What nut would blog on Christmas day?
I am that nut. I have the usual social engagements on Christmas eve and Christmas day but since 2002 I have always found time to put something up on this blog on Christmas day. So if family matters become heavy going, log on as an alternative activity. I will probably post to most of my other blogs as well.
Australia is in a time zone that is nearly a whole day earlier than some parts of America so in a few hours I will be heading off to a Christmas eve party with family and old friends.
If I can get up early enough, my Christmas day plans call for a visit to St. John's cathedral for the sung eucharist at 9:30 am. They do a good show there, including an ecclesiastical procession, but I can't remember whether they do "bells and smells" as well. My son has said he wants to go in order to introduce the arcana of the Church of England to his Korean girlfriend, even though all three of us are unbelievers. I took him there a few times when he was a kid and he enjoyed it. Both of us particularly like the Christmas hymns. And a great stone neo-Gothic cathedral is a remarkable environment. Definitely the best show in town on Christmas day.
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A new depravity from Vienna
Vienna was where Hitler formed his antisemitic views
Freedom of speech no longer exists in Austria, as definitively proven by the Vienna high court. This week, a judge upheld the conviction against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff on the following charge: "denigration of religious beliefs of a legally recognized religion." In simplest terms, this means that Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff speaks the truth about Islam, and in Austria, as in other nations across the Western world currently transitioning to sharia (Islamic law), speaking the truth about Islam is not tolerated, and, more and more, is against the law.
What did my friend Elisabeth say that the Vienna high court ruled verboten? Elisabeth was convicted in February 2011 of "denigration" of Islam because in the course of a seminar she was teaching on Islam she stated that "Muhammad had a thing for little girls."
This statement is demonstrably true. According to an authoritative Islamic text (hadith), Muhammad married his wife Aisha when she was six years old. According to the same hadith, Muhammad engaged in sexual intercourse with his "wife" when she was nine. This, at the very least, constitutes "a thing" for little girls. It also constitutes child rape under Western law and Judeo-Christian-derived morality. In all too many Islamic societies where Mohammed's example is emulated, such child rape in "wedlock" is not a crime; indeed, it is permissible under sharia.
In fact, the court didn't contest this. In both Elisabeth's initial trial and her recent appeal, the factual basis of her statement didn't come under judicial attack. Elisabeth is right, and the court knows it. What the Vienna court has twice defined now as being outside the law of Austria is the negative opinion her remark conveyed regarding Muhammad's record of deviance from Western traditions forbidding sexual intercourse with children. (Brava, Elisabeth.) It is wrong, according to the Austrian court, to look down on sex with children if the alleged perp, centuries ago, was the Islamic prophet.
As Henrik Rader Clausen put it, live-blogging the proceedings for the blog Gates of Vienna, Elisabeth, in the court's eyes, expressed "an excess of opinion that can not be tolerated. It is a ridiculing that cannot be justified." Cannot be tolerated, cannot be justified by whom, by what? The answer is by Islamic law. It is literally against Islamic law to criticize or expose Islam or its prophet (Muhammad) in any adverse way. This prohibition against freedom of conscience is now part of Austrian law as well. That the verdict upheld against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff actually imperils the most innocent and vulnerable among us -- little girls whose molestation the courts have implicitly excused as a religious rite -- only underscores the depravity of the Vienna high court.
Where, exactly, does this leave all of the rest of us in that community of nations whose calendars, despite the press of Islamization, still culminate in Christmas? I offer in response a clarifying quotation that pegs our existential whereabouts exactly. It comes from Afshin Ellian, a Dutch columnist, law professor, and professor of citizenship, social cohesion and multiculturalism at the Leiden University, who in 1983 fled Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in Iran.
In early 2010, Ellian, commenting on the trial of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders for allegedly anti-Islamic statements, had this to say:
"If you cannot say that Islam is a backward religion and that Muhammad is a criminal, then you are living in an Islamic country, my friend, because there you also cannot say such things. I may say Christ was a fag and Mary was a whore, but apparently I should stay off of Muhammad."
