A Conspiracy of Counterfeiters

Pat Buchanan

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."

"Lenin was certainly right," John Maynard Keynes continued in his 1919 classic, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace."

"There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

Keynes warned that terrible hatreds would be unleashed against "profiteers" who enriched themselves through inflation as the middle class was wiped out. And he pointed with alarm to Germany, where the mark had lost most of its international value.

By November 1923, the German currency was worthless, hauled about in wheelbarrows to buy groceries. The middle class had been destroyed. German housewives were prostituting themselves to feed their families. That same month, Adolf Hitler attempted his Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

Today a coterie of economists is prodding Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to induce inflation into the American economy.

Fearing falling prices, professor Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, is pushing for an inflation rate of 5 to 6 percent while conceding that his proposal is rife with peril and "we could end up with 200 percent inflation."

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and columnist for The New York Times, is pushing Bernanke in the same direction.

Bernanke, writes Krugman, should take the advice he gave Japan in 2000, when he urged the Bank of Japan to stimulate the economy with "an announcement that the bank was seeking moderate inflation, 'setting a target in the 3-4 percent range for inflation, to be maintained for a number of years.'"

And who inspired Bernanke to urge Tokyo to inflate? Krugman modestly credits himself. "Was Mr. Bernanke on the right track? I think so -- as well I should, since his paper was partly based on my own earlier work."

But Krugman is not optimistic about Bernanke's injecting the U.S. economy with a sufficient dose of inflation. Why is Ben hesitant? Two words, says Krugman: "Rick Perry." Krugman believes Bernanke has been intimidated by Perry's populist threat in Iowa after his first day of campaigning:

"If this guy (Bernanke) prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treasonous."

Perry was indulging in Texas hyperbole, and the press came down hard on him for language unbefitting a presidential candidate.

Yet Perry has raised a legitimate series of questions. What should be done to high officials of the U.S. government who consciously set out to dilute and destroy the savings and income of working Americans? What should be done to those who have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution and then steal the wealth of citizens by secretly manipulating the value of the currency, the store of wealth upon which those people depend?

Is inducing inflation -- debauching the currency, the systematic and secret theft of the savings of citizens -- a legitimate policy option for the Federal Reserve? Has Congress authorized official thievery? Who do these economists think they are?

Inflation rewards debt -- and erodes savings. It is legalized counterfeiting, the deliberate creation of money with nothing to back it up.

If a citizen printed dollars bills, he would be tracked by the Secret Service, prosecuted and imprisoned. Why, then, is the Fed's clandestine printing of money with nothing to back it up a legitimate exercise and, according to Krugman & Co., a desirable policy for Bernanke and the Fed?

Schooled economists such as Rogoff, Krugman and Bernanke know how to shelter their wealth from the ravages of inflation -- and even to get rich. But what about widows whose husbands leave a nest egg of savings in cash and bonds? What are they supposed to do as the value of their savings is wiped out at 4, 5 or 6 percent a year -- or whatever annual rate of ruin the Rogoffs and the Krugmans decide upon?

This is not only an economic issue but a moral issue. To inflate a currency is to steal the money citizens have earned and saved and entrusted their government to protect. Any government that betrays that trust and steals that wealth is not only unworthy of support. It is worthy of being overthrown. On this one, as Keynes said, Lenin was right.

Perry and Ron Paul deserve the nation's gratitude for putting this issue of the unfettered power and the amorality of our unelected Federal Reserve on the political docket.

SOURCE

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

David Gregory's Intolerance

On NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory grilled Rep. Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.) on her political and religious views.

Near the end of the segment, Gregory asked Bachmann about her views on gays and lesbians. He played a clip of Bachmann saying that the gay lifestyle was “personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement.”

“I am running for the presidency of the United States, I’m not running to be anyone’s judge,” Bachmann replied.

Video follows

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Lloyd Marcus

The liberal media are signaling that their mission to reelect Barack Obama is going to involve declaring Bible-believing Christians to be intolerant bigots, unfit for high office. The trigger issue is one of the liberal media's favorite causes: normalizing homosexuality.

Please, please, please understand, as we said in the '60s, "where I'm coming from." This article is not about bashing homosexuals. I have homosexual family and friends whom I love very much.

However, I found David Gregory's attack on Michele Bachmann for comments she made regarding homosexuality to be extremely disturbing and offensive. Bachmann is a Christian and simply compassionately espoused the biblical point of view. Just as Muslims live by the Quran, Christians strive to live by the Bible.
Here are a few Bible quotes about homosexuality.

Lev. 18:22: "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination."

Lev. 20:13: "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act;..."

Rom. 1:26-27, " ... for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts ... "

Whether you agree with the Bible or not is irrelevant. My point is that Bachmann did not "make up" her take on homosexuality. It came from a holy book considered sacred by mega-millions worldwide.

So, when Gregory beat up on Bachmann, he was really attacking Christians and the Bible. But most disturbing was Gregory's arrogant bullying and implicit threat to all who disagree. In effect, he announced: We, the media, have declared homosexuality normal -- period, end of subject. Any one of you Neanderthals daring to suggest otherwise will suffer the consequences.

Would Gregory have been so aggressive interviewing Muslim presidential candidates about their beliefs? I suspect not.

Most Americans accept homosexuals and are repulsed by anyone abusing them. However, America's acceptance of homosexuals is not good enough for the left. The left wish to bend our arms behind our backs until we cry "uncle," proclaiming homosexuality to be normal.

Even home improvement and cooking TV programs feature a high number of homosexual couples disproportionate to the population. Clearly, many TV producers have an agenda to normalize the homosexual lifestyle.

My dad has been in Christian ministry as a pastor for 50 years. Dad said he is being pressured to embrace the Gospel of Homosexuality. He added, "Those of us who disagree are being pushed into the closet."

Has the left won? Are we afraid to quote the Bible's rebuke of homosexuality?

Think about this, folks. According to the left, if you disapprove of acts forbidden by scripture, not only are you a "hater," but you are deemed mentally ill -- diagnosed as homophobic and in need of treatment.

During his Bachmann interview, Gregory kept referring to homosexuals as "gay Americans" in an attempt to make disapproval of a "sexual behavior" the same as discriminating against an ethnic group such as African-, Hispanic-, and other Americans.

The left reinforces the theme, calling opposition to the homosexual agenda "bigotry."

Black Civil Rights groups are offended by the left comparing their struggle to that of homosexuals.

I state again, "I have homosexual family and friends whom I love very much." However, loving them does not mean I must submit to dictatorial pressure from the media to embrace the homosexual lifestyle as being normal.

To get their way, the left always distort the discord, portraying all opposition to equal the extreme evil. For example, Americans welcome legal immigrants who obey our immigration laws with open arms. We oppose illegal immigration and all the crime and stress on our welfare system that comes with it. The left brands anyone seeking to protect our borders extremist, anti-immigration, and racist.

If you believe that elementary kids should not be forced to celebrate Gay Pride Day and not be encouraged to experiment with homosexuality, the left numbers you among the minority of nutcases seeking to harm homosexuals.

Regardless of the issue, the left, via their liberal media enforcers, slander the opposition, painting them to be haters and extremists. Former Obama supporters turned off by his unfolding socialistic agenda are suddenly redneck racists against a black president.

Patriots, I realize all of you are not Christians and my purpose is not to force my faith on anyone. This article is not about whether homosexuality is right or wrong. It is about the liberal media throwing down the gauntlet, saying, Hey, you Christians had better get with the program regarding the normalcy of homosexuality, or else!

The liberal media usurping ultimate authority to enforce their "ultimate consensus" on an issue, destroying anyone who dares think otherwise, is a serious assault on our freedom.

SOURCE

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

An Unusual Economy?

Thomas Sowell

Many in the media are saying how unusual it is for our economy to be so sluggish for so long, after we have officially emerged from a recession. In a sense, they are right. But, in another sense, they are profoundly wrong.

The American economy usually rebounds a lot faster than it is doing today. After a recession passes, consumers usually increase their spending. And when businesses see demand picking up, they usually start hiring workers to produce the additional output required to meet that demand.

Some very sharp downturns in the American economy, such as in the early 1920s, were followed quickly by bouncing back to normal levels or beyond. The government did nothing -- and it worked.

In that sense, this is an unusual recovery in how long it is taking and in how slowly the economy is growing -- while the government is doing virtually everything imaginable.

Government intervention may look good to the media but its actual track record -- both today and in the 1930s -- is far worse than the track record of letting the economy recover on its own.

Americans today are alarmed that unemployment has stayed around 9 percent for so long. But such unemployment rates have been common for years in Western European welfare states that have followed policies similar to policies being followed currently by the Obama administration.

Those European welfare states have not only used the taxpayers' money to hand out "free" benefits to particular groups, they have mandated that employers do the same. Faced with higher labor costs, employers have hired less labor.

The vast uncertainties created by ObamaCare create a special problem. If employers knew that ObamaCare would add $1,000 to their costs of hiring an employee, then they could simply reduce the salaries they offer by $1,000 and start hiring.

