breivik was criminally accountable.
Prfessor Malt said: 'It is important that we take on board that this is something much more than only a pure right-wing extremist. 'It is a tragedy for Norway, and for us. But I believe it is also a tragedy for Breivik. The first time I saw Breivik coming into the hall, I did not see a monster. I saw a deeply lonely man.'
He said that Asperger's would explain the problems Breivik's mother had with her son when he was four years old, leading the two of them to spend several months staying at Norway's National Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Breivik's mother, Wench Behring, has also described him as being constantly thirsty, a symptom Professor Malt said was frequently displayed by young Asperger's sufferers.
Breivik's violent acts could also be the result of a version of Tourette's syndrome, which is associated with Asperger's. He said had observed that Breivik suffered frequent suppressed tics.
Asperger's support groups in Norway have attacked previous attempts to attribute Breivik's massacre to the condition, arguing that there is no evidence that Asperger's is associated with increased criminality or violence. Norway's Dagbladet newspaper was forced to publish an official apology in February, after it failed to make this clear.
SOURCE
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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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Sunday, June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 09, 2012
Politicians are top-of-the-line cons
Politicians keep selling distortions because voters keep buying it
Would anyone work to support themselves or their families – and then turn over a chunk of that hard-earned money to somebody else, just because of the words used by that somebody else?
A few people may be taken in by the words of con men, here and there, but the larger tragedy is that millions more are taken in by the words of politicians, the top-of-the-line con men.
How do politicians con people out of their money? One example can be found in a recent article titled "The Autism-Welfare Nexus" by Paul Sperry in "Investor's Business Daily."
Genuine autism is a truly tragic condition, both for those afflicted by it and for their parents. Few people would have any problem with the idea that both voluntary donations and government expenditures are well spent to help those suffering from autism.
"Autism," however, has been sweepingly redefined over the years. What was discovered and defined as autism back in 1943 is just one of a number of conditions now included as being part of "the autism spectrum." Many, if not most, of these conditions are nowhere near as severe as autism, or even as clearly defined.
The growing number of children encompassed by a wider and looser definition of autism has been trumpeted across the land through the media as an "epidemic" of increasing numbers of cases of autism. Before 1990, one child out of 2,500 was said to be autistic. This year, it is said to be one out of 88. As Paul Sperry points out in IBD, "the number of language disorder cases has fallen as autism cases have risen, suggesting one disorder has simply been substituted for another."
Having heard, over the years, from many parents of late-talking children that they have been urged to let their children be diagnosed as autistic to get either government money or insurance money to pay for language problems, I am not the least bit surprised by Sperry's findings.
Every dollar spent on children falsely labeled autistic is a dollar lost – and urgently needed – in dealing with the severe problems of genuinely autistic children. But money added to the federal budget for autism is money that can be given to people, in the expectation of getting their vote at election time.
Another example of words substituting for realities was a front page story in the May 24 issue of USA Today, showing that the official statistics on the national debt only count about one-fourth of what the federal government actually owes. Even the staggering official national debt is literally not half the story.
Under ordinary accounting rules and laws, the money promised to people as pensions when they retire has to be counted as part of the debts of a business or other organization. But, since Congress makes the laws, the trillions of dollars owed to people who have paid into Social Security do not have to be counted as part of the federal government's debts.
When you or I owe money, we are in debt – and face consequences if we don't pay up. But we are not the federal government and cannot write our own accounting laws.
Perhaps the biggest frauds committed by redefining words are the many fraudulent uses of the word "poor."
For most of the history of the human race, there was no problem in defining who were "the poor." They were people without enough to eat, often without adequate clothing to protect them from the elements, and usually people who lived packed in like sardines in living quarters without adequate ventilation in the summer or adequate heat in the winter, and perhaps also lacking in such things as electricity or adequate sewage disposal.
Today, most of the officially defined "poor" have none of these problems, and most today have amenities such as air conditioning, a car or truck, a microwave oven and many other things that once defined a middle class lifestyle. Americans in poverty today have more living space than the average European.
Why are they called "poor" then? For the same reason that autism, the national debt and many other things are redefined in completely misleading ways – namely, to justify draining more money from the public in taxes, expanding the government, and allowing politicians to give handouts to people who are expected to vote for their reelection.
If we keep buying it, politicians will keep selling it.
SOURCE
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If You Don't Like It
By economist Bryan Caplan
Suppose your boss screams all the time, has extremely bad breath, or requires all his employees to speak in a faux British accent. Even today, the law usually offers you no recourse - except, of course, for "If you don't like it, quit." Discrimination law has carved out a list of well-known exceptions to employment-at-will. But "If you don't like it, quit," remains the rule.
While researching firing aversion, I came across an interesting piece by Mark Roehling showing that few American employees realize that the law affords them almost no protection against discharge. Empirically, his work seems sound. But Roehling also clearly wishes that American workers had the kind of legal protection they falsely believe they already possess. Yes, he admits, employment-at-will has some academic defenders:
Legal scholars adopting classical or neoclassical contract law perspectives argue that employment at-will is justified in that it preserves the principle of freedom of contract, promoting efficient operation of labor markets and advancing individual autonomy (e.g., Epstein, 1984).
But:
The standard rejoinder to this argument is that employees' "consent" to at-will employment is, in many instances, neither voluntary nor informed due to inequality in bargaining power between employers and employees and asymmetric information (i.e., the lack of equal information about future risks and the effect of at-will disclaimers) that both tend to favor employers (Blades, 1967). These defects in the bargaining process, it asserted, cause at-will employment to be both inefficient and unfair.
How solid is Roehling's "standard rejoinder"? Let's start with "inequality in bargaining power." Sounds sinister. But we could just as easily say, "some people have more to offer than others - and the more you have to offer, the better a deal you'll get." Then it sounds utterly trivial.
In any case, what would the economy look like if people could only make deals when they happened to have "equal bargaining power"? Almost all trade would be forbidden. Parties have equal bargaining power about as often as they have equal heights. The beauty of the price mechanism is that it persuades unequals to trade by giving parties with more to offer a sweeter deal.
Roehling's invocation of "asymmetric information" is even more off-target. In any standard asymmetric information model, the effect is not to "favor" parties with more information, but to scare off parties with less information, leading to fewer trades and making both sides poorer. The upshot: If the law somehow solved the asymmetric information problem, the result would be a big increase in labor supply - presumably making Roehling's first problem - unequal bargaining power - even worse.
Still, Roehling's intuitions are clearly widely held. My question for people who share his intuitions: Why don't the same arguments make you want to tightly regulate the dating market? With a few exceptions, modern dating markets are based on a strong version of "If you don't like it, break up." People's complaints about romantic partners are endless: "He's mean to me," "She nags me," "He's cheap," "She won't have sex before marriage," etc. Yet prior to marriage, "If you don't like it, break up," is virtually your only legal recourse.
If you take Roehling's "unequal bargaining power" or "asymmetric information" rejoinders seriously, current rules of the dating market should outrage you. Think about the inequality of bargaining power between, say, Channing Tatum and an unattractive single mom who cleans hotel rooms for a living. He has movie star looks, magnetic personality, fabulous riches, and millions of female fans; she's ugly, poor, alone, and responsible for her child's support. As a result, he could practically dictate the terms of any relationship. Does this mean she should have some recourse beyond, "If you don't like how Channing treats you, break up"?
The same goes for asymmetric information. People keep all kinds of secrets from those they date - past relationships, current entanglements, income, philosophy, whether they'll ever commit. And again, people's ultimate legal threat against romantic partners' concealed information and dishonesty is only, "If you don't like it, break up."
You could say we have a double standard because personal relationships, unlike work relationships, are too complicated to regulate. Maybe so, but I doubt it. Work relationships are incredibly complex, too. It's almost impossible to objectively define a "bad attitude," but no one wants to employ someone who's got one. You could argue that if we regulate one aspect of unequal bargaining power in the dating market, it will just resurface elsewhere. But that holds for the labor market as well: If the law requires employers to provide health insurance, they'll obviously cut wages to compensate. The simple story works best: The apparent double standard is real. Since people resent employers, they're quick to rationalize policies that tip the scales against them - even if employees ultimately bear the cost.
"If you don't like it, quit" and "If you don't like it, break up," sound unappealing - even heartless. But in the real world, it's hard to do better. In any case, trying to "do better" is probably unjust. The fact that Channing Tatum has incredibly high value in the dating market is a flimsy excuse to restrict his freedom to date. And the fact that Peter Thiel has incredibly high value in the labor market is a flimsy excuse to restrict his freedom to hire. Instead of complaining about the stinginess of people who have lots to offer, we should celebrate the universal human right to say, "I don't want to see you anymore."
SOURCE
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From Hope and Change to Fear and Smear
Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.
Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, Obamacare, could be readjusted in the second term -- something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years. What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obamacare, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to private assurances to modify it after re-election -- all before it was even fully enacted.
Obama's calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column and "Yes, we can." Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog, his great-great-grandfather's wives, and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school.
The "hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us versus them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama.
"Them," in contrast, means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it is to rally special interests through common enemies.
Remember the Obama who promised an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and special-interest money? Then came the likes of Peter Orszag, who went from overseeing the Obama budget to being a Citigroup grandee, and financial pirate Jon Corzine, who cannot account for more than $1.5 billion of investors' money but can bundle cash for Obama's re-election. If you told fervent supporters in 2008 that by early 2012 Obama would set a record for the most meet-and-greet fundraisers in presidential history, they would have thought it blasphemy.
Obama is said to go over every name on his Predator drone targeted-assassination list -- a kill tally that is now seven times larger in less than four years than what George W. Bush piled up in eight.
Guantanamo is just as open now as it was in 2008. If Obama supporter and former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was once accusing President Bush of being "torturer in chief," he is now an Obama insider arguing that bombing Libya is not really war and that taking out an American citizen and terrorist suspect in Yemen is perfectly legal. Previously bad renditions, preventative detentions and military tribunals are now all good.
Some disgruntled conservatives jumped ship in 2008 for the supposedly tightfisted Obama when he called for halving the deficit in four years and derided George Bush as "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. Yet Obama already has exceeded all the Bush borrowing in less than four years.
What accounts for the radical change in mood from four years ago?
The blue-state model of large government, increased entitlements and high taxes may be good rhetoric, but it is unsound reality.
Redistribution does not serve static, aging populations in a competitive global world -- as we are seeing from California to southern Europe. "Hope and change" was a slogan in 2008; it has since been supplanted by the reality of 40 straight months of 8-percent-plus unemployment and record deficits -- despite $5 billion in borrowed priming, near-zero interest rates, and vast increases in entitlement spending.
Obama's bragging of drilling more oil despite, rather than because of, his efforts is supposed to be a clever appeal to both greens and business. Private equity firms are good for campaign donations but bad when a Republican rival runs them. "Romney would do worse," rather than "I did well," is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012.
To be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Enterprise value tax: "A proposal from the Obama administration that has generated significant opposition from the financial sector is the enterprise value tax. This is because high taxes on investment income can be a hindrance to investment by reducing incentives for investors and financial managers to engage in certain financial activities or higher risk investments."
Markets and generosity: "A frequent though quite unjustified charge against free markets is that they encourage what Karl Marx called the cash nexus or, as it is also put, commodification, treating people as items for sale. The claim is that when people engage in commerce, they are hardhearted, stingy, or as the Oliver Stone and OWS crowd would have it, greedy. But this is a complete distortion."
Bloomberg takes a Big Gulp out of liberty: "If the Mayor can dictate the size of soda pop servings, he can dictate every other aspect of any business in his city. He could pass an ordinance restricting donut shops from selling more than 2 donuts at a time to a customer. He could outlaw larger portions of French fries; more than one pork chop per plate; any serving of steak more than 3/4 of an inch thick -- there is no limit to what evil he could do to our appetites."
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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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Politicians keep selling distortions because voters keep buying it
Would anyone work to support themselves or their families – and then turn over a chunk of that hard-earned money to somebody else, just because of the words used by that somebody else?
A few people may be taken in by the words of con men, here and there, but the larger tragedy is that millions more are taken in by the words of politicians, the top-of-the-line con men.
How do politicians con people out of their money? One example can be found in a recent article titled "The Autism-Welfare Nexus" by Paul Sperry in "Investor's Business Daily."
Genuine autism is a truly tragic condition, both for those afflicted by it and for their parents. Few people would have any problem with the idea that both voluntary donations and government expenditures are well spent to help those suffering from autism.
"Autism," however, has been sweepingly redefined over the years. What was discovered and defined as autism back in 1943 is just one of a number of conditions now included as being part of "the autism spectrum." Many, if not most, of these conditions are nowhere near as severe as autism, or even as clearly defined.
The growing number of children encompassed by a wider and looser definition of autism has been trumpeted across the land through the media as an "epidemic" of increasing numbers of cases of autism. Before 1990, one child out of 2,500 was said to be autistic. This year, it is said to be one out of 88. As Paul Sperry points out in IBD, "the number of language disorder cases has fallen as autism cases have risen, suggesting one disorder has simply been substituted for another."
Having heard, over the years, from many parents of late-talking children that they have been urged to let their children be diagnosed as autistic to get either government money or insurance money to pay for language problems, I am not the least bit surprised by Sperry's findings.
Every dollar spent on children falsely labeled autistic is a dollar lost – and urgently needed – in dealing with the severe problems of genuinely autistic children. But money added to the federal budget for autism is money that can be given to people, in the expectation of getting their vote at election time.
Another example of words substituting for realities was a front page story in the May 24 issue of USA Today, showing that the official statistics on the national debt only count about one-fourth of what the federal government actually owes. Even the staggering official national debt is literally not half the story.
Under ordinary accounting rules and laws, the money promised to people as pensions when they retire has to be counted as part of the debts of a business or other organization. But, since Congress makes the laws, the trillions of dollars owed to people who have paid into Social Security do not have to be counted as part of the federal government's debts.
When you or I owe money, we are in debt – and face consequences if we don't pay up. But we are not the federal government and cannot write our own accounting laws.