SOURCE
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The U.S. government’s unconstitutional restrictions on our freedom to travel
Steve Bierfeldt, director of development for Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, thought he was having a good day. At a regional Campaign for Liberty event in Missouri, Bierfeldt had sold thousands of dollars worth of conference tickets, bumper stickers, T-shirts, and books, and was now in the security line at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, waiting to catch a flight back to Washington, D.C. But the federal government had other ideas.
After discovering a metal box with more than $4,700 in cash and checks inside Bierfeldt’s luggage, officials from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) detained him for further screening. The TSA, you will recall, is the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that (according to its website) is tasked with protecting “the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” Bierfeldt had an altogether different experience.
TSA agents interrogated him for more than a half hour with a series of intrusive questions: “Where do you work?” “What are you planning to do with the money?” “Where did you acquire the money?” Although he had nothing to hide, Bierfeldt valued his privacy enough to refuse to answer the questions. The officers told him he wouldn’t be able to move on if he continued to clam up. But Bierfeldt stuck to his guns, and was eventually, if grudgingly, allowed to catch his flight.
Consider the potential consequences of the TSA’s open-ended license to hassle travelers. If Bierfeldt had stayed huddled inside his home rather than risk the whims of armed interrogators, he would no longer be able to pursue his lawful employment. He would be less free to express his political views by advocating Campaign for Liberty’s values. The government in this way can eviscerate constitutional rights simply by burdening the travel of those whose ideas it disfavors.
The right to travel enables the free exercise of the other rights we most cherish. We should not have to check our constitutional freedoms at the curb simply because we decide to leave the house. Sadly, freedom of movement has been one of the most disparaged rights throughout human history, and our country is no exception. If we are ever to be truly free, then we must possess an absolute, uninhibited right to travel throughout America and the world free from interference by government.
The Freedom to Travel in American Law
Of all the inalienable rights we possess as individuals, none is as basic, fundamental, and natural as the freedom of movement and travel. As human beings, we enter this world bestowed with two legs and feet and the muscles needed to power them. Furthermore, we are given a brain and the undying yearning to discover, to know the unknown, to see what lies hidden beyond the horizon. Thus, a fundamental right of movement is inherent in our very humanity. It is altogether fitting that one of the universal symbols of freedom is a broken chain.
The freedom to travel is also central to the American national psyche. Our European ancestors settled here because they had the right to move freely from their homelands. The very history and trajectory of the United States are testament to man’s inherent right to movement and travel, from Lewis and Clark to Armstrong and Aldrin.
State restrictions on the right to travel connote that the government is the individual’s master, and not his servant. The right to own property includes being able to decide which individuals may enter upon our property, and under what circumstances. If the government usurps this ultimate right from property owners, or grants itself a monopoly over certain modes of travel, then clearly the rights of individuals extend only so far as the government, and no one else, wills them. Thus, circumvention of the right to travel is particularly antithetical to the Natural Law, and to the principle that the temporal is always subject to the immutable. Freedom subject to the government’s whim is no freedom at all. Liberty, at its core, is encompassed in the right of exit. As constitutional scholar Randy Barnett has noted, if one wishes to discover which nations offer the best protection of natural rights, one only need observe the directional flow of its refugees.
American courts have, at least in theory, declared the freedom to travel to be near absolute. The right to travel is so basic to our nature that the Founding Fathers did not believe it needed to be documented in the text of the Constitution. In Saenz v. Roe (1999), the Supreme Court stated, “We need not identify the source of [the right to travel] in the text of the Constitution. The right of free ingress and egress [to enter and leave] to and from neighboring states which was expressly mentioned in the text of the Articles of Confederation, may simply have been conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger Union the Constitution created.” In other words, the right to travel is simply implicit in the concept of freedom, and indeed in the Constitution itself.
More HERE
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Should it be Gingrich?
Thomas Sowell
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years -- followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama -- and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
SOURCE
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French Muslim jailed for punching nurse who tried to remove wife's burqa during childbirth
A Muslim man who punched a nurse for trying to remove his wife's burqa during childbirth has been jailed in France.
Nassim Mimoune, 24, had already been expelled from the delivery room for branding the midwife a 'rapist' as she carried out an intimate examination of his wife.
Then through a window he spotted the nurse taking off his wife's burqa as she prepared to give birth. He smashed open the locked door and hit the woman in the face, demanding she replace the full Islamic face veil.