But, since it will take years to create all the regulations required to carry out ObamaCare, employers today don't know whether the ObamaCare costs that will hit them down the road will be $500 per employee or $5,000 per employee. Even businesses that have record amounts of cash on hand are reluctant to gamble it by expanding their hiring under these conditions.

Many businesses work their existing employees overtime or hire temporary workers, rather than get stuck with unknown and unknowable costs for expanding their permanent work force.

As unusual as 9 percent unemployment rates may seem to the current generation of Americans, unemployment rates stayed in double digits for months and years on end during the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration followed policies very similar to those of the Obama administration today. He also got away with it politically by blaming his predecessor.

SOURCE

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

ELSEWHERE

House GOP targets “job-destroying” laws: "The House Republican agenda this fall will focus on repealing environmental and labor regulations that GOP lawmakers say are driving up the cost of doing business and discouraging employers from hiring workers. House majority leader Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, said in a memo to his fellow Republicans that as soon as Congress returns to Washington next week he will start bringing up bills to repeal or restrict federal regulations."

West Bank: IDF training squatters ahead of expected “mass disorder”: "The IDF has conducted detailed work to determine a 'red line' for each settlement in the West Bank, which will determine when soldiers will be ordered to shoot at the feet of Palestinian protesters if the line is crossed. It is also planning to provide settlers with tear gas and stun grenades as part of the defense operation. The IDF is currently in the process of finalizing its preparations for Operation Summer Seeds, whose purpose is to ready the army for September and the possibility of confrontations with Palestinians following the expected vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the UN General Assembly."

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)

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

How Canada avoided America's economic and financial problems

A similar story to that below could be told about Australia. Australia too ran budget surpluses right up until the GFC and Australia's banks at no time stopped making good profits. And Australia's unemployment rate is in fact much lower than the Canadian figure: 5.1% versus 7.2%

In a recent Bank of Canada survey, businesses reported the highest hiring expectations on record amid broad optimism about future demand. A quarter of the Canadian businesses that responded are facing labor shortages. Respondents also indicated plans to increase investment spending - a factor critical to economic productivity that is far too often overlooked in the misguided obsession over consumer spending.[10] All of this has contributed to a surging Canadian dollar, which has risen from a low of 0.77 USD/CAD to well above parity and is presently making record highs on a regular basis.[11] By any conventional metric, Canada's economic performance can thus be demonstrated to have surpassed those of its peers during and subsequent to the recession.

While the United States rose to the occasion with their monolithic trillion-dollar stimulus package and the rest of the world followed suit, Canada, as noted by many opponents of the ruling party at the time,[12] all but sat idly by, and what little it did in the way of spending did nothing to contribute to its aversion of disaster, as demonstrated by the Fraser Institute.[13]

When opposition parties finally prodded the Tories into putting forward a stimulus package, the result was quite the anticlimax. As Canada's leading left-leaning policy think tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives quite cogently pointed out, the government's stimulus package was "only one quarter the size of the U.S. package and half the amount advocated by the International Monetary Fund."[15] Clearly, Canada's "stimulus package" was about as ambitious as a homeless man. In effect it was little more than a clever display of political gamesmanship whereby the appearance of action was maximized, while the action itself was minimized in order to control the damage the stimulus would cause while absolving itself of any culpability in the event of any externally induced shocks.

That the ideal policy would have been to do completely nothing, rather than merely almost nothing, is a conclusion that would have been laughed to scorn by policymakers and the public at large at the time but is nevertheless a fact that has been made painfully apparent now that the results of massive government deficit spending have become manifest. And so, with reference strictly to the differences in policy following the financial crisis, the question as to how Canada managed to escape the fate of the United States and Europe is answered not by what Canada did but rather by what Canada failed to do. It is precisely in this abstinence that we find Canada's source of relative success.

As far as the immediate policy response following the crisis is capable of explaining the economic results that obtained thereafter, the foregoing provides the answer to the disparity between the Canadian economy and those of its counterparts. However, it should be understood that a debacle like Greece is not simply a product of the policies undertaken over the prior year. Likewise for the current predicament in the United States - it takes more than one political term to drive what was once the world's largest creditor nation into near-default.

The relative strength of Canada's balance sheet is thus not to be ascribed in whole to the Conservative Party and the seven years it has now been in power but rather to the oversight it received at the hands of its ruling authorities throughout the broader period encompassing both the Conservative administration, which took power just before the financial crisis and the administration preceding it. And here we find an unlikely protagonist in the Chretien-era Liberal Party.

Under the joint leadership of Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Finance Minister Paul Martin, Canada underwent one of the most fiscally responsible periods in its history. Debt reduction was a goal that figured prominently throughout the ten years of the Chretien administration and in the subsequent two years of the finance minister's administration. Taking power as Canada's debt levels were hitting record levels, Martin made it clear from the start that the priorities of the government would be fixed squarely on eliminating the deficit and the record of the following decade leaves little doubt that this was a commitment that was delivered upon powerfully.

Martin went to great lengths to bring the public on board, televising the lobbying efforts of interest groups and publishing dire reports on Canada's fiscal situation, and then embarked on what was in all probability the greatest reduction in government spending ever undertaken in Canada from its inception. Following a peak deficit of $42 billion in fiscal 1993-1994, the administration managed to reverse the deficit and produce a surplus by 1997-1998, and sustain the surplus over the following two years before posting a historical record of $17.1 billion in budgetary surplus in fiscal 2000-2001.

From that point, the government was able to produce a surplus every year up to 2007-2008, at times finding itself alone among G7 administrations in doing so. This was a period during which several significant tax cuts were implemented including a $58 billion tax-cut package in 2001[16] alongside the reintroduction of inflation indexing for personal income taxes. This paralleled the experience in the provinces, which themselves were able to achieve budget balance in the aggregate by 2000 while concomitantly applying substantial cuts in personal income and corporate tax rates.[17]

And thus effectively the whole of the fiscal turnaround in Canada, to the extent it was effected through endogenous factors, can be quite unambiguously attributed to cuts in government spending. Altogether, Chretien and Martin presided over more than $80 billion in surpluses[18] and there is no doubt that this is the single most enduring feature of their legacy.

Equally instructive is the counterexample of the preceding administration. Prior to the Chretien regime, the Mulroney-led Conservative Party had led Canada into a protracted period of economic decline due to its inability to shake off the prevailing Keynesian orthodoxy of deficit spending as a means of reducing unemployment.[19] Incidentally, the dramatic spending cuts implemented by Martin were accompanied and followed by a steep decline in the unemployment rate - from a high of 11.4 percent in 1993 to 6 percent in 2007.[20] Having raised Canada's level of debt-to-GDP to an unprecedented high of 67 percent,[21] the Mulroney administration is a typical example of the futility of free-market rhetoric in shaping the course of the economy so long as practice remains bound by the spell of Keynesian doctrine. Together, the two episodes form an addition to the endless wealth of historical instances of economic outcomes occurring in precisely the opposite manner from that predicted by Keynesian theory.

The lesson of the succeeding Harper government is largely the same. Following the example of Paul Martin and the Chretien administration, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the Conservative Party posted surpluses in their first two years in power, helping to bring down the debt-to-GDP ratio - a measure that had been as high as 68.4 percent in fiscal 1995-1996 - to 28.8 percent in 2009,[22] giving Canada the lowest ratio in the G7[23] and making Canada the only G7 country to post ten consecutive surpluses since 1960.[24] Although this quickly deteriorated into unseemly deficits in fiscal 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 due to the political jockeying of a vulnerable minority government, by that time it was too late to overcome the favorable impact of the policies of the preceding decade.

Thanks to Canada's own debt problems at the expiration of Mulroney's term, deficit spending by the government had acquired a bad taste in the mouths of Canadians and this negative association has persisted up until the present as announcing budget deficits has become almost anathema to the voting public. This goes far in explaining why the political developments in Canada leading up to 2007 were so markedly different from other developed countries and why the country is the fiscal envy of the world today.

No nation is exempt from the laws of economics and, as the United States and Europe are now learning, the ultimate bankruptcy of an unbounded government is just as inexorable in the developed world as it is in third-world countries.

The lesson of Canada can be summarized as follows: the size of a country's problems is directly proportional to the size of its government.

More HERE

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

US Government Asset Seizures on the Rise

The Wall Street Journal published a disturbing article earlier this week entitled "Federal Asset Seizures Rise, Netting Innocent With Guilty."

You can already imagine the crux of the article. In the United States, there are hundreds of regulations which authorize dozens federal agencies to confiscate private property - homes, cars, bank accounts, gold, company shares, and even personal effects.

Ironically, most Americans still think that they live in a country where you're innocent until proven guilty. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it's just another clear example of how the US Constitution has become a worthless piece of toilet paper for the federal government.

The Fifth Amendment states that "No person shall be.deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Tell that James Lieto, a New York businessman who was relieved of $392,000 when the armored car company used by his check-cashing firm was taken down by the FBI.