Perhaps the biggest frauds committed by redefining words are the many fraudulent uses of the word "poor."
For most of the history of the human race, there was no problem in defining who were "the poor." They were people without enough to eat, often without adequate clothing to protect them from the elements, and usually people who lived packed in like sardines in living quarters without adequate ventilation in the summer or adequate heat in the winter, and perhaps also lacking in such things as electricity or adequate sewage disposal.
Today, most of the officially defined "poor" have none of these problems, and most today have amenities such as air conditioning, a car or truck, a microwave oven and many other things that once defined a middle class lifestyle. Americans in poverty today have more living space than the average European.
Why are they called "poor" then? For the same reason that autism, the national debt and many other things are redefined in completely misleading ways – namely, to justify draining more money from the public in taxes, expanding the government, and allowing politicians to give handouts to people who are expected to vote for their reelection.
If we keep buying it, politicians will keep selling it.
SOURCE
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If You Don't Like It
By economist Bryan Caplan
Suppose your boss screams all the time, has extremely bad breath, or requires all his employees to speak in a faux British accent. Even today, the law usually offers you no recourse - except, of course, for "If you don't like it, quit." Discrimination law has carved out a list of well-known exceptions to employment-at-will. But "If you don't like it, quit," remains the rule.
While researching firing aversion, I came across an interesting piece by Mark Roehling showing that few American employees realize that the law affords them almost no protection against discharge. Empirically, his work seems sound. But Roehling also clearly wishes that American workers had the kind of legal protection they falsely believe they already possess. Yes, he admits, employment-at-will has some academic defenders:
Legal scholars adopting classical or neoclassical contract law perspectives argue that employment at-will is justified in that it preserves the principle of freedom of contract, promoting efficient operation of labor markets and advancing individual autonomy (e.g., Epstein, 1984).
But:
The standard rejoinder to this argument is that employees' "consent" to at-will employment is, in many instances, neither voluntary nor informed due to inequality in bargaining power between employers and employees and asymmetric information (i.e., the lack of equal information about future risks and the effect of at-will disclaimers) that both tend to favor employers (Blades, 1967). These defects in the bargaining process, it asserted, cause at-will employment to be both inefficient and unfair.
How solid is Roehling's "standard rejoinder"? Let's start with "inequality in bargaining power." Sounds sinister. But we could just as easily say, "some people have more to offer than others - and the more you have to offer, the better a deal you'll get." Then it sounds utterly trivial.
In any case, what would the economy look like if people could only make deals when they happened to have "equal bargaining power"? Almost all trade would be forbidden. Parties have equal bargaining power about as often as they have equal heights. The beauty of the price mechanism is that it persuades unequals to trade by giving parties with more to offer a sweeter deal.
Roehling's invocation of "asymmetric information" is even more off-target. In any standard asymmetric information model, the effect is not to "favor" parties with more information, but to scare off parties with less information, leading to fewer trades and making both sides poorer. The upshot: If the law somehow solved the asymmetric information problem, the result would be a big increase in labor supply - presumably making Roehling's first problem - unequal bargaining power - even worse.
Still, Roehling's intuitions are clearly widely held. My question for people who share his intuitions: Why don't the same arguments make you want to tightly regulate the dating market? With a few exceptions, modern dating markets are based on a strong version of "If you don't like it, break up." People's complaints about romantic partners are endless: "He's mean to me," "She nags me," "He's cheap," "She won't have sex before marriage," etc. Yet prior to marriage, "If you don't like it, break up," is virtually your only legal recourse.
If you take Roehling's "unequal bargaining power" or "asymmetric information" rejoinders seriously, current rules of the dating market should outrage you. Think about the inequality of bargaining power between, say, Channing Tatum and an unattractive single mom who cleans hotel rooms for a living. He has movie star looks, magnetic personality, fabulous riches, and millions of female fans; she's ugly, poor, alone, and responsible for her child's support. As a result, he could practically dictate the terms of any relationship. Does this mean she should have some recourse beyond, "If you don't like how Channing treats you, break up"?
The same goes for asymmetric information. People keep all kinds of secrets from those they date - past relationships, current entanglements, income, philosophy, whether they'll ever commit. And again, people's ultimate legal threat against romantic partners' concealed information and dishonesty is only, "If you don't like it, break up."
You could say we have a double standard because personal relationships, unlike work relationships, are too complicated to regulate. Maybe so, but I doubt it. Work relationships are incredibly complex, too. It's almost impossible to objectively define a "bad attitude," but no one wants to employ someone who's got one. You could argue that if we regulate one aspect of unequal bargaining power in the dating market, it will just resurface elsewhere. But that holds for the labor market as well: If the law requires employers to provide health insurance, they'll obviously cut wages to compensate. The simple story works best: The apparent double standard is real. Since people resent employers, they're quick to rationalize policies that tip the scales against them - even if employees ultimately bear the cost.
"If you don't like it, quit" and "If you don't like it, break up," sound unappealing - even heartless. But in the real world, it's hard to do better. In any case, trying to "do better" is probably unjust. The fact that Channing Tatum has incredibly high value in the dating market is a flimsy excuse to restrict his freedom to date. And the fact that Peter Thiel has incredibly high value in the labor market is a flimsy excuse to restrict his freedom to hire. Instead of complaining about the stinginess of people who have lots to offer, we should celebrate the universal human right to say, "I don't want to see you anymore."
SOURCE
*****************************
From Hope and Change to Fear and Smear
Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.
Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, Obamacare, could be readjusted in the second term -- something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years. What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obamacare, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to private assurances to modify it after re-election -- all before it was even fully enacted.
Obama's calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column and "Yes, we can." Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog, his great-great-grandfather's wives, and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school.
The "hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us versus them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama.
"Them," in contrast, means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it is to rally special interests through common enemies.
Remember the Obama who promised an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and special-interest money? Then came the likes of Peter Orszag, who went from overseeing the Obama budget to being a Citigroup grandee, and financial pirate Jon Corzine, who cannot account for more than $1.5 billion of investors' money but can bundle cash for Obama's re-election. If you told fervent supporters in 2008 that by early 2012 Obama would set a record for the most meet-and-greet fundraisers in presidential history, they would have thought it blasphemy.
Obama is said to go over every name on his Predator drone targeted-assassination list -- a kill tally that is now seven times larger in less than four years than what George W. Bush piled up in eight.
Guantanamo is just as open now as it was in 2008. If Obama supporter and former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was once accusing President Bush of being "torturer in chief," he is now an Obama insider arguing that bombing Libya is not really war and that taking out an American citizen and terrorist suspect in Yemen is perfectly legal. Previously bad renditions, preventative detentions and military tribunals are now all good.
Some disgruntled conservatives jumped ship in 2008 for the supposedly tightfisted Obama when he called for halving the deficit in four years and derided George Bush as "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. Yet Obama already has exceeded all the Bush borrowing in less than four years.
What accounts for the radical change in mood from four years ago?
The blue-state model of large government, increased entitlements and high taxes may be good rhetoric, but it is unsound reality.
Redistribution does not serve static, aging populations in a competitive global world -- as we are seeing from California to southern Europe. "Hope and change" was a slogan in 2008; it has since been supplanted by the reality of 40 straight months of 8-percent-plus unemployment and record deficits -- despite $5 billion in borrowed priming, near-zero interest rates, and vast increases in entitlement spending.
Obama's bragging of drilling more oil despite, rather than because of, his efforts is supposed to be a clever appeal to both greens and business. Private equity firms are good for campaign donations but bad when a Republican rival runs them. "Romney would do worse," rather than "I did well," is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012.
To be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
Enterprise value tax: "A proposal from the Obama administration that has generated significant opposition from the financial sector is the enterprise value tax. This is because high taxes on investment income can be a hindrance to investment by reducing incentives for investors and financial managers to engage in certain financial activities or higher risk investments."
Markets and generosity: "A frequent though quite unjustified charge against free markets is that they encourage what Karl Marx called the cash nexus or, as it is also put, commodification, treating people as items for sale. The claim is that when people engage in commerce, they are hardhearted, stingy, or as the Oliver Stone and OWS crowd would have it, greedy. But this is a complete distortion."
Bloomberg takes a Big Gulp out of liberty: "If the Mayor can dictate the size of soda pop servings, he can dictate every other aspect of any business in his city. He could pass an ordinance restricting donut shops from selling more than 2 donuts at a time to a customer. He could outlaw larger portions of French fries; more than one pork chop per plate; any serving of steak more than 3/4 of an inch thick -- there is no limit to what evil he could do to our appetites."
***************************
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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Friday, June 08, 2012
Democrats show their never-ending hate
Just as you would expect, the Democrats kept it classy last night, flooding Twitter with calls for Scott Walker and his family to be murdered. Twitchy has collected dozens of death threats. A sampling:
Somebody gone kill Scott Walker man.
KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER! Ole Bitch Ass Pig Ass Nigga!!!!
Somebody need to Abe Lincoln Scott Walker cave frog lookin ass.
I wanna kill scott walker so fucking baddd!!!!! & the racist dumb assholes that voted for him #nbs
Please somebody kill Scott Walker.
Scott walker will die within the next week ive already payed for the hit
Scott walker needs fall down the capital stairs & die..
NBS I Know What School Scott Walker Son Go To
AND If Scott Walker Got A Wife Imma Fuck Her Face—
Tj Fucked Yo Bitch (@iWusGetnSumHead) June 06, 2012
Ah yes, the modern Democratic Party. The liberals’ rhetorical violence contrasts with Walker’s own restrained and dignified victory speech last night
The degree to which Walker has remained calm and civil through months of crazed attacks from the Democrats–culminating over the weekend in the “love child” smear–is remarkable.
SOURCE
****************************
Walker win a turning point
With Scott Walker’s crushing victory over Tom Barrett to retain his seat as Governor of Wisconsin, the nation may be reaching a critical turning point over the fundamental relationship between taxpayers and public employees. Between the government, and the governed.
Predicated on the consent of the governed, the U.S. experiment with democracy has reached a fundamental crossroads. Where the American people will either choose either a path that will enslave taxpayers to pay for the level of government that the government demands, or a sustainable, responsible fiscal path based on what can be afforded.
With the defeat of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio in Nov. 2011 and various reform measures in California in 2005 both via referendum, it looked as if perhaps the power wielded by the public sector unions was an insurmountable political force.
In California, those measures would have limited teacher tenure, made public union political contributions require written consent by employees, and imposed state spending limits. In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would have restricted collective bargaining for public sector employees on health and pension benefits.
Much of the same policies were invariably implemented by Walker in Wisconsin despite strong opposition from the unions.
His plan, as enacted, limits state employees from being able to collectively bargain anything except wages, giving the legislature full authority once again over expensive health and pension benefits. Instead, it requires state employees to contribute half of the cost of their pension payments and 12 percent of their health care premiums. And why shouldn’t government employees pay their fair share for their own benefits?
Walker went even further to break the back of the political power wielded by the unions, prohibiting state agencies from collecting union dues. But the real axe to their power was providing public employees with an annual vote on whether to keep their public employee union.
With the opportunity, many employees are opting out of the union system, preferring to negotiate individually with their employers. This is costing millions of Big Labor’s political coffers, and costing labor bosses their jobs.
And that, more than any other provision, is what is hurting Big Labor —and their Democrat Party patrons — the most. It is why they have spent upwards of perhaps $50 million to oust Walker.
But it was all for naught. For once, the voters have chosen to rein in the beast. For once, a state, in this case Wisconsin, said no to the unions.
Walker’s win in Wisconsin should prove that given an opportunity voters will not simply vote for themselves more benefits at other taxpayers’ expense. Judging by Walker’s margin of victory, with more than 53 percent of the popular vote, at least some union members voted for Walker. This hopefully will provide much-needed courage to other politicians across the nation to take on and defeat the seemingly all-powerful public employee unions — and the looming insolvency their demands threaten states and localities with.
Public employee unions have for decades transformed public servants into the taxpayer’s masters in local, state and federal government. No longer. With Walker’s win, this is the first step in restoring the consent of the governed. And not a moment too soon.
SOURCE
**************************
The real 'War on Women'
By Thomas Sowell
Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be "a uniter, rather than a divider" and that he would "bring us all together."
It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a divider all his adult life, especially as a community organizer, and he had repeatedly sought out and allied himself with other dividers, the most blatant of whom was the man whose church he attend for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.
Now, with his presidency on the line and the polls looking dicey, President Obama's re-election campaign has become more openly divisive than ever.
He has embraced the strident "Occupy Wall Street" movement, with its ridiculous claim of representing the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Obama's Department of Justice has been spreading the hysteria that states requiring photo identification for voting are trying to keep minorities from voting, and using the prevention of voter fraud as a pretext.
But anyone who doubts the existence of voter fraud should read John Fund's book "Stealing Elections" or J. Christian Adams's book, "Injustice," which deals specifically with the Obama Justice Department's overlooking voter fraud when those involved are black Democrats.
Not content with dividing classes and races, the Obama campaign is now seeking to divide the sexes by declaring that women are being paid less than men, as part of a "war on women" conducted by villains, from whom Obama and company will protect the women -- and, not incidentally, expect to receive their votes this November.
The old -- and repeatedly discredited -- game of citing women's incomes as some percentage of men's incomes is being played once again, as part of the "war on women" theme.
Since women average fewer hours of work per year, and fewer years of consecutive full-time employment than men, among other differences, comparisons of male and female annual earnings are comparisons of apples and oranges, as various female economists have pointed out. Read Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute or Professor Claudia Goldin of Harvard, for example.
When you compare women and men in the same occupations with the same skills, education, hours of work, and many other factors that go into determining pay, the differences in incomes shrink to the vanishing point -- and, in some cases, the women earn more than comparable men.
But why let mere facts spoil the emotional rhetoric or the political ploys to drum up hysteria and collect votes?
The farcical nature of these ploys came out after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared that Congress needed to pass the Fair Pay Act, because women average 23 percent lower incomes than men.