As his wife delivered a baby boy, Mimoune was ejected from the building by security men from the hospital in Marseille and arrested for assault.
A judge in the southern French port jailed Mimoune for six months on Wednesday, telling him: 'Your religious values are not superior to the laws of the republic.'
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Friday, December 23, 2011
China trade: myths vs. reality
By Walter E. Williams
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda." During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend." In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China."
Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is." Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."
Let's look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled "The U.S. Content of 'Made in China.'" One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Hale and Hobijn find that the vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, total imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and of that, 2.5 percent came from China. A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States, the bulk of which are domestically produced services -- such as medical care, housing, transportation, etc. -- which make up about two-thirds of spending. Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures, about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share. Chinese imported goods consist mainly of furniture and household equipment; other durables; and clothing and shoes. In the clothing and shoes category, 35.6 percent of U.S. consumer purchases in 2010 were items with the "Made in China" label.
Much of what China sells us has considerable "local content." Hale and Hobijn give the example of sneakers that might sell for $70. They point out that most of that price goes for transportation in the U.S., rent for the store where they are sold, profits for shareholders of the U.S. retailer, and marketing costs, which include the salaries, wages and benefits paid to the U.S. workers and managers responsible for getting sneakers to consumers. On average, 55 cents of every dollar spent on goods made in China goes for marketing services produced in the U.S.
Going hand in hand with today's trade demagoguery is talk about decline in U.S. manufacturing. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy -- with its own GDP -- it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth-richest economy. Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.
The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.
SOURCE
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Obama tactic failing
The more Obama pushes class warfare, the more people reject class warfare. That’s certainly not what I expected. It’s the counter-indicator effect. If he’s for it, the opposite will happen. Perhaps he should announce an Unemployment Plan instead of a Jobs Plan. It’s another one of those Obama paradoxes, like the Catch-2012. From Gallup:
More HERE
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Minister Told He Will Face Potential Arrest for Reading Christmas Story from the Bible at Capitol Christmas Tree
Rev. Patrick Mahoney to read the Christmas Story at the Capitol Tree on Thursday, December 22, at 12:00 P.M. The Capitol Christmas Tree is located on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol Building.
Rev. Mahoney met with Capitol Police officials telling them of his plans to sing Christmas Carols, read the Christmas story, pray for peace, justice and religious freedom, hold a small 5 inch Nativity Display and pray for political leaders at the Capitol Christmas Tree. Police officials told him some of his activities may be prohibited or constitute an illegal demonstration.
Rev. Mahoney contacted his attorney, Jim Henderson Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, who in turn called the Office of General Counsel for the Capitol Police on Tuesday, December, 21.
After talking with the Assistant General Counsel for the Capitol Police, Mr. Henderson sent Rev. Mahoney this email:
Rev. Mahoney told Capitol Police officials he would still read the Christmas Story and hold the Nativity Display on Thursday even if it meant arrest or citation.
This threat of arrest for reading from the Bible comes in the wake of national news stories reporting that the Capitol Christmas Tree has no ornaments depicting the Christmas Story, The Nativity or Jesus.
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states:
SOURCE
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Britain's main Leftist newspaper going broke
Guardian News & Media is to shrink the Guardian, axe its Film & Music supplement, and reduce its sport supplement to a two-days-a-week publication as it battles to stem pre-tax losses of more than £40m a year.
It will also reduce the number of pages in the Guardian’s flagship supplement G2, under wide-ranging changes to be introduced in January.
The media group, which also publishes the Observer newspaper, is briefing staff about the changes today and early next week. “As part of our digital first strategy, we have been looking in detail at how we produce our newspapers and website, and over the next few days we will be telling staff about our plans for a new, simplified production process,” a spokesman said.
“This will be introduced in January, along with some changes to the printed Monday to Friday Guardian. The changes to the paper take account of changing patterns of readership and advertising and are based on research with our readers.”
GNM will continue producing the Guardian’s sports supplement on Mondays and Saturdays, but every other day it will be folded into the main newspaper, which will itself have space squeezed due to a reduction in the number of pages. The Film & Music supplement will be replaced with a section in G2.