Lieto was innocent and not implicated in any wrongdoing, but the FBI took his money regardless as it just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Last October, another businessman named Raul Stio was suspected of wrongdoing by the Treasury Department. The government seized over $150,000 from his account, yet in the 10-months that followed, Stio has still not been charged with a crime.

According to Justice Department statistics, the total value of confiscated property exceeded $2.5 billion in 2010, more than double from five years ago. The average take per case? $166,000.and the vast majority of cases were non-criminal.

It's truly staggering to think about how much can be taken away from you in the blink of an eye, all without any judicial oversight or right to a hearing.

The reason could be anything. Maybe you violated some arcane, meaningless regulation among the hundreds of thousands of pages of US Code (ignorance of the law is NOT an excuse!). Maybe you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe they had no real reason at all other than mere suspicion.

One minute you have money, the next you're completely locked out of your wealth and livelihood. They force YOU to prove to them that you aren't guilty, but they take away any means you had to defend yourself.

Look, this is the new reality in America. The entire country has become a nation of criminals - there isn't a single man, woman, or child alive who is not in violation of some obscure regulation or cannot be `suspected' of wrongdoing.

This is really just a form of cannibalism - a government feeding on its own citizens in order to keep the party going just a little bit longer. They'll raise taxes, seize assets, take over pension funds, erode freedoms, start wars and send people to die - whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.

I've long advocated for an internationalization strategy: diversifying various assets and interests overseas so that no one single government has total control over your livelihood.

Store your gold in Switzerland. Open a bank account in Hong Kong. Register your company in the BVI. Establish a `backup' residency in Chile. Expand your business in Brazil. Get a better job in Singapore. Obtain a second passport in Malta. Open a brokerage account in the Cayman Islands.

This approach is NOT just for the super rich. In fact, I've helped all kinds of people to internationalize, young and old, rich and poor.

Taking some simple steps to protect yourself will give you extraordinary peace of mind. You'll know that, without doubt, you have some savings socked away that NOBODY can touch. You'll know that you have a solid emergency backup plan. You'll know that everything you've worked for won't vanish in an instant.

SOURCE

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

ELSEWHERE

Zogby Poll: More Bad Numbers for Obama, as 35% Say He Deserves Re-Election: "Majorities of likely voters continue to disapprove of President Barack Obama's job performance (60%) and say it is "time for someone new" (55%) in the White House. Among those who do approve of Obama's performance, 34% say they are disappointed by the president, but don't want to undermine him by saying they disapprove. The job approval and re-election results in the Aug. 25-29 IBOPE Zogby interactive poll are little changed from the last similar survey conducted Aug. 2-4."

Do we really need a national weather service?: "As Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast, news stations bombard our televisions with constant updates from the National Hurricane Center. While Americans ought to prepare for the coming storm, federal dollars need not subsidize their preparations. Although it might sound outrageous, the truth is that the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Weather Service, are relics from America's past that have actually outlived their usefulness."

Leave the hurricane price-gougers alone: "Well, if it's hurricane season, it must be anti-price-gouging season. It's bad enough for people to be hit by a hurricane. You'd think that statists would show some mercy and spare people some economic idiocy during difficult times. Alas, it is not to be. North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced that he would prosecute anybody engaging in price-gouging during Hurricane Irene."

President Obama, the Blamer-in-Chief: "I usually write songs and this is my first attempt at writing an op-ed piece. It always amazes me how most political commentators beat around the bush. Well, that's not how you write a song so let's just cut to the chase and get to the chorus: My song 'Obama Budget Plan' can be seen on YouTube. It indicates that President Obama's budget plan appears to be to spend as much of our money as he wants, on anything he wants and to pay for it by just printing more money. The fact is, President Obama doesn't really seem to have a plan at all."

Another criticism of "animal rights": "Any careful observation of the rest of nature will make it evident that applying moral criteria to how animals live is in error -- what philosophers have called a 'category mistake.' And at the same time and for similar reasons, ascribing rights to animals is also misguided, just as would be to ascribe guilt to them when they carry out their killings and maiming in the wilds"

Whose axe made your axe? You better find out: "For the second time in two years, federal agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have raided two Tennessee factories that make iconic Gibson guitars. The government alleges that Gibson imported woods in violation of the Lacey Act, a century-old law that makes it a federal crime to trade in plants, wildlife, or timber that have been harvested in violation of 'any foreign law.' While this seems simple enough, and the anti-poaching/conservation impulses behind the law are certainly commendable, the Lacey Act has become one of many federal statutes that create invisible minefields of federal regulations into which anyone can stumble unknowingly"

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)

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

The end of the 20th century welfare state – and the death of social democracy?

By Greg Lindsay, Executive Director of Australia's "Centre for Independent Studies" (A market-oriented thinktank)

Readers of my occasional posts on e-PréCIS over the years will detect a theme that recent events have only reinforced: the end of one of the most costly social experiments in the history of mankind – the 20th century welfare state – and the death of social democracy. The CIS has been warning about this for the last couple of decades. Looks like a crisis or two is the only way to bring people to their senses, although I’m not especially hopeful on that front either.

The unfolding crisis broadly seems to be in two parts: fiscal crises as exemplified by the unfolding sovereign and banking disasters in Europe and the United States, and the social riots in the United Kingdom – with some other issues tossed into the mix such as failing families and education. They are both two sides of the same coin. This crisis for modern liberal democracy in the West is a serious problem and we’d better get it right.

The inexorable growth in entitlement welfare and its imperialistic intrusion into all facets of daily life is not only unsustainable but enfeebling and enslaving. The idea that a strong market economy could sustain increased social spending forever was a neo-socialist’s dream. It’s now turned into a nightmare fuelled by continued borrowing and wishful thinking.

Like rabbits in the headlights, the so-called leaders in politics and officialdom have proved to be no less mortal and fallible than the rest of us. And yet, an article in today’s Australian Financial Review ran with the headline ‘Politicians told to fix political crisis’. Blinded and unable to move, they have mortgaged the futures of our children. This is a scandalous moral catastrophe and a cause for shame and humiliation, but contrition is not part of their thinking. It may well end badly, but hopefully not.

Much of what we at CIS have argued for provides some solid analysis of the issues and also some signposts as to where we should be heading. Australia is in a better position than almost every other country. Perhaps our leaders have been listening to us.

Received via email

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

Depraved but not deprived

By MARK STEYN

Unlike many of my comrades in the punditry game, I don't do a lot of TV. But I'm currently promoting my latest doom-mongering bestseller so I'm spending more time than usual on the telly circuit. This week I was on the BBC's current-affairs flagship "Newsnight." My moment in the spotlight followed a report on the recent riots in English cities, in the course of which an undercover reporter interviewed various rioters from Manchester who'd had a grand old time setting their city ablaze and expressed no remorse over it. There then followed a studio discussion, along the usual lines. The host introduced a security guard who'd fought for Queen and country in Afghanistan and Bosnia and asked whether he sympathized with his neighbors. He did. When you live in an "impoverished society," he said, "people do what they have to do to survive."

When we right-wing madmen make our twice-a-decade appearance on mainstream TV, we're invariably struck by how narrow are the bounds of acceptable discourse in polite society. But in this instance I was even more impressed by how liberal pieties triumph even over the supposed advantages of the medium. Television, we're told, favors strong images – Nixon sweaty and unshaven, Kennedy groomed and glamorous, etc. But, in this instance, the security guard's analysis, shared by three-quarters of the panel, was entirely at odds with the visual evidence: There was no "impoverished society." The preceding film had shown a neat subdivision of pleasant red-brick maisonettes set in relatively landscaped grounds. There was grass, and it looked maintained. Granted, it was not as bucolic as my beloved New Hampshire, but, compared to the brutalized concrete bunkers in which the French and the Swedes entomb their seething Muslim populations, it was nothing to riot over. Nonetheless, someone explained that these riotous Mancunian youth were growing up in "deprivation," and the rioters themselves seemed disposed to agree. Like they say in "West Side Story," "I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived." We've so accepted the correlation that we don't even notice that they're no longer deprived, but they are significantly more depraved.

SOURCE

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

Greed, theft and envy are the hallmarks of socialism

The first virtue of socialism is greed. When most people hear the word “greed,” capitalism is the only economic system that comes to mind. There is no question, in the minds of many, that capitalism and greed are synonymous. However, one needs to step back and ask if greed applies to socialism as well. Greed, according to a dictionary, is the selfish desire for or pursuit of money, wealth, power, food, or other possessions, especially when this denies the same goods to others. So does this apply to socialism? Absolutely. The reason is this: those who want to “share the wealth” are themselves just as guilty as pursuing more money and wealth than they have earned. Though their pursuit of wealth is disguised by an agenda to make America socialist, if they get their wishes the government will automatically grant them wealth without effort. This is still greed, because they are driven by a desire for more money. In other words, you do not have to be rich to be greedy.