A reporter from The Daily Caller then pointed out that the women on Nancy Pelosi's own staff average 27 percent lower incomes than the men on her staff. Does that show that Pelosi herself is guilty of discrimination against women? Or does it show that such simple-minded statistics are grossly misleading?
The so-called Fair Pay Act has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with election-year politics. No one in his right mind expects that bill to become law. It will be lucky to pass the Senate, and has no chance whatever of getting passed in the House of Representatives.
The whole point of this political exercise is to get Republicans on record voting against "fairness" for women, as part of the Democrats' campaign strategy to claim that there is a "war on women."
If you are looking for a real war on women, you might look at the practice of aborting girl babies after an ultrasound picture shows that they are girls. These abortions are the most basic kind of discrimination, and their consequences have already been demonstrated in countries like China and India, where sexually discriminatory abortions and female infanticide have produced an imbalance in the number of adult males and females.
A bill to outlaw sexually and racially discriminatory abortions has been opposed and defeated by House Democrats.
SOURCE
************************
A cheer for constitutional monarchy's restraint on government
It diminishes politicians
As the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations wind down, it may be well to reflect on an aspect of public choice theory which supports constitutional monarchy — principally its rôle as a brake upon self-aggrandising politicians.
Public choice argues that, contrary to the myths propagated about the selfless motives of public servants, politicians and bureaucrats can be as self-interested in their public personas as they are as private citizens.
This is not the time to examine the unitive functions of the Crown, nor the acts of public service performed by the Royal Family — and how monarchy either refutes or conforms to the political landscape sketched out by public choice theory (though I personally believe the opportunities for gain are very few, while the burdens are many).
Neither is this an argument for constitutional monarchy as against republican forms of government; indeed, this may be one of the few areas where both forms, when modelled on justice, are equally serviceable according to the respective country’s traditions and national character — quite in variance, by the way, with respect to economics, where all the arguments are in favour of classical liberal/Austrian theories and quite contrary to Keynesian prescriptions.
Moreover, let it be admitted that constitutional monarchy is rarely an active force in limiting the power of politicians (minority parliaments being one exception, where the Crown has legitimate avenues of intervention), but serves rather more as a passive agent in limiting the State.
First, the very hereditary nature of British constitutional monarchy — i.e., non-elective — disinclines government to aggrandise the Head of State. Governments are reluctant to invoke public criticism for expenditures which do not in some way flatter the ‘heirs’ of democracy (especially when the House of Windsor is itself exceptionally well-endowed financially): Witness the absence of a royal yacht when H.M.Y. Britannia was decommissioned.
Second, the constitutional role of the monarch in the Westminster parliamentary system means that the prime minister is a servant of the Crown and cannot therefore with impunity rise above his station. It is at best to be guilty of lèse-majesté, and at worse an affront to the parliamentary party which can always be relied upon to remember that the inhabitant of No. 10 is simply primus inter pares.
The theoretical ground of this public choice defence is laid out by Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe who, while he may not necessarily be a monarchist, sees the unrestrained growth of elective governments as far more destructive of personal liberty and economic freedom.
When absolute monarchy reigned, Hoppe argues, the State and its appurtenances were held as private property, and husbanded wisely as a future inheritance; subjects were jealous of their rights and defended them tenaciously (arising from an awareness of ‘class consciousness’), leaving the Crown on guard not to exceed its authority.
Democracies, to the contrary, do not arouse a corresponding scepticism — Why, one day I too may be leader of the country! — but nor do they engender similar feelings of safeguarding wealth: Without the responsibility of bequeathing royal estates to one’s children, politicians become mere ‘caretakers’, and the spoils of State become transitory gifts that must be enjoyed and shared with one’s cronies while the democratic gods shine (a form of present-orientedness that is reflected in citizens’ consumption rather than investment).
Arthur Seldon called this ‘the dilemma of democracy’, noting four weaknesses in popular government: short-sighted with material resources; over-expansive with a tendency to ‘grow’; liable to conspiratorial patronage; and uncritical of majoritarian electoral decisions. All of which leads me to wonder why classical liberals are so often enamoured of the republican ideal. As Hoppe observes:
One can understand their inability to appreciate a Tory reverence for tradition and continuity, yet why do they so cavalierly dismiss the public choice arguments that demonstrate that limited government in the age of the Welfare State is held hostage to democratic fortune?
‘It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the œconomy of private people, and to restrain their expence,’ wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. ‘They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will (II.iii.36).’
Let not the irony be lost: Britain has gone from the time when a burgeoning representative democracy set in motion the end of the divine right of kings, transformed thus into constitutional monarchy — which itself has become the most visible restraint on elected politicians who behave as if themselves graced with divine sanction. We may no longer fear kings, but their ministers remain a threat to our rights and freedoms. Elizabeth II embodies the limits we must impose upon the political classes; her Diamond Jubilee an occasion to remember the State is the servant of the people. God Save the Queen!
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Just as you would expect, the Democrats kept it classy last night, flooding Twitter with calls for Scott Walker and his family to be murdered. Twitchy has collected dozens of death threats. A sampling:
Somebody gone kill Scott Walker man.
KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER! Ole Bitch Ass Pig Ass Nigga!!!!
Somebody need to Abe Lincoln Scott Walker cave frog lookin ass.
I wanna kill scott walker so fucking baddd!!!!! & the racist dumb assholes that voted for him #nbs
Please somebody kill Scott Walker.
Scott walker will die within the next week ive already payed for the hit
Scott walker needs fall down the capital stairs & die..
NBS I Know What School Scott Walker Son Go To
AND If Scott Walker Got A Wife Imma Fuck Her Face—
Tj Fucked Yo Bitch (@iWusGetnSumHead) June 06, 2012
Ah yes, the modern Democratic Party. The liberals’ rhetorical violence contrasts with Walker’s own restrained and dignified victory speech last night
The degree to which Walker has remained calm and civil through months of crazed attacks from the Democrats–culminating over the weekend in the “love child” smear–is remarkable.
SOURCE
****************************
Walker win a turning point
With Scott Walker’s crushing victory over Tom Barrett to retain his seat as Governor of Wisconsin, the nation may be reaching a critical turning point over the fundamental relationship between taxpayers and public employees. Between the government, and the governed.
Predicated on the consent of the governed, the U.S. experiment with democracy has reached a fundamental crossroads. Where the American people will either choose either a path that will enslave taxpayers to pay for the level of government that the government demands, or a sustainable, responsible fiscal path based on what can be afforded.
With the defeat of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio in Nov. 2011 and various reform measures in California in 2005 both via referendum, it looked as if perhaps the power wielded by the public sector unions was an insurmountable political force.
In California, those measures would have limited teacher tenure, made public union political contributions require written consent by employees, and imposed state spending limits. In Ohio, Senate Bill 5 would have restricted collective bargaining for public sector employees on health and pension benefits.
Much of the same policies were invariably implemented by Walker in Wisconsin despite strong opposition from the unions.
His plan, as enacted, limits state employees from being able to collectively bargain anything except wages, giving the legislature full authority once again over expensive health and pension benefits. Instead, it requires state employees to contribute half of the cost of their pension payments and 12 percent of their health care premiums. And why shouldn’t government employees pay their fair share for their own benefits?
Walker went even further to break the back of the political power wielded by the unions, prohibiting state agencies from collecting union dues. But the real axe to their power was providing public employees with an annual vote on whether to keep their public employee union.
With the opportunity, many employees are opting out of the union system, preferring to negotiate individually with their employers. This is costing millions of Big Labor’s political coffers, and costing labor bosses their jobs.
And that, more than any other provision, is what is hurting Big Labor —and their Democrat Party patrons — the most. It is why they have spent upwards of perhaps $50 million to oust Walker.
But it was all for naught. For once, the voters have chosen to rein in the beast. For once, a state, in this case Wisconsin, said no to the unions.
Walker’s win in Wisconsin should prove that given an opportunity voters will not simply vote for themselves more benefits at other taxpayers’ expense. Judging by Walker’s margin of victory, with more than 53 percent of the popular vote, at least some union members voted for Walker. This hopefully will provide much-needed courage to other politicians across the nation to take on and defeat the seemingly all-powerful public employee unions — and the looming insolvency their demands threaten states and localities with.
Public employee unions have for decades transformed public servants into the taxpayer’s masters in local, state and federal government. No longer. With Walker’s win, this is the first step in restoring the consent of the governed. And not a moment too soon.
SOURCE
**************************
The real 'War on Women'
By Thomas Sowell
Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be "a uniter, rather than a divider" and that he would "bring us all together."
It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a divider all his adult life, especially as a community organizer, and he had repeatedly sought out and allied himself with other dividers, the most blatant of whom was the man whose church he attend for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.
Now, with his presidency on the line and the polls looking dicey, President Obama's re-election campaign has become more openly divisive than ever.
He has embraced the strident "Occupy Wall Street" movement, with its ridiculous claim of representing the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Obama's Department of Justice has been spreading the hysteria that states requiring photo identification for voting are trying to keep minorities from voting, and using the prevention of voter fraud as a pretext.
But anyone who doubts the existence of voter fraud should read John Fund's book "Stealing Elections" or J. Christian Adams's book, "Injustice," which deals specifically with the Obama Justice Department's overlooking voter fraud when those involved are black Democrats.
Not content with dividing classes and races, the Obama campaign is now seeking to divide the sexes by declaring that women are being paid less than men, as part of a "war on women" conducted by villains, from whom Obama and company will protect the women -- and, not incidentally, expect to receive their votes this November.
The old -- and repeatedly discredited -- game of citing women's incomes as some percentage of men's incomes is being played once again, as part of the "war on women" theme.
Since women average fewer hours of work per year, and fewer years of consecutive full-time employment than men, among other differences, comparisons of male and female annual earnings are comparisons of apples and oranges, as various female economists have pointed out. Read Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute or Professor Claudia Goldin of Harvard, for example.
When you compare women and men in the same occupations with the same skills, education, hours of work, and many other factors that go into determining pay, the differences in incomes shrink to the vanishing point -- and, in some cases, the women earn more than comparable men.
But why let mere facts spoil the emotional rhetoric or the political ploys to drum up hysteria and collect votes?
The farcical nature of these ploys came out after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared that Congress needed to pass the Fair Pay Act, because women average 23 percent lower incomes than men.
A reporter from The Daily Caller then pointed out that the women on Nancy Pelosi's own staff average 27 percent lower incomes than the men on her staff. Does that show that Pelosi herself is guilty of discrimination against women? Or does it show that such simple-minded statistics are grossly misleading?
The so-called Fair Pay Act has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with election-year politics. No one in his right mind expects that bill to become law. It will be lucky to pass the Senate, and has no chance whatever of getting passed in the House of Representatives.
The whole point of this political exercise is to get Republicans on record voting against "fairness" for women, as part of the Democrats' campaign strategy to claim that there is a "war on women."
If you are looking for a real war on women, you might look at the practice of aborting girl babies after an ultrasound picture shows that they are girls. These abortions are the most basic kind of discrimination, and their consequences have already been demonstrated in countries like China and India, where sexually discriminatory abortions and female infanticide have produced an imbalance in the number of adult males and females.
A bill to outlaw sexually and racially discriminatory abortions has been opposed and defeated by House Democrats.
SOURCE
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A cheer for constitutional monarchy's restraint on government
It diminishes politicians
As the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations wind down, it may be well to reflect on an aspect of public choice theory which supports constitutional monarchy — principally its rôle as a brake upon self-aggrandising politicians.
Public choice argues that, contrary to the myths propagated about the selfless motives of public servants, politicians and bureaucrats can be as self-interested in their public personas as they are as private citizens.
This is not the time to examine the unitive functions of the Crown, nor the acts of public service performed by the Royal Family — and how monarchy either refutes or conforms to the political landscape sketched out by public choice theory (though I personally believe the opportunities for gain are very few, while the burdens are many).
Neither is this an argument for constitutional monarchy as against republican forms of government; indeed, this may be one of the few areas where both forms, when modelled on justice, are equally serviceable according to the respective country’s traditions and national character — quite in variance, by the way, with respect to economics, where all the arguments are in favour of classical liberal/Austrian theories and quite contrary to Keynesian prescriptions.
Moreover, let it be admitted that constitutional monarchy is rarely an active force in limiting the power of politicians (minority parliaments being one exception, where the Crown has legitimate avenues of intervention), but serves rather more as a passive agent in limiting the State.
First, the very hereditary nature of British constitutional monarchy — i.e., non-elective — disinclines government to aggrandise the Head of State. Governments are reluctant to invoke public criticism for expenditures which do not in some way flatter the ‘heirs’ of democracy (especially when the House of Windsor is itself exceptionally well-endowed financially): Witness the absence of a royal yacht when H.M.Y. Britannia was decommissioned.
Second, the constitutional role of the monarch in the Westminster parliamentary system means that the prime minister is a servant of the Crown and cannot therefore with impunity rise above his station. It is at best to be guilty of lèse-majesté, and at worse an affront to the parliamentary party which can always be relied upon to remember that the inhabitant of No. 10 is simply primus inter pares.
The theoretical ground of this public choice defence is laid out by Austrian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe who, while he may not necessarily be a monarchist, sees the unrestrained growth of elective governments as far more destructive of personal liberty and economic freedom.
When absolute monarchy reigned, Hoppe argues, the State and its appurtenances were held as private property, and husbanded wisely as a future inheritance; subjects were jealous of their rights and defended them tenaciously (arising from an awareness of ‘class consciousness’), leaving the Crown on guard not to exceed its authority.
Democracies, to the contrary, do not arouse a corresponding scepticism — Why, one day I too may be leader of the country! — but nor do they engender similar feelings of safeguarding wealth: Without the responsibility of bequeathing royal estates to one’s children, politicians become mere ‘caretakers’, and the spoils of State become transitory gifts that must be enjoyed and shared with one’s cronies while the democratic gods shine (a form of present-orientedness that is reflected in citizens’ consumption rather than investment).