Last year GNM, which is propped up by the Scott Trust, went £43.8m into the red. The previous year the figure was £57.9m. The reduction in the Guardian’s activities is part of an effort to make £25m of savings over the next five years, which is also expected to include large-scale job losses.
The group is still seeking volunteers for redundancy but is expected to start the firing gun on compulsory redundancies in the new year, after too few volunteers came forward. Insiders say the company plans to cut around 100 jobs in total, although a Guardian spokeswoman said she did not recognise that figure.
GNM has cut more than 300 jobs in the last two financial years, reduced pagination and closed The Guardian's media, education and society supplements. It is also considering closing the £80m printing plant it opened just six years ago, leading to further job losses.
It has opened talks with Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror, about shifting its Berliner printing presses to the red-top’s Watford plant.
At one point it considered abandoning its print products altogether, but Andrew Miller, chief executive of GNM’s parent company Guardian Media Group, has told staff it will continue to have a print presence “for the foreseeable future”.
SOURCE
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Obama’s Middle Class Betrayal
Barack Obama literally can’t stop talking about the American middle class. During his unofficial 2012 campaign kickoff speech in Kansas earlier this month, he used the term “middle class” eighteen times as he derided those of us who still believe in free market principles like individual ingenuity and self-sufficiency.
“We simply cannot return to this brand of ‘you’re on your own’ economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country,” Obama said, passionately defending the doctrines of government dependence and class warfare that have been the hallmarks of his regime.
But beyond the not-so-thinly-disguised “us-against-us” rhetoric emanating from his teleprompter, what has Obama actually accomplished on behalf of the middle class?
Not much. Despite his administration’s unprecedented investment in the expansion of an already obscenely-big government, the middle class has wound up paying for – not benefiting from – Obama’s policies. In fact the numbers would indicate that Obama’s stated intention to “spread the wealth around” has actually produced a shrinking middle class – one with less income and more debt.
According to census data released earlier this month, a total of 97.3 million Americans are currently classified as low income. Meanwhile an additional 49.1 million Americans are currently living below the poverty line. Add those numbers together and you’ve got 146.4 million people – or 48 percent of the country – who are currently either poor or low income, an increase of 4 million people from 2009.
Within that total an estimated 44 million people – or 15 percent of the population – are currently receiving food stamps, a 69 percent increase from 2007. More than 50 million people – or 17 percent of the population – are currently on Medicaid, with Obama’s socialized medicine plan scheduled to add another 14 million to government health care rolls beginning in 2014.
Meanwhile an estimated 16 million people – or 15.6 percent of the nation’s available work force – are currently underemployed, while more than 6.2 million people have been out of work for longer than six months.
Want more evidence of the “great middle class betrayal?”
Despite a massive federal bailout of the housing industry, 10.7 million American mortgages were underwater as of September 2011 – meaning the debt on these properties exceeds their fair market value. Another 2.4 million borrowers had an equity stake of less than 5 percent in their homes.
Also, bear in mind that these dismal stats don’t include the nearly four million U.S. homes that have already been foreclosed on since the recession began in December 2007.
While Obama likes to blame his predecessor for the ongoing sluggishness of the economy, it’s important to remember that he wholeheartedly endorsed the interventionist policies championed by George W. Bush in response to the initial economic downtown. In fact he put Bush’s approach on steroids – dramatically upping the federal government’s Keynesian ante in an attempt to “stimulate” the economy.
Obviously even a cursory look at the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” revealed that the only thing it intended to “stimulate” was the growth of government – as evidenced by the fact that it created more than 30 new government programs and expanded more than 70 existing ones.
Not only that, Obama’s bailout effectively repealed America’s welfare reform laws – putting states back on the old “bounty system” that incentivized them to add names to the welfare rolls. And since then, Obama has successfully pushed for the perpetual extension of unemployment benefits – basically incentivizing workers to remain on their sofas instead of on the job site.
Who’s paying for this dramatic expansion of the dependency culture? You guessed it – the “middle class,” the very people Obama claims to be fighting for.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
Portugal: Supreme Court denies US appeal for fugitive killer: "Portugal's Supreme Court has refused a request from the U.S. to extradite American fugitive George Wright, his lawyer said Thursday. Wright's lawyer Manuel Luis Ferreira said the court rejected an appeal by the U.S. against a lower court's decision that denied extradition a month ago."