The second virtue of socialism is envy. Envy, according to a dictionary, is best defined as an emotion that occurs when a person lacks another’s (perceived) superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it (Italics dictionary). This one goes hand in hand with greed, however, it seems more obvious than that. Wealth is a possession and if wealth is a possession, then envy applies to those who covet money. Socialism is about coveting money, namely the rich person’s money. Other things could also drive this coveting of wealth, like what one would do if they had more money. Of course, if they had more money they could live like the rich.

The third virtue is of socialism is theft. Theft occurs in socialism when the rich person’s money is forcibly taken from him by way of income taxation. First off, no one’s income should be taxed because everyone has a right to keep the money that they have earned. Taxation is legalized theft, but we do not all see it that way. To paraphrase what Ron Paul said in The Revolution: A Manifesto, if someone were to come in to our house and take our money with promises that they will do good with the money they are stealing from us, we would object to this behavior and notify the authorities. What are these taxes used for that are in the name of good intentions? Statist programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. This all seems well and good, and not all of this money comes from the rich, but you get the point of the analogy. Another thing taxation is used for is war. Starve the government of taxation, and wars become much more difficult to fight without bankrupting the country.

The word that is paired with socialism, and perhaps its main principle, is fairness. It is only “fair” that the government makes sure that its people are taken are come by spreading the wealth, according to the socialist. But is it fair to steal from someone else? Is it fair to take the earnings of someone and give it to another person who did not earn it? Where is the motivation for the person to work hard or harder to maintain his standard of living? Where is the motivation of the person receiving the money to improve himself by becoming a hard worker?

Capitalism’s main virtue is one that many people need to understand, namely, that you have the right to keep what you earn. Also another principle of capitalism is that it is in my best interest to act in your best interest and your best interest to act in my best interest. This necessity allows for things like trade to occur. It also reminds us that the rich cannot oppress the poor, because if they do the poor will seek a way out and get find a way to get what they believe is in their best interest (usually better wages).

So when a socialist claims that he or she has a moral system and capitalism does not, there is no excuse for the capitalist not to argue against this point. If anything, socialism is a much more immoral system than capitalism could ever possibly be.

SOURCE

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

"Temple denial"

Temple Denial is the belief that no Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. This claim, despite being counter to Islamic tradition, became internalized within Palestinian academic, religious, and political circles following the 1967 Six-Day War. Since the 2000 Camp David Summit, during which Yasir Arafat asserted that the Jewish Temple never existed in Jerusalem, “Temple Denial” has spread with increased virulence in an attempt to deny both Jewish authority and access to the Temple Mount and Western Wall.

On the ninth day of the 2000 Camp David Summit, Yasir Arafat, then Palestinian National Authority President, told President Bill Clinton that “Solomon’s Temple was not in Jerusalem, but Nablus.”[1] Arafat’s remark, known as “Temple Denial,” shook the foundation of the negotiations, as the leading Palestinian figure denied the existence of Judaism’s holiest site. Temple Denial is historical revisionism that runs counter to classical Islamic tradition and archaeological evidence. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, after Muslim control over the Temple Mount was lost to Israel, the belief that no Jewish Temple ever existed in Jerusalem has developed and become internalized within Palestinian academic, religious, and political circles. Since Camp David, Temple Denial has transformed into a virulent delegitimization campaign that attempts to deny both Jewish authority and access to the Temple Mount and Western Wall (or Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem.

For Jews, the Temple Mount is the holiest place in the world. The Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount originates in the biblical narrative, as it is said to be the location of the binding of Isaac.[2] The Talmud, Judaism’s supreme canonical text, says that the foundation stone on the Temple Mount is the location from which the world was created.[3] In Samuel II 24:18-25, King David bought the bedrock for the Temple from Araunah the Jebusite. Subsequently, Solomon, David’s son, used the bedrock to build the First Temple.[4] Solomon’s Temple was eventually destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon in 586 BCE.

Following the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple, many Jews were sent into exile. However, under the Persian King Cyrus, the Jews were allowed to return and began to rebuild the Temple. The Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE and expanded by King Herod in 19 BCE. In 70 CE, the Roman Empire, led by Emperor Titus, laid siege to Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. Jews have maintained an unbreakable connection to Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount since that time.

Classic Islamic literature also recognizes the existence of a Jewish Temple and its importance to Judaism. This makes Palestinian Temple Denial all the more puzzling.

In Sura 17:1 of the Koran, the “Farthest Mosque” is called the al-masjid al-Aqsa. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn,[8] a well-respected Sunni exegesis of the Koran from the 15th and 16th centuries, notes that the “Farthest Mosque” is a reference to the Bayt al-Maqdis of Jerusalem.[9] In Hebrew, the Jewish Temple is often referred to as the Beyt Ha-Miqdash, nearly identical to the Arabic term. In the commentary of Abdullah Ibn Omar al-Baydawi, who authored several prominent theological works in the 13th century, the masjid is referred to as the Bayt al-Maqdis because during Muhammad’s time no mosque existed in Jerusalem.[10] Koranic historian and commentator, Abu Jafar Muhammad al-Tabari, who chronicled the seventh century Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, wrote that one day when Umar finished praying, he went to the place where “the Romans buried the Temple [bayt al-maqdis] at the time of the sons of Israel.”[11] In addition, eleventh century historian Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Maqdisi and fourteenth century Iranian religious scholar Hamdallah al-Mustawfi acknowledged that the al-Aqsa Mosque was built on top of Solomon’s Temple.[12]

This is a small sample of the Islamic literature attesting to the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. Innumerable other writings from other faiths attest to this fact, as well.

The modern phenomenon of Temple Denial began during the Palestine Mandate. During this period, the Temple Mount was under the authority of the Supreme Muslim Council, led by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husayni. The Supreme Muslim Council published yearly guide books to the Haram al-Sharif (the Temple Mount). Drawing from those available, the 1924, 1925, 1929, and 1935 guide books all stated that the Haram al-Sharif’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute. This, too, is the spot, according to the universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.”[13] The recognition of the Temple Mount’s importance to Jews in the guidebooks continued until 1950, two years after Israel’s establishment.[14] However, by 1954, the references to Solomon’s Temple disappeared. At some point between 1950 and 1954, the Muslim waqf (religious authority) that governed the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque inexplicably began to remove the references seen in earlier guide books.

More HERE

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

ELSEWHERE



The "fast unto death" still works in India: "A septuagenarian anticorruption activist ended a 13-day hunger strike Sunday with a glass of coconut water after India's Parliament bowed to his demands, agreeing to create a powerful, independent lokpal, or ombudsman, with authority to go after high-level corruption."

Israel: Seven wounded in Arab attack: "A Palestinian [Arab] attacker wounded seven Israelis near a Tel Aviv nightclub early Monday, hitting a police checkpoint with a stolen taxi and then stabbing others, police said. The attacker was a Palestinian in his twenties from the city of Nablus, according to Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri."

Canada: Attack on author may be Islamist hate crime: "Halton police are treating an attack on a first-time author whose self-published book has been branded anti-Muslim as a possible hate crime. Raised Islamic, Paris Dipersico, 24, reported being dragged from his bicycle Aug. 17, tied up among trees, then beaten briefly unconscious by two Muslim men."

The state against the urban poor: "In the hands of those who know how to use it, the state is a weapon. Planning laws are a good example of its subtle use by powerful interest groups. They effectively control the supply of desirable property, so that the owners of those properties can earn monopolistic profits. As with the barrier-to-entry laws that protect established corporations, planning laws protect property owners."

Heavy hand: "It is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that Washington’s intrusive, heavy-handed policies are not stifling economic growth across America, and particularly on Main Street. One might add that this is further evidence that liberty and prosperity (and their opposites) go hand in hand -- a point that Republican presidential candidates would do well to emphasize."

Doubling down in the drug war: "Why can’t the U.S. government ever learn lessons from any of its failed programs? The biggest lesson it fails to learn is the importance of ending programs that are obvious failures, especially ones that are inherently incapable of succeeding. Instead, in its usually bullheaded, headstrong fashion, the government maintains the program and, even worse, actually expands it."

More on Government Motors: "The suit, filed by one Donna Truska, argues that the Impalas -- made between 2007 and 2008 -- had defective rear spindle rods, leading to rapid tire wear. The plaintiff claims that GM has breached its warranty, and demands that GM fix the cars. But the new GM argues that since the cars were made by the Old GM, it is not liable for the repairs, and the 400,000 Impala owners should therefore go to hell."

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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

They Wouldn't Dream of Getting a Job: They'd Lose Their Welfare!"

When I asked our next-door neighbor, a well-known African-American movie actor, why his three healthy, middle-aged brothers didn’t have jobs when, as the actor complained, they were continually “hitting [him] up for money”, he answered—“They wouldn’t dream of getting a job: they’d lose their welfare!” This statement sums up the poisonous deterrent to personal initiative and the subsequent production of personal sloth engendered by the creation of the welfare state more completely than any statement I have ever heard. I should be broadcast around the country, so exactly to the point it is.