Arthur Seldon called this ‘the dilemma of democracy’, noting four weaknesses in popular government: short-sighted with material resources; over-expansive with a tendency to ‘grow’; liable to conspiratorial patronage; and uncritical of majoritarian electoral decisions. All of which leads me to wonder why classical liberals are so often enamoured of the republican ideal. As Hoppe observes:
From the viewpoint of those who prefer less exploitation over more and who value farsightedness and individual responsibility above shortsightedness and irresponsibility, the historic transition from monarchy to democracy represents not progress but civilizational decline.
One can understand their inability to appreciate a Tory reverence for tradition and continuity, yet why do they so cavalierly dismiss the public choice arguments that demonstrate that limited government in the age of the Welfare State is held hostage to democratic fortune?
‘It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the œconomy of private people, and to restrain their expence,’ wrote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. ‘They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will (II.iii.36).’
Let not the irony be lost: Britain has gone from the time when a burgeoning representative democracy set in motion the end of the divine right of kings, transformed thus into constitutional monarchy — which itself has become the most visible restraint on elected politicians who behave as if themselves graced with divine sanction. We may no longer fear kings, but their ministers remain a threat to our rights and freedoms. Elizabeth II embodies the limits we must impose upon the political classes; her Diamond Jubilee an occasion to remember the State is the servant of the people. God Save the Queen!
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Immoral Beyond Redemption
Walter E. Williams
Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Are today's Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let's think it through with a few questions.
Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She's hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I've committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another.
Most Americans would agree that it would be theft regardless of what I did with the money. Now comes the hard part. Would it still be theft if I were able to get three people to agree that I should take your money? What if I got 100 people to agree -- 100,000 or 200 million people? What if instead of personally taking your money to assist the woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take your money? In other words, does an act that's clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively? Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it's right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong.
Don't get me wrong. I personally believe that assisting one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another's pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation. Some people call governmental handouts charity, but charity and legalized theft are entirely two different things. But as far as charity is concerned, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." To my knowledge, the Constitution has not been amended to include charity as a legislative duty of Congress.
Our current economic crisis, as well as that of Europe, is a direct result of immoral conduct. Roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress' taking the property of one American and giving it to another. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half of federal spending. Then there are corporate welfare and farm subsidies and thousands of other spending programs, such as food stamps, welfare and education. According to a 2009 Census Bureau report, nearly 139 million Americans -- 46 percent -- receive handouts from one or more federal programs, and nearly 50 percent have no federal income tax obligations.
In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It's not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that's delivered us to where we are. It's about how we pay for it -- namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.
Ayn Rand, in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," reminded us that "when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good."
SOURCE
********************************
The Upside of the Downside
Jonah Goldberg
One of my heroes, Irving Kristol, used to say that there's nothing wrong with the country a bad recession couldn't fix.
Kristol (father of the more famous Bill, by the way) wasn't hoping for a recession, he was merely making the point that so many of the problems with our culture, both popular and political, were the sorts of challenges that come with affluence.
Wealth makes it easier to abandon the old customs, rituals and habits of the heart that generated the wealth in the first place.
For instance, I always love reading about irresolute rich families that lose their mojo within a generation or two. When the illiterate shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt died, he had amassed a personal fortune larger than the U.S. Treasury. Within a few generations, his family had squandered it all. Vastly better educated and more refined than their tobacco-juice-spitting patriarch, they also lacked his entrepreneurial drive and financial thrift because they never needed it. It's a pattern that repeats itself in countless families. Billionaires so often raise their children to be playboys or poets.
Edward Gibbon's theory of the fall of the Roman Empire has come in for some revision over the years, but his basic thesis still has merit. The Romans became so wealthy they lost the civic and martial virtues that built the empire in the first place. They in effect contracted out the hard work of civilization that allows civilization to continue.
And then, of course, there's the universally recognized lesson of Rocky Balboa, who learned the hard way from Clubber Lang (aka Mr. T) that success can make you lose the eye of the tiger more than failure can.
Anyway, you get the point.
And while I hope we can get back to having the problems of a rich country really soon, it's worth pausing to appreciate America's capacity for self-correction and the fact that many of the problems we had over the last couple decades were good problems to have.
Illegal immigration is a great example of a rich country's problem. (For instance, no one but terrorists are sneaking into Somalia in search of work.) After years of screaming over what to do about it, the rate of illegal immigration has suddenly plummeted. Some say it has actually stopped entirely, as many illegal immigrants have started going home. Yes, there are other issues at work, but no one denies that if the U.S. economy were in good shape, we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.
In terms of self-correction, the examples are all over the place. In 2005, America had the lowest personal savings rate since 1933. In fact it was outright negative -- i.e., consumers spent more money than they made. Today it's at 3.4 percent.
For years intellectuals looked enviously at the way the Japanese live in multigenerational homes. Grandma and grandpa looked after the grandkids, and everyone looked after grandma and grandpa. From 2008 to 2010, American multigenerational households increased at a faster rate of growth than in the previous eight years combined, according to AARP.
In perhaps the most welcome news, laser tattoo removals have increased by 32 percent from 2011 to 2012 alone. "Employment reasons" are cited as the new No. 1 reason for the procedure. It turns out that in an era of austerity, having a Chinese-character tattoo that translates into "I have Kung Pao chicken pants" is an act of unnecessary self-indulgence rather than glorious self-expression.
It also turns out that our politics have a capacity for self-correction that few experts anticipated. When President Obama came into office, his administration's mantra was "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste." This little prayer to cynicism masquerading as an idealistic insight was used to justify vast expansions of government. The social scientists even told us this was to be expected. After all, they explained, during times of economic hardship, voters rally around the government.
Except that's not true. Yes, it happened during the Great Depression. But ever since, liberalism has been a luxury thriving on prosperity, not austerity. The Great Society was a byproduct of the so-called Affluent Society.
Instead of a tsunami of political support for ObamaCare and government unions, we got the Tea Party and the rollback of public-sector collective bargaining. Instead of massive support for Obama's green agenda, the air is thick with calls for more drilling, more fracking and more Keystone pipelines. It turns out the "new progressive era" was just too pricey.
Hopefully, the interminable winter of Obama's "Summer of Recovery" will soon end. And when it does, I hope we take the lessons to heart.
SOURCE
*****************************
Obama's Clinton problem
Back in 2008, after a hard-fought primary battle against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., then-Sen. Barack Obama had a choice: he could put her on the ticket as his vice presidential nominee, thereby healing the rift that had torn apart the Democratic Party or he could go another direction. He chose Joe Biden over Clinton -- a move for which comics everywhere will forever thank him -- and relegated Clinton to a figurehead secretary of state.
The question at the time was: Why?
Pundits then settled on two answers. The first was ego: Obama didn't want to be outshone by his second-in-command, especially with regard to national security issues. The second was more nefarious: Obama feared having Hillary Clinton as the second-in-line to the presidency. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the Clintons weren't beyond Shakespearian action to obtain the highest office in the land once again; less kooky commentators theorized that a Clinton vice presidency would motivate her to undercut him in order to get a shot at the big chair.
It all seemed a bit overblown at the time. Not anymore.
This week, a desperate President Obama called on former President Clinton to help him reinvigorate his base. They held a joint fundraiser in New York City that netted the president some $3 million.
It also netted him some good old-fashioned Arkansas ass-whuppin' from the prospective first gentleman. "I care about the long-term debt of the country a lot," Clinton told the crowd. "Remember me, I'm the only guy that gave you four surplus budgets out of the eight I sent." Ouch. The only way the moment could have been more uncomfortable for Obama is if he'd been wearing something low-cut at the time, so Clinton could undress him visually as well as verbally.
Obama should have seen it coming. The week before the event, Clinton completely undercut Obama's central strategy of attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, calling that record "sterling." "I think he had a good business career," said Bill. "A man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."
But Clinton wasn't done. He also declared the American economy in a "recession" and suggested that President Obama re-up President Bush's tax rates.
Bill Clinton may be petty and vindictive, but that doesn't mean he's stupid. Backstabbing President Obama is a concerted strategy, not an emotional revenge tactic.
If Obama loses his re-election bid, Clinton will still be seen as the greatest Democratic president since FDR; no one-term president can challenge that title. If Obama loses, Hillary can also claim that he lost because she was isolated from central administration decisions and prepare to run as a moderate in 2016.
And so Bill has leapt into action. Driven by pride and opportunism, he's got President Obama right where he wants him. And yet, like a deer transfixed by headlights, Obama has no choice but to stand pat and hope that the Clinton bus doesn't run him down.
Every day, that hope seems less and less realistic.
SOURCE
******************
Austrian economics explain what Keynes cannot
Most of my classes at UNLV were very forgettable, but classes with Rothbard changed my mindset. He made me understand that peace and prosperity can only come from free markets and liberty. It is a message that will save the world.
Although Murray is no longer with us, his colleagues and students are here to pass his wisdom on to a whole new generation of students each year at Mises University. "There exists nothing as comprehensive, learned, or world-class as Mises U," Amherst College's Gregory Campeau wrote about MU a couple years ago. "If taken seriously, it can be a life-changing week in your intellectual life."
The mainstream financial press calls this the worst economic recovery in history. Bernanke's Fed and the Obama administration have thrown everything at the economy but the kitchen sink, and even the phony government numbers are punk. GDP grew 3 percent in 2010, 1.7 percent in 2011, and 2012 doesn't look any better. Millions are unemployed and many more millions have given up. Uncle Sam provides groceries for 46 million Americans.
While government and its captive press desperately want to characterize the current economy as a recovery, it is anything but. And for young people it is a tragedy. "I've never seen the world so bad for young people. The only way I can describe it is as a Great Depression," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University, who has studied young-adult unemployment in depth.
The number of young adults in their 20s without jobs is the highest since recordkeeping began after World War II, and the bleak outlook has barely improved even as the broader US economy has seen new hiring in recent months.
Only 55 percent of Americans in the 16-to-29 age bracket were working in 2010, which is down dramatically from 67 percent in 2000. However, the situation is even worse than those numbers indicate. That's because millions of young adults are also underemployed, working part time while looking for a full-time job — the modern term for that being "mal-employed," which means holders of college degrees working low-end jobs.
The average young college graduates don't know what hit them. They've done everything they were told. They went to good universities, persevered, earned their diplomas, and collectively piled up a trillion dollars in debt doing it. Now, depending on their major, they're tending bar or waiting tables.
Northeastern's Sum is outraged that the Obama administration hasn't created a stimulus plan to employ college graduates. "We've betrayed our young people badly," he said.
However, government has betrayed young people with its continuous meddling in the economy. The future is cloudy because of the endless stimulus plans, high taxation, and overregulation by government busybodies. The Federal Reserve continuously prints money, bailing out bankrupt businesses, allowing these capital wasters to destroy the resources that could spur job growth.
The Fed-induced booms and busts have decimated the retirement savings of older Americans, at the same time that price inflation keeps those hoping to retire from saving enough. Instead, they must remain on the job rather than enjoy retirement, denying positions to young people.
The worst of it is, Ben Bernanke has every intention of making matters worse. He believes it when people call him the foremost authority on the Great Depreciation. The Fed chair believes he must flood the world with money to eradicate deflation. He holds the dangerous notion in his head that he knows just the right amount of money to inject and just the proper interest rate to fix in order to centrally plan the economy.
He told a 60 Minutes TV audience a couple years ago that he was 100 percent certain of being able to control inflation. But the nation's high unemployment bothers him, and he thinks he can fix it with more money. He's wrong, but he doesn't understand that he's wrong.
Students question the authorities and the government's quashing of personal and economic freedoms. They know something is wrong when day-to-day economic news bears no relation to the state of the real economy. They don't believe the mainstream babble, because their job prospects are abysmal and they want to know what caused this mess. At Mises University they gain an academic understanding of the diabolical effects of this government tyranny. The education they receive has relevance each and every day.
Mises, Rothbard, and the rest of the great Austrian thinkers taught us that meddling by Washington and the Federal Reserve will not create economic riches. The malinvestments of the boom must be liquidated, and that liquidation process will continue despite Obama and Bernanke claiming they can reinflate the bubble prosperity. They can't.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Walter E. Williams
Benjamin Franklin, statesman and signer of our Declaration of Independence, said: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." John Adams, another signer, echoed a similar statement: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Are today's Americans virtuous and moral, or have we become corrupt and vicious? Let's think it through with a few questions.
Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She's hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I've committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another.
Most Americans would agree that it would be theft regardless of what I did with the money. Now comes the hard part. Would it still be theft if I were able to get three people to agree that I should take your money? What if I got 100 people to agree -- 100,000 or 200 million people? What if instead of personally taking your money to assist the woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take your money? In other words, does an act that's clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively? Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it's right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong.
Don't get me wrong. I personally believe that assisting one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another's pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation. Some people call governmental handouts charity, but charity and legalized theft are entirely two different things. But as far as charity is concerned, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." To my knowledge, the Constitution has not been amended to include charity as a legislative duty of Congress.
Our current economic crisis, as well as that of Europe, is a direct result of immoral conduct. Roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress' taking the property of one American and giving it to another. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for nearly half of federal spending. Then there are corporate welfare and farm subsidies and thousands of other spending programs, such as food stamps, welfare and education. According to a 2009 Census Bureau report, nearly 139 million Americans -- 46 percent -- receive handouts from one or more federal programs, and nearly 50 percent have no federal income tax obligations.
In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It's not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that's delivered us to where we are. It's about how we pay for it -- namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.
Ayn Rand, in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," reminded us that "when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good."
SOURCE
********************************
The Upside of the Downside
Jonah Goldberg
One of my heroes, Irving Kristol, used to say that there's nothing wrong with the country a bad recession couldn't fix.
Kristol (father of the more famous Bill, by the way) wasn't hoping for a recession, he was merely making the point that so many of the problems with our culture, both popular and political, were the sorts of challenges that come with affluence.
Wealth makes it easier to abandon the old customs, rituals and habits of the heart that generated the wealth in the first place.