France: National Assembly passes Armenian genocide censorship bill: "Turkey is fuming over French legislation that would criminalize any public denial of what the bill calls the Armenian genocide last century in Ottoman Turkey. 'We are reviewing our relations with France,' Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the French National Assembly passed the so-called Armenian genocide bill. 'We will take our measures phase by phase depending on France's behavior from now on.'"
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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By Walter E. Williams
Republicans and Democrats, liberals as well as conservatives, have bought into anti-Chinese trade demagoguery. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that tariffs against China are a "key part of our 'Make It in America' agenda." During his 2010 campaign, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called his tea party-backed Republican challenger, Sharron Angle, "a foreign worker's best friend." In a recent news conference, President Barack Obama gave his support to the anti-China campaign, declaring that China "has been very aggressive in gaming the trading system to its advantage," adding that "we can and should take action against countries that are keeping their currencies undervalued ... (and) that, above all, means China."
Republican 2012 presidential candidates have jumped on the anti-China bandwagon. Mitt Romney wrote: "If I am fortunate enough to be elected president, I will work to fundamentally alter our economic relationship with China. ... I will begin on Day One by designating China as the currency manipulator it is." Former Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was even more challenging, saying, "I want to go to war with China."
Let's look at the magnitude of our trade with China. An excellent place to start is a recent publication (8/8/2011) by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, titled "The U.S. Content of 'Made in China.'" One of the several questions they ask is: What is the fraction of U.S. consumer spending for goods made in China? Their data sources are the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Hale and Hobijn find that the vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, total imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, and of that, 2.5 percent came from China. A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States, the bulk of which are domestically produced services -- such as medical care, housing, transportation, etc. -- which make up about two-thirds of spending. Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures, about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share. Chinese imported goods consist mainly of furniture and household equipment; other durables; and clothing and shoes. In the clothing and shoes category, 35.6 percent of U.S. consumer purchases in 2010 were items with the "Made in China" label.
Much of what China sells us has considerable "local content." Hale and Hobijn give the example of sneakers that might sell for $70. They point out that most of that price goes for transportation in the U.S., rent for the store where they are sold, profits for shareholders of the U.S. retailer, and marketing costs, which include the salaries, wages and benefits paid to the U.S. workers and managers responsible for getting sneakers to consumers. On average, 55 cents of every dollar spent on goods made in China goes for marketing services produced in the U.S.
Going hand in hand with today's trade demagoguery is talk about decline in U.S. manufacturing. For the year 2008, the Federal Reserve estimated that the value of U.S. manufacturing output was about $3.7 trillion. If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate economy -- with its own GDP -- it would be tied with Germany as the world's fourth-richest economy. Today's manufacturing worker is so productive that the value of his average output is $234,220, three times higher than it was in 1980 and twice as high as it was in 1990. That means more can be produced with fewer workers, resulting in a precipitous fall in manufacturing jobs, from 19.5 million jobs in 1979 to a little more than 10 million today.
The bottom line is that we Americans are allowing ourselves to be suckered into believing that China is the source of our unemployment problems when the true culprit is Congress and the White House.
SOURCE
************************
Obama tactic failing
The more Obama pushes class warfare, the more people reject class warfare. That’s certainly not what I expected. It’s the counter-indicator effect. If he’s for it, the opposite will happen. Perhaps he should announce an Unemployment Plan instead of a Jobs Plan. It’s another one of those Obama paradoxes, like the Catch-2012. From Gallup:
Americans are now less likely to see U.S. society as divided into the “haves” and “have nots” than they were in 2008, returning to their views prior to that point. A clear majority, 58%, say they do not think of America in this way, after Americans were divided 49% to 49% in the summer of 2008….
If they had to choose, 58% of Americans would say they are in the “haves,” rather than the “have nots” group. This breakdown has held remarkably steady over the past two decades of economic boom and bust, with a record-high 67% of Americans putting themselves in the “haves” category during the strong economic times of the late 1990s.
More HERE
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Minister Told He Will Face Potential Arrest for Reading Christmas Story from the Bible at Capitol Christmas Tree
Rev. Patrick Mahoney to read the Christmas Story at the Capitol Tree on Thursday, December 22, at 12:00 P.M. The Capitol Christmas Tree is located on the West Lawn of the United States Capitol Building.