When I was a boy in the 1940s I remember that no one would have dreamed of admitting publically that he was on welfare, or even that he was poor. To confess to poverty meant announcing to the world that one had failed to provide for oneself, that one had essentially failed in achieving the national personal goal of self-sufficiency. Today, by contrast, hordes of picketers can be seen in public demanding this or that form of welfare, almost proudly proclaiming their indigence. Electoral politics have even encouraged officials, a preponderance of them Democrats, to be forthcoming with government handouts as a way of buying whole classes of future voters, and let the country be damned. Even the modern euphemistic vocabulary for welfare has served to erase the stigma of government handouts, with words such as “compensation” and “entitlement” making the reality of being on the public dole sound almost honorable.

A particularly egregious form of welfare is Aid to Single Mothers, a subsidy that not only encourages dependency but that actually discourages marriage, destroying any semblance of family life. In the Afro-American community, for example, the percentage of children born out of wedlock just after World War II was eight percent. Today, with decades of the Aid to Single Mothers program behind us, that figure is close to seventy percent (the Left, of course, blames this high figure on slavery!), with fatherless boys especially forced to look for male role models in organized groups—such as gangs.

Is it a lack of intelligence that makes us choose welfare? Hardly! Our intelligence tells us that if anyone offers us free money we should take it! It is rather our integrity and our traditional American values, both diminishing qualities in our society, that tell us not to take it because taking public money is basically taking money from other people against their will, money they badly need for themselves! What we need is leaders who have the intelligence and the integrity to realize that putting people on the dole creates a class—and eventually a nation—of parasites, a catastrophe for any nation that eventually dooms that nation to oblivion.

Even I, who loathe the idea of welfare, have experienced the seductive appeal of free government money. When I was laid off of my job five years ago I discovered that unemployment compensation, which I knew would last for a year, was quite adequate to live on, which I did for almost the whole year before looking for another job. To my great shame I interpreted it as a paid year’s vacation, which I rationalized by saying that I had paid into it, although in reality it was my employer who had paid into it. I can't believe that I am the only recipient to have reacted in this manner. Of course there is a need for welfare, but it should be reserved for the truly incapacitated, that is, exclusively for the tiny percentage of people who are actually physically unable to work.

So when the public cringes at the current unemployment numbers, particularly among minorities, they should avoid the clarion calls to “compassion” and realize that not only will more government doles foster more parasitism, but that a significant percentage of these unemployed are already in a huge and growing sub-class of people who “wouldn’t dream of getting a job—because they’d lose their welfare!”

SOURCE

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

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea

It has always been hard to pin down just what “conservatism” stands for, what with people of such widely divergent views as Barry Goldwater, Jerry Falwell, and both George Bushes described by that term. The relatively recent addition to the political lexicon of “neoconservatism” complicates matters further. What do “neocons” believe? Where do their ideas come from? If they obtain political power, what can we expect?

To find answers to those questions, I strongly recommend Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea. In it, authors C. Bradley Thompson of Clemson University and Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute dig through the words of neocon politicians like John McCain, the writings of neocon strategists like Irving Kristol, William Kristol, and David Brooks, and ultimately to the wellspring of the neoconservative movement, University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss. What readers discover is that neoconservatism is a strikingly authoritarian movement with scant regard for individual rights. Neoconservatives aren’t concerned with individuals, the authors contend, but want to build cohesion—even if it requires great Machiavellian deception of the people—in pursuit of “national greatness.” Life, liberty, and property are all at the mercy of whatever politicians the neocon intelligentsia manages to elect.

“The neocons,” the authors write, “might be best described as cautious or pragmatic liberals in that they think reform should be modest, slow, and experimental, and that it should be devised in such a way that it relies more on traditional social values . . . than on bureaucratic authority and ideological dogmas.” But while neocons are thus tactically at odds with the headlong statism that dominates the Democratic Party, they are strategically at odds with Americans who want to downsize the State. In one of the book’s most memorable phrases, we learn that neocons believe that “leave us alone is not a governing philosophy.” That is, they want to use governmental power, not dismantle it. They abhor the idea of people telling government officials, “You have no moral or constitutional right to dictate my life.” Neocons, Thompson and Brook contend, are sharply opposed to the philosophy of the American founding, a fact they obscure behind rhetorical smokescreens.

So if the neocons are against Obama-style statism but also against libertarianism, what are these supposedly pragmatic people for? And why? Much of the book is devoted to teasing out those surprisingly difficult answers. The authors trace the movement back to Strauss, a political philosopher who was captivated by the ancient Greek idea that individuals fulfill their purpose by working and sacrificing for the good of the city-state. Strauss took Plato to heart, arguing that the people should be subservient to the greater collective, and while the connections to Strauss aren’t always perfectly clear, present-day neocons adopt that same belief. Instead of worrying about governmental intrusions against individual liberty, neocons are animated by a desire to grasp power for malleable, big-government Republicans such as McCain, then use the levers of power for what they think are “good” national goals.

What kinds of goals? That is left vague because, lacking true principles, neoconservatism leaves it up to political leaders under the sway of neocon thinkers to decide what our national goals should be. “Nation building” in places like Iraq and Afghanistan certainly qualifies. The neocons realized that the 9/11 attacks provided the ideal excuse to tear Americans away from their petty personal lives and dragoon them into a crusade against international terrorism. In that, the neocons show their allegiance to expansionist presidents of the past, like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who gloried in the use of military power abroad.

Since they lack a core philosophy, however, how can the neocons argue with those who wish to use government power for different kinds of “national greatness” projects? They can’t have any principled objection to a party that pledges national greatness through deep environmentalism, for example. (The neocons have so far opposed the wild-eyed environmentalists but it’s not clear why “green” central planning is necessarily inconsistent with their belief system.) They might scheme to keep such a party out of power, but what if they fail? It seems not to worry the neocons that the power they covet and seek to expand will certainly fall into “bad” hands at some point.

All in all, neoconservatism turns out to be another of those foolish movements that seek to commandeer the liberty, property, and even the lives of ordinary people so that “great men” might use them in pursuit of their dreams. Obviously it doesn’t bother the neocons that when they exert their will over the rest of us, millions of individual, peaceful plans and projects are wiped out. When the State sucks in resources for “national greatness,” less is left for business growth, charitable operations, and other voluntary activities. The neocons seem to care about that just as much as, oh, Napoleon did.

SOURCE

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

The petition process of initiative and referendum

Legitimate government is anchored on the consent of the governed. Yet, ours not only lacks popular approval, the men and women pulling the levers are actively trying to cut “We the People” out of the picture. Except, of course, to shut up and pay our taxes.

From Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, California, to little towns like Boulder City, Nevada, and Monroe, Washington, elected representatives of the people conspire to remove those people’s most effective means of oversight. They block the opportunity for those whom they should serve and to whom they must answer to decide issues at the ballot box.

Why protest Washington, D.C., chapter and verse? Everyone knows that Congress doesn’t represent us, regularly passing laws that a majority of folks oppose. Voters have booted majority parties three times in the last two decades. No change ensued. Today, Congress has set another all-time mark: the lowest public approval. Ever. Twelve percent.

Likewise, President Obama’s approval ratings are drooping. And it’s not simply due to the economy. All rational people now know that the problem with Barack Obama is not that he is “so different,” but that he is so much the same as every other politician. On the biggest new law, ObamaCare, while the candidate understood that “part of what we have to do is enlist the American people in this process,” and passionately promised “the public will be part of the conversation,” the president reneged in full.

Maybe Candidate Obama was pulling our leg. (Not funny.) Or he was recklessly not serious about following through on the promises that so led so many to place in him so much trust. Take your pick.

As the country reels under crisis, no one in the White House or Congress has even stumbled upon an idea that would include the American people more deeply in the conversation, give the voters a small role in decision-making, or, heaven forbid, any sort of check on their representatives’ awesome power.

Sadly, this studied lack of interest in ‘government by the people’ has also found its way to your state capital and even your city, town, village or hamlet.

In Sacramento, California, Governor Brown has already vetoed a bill passed by his own party’s legislators that would “drive up the costs of circulating ballot measures, thereby further favoring the wealthiest interests.” Another bill is now on Brown’s desk that would force people compensated in any way for circulating a petition to wear a sign that reads: “Paid Signature Gatherer.”

A majority of California representatives believe they have a right to slap a sign on a citizen’s chest if that uppity citizen engages in democratic acts legislators frown upon.

“We are trying to take on a giant with one hand tied behind our back,” Democratic Assemblyman Mike Gatto told the Los Angeles Times. The “giant” is the democratic right of Californians to petition issues onto the ballot and counter their out-of-control legislature.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported via headline that “Sen. Loni Hancock acts to thwart Amazon referendum.” Amazon.com is financing a referendum to challenge and place to a public vote legislation that will tax online retailers. Hancock argues, “The initiative and referendum process has increasingly been hijacked by large corporations for measures that would benefit their companies and businesses.”