For instance, I always love reading about irresolute rich families that lose their mojo within a generation or two. When the illiterate shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt died, he had amassed a personal fortune larger than the U.S. Treasury. Within a few generations, his family had squandered it all. Vastly better educated and more refined than their tobacco-juice-spitting patriarch, they also lacked his entrepreneurial drive and financial thrift because they never needed it. It's a pattern that repeats itself in countless families. Billionaires so often raise their children to be playboys or poets.
Edward Gibbon's theory of the fall of the Roman Empire has come in for some revision over the years, but his basic thesis still has merit. The Romans became so wealthy they lost the civic and martial virtues that built the empire in the first place. They in effect contracted out the hard work of civilization that allows civilization to continue.
And then, of course, there's the universally recognized lesson of Rocky Balboa, who learned the hard way from Clubber Lang (aka Mr. T) that success can make you lose the eye of the tiger more than failure can.
Anyway, you get the point.
And while I hope we can get back to having the problems of a rich country really soon, it's worth pausing to appreciate America's capacity for self-correction and the fact that many of the problems we had over the last couple decades were good problems to have.
Illegal immigration is a great example of a rich country's problem. (For instance, no one but terrorists are sneaking into Somalia in search of work.) After years of screaming over what to do about it, the rate of illegal immigration has suddenly plummeted. Some say it has actually stopped entirely, as many illegal immigrants have started going home. Yes, there are other issues at work, but no one denies that if the U.S. economy were in good shape, we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.
In terms of self-correction, the examples are all over the place. In 2005, America had the lowest personal savings rate since 1933. In fact it was outright negative -- i.e., consumers spent more money than they made. Today it's at 3.4 percent.
For years intellectuals looked enviously at the way the Japanese live in multigenerational homes. Grandma and grandpa looked after the grandkids, and everyone looked after grandma and grandpa. From 2008 to 2010, American multigenerational households increased at a faster rate of growth than in the previous eight years combined, according to AARP.
In perhaps the most welcome news, laser tattoo removals have increased by 32 percent from 2011 to 2012 alone. "Employment reasons" are cited as the new No. 1 reason for the procedure. It turns out that in an era of austerity, having a Chinese-character tattoo that translates into "I have Kung Pao chicken pants" is an act of unnecessary self-indulgence rather than glorious self-expression.
It also turns out that our politics have a capacity for self-correction that few experts anticipated. When President Obama came into office, his administration's mantra was "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste." This little prayer to cynicism masquerading as an idealistic insight was used to justify vast expansions of government. The social scientists even told us this was to be expected. After all, they explained, during times of economic hardship, voters rally around the government.
Except that's not true. Yes, it happened during the Great Depression. But ever since, liberalism has been a luxury thriving on prosperity, not austerity. The Great Society was a byproduct of the so-called Affluent Society.
Instead of a tsunami of political support for ObamaCare and government unions, we got the Tea Party and the rollback of public-sector collective bargaining. Instead of massive support for Obama's green agenda, the air is thick with calls for more drilling, more fracking and more Keystone pipelines. It turns out the "new progressive era" was just too pricey.
Hopefully, the interminable winter of Obama's "Summer of Recovery" will soon end. And when it does, I hope we take the lessons to heart.
SOURCE
*****************************
Obama's Clinton problem
Back in 2008, after a hard-fought primary battle against then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., then-Sen. Barack Obama had a choice: he could put her on the ticket as his vice presidential nominee, thereby healing the rift that had torn apart the Democratic Party or he could go another direction. He chose Joe Biden over Clinton -- a move for which comics everywhere will forever thank him -- and relegated Clinton to a figurehead secretary of state.
The question at the time was: Why?
Pundits then settled on two answers. The first was ego: Obama didn't want to be outshone by his second-in-command, especially with regard to national security issues. The second was more nefarious: Obama feared having Hillary Clinton as the second-in-line to the presidency. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the Clintons weren't beyond Shakespearian action to obtain the highest office in the land once again; less kooky commentators theorized that a Clinton vice presidency would motivate her to undercut him in order to get a shot at the big chair.
It all seemed a bit overblown at the time. Not anymore.
This week, a desperate President Obama called on former President Clinton to help him reinvigorate his base. They held a joint fundraiser in New York City that netted the president some $3 million.
It also netted him some good old-fashioned Arkansas ass-whuppin' from the prospective first gentleman. "I care about the long-term debt of the country a lot," Clinton told the crowd. "Remember me, I'm the only guy that gave you four surplus budgets out of the eight I sent." Ouch. The only way the moment could have been more uncomfortable for Obama is if he'd been wearing something low-cut at the time, so Clinton could undress him visually as well as verbally.
Obama should have seen it coming. The week before the event, Clinton completely undercut Obama's central strategy of attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital, calling that record "sterling." "I think he had a good business career," said Bill. "A man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold."
But Clinton wasn't done. He also declared the American economy in a "recession" and suggested that President Obama re-up President Bush's tax rates.
Bill Clinton may be petty and vindictive, but that doesn't mean he's stupid. Backstabbing President Obama is a concerted strategy, not an emotional revenge tactic.
If Obama loses his re-election bid, Clinton will still be seen as the greatest Democratic president since FDR; no one-term president can challenge that title. If Obama loses, Hillary can also claim that he lost because she was isolated from central administration decisions and prepare to run as a moderate in 2016.
And so Bill has leapt into action. Driven by pride and opportunism, he's got President Obama right where he wants him. And yet, like a deer transfixed by headlights, Obama has no choice but to stand pat and hope that the Clinton bus doesn't run him down.
Every day, that hope seems less and less realistic.
SOURCE
******************
Austrian economics explain what Keynes cannot
Most of my classes at UNLV were very forgettable, but classes with Rothbard changed my mindset. He made me understand that peace and prosperity can only come from free markets and liberty. It is a message that will save the world.
Although Murray is no longer with us, his colleagues and students are here to pass his wisdom on to a whole new generation of students each year at Mises University. "There exists nothing as comprehensive, learned, or world-class as Mises U," Amherst College's Gregory Campeau wrote about MU a couple years ago. "If taken seriously, it can be a life-changing week in your intellectual life."
The mainstream financial press calls this the worst economic recovery in history. Bernanke's Fed and the Obama administration have thrown everything at the economy but the kitchen sink, and even the phony government numbers are punk. GDP grew 3 percent in 2010, 1.7 percent in 2011, and 2012 doesn't look any better. Millions are unemployed and many more millions have given up. Uncle Sam provides groceries for 46 million Americans.
While government and its captive press desperately want to characterize the current economy as a recovery, it is anything but. And for young people it is a tragedy. "I've never seen the world so bad for young people. The only way I can describe it is as a Great Depression," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University, who has studied young-adult unemployment in depth.
The number of young adults in their 20s without jobs is the highest since recordkeeping began after World War II, and the bleak outlook has barely improved even as the broader US economy has seen new hiring in recent months.
Only 55 percent of Americans in the 16-to-29 age bracket were working in 2010, which is down dramatically from 67 percent in 2000. However, the situation is even worse than those numbers indicate. That's because millions of young adults are also underemployed, working part time while looking for a full-time job — the modern term for that being "mal-employed," which means holders of college degrees working low-end jobs.
The average young college graduates don't know what hit them. They've done everything they were told. They went to good universities, persevered, earned their diplomas, and collectively piled up a trillion dollars in debt doing it. Now, depending on their major, they're tending bar or waiting tables.
Northeastern's Sum is outraged that the Obama administration hasn't created a stimulus plan to employ college graduates. "We've betrayed our young people badly," he said.
However, government has betrayed young people with its continuous meddling in the economy. The future is cloudy because of the endless stimulus plans, high taxation, and overregulation by government busybodies. The Federal Reserve continuously prints money, bailing out bankrupt businesses, allowing these capital wasters to destroy the resources that could spur job growth.
The Fed-induced booms and busts have decimated the retirement savings of older Americans, at the same time that price inflation keeps those hoping to retire from saving enough. Instead, they must remain on the job rather than enjoy retirement, denying positions to young people.
The worst of it is, Ben Bernanke has every intention of making matters worse. He believes it when people call him the foremost authority on the Great Depreciation. The Fed chair believes he must flood the world with money to eradicate deflation. He holds the dangerous notion in his head that he knows just the right amount of money to inject and just the proper interest rate to fix in order to centrally plan the economy.
He told a 60 Minutes TV audience a couple years ago that he was 100 percent certain of being able to control inflation. But the nation's high unemployment bothers him, and he thinks he can fix it with more money. He's wrong, but he doesn't understand that he's wrong.
Students question the authorities and the government's quashing of personal and economic freedoms. They know something is wrong when day-to-day economic news bears no relation to the state of the real economy. They don't believe the mainstream babble, because their job prospects are abysmal and they want to know what caused this mess. At Mises University they gain an academic understanding of the diabolical effects of this government tyranny. The education they receive has relevance each and every day.
Mises, Rothbard, and the rest of the great Austrian thinkers taught us that meddling by Washington and the Federal Reserve will not create economic riches. The malinvestments of the boom must be liquidated, and that liquidation process will continue despite Obama and Bernanke claiming they can reinflate the bubble prosperity. They can't.
SOURCE
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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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Wednesday, June 06, 2012
The American media knows where to find its friends
Barbara Walters, the grande dame of American television news, was forced to apologise on Tuesday night after it emerged that she had tried to use her influence to further the career of a former leading aide of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Emails seen by London's The Daily Telegraph show that Walters tried to help Sheherazad Jaafari, the daughter of Syria's UN ambassador, secure a place at an Ivy League university and an internship with Piers Morgan's CNN programme.
When confronted with the emails, which were obtained by a Syrian opposition group, the 82-year-old ABC broadcaster admitted a conflict of interest and expressed "regret" for her actions.
Miss Jaafari, 22, who in some reports has been dubbed "Serious Kim Kardashian", was a close adviser to Mr Assad and was at his side as Syrian troops dramatically stepped up their campaign of killing and repression.
She would speak to the president several times a day, sometimes calling him "the Dude" in her adopted American accent, and was sometimes the only official in the room when he did interviews with Western journalists.
Miss Jaafari, whose father Bashar Jaafari has known Walters for around seven years, began dealing with the broadcaster late last year as ABC News lobbied for an interview with Mr Assad.
Walters's interview in December - the first with an American television network - made headlines around the world as Mr Assad denied he was responsible for the crackdown which had already resulted in thousands of deaths across Syria. The emails show that after the interview Miss Jaafari and Ms Walters stayed in close contact.
Miss Jaafari did not ultimately get the internship nor the university place.
Miss Jaafari was part of a young circle of aides who advised Mr Assad to speak to the Western media as evidence of atrocities mounted. When he agreed to the interview with Walters in December, Miss Jaafari wrote a list of talking points advising that the "American psyche can be easily manipulated" if he were to make a limited expression of regret.
SOURCE
*************************
Iceland
For a while, the country had the Midas touch. During 2003-07 the Icelandic stock market grew ninefold, while real estate prices tripled. But the newfound riches proved fool’s gold. The three largest banks, whose assets at their peak were nearly 10 times the national GDP, collapsed in the fall of 2008. The Icelandic currency, the krona, lost more than half its value against the euro and became all but worthless outside the country. Employers shed jobs and inflation reached 20 percent. The stock market took an 85 percent dive. And Icelanders were now on the hook for an estimated $85 billion to $100 billion in bank losses, or roughly $300,000 for every man, woman and child. And you thought we had it bad.
Yet here it is, 2012, and Iceland appears to have recovered from this debacle rather nicely – and without a bailout from the IMF. Put simply, the government allowed major banks to fail and told foreign creditors to bite the bullet. It dismantled the failed banks, paid off creditors from the proceeds of asset sales, and tightened bank capitalization requirements. The country still faces major problems. Household and business debt remains high. And some Icelanders are migrating to Norway and elsewhere in search of a job. Yet on balance, the country is far better off than could have been predicted three years ago.
Here’s how the Washington Post’s Brady Dennis this January described the scene in the principal city of Reykjavik:
“Three years later,” the author writes, “the unemployment rate has fallen. Tourism has increased. The economy is growing. The government successfully raised money from investors in the summer for the first time since its crisis.”
In many ways, Iceland is an easy country to like. The 40,000-square-mile North Atlantic republic, located just south of the Arctic Circle some 500 miles from its nearest European neighbor Scotland, is a hybrid of Old Norse and modern culture. Average life expectancy at birth is now 81. Median income (2011) is around $38,000. The nonprofit watchdog group Transparency International continues to rate Iceland as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, even after the banking collapse. The country has spectacular natural scenery, including more than 100 volcanoes. One of its filmmakers, Baltasar Kormakur, directed a hit Hollywood movie this winter, “Contraband,” starring Mark Wahlberg; Kormakur, in fact, had starred in the 2008 film on which it was based, “Reykjavik-Rotterdam,” directed by another Icelander, Oskar Jonasson. And, of course, there is the instantly recognizable female singer-songwriter, Bjork, whose mix of folk-rock, post-punk and electronica has won tens of millions of fans the world over.
But the main reason to like Iceland may be its reluctance, at least when it counted, to transfer part of its sovereignty to the European Union. Iceland, despite its short-sighted bank deregulation of a decade ago, had a 7 percent unemployment rate in 2011, to be sure, way above the 1 percent preceding the collapse and yet slightly lower than the average of the immediate post-crash years – no mean feat. Annual GDP has been growing at 3 to 4 percent since 2009. “For a country whose entire financial system collapsed, Iceland is doing remarkably well,” admits Julie Kozack, IMF mission chief for Iceland.
This raises the question: Why? How could a nation witness the evaporation of its financial assets and yet stabilize the situation within a relatively short time, while much of the rest of Europe approaches the abyss? Certainly, Iceland is in far better shape without international aid than is subsidized Greece. So given all that it did wrong, Iceland must have done a few things right since.