Rev. Mahoney met with Capitol Police officials telling them of his plans to sing Christmas Carols, read the Christmas story, pray for peace, justice and religious freedom, hold a small 5 inch Nativity Display and pray for political leaders at the Capitol Christmas Tree. Police officials told him some of his activities may be prohibited or constitute an illegal demonstration.
Rev. Mahoney contacted his attorney, Jim Henderson Senior Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, who in turn called the Office of General Counsel for the Capitol Police on Tuesday, December, 21.
After talking with the Assistant General Counsel for the Capitol Police, Mr. Henderson sent Rev. Mahoney this email:
"Your use of the Bible or the ornament (Nativity Scene) would convert your activity, in the view of the Capitol Police, into a prohibited demonstration. If you failed to discontinue that activity on police direction you would be risking ticketing or arrest."
Rev. Mahoney told Capitol Police officials he would still read the Christmas Story and hold the Nativity Display on Thursday even if it meant arrest or citation.
This threat of arrest for reading from the Bible comes in the wake of national news stories reporting that the Capitol Christmas Tree has no ornaments depicting the Christmas Story, The Nativity or Jesus.
Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, states:
"It is hard to imagine that a minister, or any American, would face possible arrest or citation for reading the Christmas Story from the Bible or holding a Nativity Display in the palm of their hand in front of the Capitol Christmas Tree on the lawn of the United States Capitol Building. "Yet, this is what I am facing on Thursday at noon.
"Sadly, we are seeing a growing hostility toward public expressions of faith in the public square especially during the Christmas Season.
"We are now seeing that at the Capitol Christmas Tree where there are no ornaments of Christ or the Nativity and a minister is facing arrest for reading the Christmas Story from the Bible.
"I was told I could hold sheet music, an instrument or camera in my hand, but if I hold a Bible or small Nativity Scene that would be considered a 'prop' and cause me to face arrest or citation.
"I want to make to clear that every American should have the right to express their faith in the public square free from government intimidation or harassment.
"If that means spending time in jail for reading the Christmas Story from the Bible, then I consider that a small price price to pay."
SOURCE
*************************
Britain's main Leftist newspaper going broke
Guardian News & Media is to shrink the Guardian, axe its Film & Music supplement, and reduce its sport supplement to a two-days-a-week publication as it battles to stem pre-tax losses of more than £40m a year.
It will also reduce the number of pages in the Guardian’s flagship supplement G2, under wide-ranging changes to be introduced in January.
The media group, which also publishes the Observer newspaper, is briefing staff about the changes today and early next week. “As part of our digital first strategy, we have been looking in detail at how we produce our newspapers and website, and over the next few days we will be telling staff about our plans for a new, simplified production process,” a spokesman said.
“This will be introduced in January, along with some changes to the printed Monday to Friday Guardian. The changes to the paper take account of changing patterns of readership and advertising and are based on research with our readers.”
GNM will continue producing the Guardian’s sports supplement on Mondays and Saturdays, but every other day it will be folded into the main newspaper, which will itself have space squeezed due to a reduction in the number of pages. The Film & Music supplement will be replaced with a section in G2.
Last year GNM, which is propped up by the Scott Trust, went £43.8m into the red. The previous year the figure was £57.9m. The reduction in the Guardian’s activities is part of an effort to make £25m of savings over the next five years, which is also expected to include large-scale job losses.
The group is still seeking volunteers for redundancy but is expected to start the firing gun on compulsory redundancies in the new year, after too few volunteers came forward. Insiders say the company plans to cut around 100 jobs in total, although a Guardian spokeswoman said she did not recognise that figure.
GNM has cut more than 300 jobs in the last two financial years, reduced pagination and closed The Guardian's media, education and society supplements. It is also considering closing the £80m printing plant it opened just six years ago, leading to further job losses.
It has opened talks with Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror, about shifting its Berliner printing presses to the red-top’s Watford plant.
At one point it considered abandoning its print products altogether, but Andrew Miller, chief executive of GNM’s parent company Guardian Media Group, has told staff it will continue to have a print presence “for the foreseeable future”.