Wealthy interests can, indeed, leverage the initiative process. But voters ultimately get to decide, and are not tricked like toddlers by TV ads. In 2010, Pacific Gas & Electric outspent its opposition 161 to 1; its ballot measures still went down to defeat. Amazon’s effort, self-interested no doubt, solicits nothing more than a decision from the citizens of California; Sen. Hancock’s goal is to prevent just such a public vote.

You can find the same disdain for citizen input even in small-town America. In this space in January, I told a story of Boulder City, Nevada, where citizens petitioning to place several initiative measures were personally sued by their own city government in an attempt to intimidate them and block a vote. Then, they were sued again after the measures passed.

In Monroe, Washington, citizens are locked in an ongoing battle to gain a simple vote on a measure to stop red-light cameras. Initiative activist Tim Eyman sums up the disrespectful, irresponsible behavior of local officials: “After working tirelessly to obstruct citizens who have attempted to participate in the traffic camera discussion, suing their own citizens, insulting the citizens by offering false choices at the ballot box and finally breaking all ethical boundaries by contaminating the anti-camera committee” by appointing “their pro-camera obstructionist” to it, “the Mayor and City Council's silence in the wake of this broiling battle has been absolutely deafening.”

It’s not just Monroe. Every time citizens anywhere in the country have voted on such traffic-ticketing cameras, they’ve said, “No!” Yet, politicians in city after city attempt to install the cameras to fleece citizens without their consent. When challenged in this unpopular endeavor, in localities in which citizens enjoy initiative and referendum rights, the politicians work to overturn the applecart of democracy.

SOURCE

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

Disaster isn't a stimulus package

by Jeff Jacoby

COLUMNISTS MAKE PREDICTIONS at their peril, but I'll go out on a limb: If Hurricane Irene turns out to have wrought the havoc some forecasters have predicted, it will be only a matter of days before some expert reassures us that all the destruction will actually be good for the economy. "One of the most reliable results of any natural disaster," remarks economist Russell Roberts, "is the spreading of bad economics." And few economic fallacies are more enduring than the belief that disasters are really a net benefit to society, since the money spent on recovery stimulates new jobs and construction.

Consider the massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan earlier this year -- a catastrophe that killed more than 22,000 people, caused the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, and pitched the already sagging Japanese economy into recession. Three days after disaster struck, the Huffington Post published California intellectual Nathan Gardels's essay celebrating "The Silver Lining of Japan's Quake." Urging his readers to "look past the devastation," he rejoiced that "the need to rebuild a large swath of Japan will create huge opportunities for domestic economic growth" and observed that "Mother Nature has accomplished what fiscal policy and the central bank could not." Now the Japanese would have lots of bridges to build, "entire cities and regions" to reconstruct, and information networks to revamp.

"The result of all the new wealth creation," Gardels concluded, "will be money in the pockets of Japanese."

Japanese who survived, that is. The tens of thousands who died won't be pocketing any new wealth. And all the money in the world won't make whole the countless Japanese whose minds, bodies, or careers were permanently broken by the mayhem. True, trillions of yen will be spent to repair, rebuild, and restore. But equally true is that all those trillions will no longer be available for everything they would have otherwise been spent on. Whatever Japan may gain from the resources committed to reconstruction will never outweigh the value of everything lost through wanton destruction.

Yet the conviction that devastation is really a boon never seems to go out of fashion.

More HERE

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)

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

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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

A defeat for the obesity warriors: Heart disease risk inherited through genes, not due to diet

Amazing: They have just shown that lifestyle is irrelevant but still cannot help themseves from preaching the lifestyle gospel. There's a lot of religion in all the "sciences" as far as I can see. These guys are just as much men of faith as any Christian

Parents increase their child's risk of coronary heart disease through their genes and not through the family's diet or lifestyle, a new study shows.

Children born to parents with CHD are 40 to 60 per cent more likely to develop the condition themselves, but growing up in an unhealthy household is of little importance.

Although children of people who suffer from the condition were already known to be at increased risk, it was not previously clear whether this was due to genetics or because children of unhealthy parents adopt similar lifestyles.

But a study of more than 80,000 men and women who were adopted as children showed that susceptibility to the disease is transmitted in the womb and not in the home.

Smoking, eating unhealthy food and avoiding exercise still play a major role in an individual's chance of developing CHD, doctors said, but the risk that is passed down through families is based on DNA rather than behaviour.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden, where nearly all residents are registered on a national health care database, compared the medical records of adoptees to both their biological and adoptive parents.

They found that adoptees who had at least one biological parent with CHD had up to 60 per cent more chance of suffering the disease themselves, compared with a control group.

In contrast, growing up in a home with adoptive parents who suffered from CHD resulted in no additional risk for the child, even if both parents had the disease.

Prof Kristina Sundquist, who led the study, said it showed that inherited risk of CHD is genetic and parents' lifestyles are not to blame for passing it on to their children.

She said: "Of course it is always important to think about your own lifestyle but this study shows you cannot blame families for passing on poor lifestyles to their children."

Prof Peter Weissberg, medical director of the BHF, said: "This study tells us that genes are very important but no matter what genes you have, you still need to pay attention to your lifestyle."

SOURCE

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

"Progressive" folly over gun control

I've always been curious how American progressives got on the wrong -- anti-civil liberties -- side of gun control. In my mind this has been a grave strategic error. I have written elsewhere about the extreme difficulty liberals and progressives face in engaging the working class. I have also been highly critical of their tendency to get sucked into "lifestyle" campaigns (anti-smoking, anti-obesity, vegetarianism, etc.) etc., owing to the deep seated class antagonism this engenders in blue collar voters. Contrary to the stereotypes portrayed in the corporate media, class differences -- and class hatred -- are very real in the US. From a working class perspective, the progressive movement is the middle class. They're the teachers, social workers, psychologists, doctors, lawyers and religious leaders who play a fundamental role in setting behavioral standards for the rest of us. Thus when they tell us not to smoke, eat big Macs, or buy guns, we don't see this as political reform. We see it as an extension of their (privileged) class role.

For a progressive to take a stand against gun control is a pretty lonely place. There's a 1979 book edited by Don Kates entitled Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out. There's also an organization called the Liberal Gun Club whose mission is to "provide a voice for gun-owing liberals and moderates in the national conversation on gun rights, gun legalization, firearms safety, and shooting sports."

Then there's Sam Smith's excellent article in the Progressive Review: Why "Progressives Should Stop Pushing for More Gun Control Laws." Among Smith's numerous arguments, three leap out at me: the exacerbation of "cultural conflict" between rural and urban and wealthy and not so well off, the tendency for gun restrictions and prohibition to be interwoven with the drive to restrict other civil liberties, and the need for progressives to stop treating average Americans as though they were "alien creatures." Smith also makes the point that progressives lose elections as much because of their attitudes as their issues.

In January (following Representative Gifford's shooting and renewed calls for gun control), Dan Baum wrote in the Huffington Post that progressives have wasted a generation of progress on health care, women's rights, immigration reform, income fairness and climate change because "we keep messing with people's guns." He feels it's helpful to think of gun control as akin to marijuana prohibition -- all it does is turn otherwise law-abiding people into criminals and create divisiveness and resentment.

More here

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

Hate drives the Israeli Left too

The point where we reach the limits of civil debate about policy is, like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description of pornography, hard to define but you generally know it when you see it. That’s the only possible reaction to a blog post by Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner who wrote on Sunday to say the actions of the terrorists who murdered eight Israelis near Eilat last week were justified. Yes, you read that right. Derfner, a veteran journalist who has enjoyed playing the enfant terrible house leftist at the centrist Post for years, wrote on his personal blog to say Palestinian terrorism against Israelis is “justified.”

In doing so, Derfner has exposed the fundamental flaw in the left’s position on terror. His obscene post will, as he predicted, lead some of his fellow countrymen to call him a traitor, and Israel’s enemies will cite it in defense of their policy of murder. But the significant aspect of this piece is it shows how pious liberals who believe the blame for the conflict falls upon the Jews are inevitably led to the justification of murder.

Derfner claims, despite all the evidence of the past 18 years of peace processing, the blame for the continuation of the conflict falls squarely on Israel and no one else. He says the Palestinian terrorists are merely fighting for their “independence” against an evil Israeli “occupation.” But, as even Shimon Peres has said, if the conflict were just about the Palestinian desire for an independent state, it would have been over more than a decade ago when Yasir Arafat chose to reject Ehud Barak’s offer at Camp David in July 2000. Since then, that offer has been repeated and rejected. But that is meaningless to Derfner, because he and those who think like him have never been really been interested in the Palestinians or what they do or want. His focus is hatred of the Israeli right and the settlement movement, and to discuss anything else, even if that means ignoring the truth about Palestinian nationalism and its implacable desire to destroy Israel no matter where its borders are drawn, is a distraction.

More HERE

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

Perry offends Leftist snobs

Jonah Goldberg

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that's the main reason so many East Coast pundits and Beltway wags are making fun of him. He likes guns! He's from Texas! He talks funny! He's a -- gird yourself now -- Christian!