Without discounting the importance of cultural explanations, arguably the main reason for Iceland’s resurgence is related to the economics concept of moral hazard. In essence, moral hazard refers to the additional risks that a particular party – be it a person, a corporation or a nation – takes on when it does not have to bear the costs of its mistakes. People by nature are less cautious when they know in advance that an outside party will cover them. As a corollary, the outside party, typically armed with better information about motive and action, is more likely than otherwise the case to behave irresponsibly, believing he won’t get caught or otherwise bear the cost. Think of Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko, in the two “Wall Street” movies.
The flip side of moral hazard is aversion to it. That is, in assessing a possible transaction or long-term agreement, a principal party may decide that the risk of an agent mishandling his money isn’t worth the gain in expertise. Equally to the point, he may sense that taking responsibility for the consequences of his own mistakes will reduce the likelihood of making them in the first place.
Iceland is an example of the second scenario. Its government during those dark months of late 2008 and early 2009 wisely eschewed a “too big to fail” policy in dealing with the nation’s financial institutions, recognizing, if out of necessity, that it can’t compensate reckless banking decisions. “No responsible government takes risks with the future of its people, even when the banking system itself is at stake,” said then-Prime Minister Geir Haarde in an emergency address to the nation in October 2008. He would resign on February 1, 2009. Johanna Sigurdardottir, a Social Democrat, would take over.
But why did the recklessness occur in the first place? It happened in large measure because country’s bankers thought Iceland was ready for the big time. The global economy, especially the demand for homeownership, was expanding. The bankers believed they could grow rich by radically ramping up mortgage lending and then packaging the loans as marketable securities to investors on Wall Street and elsewhere – sound familiar? Escalation in house prices presumably could cover any shortfalls, and the Icelandic government or the IMF could rescue them if prices didn’t keep rising. Who wanted to be a fisherman when the world was your oyster anyway?
“You had to be crazy not to want to become a banker,” says University of Iceland student Heimir Hannesson, looking back at those years. “You went to college, studied business. You became a millionaire overnight. That was the dream. And for a few years, it was the reality.”
Unfortunately, the reality of Geir Haarde, who served as prime minister for less than three years, is that he’s out of a job and likely headed for prison. The Sigurdardottir administration is bent on meting out justice to those whom it sees as responsible for the financial collapse. Her predecessor makes for a good trophy. This March, former Prime Minister Haarde, facing four separate criminal negligence charges, took the witness stand in his defense, arguing that no government could have prevented Iceland’s crash since nobody outside the banks was aware of how much debt they were carrying. He would be found guilty anyway in April on one of the charges.
Under its new leadership, Iceland may go the way of European integration. Finance Minister Oddny Hardardottir affirmed her commitment to adoption of the euro. The country applied for membership in the European Union in July 2009 and opened talks in 2010, despite widespread domestic opposition. Hardardottir believes that using the euro isn’t in conflict with becoming more solvent, and that the euro is a superior alternative to the highly fluctuating krona. “I’m not concerned about the future of the euro,” she remarked early this year. “The demand is that countries become more disciplined in their economic management. That’s something that we should also take to heart, although we’ve shown great effort and performance in that regard following the economic collapse.”
One only can hope. But in the meantime there are a couple reasons why Americans should pay close attention to the situation in Iceland.
First, like it or not, from the beginning of the EU, we have been committed to its solvency via the International Monetary Fund. And lately we’ve become more committed than ever. This spring, IMF officials cobbled together an additional $430 billion in pledges on top of the $380 billion in existing IMF lending capacity and the aforementioned 750 billion euro (US$950 billion) EU-IMF crisis package. Our total IMF liability now stands at $172 billion, second only to the $186 billion of Japan. (It could have been higher, actually, had the Obama administration pushed Congress on the issue.) The U.S. helped pay for the Irish and Portuguese bailouts this way. Now we’re covering the Greeks.
Second, having instituted our own bailouts over the last four years, we should be experts by now on the risks of growing an economy based on moral hazard. The Bush and Obama administrations, each aided by Congress, have created large-scale emergency conduits to support the automobile and financial services industries. In the short term, we mitigated a highly painful collapse. But in the long term, we are laying the groundwork for a potentially far deeper and intractable collapse. By signaling to “too big to fail” enterprises that they need not fear going extinct, we are enabling them to make bad decisions at taxpayers’ expense. The ever-expanding federal deficit is in some measure a consequence of this. Take heart, at least, that we’re not the lead player in some North American Union; one only can imagine the ultimate cost of bailing out Mexico.
One wishes Iceland well in its ongoing recovery. It may have only roughly one-hundredth of our land area and one-thousandth of our population, but its aversion to joining the EU during the Haarde years likely has benefited other nations, ours included. “I don’t want the euro, hell no,” remarked a female food truck operator in Reykjavik several months ago. “The countries that have the euro, it’s going pretty badly.” Iceland may well get the euro anyway. If that happens, it’s conceivable the U.S., if indirectly, will be responsible for some of its bills.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
WI: Walker survives recall vote: "Gov. Scott Walker, whose decision to cut collective bargaining rights for most public workers set off a firestorm in a state usually known for its political civility, held on to his job on Tuesday, becoming the first governor in the country to survive a recall election and dealing a painful blow to Democrats and labor unions."
CA: Appeals court won’t touch pro-family ruling, SCOTUS likely next: "An escalating showdown over gay rights in America appears to be heading inevitably to the US Supreme Court. Two major appeals court cases dealing with same-sex marriage are poised for possible review at the nation’s highest court -- perhaps with decisions as early as next year. A federal appeals court in San Francisco announced on Tuesday that it would not examine a February decision striking down as unconstitutional California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which effectively banned same-sex marriages in the state."
A liberal war on women: "The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act), a law passed by a liberal Congress in 2009 and signed by President Obama, 'keeps many homemakers from qualifying for credit cards,' notes the world’s oldest law blog, Overlawyered."
The Bernanke bust: "To Austrians, all economic 'booms' founded on monetary largesse always end in economic busts, roughly equal in size and intensity to the preceding booms. By distorting interest-rate and price signals and, as a consequence, creating malinvestments that must eventually be liquidated, monetary booms necessitate economic busts. This is true regardless of whatever short-term benefits the economy or financial markets appear to enjoy from this largesse.
Lese majesty: "A farmer decides, in the wake of the Mad Cow outbreak to conduct tests above and beyond those required by the government in order to advertise that his beef is safer than the national standard. The USDA doesn’t allow him to do so, he cannot conduct his own tests with his own money."
Universal health care does not mean government health care: "Maybe social means are inadequate; or maybe there is some reason, which has yet to be mentioned, why governmental control is preferable, as a means for getting it, to voluntary associations for mutual aid. But whether the position is right or wrong, it’s certainly not one that can be answered simply by defining it out of existence, as you do when you pretend that the only alternatives available are (1) corporate coverage of only those who can afford it; or else (2) universal coverage by means of government mandates; as if there were no (3) universal coverage by non-governmental means."
The power of market-driven diversity: "The story of Chicago-based Supreme Life Insurance Company of America, one of the most venerable black-owned businesses in American history, challenges the prevailing fiction that minority customers need the government to guarantee services for them and is a dynamic reminder of the power of markets as a basis for economic freedom."
Wealth creation is not the enemy: "President Obama accuses Mitt Romney of putting profits above people by striving to create wealth rather than jobs during his 15 years at Bain Capital. This critique of Romney's work at the private equity firm, which Obama says will be central to his re-election campaign, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism"
The case for single-issue activism: "The only period, as I see it, when the supporters of freedom have made really sizeable inroads against the state was in the early nineteenth century where single-issue campaigns against the Corn Laws, slavery, emancipation of Catholics and so on brought substantive achievements. Many of those involved were, as Lord Acton observed, not true supporters of freedom. Similarly, amongst Thatcherism’s greatest achievements must surely be the great utility privatisations or curbing of excessive union powers even though many Thatcherites were hardly typical supporters of Liberal freedoms. It is this limited, achievable and comprehensible type of reform we first need to find and then unite behind."
***************************
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)
****************************
Barbara Walters, the grande dame of American television news, was forced to apologise on Tuesday night after it emerged that she had tried to use her influence to further the career of a former leading aide of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Emails seen by London's The Daily Telegraph show that Walters tried to help Sheherazad Jaafari, the daughter of Syria's UN ambassador, secure a place at an Ivy League university and an internship with Piers Morgan's CNN programme.
When confronted with the emails, which were obtained by a Syrian opposition group, the 82-year-old ABC broadcaster admitted a conflict of interest and expressed "regret" for her actions.
Miss Jaafari, 22, who in some reports has been dubbed "Serious Kim Kardashian", was a close adviser to Mr Assad and was at his side as Syrian troops dramatically stepped up their campaign of killing and repression.
She would speak to the president several times a day, sometimes calling him "the Dude" in her adopted American accent, and was sometimes the only official in the room when he did interviews with Western journalists.
Miss Jaafari, whose father Bashar Jaafari has known Walters for around seven years, began dealing with the broadcaster late last year as ABC News lobbied for an interview with Mr Assad.
Walters's interview in December - the first with an American television network - made headlines around the world as Mr Assad denied he was responsible for the crackdown which had already resulted in thousands of deaths across Syria. The emails show that after the interview Miss Jaafari and Ms Walters stayed in close contact.
Miss Jaafari did not ultimately get the internship nor the university place.
Miss Jaafari was part of a young circle of aides who advised Mr Assad to speak to the Western media as evidence of atrocities mounted. When he agreed to the interview with Walters in December, Miss Jaafari wrote a list of talking points advising that the "American psyche can be easily manipulated" if he were to make a limited expression of regret.
SOURCE
*************************
Iceland
For a while, the country had the Midas touch. During 2003-07 the Icelandic stock market grew ninefold, while real estate prices tripled. But the newfound riches proved fool’s gold. The three largest banks, whose assets at their peak were nearly 10 times the national GDP, collapsed in the fall of 2008. The Icelandic currency, the krona, lost more than half its value against the euro and became all but worthless outside the country. Employers shed jobs and inflation reached 20 percent. The stock market took an 85 percent dive. And Icelanders were now on the hook for an estimated $85 billion to $100 billion in bank losses, or roughly $300,000 for every man, woman and child. And you thought we had it bad.
Yet here it is, 2012, and Iceland appears to have recovered from this debacle rather nicely – and without a bailout from the IMF. Put simply, the government allowed major banks to fail and told foreign creditors to bite the bullet. It dismantled the failed banks, paid off creditors from the proceeds of asset sales, and tightened bank capitalization requirements. The country still faces major problems. Household and business debt remains high. And some Icelanders are migrating to Norway and elsewhere in search of a job. Yet on balance, the country is far better off than could have been predicted three years ago.
Here’s how the Washington Post’s Brady Dennis this January described the scene in the principal city of Reykjavik:
On the snowy streets of this capital city, the economic panic of 2008 has mostly faded. The trendy cafes along Laugavegur brim with customers. Restaurant menus feature $40 grilled minke whale and $60 racks of lamb, and hardly a table goes empty. Boozy youths line up to pack nightclubs that thump all night. It’s even okay now to joke about the crash, or kreppa, as it’s known: “We may not have cash, but we have ash!” reads one T-shirt with a picture of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano that erupted in 2010.
“Three years later,” the author writes, “the unemployment rate has fallen. Tourism has increased. The economy is growing. The government successfully raised money from investors in the summer for the first time since its crisis.”
In many ways, Iceland is an easy country to like. The 40,000-square-mile North Atlantic republic, located just south of the Arctic Circle some 500 miles from its nearest European neighbor Scotland, is a hybrid of Old Norse and modern culture. Average life expectancy at birth is now 81. Median income (2011) is around $38,000. The nonprofit watchdog group Transparency International continues to rate Iceland as one of the least corrupt countries in the world, even after the banking collapse. The country has spectacular natural scenery, including more than 100 volcanoes. One of its filmmakers, Baltasar Kormakur, directed a hit Hollywood movie this winter, “Contraband,” starring Mark Wahlberg; Kormakur, in fact, had starred in the 2008 film on which it was based, “Reykjavik-Rotterdam,” directed by another Icelander, Oskar Jonasson. And, of course, there is the instantly recognizable female singer-songwriter, Bjork, whose mix of folk-rock, post-punk and electronica has won tens of millions of fans the world over.
But the main reason to like Iceland may be its reluctance, at least when it counted, to transfer part of its sovereignty to the European Union. Iceland, despite its short-sighted bank deregulation of a decade ago, had a 7 percent unemployment rate in 2011, to be sure, way above the 1 percent preceding the collapse and yet slightly lower than the average of the immediate post-crash years – no mean feat. Annual GDP has been growing at 3 to 4 percent since 2009. “For a country whose entire financial system collapsed, Iceland is doing remarkably well,” admits Julie Kozack, IMF mission chief for Iceland.
This raises the question: Why? How could a nation witness the evaporation of its financial assets and yet stabilize the situation within a relatively short time, while much of the rest of Europe approaches the abyss? Certainly, Iceland is in far better shape without international aid than is subsidized Greece. So given all that it did wrong, Iceland must have done a few things right since.
Without discounting the importance of cultural explanations, arguably the main reason for Iceland’s resurgence is related to the economics concept of moral hazard. In essence, moral hazard refers to the additional risks that a particular party – be it a person, a corporation or a nation – takes on when it does not have to bear the costs of its mistakes. People by nature are less cautious when they know in advance that an outside party will cover them. As a corollary, the outside party, typically armed with better information about motive and action, is more likely than otherwise the case to behave irresponsibly, believing he won’t get caught or otherwise bear the cost. Think of Michael Douglas’ character, Gordon Gekko, in the two “Wall Street” movies.
The flip side of moral hazard is aversion to it. That is, in assessing a possible transaction or long-term agreement, a principal party may decide that the risk of an agent mishandling his money isn’t worth the gain in expertise. Equally to the point, he may sense that taking responsibility for the consequences of his own mistakes will reduce the likelihood of making them in the first place.