SOURCE
***************************
Obama’s Middle Class Betrayal
Barack Obama literally can’t stop talking about the American middle class. During his unofficial 2012 campaign kickoff speech in Kansas earlier this month, he used the term “middle class” eighteen times as he derided those of us who still believe in free market principles like individual ingenuity and self-sufficiency.
“We simply cannot return to this brand of ‘you’re on your own’ economics if we’re serious about rebuilding the middle class in this country,” Obama said, passionately defending the doctrines of government dependence and class warfare that have been the hallmarks of his regime.
But beyond the not-so-thinly-disguised “us-against-us” rhetoric emanating from his teleprompter, what has Obama actually accomplished on behalf of the middle class?
Not much. Despite his administration’s unprecedented investment in the expansion of an already obscenely-big government, the middle class has wound up paying for – not benefiting from – Obama’s policies. In fact the numbers would indicate that Obama’s stated intention to “spread the wealth around” has actually produced a shrinking middle class – one with less income and more debt.
According to census data released earlier this month, a total of 97.3 million Americans are currently classified as low income. Meanwhile an additional 49.1 million Americans are currently living below the poverty line. Add those numbers together and you’ve got 146.4 million people – or 48 percent of the country – who are currently either poor or low income, an increase of 4 million people from 2009.
Within that total an estimated 44 million people – or 15 percent of the population – are currently receiving food stamps, a 69 percent increase from 2007. More than 50 million people – or 17 percent of the population – are currently on Medicaid, with Obama’s socialized medicine plan scheduled to add another 14 million to government health care rolls beginning in 2014.
Meanwhile an estimated 16 million people – or 15.6 percent of the nation’s available work force – are currently underemployed, while more than 6.2 million people have been out of work for longer than six months.
Want more evidence of the “great middle class betrayal?”
Despite a massive federal bailout of the housing industry, 10.7 million American mortgages were underwater as of September 2011 – meaning the debt on these properties exceeds their fair market value. Another 2.4 million borrowers had an equity stake of less than 5 percent in their homes.
Also, bear in mind that these dismal stats don’t include the nearly four million U.S. homes that have already been foreclosed on since the recession began in December 2007.
While Obama likes to blame his predecessor for the ongoing sluggishness of the economy, it’s important to remember that he wholeheartedly endorsed the interventionist policies championed by George W. Bush in response to the initial economic downtown. In fact he put Bush’s approach on steroids – dramatically upping the federal government’s Keynesian ante in an attempt to “stimulate” the economy.
Obviously even a cursory look at the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” revealed that the only thing it intended to “stimulate” was the growth of government – as evidenced by the fact that it created more than 30 new government programs and expanded more than 70 existing ones.
Not only that, Obama’s bailout effectively repealed America’s welfare reform laws – putting states back on the old “bounty system” that incentivized them to add names to the welfare rolls. And since then, Obama has successfully pushed for the perpetual extension of unemployment benefits – basically incentivizing workers to remain on their sofas instead of on the job site.
Who’s paying for this dramatic expansion of the dependency culture? You guessed it – the “middle class,” the very people Obama claims to be fighting for.
SOURCE
*************************
ELSEWHERE
Portugal: Supreme Court denies US appeal for fugitive killer: "Portugal's Supreme Court has refused a request from the U.S. to extradite American fugitive George Wright, his lawyer said Thursday. Wright's lawyer Manuel Luis Ferreira said the court rejected an appeal by the U.S. against a lower court's decision that denied extradition a month ago."
France: National Assembly passes Armenian genocide censorship bill: "Turkey is fuming over French legislation that would criminalize any public denial of what the bill calls the Armenian genocide last century in Ottoman Turkey. 'We are reviewing our relations with France,' Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after the French National Assembly passed the so-called Armenian genocide bill. 'We will take our measures phase by phase depending on France's behavior from now on.'"
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance?
There is an amusing paper in the forthcoming JANUARY 2012 NOTICES OF THE AMS (American Mathematical Society) which purports to show that it is only oppression of women by society which causes females not to do well in mathematics.