New York magazine and others mock his harmless, Bush-like pronunciation of nuclear ("nuke-ular"). They're scandalized that he doesn't go to a golf course to relax, but a shooting range. It's already a cliche among liberals to describe him as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy they thought George W. Bush was (though to date, nobody feels the need to apologize to Bush for misinterpreting him).

And before we bust out the world's smallest violin -- or, I guess, the world's smallest fiddle -- to play the world's softest sob song for poor Rick Perry, keep in mind that he plays this game too. When asked to explain the difference between himself and Bush, Perry responded that Bush went to Yale, while he went to Texas A&M.

"In other words," joked Conan O'Brien, "Rick Perry's idea of instilling confidence is to say, 'Don't worry, I'm not as smart as George W. Bush.'"

Rick Perry's overt Christianity horrifies many of his liberal critics. Bill Keller, the outgoing editor of the New York Times, agonized recently that "Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity." Actually, Santorum is a fairly famous Catholic, but that's tomaytoh, tomahto for Keller, apparently.

"Every faith," Keller writes, "has its baggage, and every faith holds beliefs that will seem bizarre to outsiders. I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ."

I hope his current priest doesn't mind when he calls Holy Communion "baggage."

Perry's twang offends liberals who think everyone should talk like Barack Obama, a man of cosmopolitan and learned diction. Of course, Obama pronounces "corpsman," "corpse-man" -- as if our Navy were staffed with heroic zombies. One would think he'd have picked up the right punctuation during his travels to all 57 U.S. states.

Obama's gaffes earn no traction the way, say, the last president's "Bushisms" did. Nor do they cause bowel-stewing panic at MSNBC the way Sarah Palin's flavorful patois does.

And don't even get me started on Joe Biden. He could show up at a Russian state funeral in a Speedo and pith helmet, singing the Alvin and the Chipmunks B-sides, and NBC's Andrea Mitchell would lead with the disturbing reports that Sarah Palin quoted Biden inaccurately on her Twitter account.

Let's cut through the clutter: A lot of people on the East and West coasts are bigots and snobs about "flyover types." They equate funny accents with stupidity, and they automatically assume someone who went to Texas A&M must be dumber than someone who went to Yale. Overt displays of religion trigger their fight-or-flight instincts, causing them to lash out irrationally.

My favorite example? When John McCain picked Palin as his running mate, University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger wrote that Palin's "greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."

When I read such idiocy, it's impossible for me not to love Bush, Perry, Palin, et al. for their enemies.

SOURCE

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

What if Obama isn't so smart?

Eek! Another Republican moron is running for president, and the blogs on the Left are aghast. Another village in Texas is missing its idiot! Another s--t-kicking cowboy has messed with their heads.

The question this time is not just whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry is dumb -- the Left claims the obvious answer is yes -- but also whether he is as dumb as George W. Bush, or even much dumber, moronic where Bush was simply "incurious," and also much less gently bred.

Either way, few on the Left doubt that neither is, as Steve Benen says, "an intellectually curious, creative thinker, capable to examining [sic] complex issues in a sophisticated way."

Fortunately we have such a thinker, "capable to examining" things to perfection, and that is the problem: President Obama is their ideal of a thinker. He is president, and he has been -- how to put it? -- a bomb.

Based on results, Perry has been more successful as governor of Texas than Obama has been as president, or as anything else he has ever tried being, in the entire whole course of his life.

In 2008, Obama was hailed as a genius, a "first rate intellect," the smartest man to ever be president, and we know now the first part is true. He is the political genius who shed 30 points in his first years in office.

He's the political genius who blew up his coalition in his first months in office, who led his party to annihilation in the 2010 midterms (while showing utter indifference to the fate of congressional Democrats), and gave the Republicans -- who were on the floor, in a coma -- more than they needed to come roaring back from the dead.

He is the policy genius who "leads from behind," whose engagement ideas have gone nowhere, whose stimulus stimulated only the deficit, whose health care "success" helped kill off his recovery, and whose efforts to create jobs all fell flat.

Almost 40 percent of the new jobs that were created happened under Perry in Texas. Liberals who fault that state for its low levels of taxes and spending might ask themselves why, if it is a hellhole, so many people go there and stay there.

Many of them are fleeing states ruled by Democrats, which have high taxes, a strong union presence and a rich array of the programs that Democrats love.

If this is idiocy, we may want some more idiots, as Lincoln once asked for more drunks in his army, rather like Gen. Grant.

The bloggers fear that he may win a second term anyhow, as there may be a difference between being "too dumb to govern," (look at Bush, for example), and being "too dumb to win."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones thinks Perry may be too dim for even the doltish American public, while Paul Waldman thinks otherwise. "The doltish candidates seem mostly on the Republican side," he writes in the American Prospect, while only Democrats have and/or treasure intelligence.

"So while there are many things to dislike about Perry, his tiny brain" might do him no harm. But the real examples of those who campaigned well and bombed afterward are Democrats, such as Obama and Carter, whose careers peaked on the day they took office and went steadily downhill from then on.

And if Obama is brilliant, and Bush is an imbecile, how come the genius kept most of the things the dolt set in motion: the protocols for fighting the war against terror, the surge strategy, the timetables, and even, in Robert Gates and David Petraeus, some of his main appointees? Why couldn't the genius improve on the idiot's handiwork? Maybe he isn't that bright.

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)

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

What caused the Industrial Revolution?

I am reproducing the whole of an article by Prof. Boudreaux below as it is itself a very condensed treament of a big topic. I follow the article, however, with what I believe is a better argument

Few questions in economic history are discussed and debated as much as this one. Even if you happen to be among the small number of people who regret what historian (and Freeman columnist) Steve Davies calls “the wealth explosion” of the past couple of centuries, you must nevertheless find this question intriguing, for it asks about the causes of what is surely the single greatest change in human history.

For at least 70 millennia the standard of living of the vast majority of us humans was at, or very near, subsistence. Then all of a sudden (in the great sweep of history)—boom! Starting in the eighteenth century living standards shot upward not only for royalty and the landed nobility but for everyone. And to this very day our standard of living—including our life expectancy and measures of healthfulness—continues to rise.

Why? A question so momentous elicits plenty of answers. Among the well-known answers that have been offered over the years are capitalist exploitation of workers; capitalist exploitation of colonies; religious beliefs that promoted savings and risk-taking; and England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution, which is said to have made property rights more secure. And new answers continue to be offered, such as economist Gregory Clark’s thesis, explained in his book A Farewell to Alms, that genes equipping human beings especially well for carrying out enterprise and commerce were passed down from the English nobility into the English middle classes—thus equipping the bourgeoisie finally to do its thing.

Some of these answers are more plausible than others (with Clark’s being among the least plausible). But not a single one is satisfactory. None explains why the Industrial Revolution began where it began (northwestern Europe) or why it began when it began (the eighteenth century). Another explanation is needed.

And another explanation has indeed just been offered: a change in rhetoric. This rhetoric-based thesis comes from the great economist and historian Deirdre McCloskey in her 2010 book Bourgeois Dignity. It’s a book that, like only three or four others I’ve read, caused a major change in my thinking.

McCloskey reviews with awesome thoroughness all the major (and many not-so-major) explanations for the Industrial Revolution. She finds them all wanting.

Some of these explanations are more obviously flawed than others. Capitalist exploitation of workers, for instance, fails spectacularly as an explanation on a variety of fronts, not the least of which is that the very people from whom the newly created wealth is supposedly extracted (the masses) are the same people who have benefitted most from this wealth explosion.

If capitalist wealth was wrenched from the bent backs and sweaty brows of the working class, then surely workers as a group would today be much poorer rather than (depending on how you count) 10 to 100 times wealthier than were their pre-industrial peasant ancestors. As McCloskey emphasizes, “[M]odern economic growth did not and does not and cannot depend on the scraps to be gained by stealing from poor people. It is not a good business plan.”

A more plausible explanation is one associated most familiarly with the Nobel economist Douglass North and his frequent coauthor Barry Weingast. It’s an explanation I once accepted. According to North and Weingast, the replacement of the Stuart monarchs by William and Mary in the late seventeenth century resulted in more secure property rights in England, which in turn sparked the Industrial Revolution.

While everyone with a modicum of sense understands that the Industrial Revolution would not have happened if private property rights in England weren’t secure, McCloskey argues persuasively that the Glorious Revolution—for all of its undoubted benefits—did not bring about much of a change in England’s property laws or in the security of private property rights. Here’s what McCloskey writes on page 318:

England when at peace, which was the usual case throughout its history, was a nation of ordinary property laws, no more or less corrupt than Chicago in 1925 or the American South under segregation, places in which innovation flourished. It was so, for example, even when the Stuart kings were undermining the independence of the judiciary in order to extract the odd pound with which to have a foreign policy in a new age of standing armies and floating navies. And the amounts extracted, contrary to the Northian suggestion that the king owned everything, were by modern standards pathetically small. The figures offered by North and Weingast themselves imply that total government expenditure under James I and Charles I was at most a mere 1.2 to 2.4 percent of national income. . . .