Iceland is an example of the second scenario. Its government during those dark months of late 2008 and early 2009 wisely eschewed a “too big to fail” policy in dealing with the nation’s financial institutions, recognizing, if out of necessity, that it can’t compensate reckless banking decisions. “No responsible government takes risks with the future of its people, even when the banking system itself is at stake,” said then-Prime Minister Geir Haarde in an emergency address to the nation in October 2008. He would resign on February 1, 2009. Johanna Sigurdardottir, a Social Democrat, would take over.
But why did the recklessness occur in the first place? It happened in large measure because country’s bankers thought Iceland was ready for the big time. The global economy, especially the demand for homeownership, was expanding. The bankers believed they could grow rich by radically ramping up mortgage lending and then packaging the loans as marketable securities to investors on Wall Street and elsewhere – sound familiar? Escalation in house prices presumably could cover any shortfalls, and the Icelandic government or the IMF could rescue them if prices didn’t keep rising. Who wanted to be a fisherman when the world was your oyster anyway?
“You had to be crazy not to want to become a banker,” says University of Iceland student Heimir Hannesson, looking back at those years. “You went to college, studied business. You became a millionaire overnight. That was the dream. And for a few years, it was the reality.”
Unfortunately, the reality of Geir Haarde, who served as prime minister for less than three years, is that he’s out of a job and likely headed for prison. The Sigurdardottir administration is bent on meting out justice to those whom it sees as responsible for the financial collapse. Her predecessor makes for a good trophy. This March, former Prime Minister Haarde, facing four separate criminal negligence charges, took the witness stand in his defense, arguing that no government could have prevented Iceland’s crash since nobody outside the banks was aware of how much debt they were carrying. He would be found guilty anyway in April on one of the charges.
Under its new leadership, Iceland may go the way of European integration. Finance Minister Oddny Hardardottir affirmed her commitment to adoption of the euro. The country applied for membership in the European Union in July 2009 and opened talks in 2010, despite widespread domestic opposition. Hardardottir believes that using the euro isn’t in conflict with becoming more solvent, and that the euro is a superior alternative to the highly fluctuating krona. “I’m not concerned about the future of the euro,” she remarked early this year. “The demand is that countries become more disciplined in their economic management. That’s something that we should also take to heart, although we’ve shown great effort and performance in that regard following the economic collapse.”
One only can hope. But in the meantime there are a couple reasons why Americans should pay close attention to the situation in Iceland.
First, like it or not, from the beginning of the EU, we have been committed to its solvency via the International Monetary Fund. And lately we’ve become more committed than ever. This spring, IMF officials cobbled together an additional $430 billion in pledges on top of the $380 billion in existing IMF lending capacity and the aforementioned 750 billion euro (US$950 billion) EU-IMF crisis package. Our total IMF liability now stands at $172 billion, second only to the $186 billion of Japan. (It could have been higher, actually, had the Obama administration pushed Congress on the issue.) The U.S. helped pay for the Irish and Portuguese bailouts this way. Now we’re covering the Greeks.
Second, having instituted our own bailouts over the last four years, we should be experts by now on the risks of growing an economy based on moral hazard. The Bush and Obama administrations, each aided by Congress, have created large-scale emergency conduits to support the automobile and financial services industries. In the short term, we mitigated a highly painful collapse. But in the long term, we are laying the groundwork for a potentially far deeper and intractable collapse. By signaling to “too big to fail” enterprises that they need not fear going extinct, we are enabling them to make bad decisions at taxpayers’ expense. The ever-expanding federal deficit is in some measure a consequence of this. Take heart, at least, that we’re not the lead player in some North American Union; one only can imagine the ultimate cost of bailing out Mexico.
One wishes Iceland well in its ongoing recovery. It may have only roughly one-hundredth of our land area and one-thousandth of our population, but its aversion to joining the EU during the Haarde years likely has benefited other nations, ours included. “I don’t want the euro, hell no,” remarked a female food truck operator in Reykjavik several months ago. “The countries that have the euro, it’s going pretty badly.” Iceland may well get the euro anyway. If that happens, it’s conceivable the U.S., if indirectly, will be responsible for some of its bills.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
WI: Walker survives recall vote: "Gov. Scott Walker, whose decision to cut collective bargaining rights for most public workers set off a firestorm in a state usually known for its political civility, held on to his job on Tuesday, becoming the first governor in the country to survive a recall election and dealing a painful blow to Democrats and labor unions."
CA: Appeals court won’t touch pro-family ruling, SCOTUS likely next: "An escalating showdown over gay rights in America appears to be heading inevitably to the US Supreme Court. Two major appeals court cases dealing with same-sex marriage are poised for possible review at the nation’s highest court -- perhaps with decisions as early as next year. A federal appeals court in San Francisco announced on Tuesday that it would not examine a February decision striking down as unconstitutional California’s Proposition 8 ballot initiative, which effectively banned same-sex marriages in the state."
A liberal war on women: "The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (CARD Act), a law passed by a liberal Congress in 2009 and signed by President Obama, 'keeps many homemakers from qualifying for credit cards,' notes the world’s oldest law blog, Overlawyered."
The Bernanke bust: "To Austrians, all economic 'booms' founded on monetary largesse always end in economic busts, roughly equal in size and intensity to the preceding booms. By distorting interest-rate and price signals and, as a consequence, creating malinvestments that must eventually be liquidated, monetary booms necessitate economic busts. This is true regardless of whatever short-term benefits the economy or financial markets appear to enjoy from this largesse.
Lese majesty: "A farmer decides, in the wake of the Mad Cow outbreak to conduct tests above and beyond those required by the government in order to advertise that his beef is safer than the national standard. The USDA doesn’t allow him to do so, he cannot conduct his own tests with his own money."
Universal health care does not mean government health care: "Maybe social means are inadequate; or maybe there is some reason, which has yet to be mentioned, why governmental control is preferable, as a means for getting it, to voluntary associations for mutual aid. But whether the position is right or wrong, it’s certainly not one that can be answered simply by defining it out of existence, as you do when you pretend that the only alternatives available are (1) corporate coverage of only those who can afford it; or else (2) universal coverage by means of government mandates; as if there were no (3) universal coverage by non-governmental means."
The power of market-driven diversity: "The story of Chicago-based Supreme Life Insurance Company of America, one of the most venerable black-owned businesses in American history, challenges the prevailing fiction that minority customers need the government to guarantee services for them and is a dynamic reminder of the power of markets as a basis for economic freedom."
Wealth creation is not the enemy: "President Obama accuses Mitt Romney of putting profits above people by striving to create wealth rather than jobs during his 15 years at Bain Capital. This critique of Romney's work at the private equity firm, which Obama says will be central to his re-election campaign, betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of capitalism"
The case for single-issue activism: "The only period, as I see it, when the supporters of freedom have made really sizeable inroads against the state was in the early nineteenth century where single-issue campaigns against the Corn Laws, slavery, emancipation of Catholics and so on brought substantive achievements. Many of those involved were, as Lord Acton observed, not true supporters of freedom. Similarly, amongst Thatcherism’s greatest achievements must surely be the great utility privatisations or curbing of excessive union powers even though many Thatcherites were hardly typical supporters of Liberal freedoms. It is this limited, achievable and comprehensible type of reform we first need to find and then unite behind."
***************************
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)
****************************
More on how a criminal Leftist got a law-abiding conservative arrested
With the help of many misrepresentations and an aged scofflaw judge
David Hogberg
As reported last week on Capital Hill, the judge in the Brett Kimberlin-Aaron Walker peace order hearing granted Kimberlin’s peace order. At the end of the hearing, Walker was led away in handcuffs.
I went back to the District Court of Maryland for Montgomery County on Friday to get a copy of the warrant for Walker. I have uploaded it here (addresses and phone numbers are redacted).
The warrant was filed by Kimberlin on Sunday, and from it a few things are now clear that I got wrong in the post from last week. First, Kimberlin claims that Walker violated the second peace order Kimberlin filed against Walker, not the first. Kimberlin filed the second peace order on May 22, and it is “temporarily” in effect until the hearing on May 29th.
In it, Kimberlin basically claims that the blog posts Walker wrote between May 22 and May 27 constitute a violation of the peace order (more on that in a bit).
Also, in the blog I wrote that the “court apparently agreed (that Walker had violated the peace order) and Walker was arrested.”
That leaves the impression that the judge had Walker arrested. He did not. Rather, the warrant was carried out by a Montgomery County Sheriff, as is clear from the first page of the warrant. The easiest way for a sheriff to arrest someone is to know exactly where he is, and the sheriff obviously knew Walker would be in court that day.
In the warrant, Kimberlin claimed: "Mr. Walker has tweeted on Twitter about me in alarming and annoying ways over hundreds of times in the past week and urged others to attack me. He has generated hundreds of blog posts directly and indirectly based on false allegations that I framed him for an assault.
Mr. Walker has had many people threaten me directly with death, and told me to stop talking to the police, and not show up in court or I would die."
Notice that Kimberlin doesn’t explicitly say how Walker had people threaten him. Nowhere on his blog or Twitter feed does Walker tell anyone to threaten Kimberlin. What proof does Kimberlin then have that Walker had people threaten him? If the Tuesday hearing was any indication, he has none. Kimberlin then gets very slippery in this part:
The peace order prohibits as special condition “threats” and “no electronic contact.” I have received many threats by Electronic contact on behalf of Mr. Walker. On Saturday, May 26, 2012, at 7:57 pm, “A message from Aaron — Don’t show up in court Tuesday or you are dead. This is your only warning.” On Sunday, May 27, 1:24 pm, “If Brett does not start acting like a grown up and quit calling the police on people like a little punk, there will be hell to pay.”
Note that Kimberlin claims he has received these “on behalf of” Walker. Thus, we can safely assume that the first message is not actually from Aaron Walker. (Having spoken to Mr. Walker, I can say that it seems highly unlikely he would be that stupid.)
But the broader point here is that Kimberlin apparently believes that if Walker writes a blog post or tweets about him, and then third parties send him threatening emails, it constitutes harassment on the part of Walker. Then there is this laugher:
"Mr. Walker has urged people to intimidate me if I come to court on Tuesday by tweeting for a mob of people to show up."
While there are some tweets in Walker’s Twitter feed encouraging people to show up (see here and here), I can’t seem to find the ones where he says he wants a “mob” to “intimidate” Kimberlin.
Yet Kimberlin seems to believe that a blogger who writes about him is responsible for death threats from third parties. So maybe he also believes that asking people to show up to court is the equivalent of egging on a mob. None of this would even pass the laugh test, let alone the principles set forth in the Supreme Court case Brandenburg vs. Ohio.
But, apparently, it might pass the Vaughey test. That would be the test named after C.J. Vaughey, the judge in the Kimberlin-Walker peace order hearing who found in favor of Kimberlin last Tuesday.
Someone has posted the full audio of the hearing here, and blogger Patterico has done an excellent job posting text of some of the more outrageous moments. Here is the part where the judge invoked the Vaughey standard:
"WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though.
VAUGHEY: Forget Bradenburg (sic). Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world. But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly."
Not much to say here except that the rot that is judicial activism has obviously spread far and wide in our court system.
There was one part that was not included in Patterico’s post that is worth examining since it may shed some light on Vaughey’s biases. At one point in the hearing the judge asks Walker what if a “freak somewhere up in Oklahoma” does nasty things to Kimberlin. A little later he says, “You don’t get all these people from Oklahoma, Indiana, Wyoming, wherever the heck it is, and all of these past things.”
Looks like Vaughey forgot to mention Montana and Texas. Seriously, does Judge Vaughey think that “freaks” come from primarily red states? If so, it says a lot about his mindset. On the other hand, that may be reading too much into it. Maybe he was just listing states off the top of his head. But then, why not use the term “freak” without associating it with any states?
Vaughey is technically a “retired” judge. Perhaps he should enjoy retirement in the more traditional fashion of not going back to one’s old job.
WARNING: If you are going to post comments on this, keep it civil. In other words, NO threats of violence. Any such comments will be removed.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
****************************
Florida to Continue Voter Purge in Defiance of DOJ
Florida, a key U.S. electoral battleground where the 2000 presidential election was decided by a few hundred ballots, will defy the U.S. Justice Department's warning to stop its effort to purge ineligible voters, a state spokesman said on Saturday.
The warning issued this week by the head of the Justice Department's voting section said the move to purge voters appeared to violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities. It demanded a response by Wednesday.
But a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said the state must ensure only eligible voters cast ballots, and intends to go forward with the campaign.
"We have a year-round obligation to ensure the integrity of Florida's elections. We will be responding to (the Justice Department's) concerns next week," Chris Cate said in an email message.
Polls show Florida will be closely contested between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the outcome could swing the Nov. 6 election.
A mere 537 Florida votes decided the 2000 election in favor of Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, amid charges from both sides that some people were unable to vote, some votes were uncounted, or were counted incorrectly.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided the contest in a ruling that halted the recount process.
Supporters of Florida's voter scrub, conducted by the administration of Republican Governor Rick Scott, say it is aimed at clearing voter registration rolls of non-citizens. But critics call it part of longstanding Republican efforts to deter minorities and the poor, who tend to vote Democratic, from casting ballots.
In its letter to Detzner on Thursday, the Justice Department also said the effort seemed to violate the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and its rules for maintaining "accurate and current" voter registration lists "in a uniform and non-discriminatory manner."
The purge effort, begun in April, compares lists of registered voters with driver's license records that contain information on citizenship. Critics contend the information can be out of date as many people become citizens after they get their driver's licenses or state IDs.
So far the state has identified about 2,700 voters as suspicious and sent them letters demanding they produce proof of citizenship to avoid being stricken from the voter rolls.
SOURCE
*****************************
Only Getting Worse
by GADI ADELMAN (Gadi Adelman grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed)
Since returning to the United States in 1981 I've been attempting to educate people on the truth of Islam. Over the years I have seen dozens of new people emerge writing about the same thing, and it is obviously helping. There is no doubt that we are making headway and more people are aware of the threat of Islam.