"[T]he Stuart kings, grasping though they were, and emboldened (as were many monarchs at the time) by the newly asserted divine right of kings, were nothing like as efficient in predation as modern governments—or indeed as were the Georgian kings of Great Britain and Ireland who eventually succeeded the Stuarts."

Indeed so. This explanation fails.

The mainstream economist’s long-preferred explanation is capital accumulation. It fares no better than does the capitalist-exploitation thesis and the North-Weingast thesis.

According to the capital-accumulation thesis, people (for any of a variety of different reasons) began to save more. These savings were transformed into capital goods whose use increased the productivity of labor. And so the Industrial Revolution happened.

But as McCloskey points out, history is full of instances in which people saved just as much as in northwestern Europe at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but without unleashing any revolutionary industrial forces. Moreover—and contrary to a thesis still fondly held by many people from Marxists to Reagan Republicans—economic growth does not require substantial capital accumulation. It can be, and has been, funded largely out of retained earnings.

What does best explain why the Industrial Revolution began in northwestern Europe in the eighteenth century is that for the first time in history people then and in that part of the world began to talk about the bourgeoisie with respect. This new “habit of the lip” (as McCloskey calls it) replaced the older habit of talking about entrepreneurs and merchants as being, at best, contemptible functionaries whose services society might need in some measure but whose importance to society fell far below the services supplied by warriors, royalty, noblemen, and priests.

With merchants and entrepreneurs in eighteenth-century Holland and England finally accorded widespread dignity, society’s best and brightest no longer avoided the world of private business to pursue careers at court or on the battlefield. The power of the bourgeoisie in these countries with tolerably secure private property rights was thus finally unleashed to revolutionize the economy—first in northwestern Europe and, continuing to today, the rest of the world.

SOURCE

The question discussed above is of immense interest to those of us who are interested in history. But I think the explanation in terms of rhetoric favored above by Prof. Boudreaux is at best a very partial explanation. One immediately asks WHY the rhetoric about the bourgeoisie changed. No answer is given.

Prof. Boudreaux seems to be a pretty thoroughgoing libertarian and, as is common in such circles, sees genetics as of only minor importance. That is presumably why he so airily dismisses Gregory Clark’s thesis in terms of genetics and natural selection (i.e. in pre-modern times the rich and powerful had greater reproductive success).

But why he so airily dismissed the Weberian explanation in terms of Calvinism ("religious beliefs that promoted savings and risk-taking") is mysterious. I can however provide my own reasons for dismissing Weber's thesis (at least in its narrowest sense of applying to Calvinists only) so I will not dwell on that.

I, on the other hand can see no reason to doubt the process that Clark describes (briefly outlined here) except in one important respect: The same thing must have happened in Tokugawa Japan but the same result was certainly not observed.

I take it as given that no one factor is alone sufficient to account for the industrial revolution. Prof. Boudreaux mentions above a number of factors that could have had a facilitatory effect (security of property rights, capital accumulation, a long period of peace etc.) and it seems obvious to me that when you have a lot of those factors present at the one time and in the one place you then reach what we know from nuclear physics as a "critical mass": There is a long buildup with nothing obviously changing and then suddenly it all does change in a big way. A "tipping point" is a similar concept, one much relied upon by Warmists but which anybody who has ever seen an oldfashioned set of counterweighted scales in use will readily understand. You keep adding weights to one side of the scale and nothing happens. But add that last weight and the scale suddenly tips up.

And it seems to me that the genetic process described by Clark is an important one of those crucial factors which together gave rise to the industrial revolution.

But surely the favourable factors came together somewhere else at some time? And Tokugawa Japan would seem to be such an instance. It had the longest period of peace of any country in history, the genetic process described by Clark should have occurred and it was a very orderly law-bound society.

So we have to look at factors beyond the Clark thesis. And I think that the responsible factors are easy to see. Mercants were NOT respected, no religious innovation akin to Calvinism was allowed and the laws were very unequally applied. A Samurai had far greater rights than a farmer, for instance.

So Clark's process cannot stand alone but, seen as a tributary joining with others to form a mighty river of change, it surely has an important place.

And those tributaries started flowing much sooner than is popularly believed. The birth of scientific thinking was surely important in sparking things like the invention of the steam engine and scientific thinking goes back a very long way. It started of course with the ancient Greeks but was lost for a time. The Renaissance is often seen as the revival of Greek learning which in turn sparked the beginning of modern science with Galileo and his telescope etc.

On closer examination, however, the Renaissance was not such a sudden change. There was a continuing quiet evolution of thinking even in the "dark" ages and much that is attributed to the Renaissance came in fact from Medieval times. See here.

Which leads me to my final point: That the whole of history led up to the Industrial revolution. Human capabilities continually expanded in fits and starts and even occasionally gave rise to real civilizations such as ancient Athens and Rome. But, to re-use again the "critical mass" concept, none of the advances in capability and understanding were quite enough to ignite a great change. When enough capability and understanding had built up, however, the scales tipped (to change the metaphor). The industrial revolution seemed sudden but it was in fact the accumulation of thousands of years of social evolution. Everything finally came together at last.

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

The Sage of Omaha speaks, but his actions speak louder

Jeff Jacoby notes below that Buffett's deeds contradict his words but he does not really delve into why the wise Mr. Buffett said what he did about tax. Buffett's words are of course just one more demonstration of how wise he is. As he is a very rich man he risks getting condemned as part of Obama's constant abuse of the rich. So he has at least verbally thrown in his hat as being on the side of the "saints". He has neutered criticism of himself at no cost to himself. Wise indeed. And his BofA deal shows that he is as sharp as ever

WARREN BUFFETT is the billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a friend and political supporter of Barack Obama, and a well-known advocate of higher taxes on the rich. He is also a hypocrite, whose actions belie his words.

For several years now, Buffett has been calling for significant tax hikes on extremely wealthy Americans like himself. Last week, in a New York Times column headlined "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Buffett lamented that the $6,938,744 he forked over in federal income and payroll taxes in 2010 amounted to just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. "What I paid," the world's most famous investor observed, "was . . . actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent, and averaged 36 percent."

Buffett has not made his employees' tax returns public, but the federal tax burdens he ascribes to them appear to be highly atypical. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the overall federal tax load shouldered by Americans -- comprising income, payroll, corporate, and excise taxes -- is quite progressive. CBO reported last summer that "households in the bottom fifth of the income distribution paid 4.0 percent of their income in federal taxes, the middle quintile paid 14.3 percent, and the highest quintile paid 25.1 percent. Average rates continued to rise within the top quintile: The top 1 percent faced an average rate of 29.5 percent." If Buffett's numbers are right, his employees must be among the highest-taxed workers in America.

Yet Buffett doesn't argue that his workers' federal taxes should be cut. He demands that his own be raised.

As many critics have noted, Buffett can voluntarily send Washington more money than he owes in taxes. Anyone can. Since 1843, the Treasury Department notes on its website, the government has maintained an account "to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States." Deposits to that account are added to the government's general fund, but the feds also accept contributions -- by credit card, electronic payment, or check -- specifically earmarked for paying down federal debt.

It would be nice to think that those who insist so vehemently that Washington's debt crisis cannot be resolved without higher revenues are taking the lead and freely reaching into their own pockets. Alas, no. Donations to the Bureau of the Public Debt, The New York Times reported last year, only trickle in at an annual rate of about $2 million to $3 million.

What makes Buffett a hypocrite isn't that he champions an immediate tax increase on the wealthy, yet donates nothing extra to Washington himself. Merely favoring a change in the law doesn't oblige anyone to act as if the change has been enacted.

But Buffett doesn't just propose higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires as a matter of abstract policy. He argues that he personally (along with what he calls "my mega-rich friends") has been "spared" any shared sacrifice, that he personally has "been coddled long enough," that he personally shouldn't get "extraordinary tax breaks" when so many Americans are struggling. He frames his call for higher taxes as an avowal of his own moral obligations. Were he to put his money where his mouth is and voluntarily send the Treasury a big check, his call for higher taxes would carry greater moral authority. His failure to do so is not just intellectually inconsistent, but hypocritical.

Buffett isn't greedy. He is an extraordinary philanthropist who has undertaken to give 99 percent of his immense fortune to charity, and who, with Bill Gates, actively encourages other billionaires to spend down half or more of their wealth in charitable donations.

And why is he giving all that money to charity instead of to Uncle Sam? Because, as he has said in interviews, he knows it will do more good that way and be used more effectively. Who would disagree? For all Buffett's talk of being undertaxed, he believes what nearly everyone believes -- that he can allocate his money more wisely than the government. And not just that he can, but that he should.

When the Sage of Omaha calls for higher taxes, his words get plenty of attention. But his actions speak louder, and convey a markedly different message.

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)

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