It would seem to me that if more people have become educated and are aware of the situation things should be getting better rather than worse but sadly, that's not the case. Day in and day out, if you read publications other than the mainstream media, it's the same headlines, stories and news reports from all over the world. Islamic terrorism, honor killings, child brides, female genital mutilation and innocent people being murdered for no other reason than not being Islamic.
The so called "Arab Spring" has certainly made matters worse with the birth of new Islamic Republics that are demanding Sharia governments and laws.
Since 9/11 there has been 18,985 deadly attacks all carried out in the name of Islam and explicitly for Allah.
Just yesterday 15 people were killed and 38 wounded in two separate church bombings in Nigeria. Without a doubt this was the work of ‘Boko Haram', the Al Qaeda linked group who refer to themselves as the "Nigerian Taliban". The name ‘Boko Haram' actually translates to "Western education is forbidden".
Over 2 years ago, in April 2010 I wrote an article "No Big Deal, Just Some People In Africa, Right?", in which I explained that Christians were being killed by the hundreds for no reason other than because they were Christian, and yes, this was happening all in the name of Islam. Well this year alone there have been over 530 people, including women and children who have unfortunately become more of that statistic.
This week, like all others, we just see more of the same. Another Israeli soldier was killed Friday morning when a terrorist from Gaza crossed the border in to Israel and opened fire on a group of soldiers. Staff-Sergeant Netanel Moshiashvili, a medic, was mortally wounded.
Eleven Lebanese girls, between six and eight years old, were all victimized by their 22 year old teacher. The sexual assault occurred at a school in Mount Lebanon.
The teacher is said to have harassed the girls, forcing them to undergo nude photo sessions. According to the Lebanese website Naharnet:
A young mother was found guilty of adultery in Sudan and has been sentenced to death by stoning according to a report in the Guardian.
What a shocker, she had no right to an attorney, they beat a confession out of her, and the man who denied any wrong doing was released. Sharia and women's rights hard at work once again.
Reuters reported that Brussels Police were attacked Thursday night after they arrested a Muslim woman for refusing to remove her face veil:
For those that don't recall, "Belgium and France both banned people from wearing full face veils in public last year."
Iran is only upping its game of words now warning the United States not to resort to military action against it, saying on Saturday that US bases in the region were vulnerable to the Islamic Republic's missiles. The Jerusalem Post article explains,
Yes and they really are just using the nuclear power for "peaceful purposes", why on earth would anyone not believe that after they outright threaten the US and Israel.
This article wouldn't be complete without the story of the former associate professor at Sweden's medical institute. According to the UK Daily Mail:
Talk about "eating your words.: So what would make someone do this, yes, you guessed it, honor.
So there is just very small sample of what goes on throughout the world week after week in the world of the "religion of peace."
Yes, more people are aware, but even less seem to care. All we can do is educate, it is up to you the reader to pass it on further. Remember, we can still speak out about these atrocities, as long as we have lips.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
With the help of many misrepresentations and an aged scofflaw judge
David Hogberg
As reported last week on Capital Hill, the judge in the Brett Kimberlin-Aaron Walker peace order hearing granted Kimberlin’s peace order. At the end of the hearing, Walker was led away in handcuffs.
I went back to the District Court of Maryland for Montgomery County on Friday to get a copy of the warrant for Walker. I have uploaded it here (addresses and phone numbers are redacted).
The warrant was filed by Kimberlin on Sunday, and from it a few things are now clear that I got wrong in the post from last week. First, Kimberlin claims that Walker violated the second peace order Kimberlin filed against Walker, not the first. Kimberlin filed the second peace order on May 22, and it is “temporarily” in effect until the hearing on May 29th.
In it, Kimberlin basically claims that the blog posts Walker wrote between May 22 and May 27 constitute a violation of the peace order (more on that in a bit).
Also, in the blog I wrote that the “court apparently agreed (that Walker had violated the peace order) and Walker was arrested.”
That leaves the impression that the judge had Walker arrested. He did not. Rather, the warrant was carried out by a Montgomery County Sheriff, as is clear from the first page of the warrant. The easiest way for a sheriff to arrest someone is to know exactly where he is, and the sheriff obviously knew Walker would be in court that day.
In the warrant, Kimberlin claimed: "Mr. Walker has tweeted on Twitter about me in alarming and annoying ways over hundreds of times in the past week and urged others to attack me. He has generated hundreds of blog posts directly and indirectly based on false allegations that I framed him for an assault.
Mr. Walker has had many people threaten me directly with death, and told me to stop talking to the police, and not show up in court or I would die."
Notice that Kimberlin doesn’t explicitly say how Walker had people threaten him. Nowhere on his blog or Twitter feed does Walker tell anyone to threaten Kimberlin. What proof does Kimberlin then have that Walker had people threaten him? If the Tuesday hearing was any indication, he has none. Kimberlin then gets very slippery in this part:
The peace order prohibits as special condition “threats” and “no electronic contact.” I have received many threats by Electronic contact on behalf of Mr. Walker. On Saturday, May 26, 2012, at 7:57 pm, “A message from Aaron — Don’t show up in court Tuesday or you are dead. This is your only warning.” On Sunday, May 27, 1:24 pm, “If Brett does not start acting like a grown up and quit calling the police on people like a little punk, there will be hell to pay.”
Note that Kimberlin claims he has received these “on behalf of” Walker. Thus, we can safely assume that the first message is not actually from Aaron Walker. (Having spoken to Mr. Walker, I can say that it seems highly unlikely he would be that stupid.)
But the broader point here is that Kimberlin apparently believes that if Walker writes a blog post or tweets about him, and then third parties send him threatening emails, it constitutes harassment on the part of Walker. Then there is this laugher:
"Mr. Walker has urged people to intimidate me if I come to court on Tuesday by tweeting for a mob of people to show up."
While there are some tweets in Walker’s Twitter feed encouraging people to show up (see here and here), I can’t seem to find the ones where he says he wants a “mob” to “intimidate” Kimberlin.
Yet Kimberlin seems to believe that a blogger who writes about him is responsible for death threats from third parties. So maybe he also believes that asking people to show up to court is the equivalent of egging on a mob. None of this would even pass the laugh test, let alone the principles set forth in the Supreme Court case Brandenburg vs. Ohio.
But, apparently, it might pass the Vaughey test. That would be the test named after C.J. Vaughey, the judge in the Kimberlin-Walker peace order hearing who found in favor of Kimberlin last Tuesday.
Someone has posted the full audio of the hearing here, and blogger Patterico has done an excellent job posting text of some of the more outrageous moments. Here is the part where the judge invoked the Vaughey standard:
"WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though.
VAUGHEY: Forget Bradenburg (sic). Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world. But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly."
Not much to say here except that the rot that is judicial activism has obviously spread far and wide in our court system.
There was one part that was not included in Patterico’s post that is worth examining since it may shed some light on Vaughey’s biases. At one point in the hearing the judge asks Walker what if a “freak somewhere up in Oklahoma” does nasty things to Kimberlin. A little later he says, “You don’t get all these people from Oklahoma, Indiana, Wyoming, wherever the heck it is, and all of these past things.”
Looks like Vaughey forgot to mention Montana and Texas. Seriously, does Judge Vaughey think that “freaks” come from primarily red states? If so, it says a lot about his mindset. On the other hand, that may be reading too much into it. Maybe he was just listing states off the top of his head. But then, why not use the term “freak” without associating it with any states?
Vaughey is technically a “retired” judge. Perhaps he should enjoy retirement in the more traditional fashion of not going back to one’s old job.
WARNING: If you are going to post comments on this, keep it civil. In other words, NO threats of violence. Any such comments will be removed.
SOURCE (See the original for links)
****************************
Florida to Continue Voter Purge in Defiance of DOJ
Florida, a key U.S. electoral battleground where the 2000 presidential election was decided by a few hundred ballots, will defy the U.S. Justice Department's warning to stop its effort to purge ineligible voters, a state spokesman said on Saturday.
The warning issued this week by the head of the Justice Department's voting section said the move to purge voters appeared to violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which protects minorities. It demanded a response by Wednesday.
But a spokesman for Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner said the state must ensure only eligible voters cast ballots, and intends to go forward with the campaign.
"We have a year-round obligation to ensure the integrity of Florida's elections. We will be responding to (the Justice Department's) concerns next week," Chris Cate said in an email message.
Polls show Florida will be closely contested between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the outcome could swing the Nov. 6 election.
A mere 537 Florida votes decided the 2000 election in favor of Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore, amid charges from both sides that some people were unable to vote, some votes were uncounted, or were counted incorrectly.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided the contest in a ruling that halted the recount process.
Supporters of Florida's voter scrub, conducted by the administration of Republican Governor Rick Scott, say it is aimed at clearing voter registration rolls of non-citizens. But critics call it part of longstanding Republican efforts to deter minorities and the poor, who tend to vote Democratic, from casting ballots.
In its letter to Detzner on Thursday, the Justice Department also said the effort seemed to violate the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and its rules for maintaining "accurate and current" voter registration lists "in a uniform and non-discriminatory manner."
The purge effort, begun in April, compares lists of registered voters with driver's license records that contain information on citizenship. Critics contend the information can be out of date as many people become citizens after they get their driver's licenses or state IDs.
So far the state has identified about 2,700 voters as suspicious and sent them letters demanding they produce proof of citizenship to avoid being stricken from the voter rolls.
SOURCE
*****************************
Only Getting Worse
by GADI ADELMAN (Gadi Adelman grew up in Israel, studying terrorism and Islam for 35 years after surviving a terrorist bomb in Jerusalem in which 7 children were killed)
Since returning to the United States in 1981 I've been attempting to educate people on the truth of Islam. Over the years I have seen dozens of new people emerge writing about the same thing, and it is obviously helping. There is no doubt that we are making headway and more people are aware of the threat of Islam.
It would seem to me that if more people have become educated and are aware of the situation things should be getting better rather than worse but sadly, that's not the case. Day in and day out, if you read publications other than the mainstream media, it's the same headlines, stories and news reports from all over the world. Islamic terrorism, honor killings, child brides, female genital mutilation and innocent people being murdered for no other reason than not being Islamic.
The so called "Arab Spring" has certainly made matters worse with the birth of new Islamic Republics that are demanding Sharia governments and laws.
Since 9/11 there has been 18,985 deadly attacks all carried out in the name of Islam and explicitly for Allah.
Just yesterday 15 people were killed and 38 wounded in two separate church bombings in Nigeria. Without a doubt this was the work of ‘Boko Haram', the Al Qaeda linked group who refer to themselves as the "Nigerian Taliban". The name ‘Boko Haram' actually translates to "Western education is forbidden".
Over 2 years ago, in April 2010 I wrote an article "No Big Deal, Just Some People In Africa, Right?", in which I explained that Christians were being killed by the hundreds for no reason other than because they were Christian, and yes, this was happening all in the name of Islam. Well this year alone there have been over 530 people, including women and children who have unfortunately become more of that statistic.
This week, like all others, we just see more of the same. Another Israeli soldier was killed Friday morning when a terrorist from Gaza crossed the border in to Israel and opened fire on a group of soldiers. Staff-Sergeant Netanel Moshiashvili, a medic, was mortally wounded.
Eleven Lebanese girls, between six and eight years old, were all victimized by their 22 year old teacher. The sexual assault occurred at a school in Mount Lebanon.
The teacher is said to have harassed the girls, forcing them to undergo nude photo sessions. According to the Lebanese website Naharnet:
One six-year-old told her father that the teacher had instructed her "to lift her skirt before pressing himself up against her."
A young mother was found guilty of adultery in Sudan and has been sentenced to death by stoning according to a report in the Guardian.
Intisar Sharif Abdallah was tried without access to a lawyer and is being detained with her four-month-old baby, according to Amnesty International.
Amnesty puts Abdallah's age at 20; Human Rights Watch says she may be under 18.
Abdallah admitted to the charges only after her brother reportedly beat her. The conviction was based solely rests on this testimony. The man held with her reportedly denied the charges and was released.
What a shocker, she had no right to an attorney, they beat a confession out of her, and the man who denied any wrong doing was released. Sharia and women's rights hard at work once again.
Reuters reported that Brussels Police were attacked Thursday night after they arrested a Muslim woman for refusing to remove her face veil:
the woman had scuffled with officersed and she was taken to hospital with mild concussion," the police spokesman told Le Soir newspaper.
The woman's husband went to the police station later that day to complain, accompanied by about 20 others.
Protesters hurled bins and metal barriers at a Brussels police station, a spokesman for Brussels police stated "They tried to enter by force, but they were not able to, so instead they threw metal barriers and bins."
For those that don't recall, "Belgium and France both banned people from wearing full face veils in public last year."
Iran is only upping its game of words now warning the United States not to resort to military action against it, saying on Saturday that US bases in the region were vulnerable to the Islamic Republic's missiles. The Jerusalem Post article explains,
"The politicians and the military men of the United States are well aware of the fact that all of their bases (in the region) are within the range of Iran's missiles and in any case are highly vulnerable," Press TV reported Brigadier-General Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.
Safavi also warned that Iranian missiles could reach all parts of Israel.
Yes and they really are just using the nuclear power for "peaceful purposes", why on earth would anyone not believe that after they outright threaten the US and Israel.
This article wouldn't be complete without the story of the former associate professor at Sweden's medical institute. According to the UK Daily Mail:
A former associate professor at Sweden's prestigious Karolinska medical institute is being held in police custody for cutting off his wife's lips with a knife and then eating them in Stockholm.
Talk about "eating your words.: So what would make someone do this, yes, you guessed it, honor.
The man, who is 52, admitted to cutting off his wife's lips in a closed court hearing, the paper reported, saying it was retaliation.
"It was honour related. He doesn't seem to regret a thing. He believes she insulted him," a source with knowledge of the matter told the paper.
The man, who is from Iran, was doing post-Doctoral research at the institute in 2010.
So there is just very small sample of what goes on throughout the world week after week in the world of the "religion of peace."
Yes, more people are aware, but even less seem to care. All we can do is educate, it is up to you the reader to pass it on further. Remember, we can still speak out about these atrocities, as long as we have lips.
SOURCE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
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