The paper was of course zealous to rule out genetic differences but that does rather leave them without an explanation for Chinese excellence in mathematics. Regardless of the country in which they reside, Chinese tend to be prominent among leading mathematicians -- and China itself is a major centre of mathematical excellence. Yet China is still in many ways a very traditional society in which the very notion of gender equality would normally be scoffed at. The way they abort girl babies is surely enough evidence of that.
Anyway, the paper more or less assumes what it has to prove. In a rather self-contradictory way, the authors seem to assume that educational performance fully indexes innate ability. The paper draws its "evidence" not from IQ tests but from various international measures of educational attainment. And educational attainment is the product of many things other than IQ. Hard work anyone? Social pressures anyone? So I partially agree with the first line of their "Conclusions":
You note that they skate entirely over IQ.
They go on to argue that eliminating gender "inequities" is needed to lift female mathematical achievements. After decades of feminism and affirmative action it is hard to imagine how more might be done on that front in the USA other than by procrustean quota systems so the recommendation is as vacuous as it is irrelevant.
Women will always be up against their lower level of mathematical ability that IQ tests reveal so clearly. In recent years women have been pushed into mathematics to satisfy feminist dogma but few will rise to the heights.
**********************
Rabbit Raisers Defeat USDA, Won't Pay Any Fines!
This is a victory for all Americans and a warning about how hard-won such victories are under the vast bureaucracies that throttle America
Remember back in May when I reported disturbing news about John and Judy Dollarhite facing $4 million in USDA fines for selling too many bunnies? That news was followed by a dozen and a half posts about federal agents bullying the Nixa, Mo., couple as well as several others across the country - even magicians who pull rabbits out of hats! Well, there's finally some good news to report about this case.
On their Facebook page, USDA Bunny Tyranny of the Dollarhite Family, the Dollarhites announced victory Tuesday night:
I take this as a sign that out-of-control government agencies can be brought under control when Americans band together to fight for what's right.
More here
************************
Testing the waters of economic liberty
In 1927, seven years before the board game was created, Washington state decided to play monopoly. It gave a private interest the exclusive right to operate a ferry on 55-mile long Lake Chelan in the northern Cascade Mountains. The state apparently will defend this folly until Judgment Day, when state officials will get an earful from the Creator who -- we have Jefferson's word for this -- endowed everyone, including Jim and Cliff Courtney, with the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Courtney brothers' happiness would be enlarged if they could operate a competing ferry. But 84 years ago Washington state asserted a principle much favored by all of America's governments, the principle that it may parcel out certain economic liberties sparingly and only to those who can prove to government that their exercise of their liberty will satisfy some government-concocted criteria.
That principle lacks constitutional warrant and repudiates the nation's foundational philosophy. Hence the national importance of the Courtney brothers' litigation, which asks courts to correct judicial mistakes of 1873 and 1938.
The brothers live in Stehekin on the lake's northern tip and provide recreational services to people who manage to get there from Chelan on the lake's southeast end. But people can get to Stehekin only by plane or boat. And during the summer season, when the boat schedule is most convenient, the two boats operated by the state-conferred monopoly make only one trip a day in each direction, and both depart at the same time in the same direction.
But before the Courtney brothers can give travelers a better choice, they must receive from the state a "certificate of public convenience and necessity." The burden is on them to prove that the current monopolist's service is not "reasonable and adequate." At least four would-be competitors tried and failed to get such a certificate; the most recent attempt generated a 515-page transcript.
How did America reach the point where aspiring entrepreneurs, seeking to improve their lot by improving other people's choices, must approach government on bended knee to beg it to confer upon them a right -- the right to compete? How did America stray from its foundational principle that government exists to protect pre-existing rights, not to apportion such rights as it creates and chooses to bestow? Read on.
The Courtney brothers are represented by the Institute for Justice, which battles government infringements of individuals' liberties -- particularly economic liberties. In an 1873 decision, the Supreme Court (divided 5-4) defined Americans' "privileges or immunities" -- the 14th Amendment's language meaning rights -- narrowly. The court recognized only a few rights, mostly essential to national citizenship, and not including economic liberty.
In 1938, the court bowed to the progressive desire to empower government to allocate wealth and opportunity. The court decided -- without citing a supportive constitutional text, there being none -- that economic liberty should be assigned a status markedly inferior to that of "fundamental" liberties. This spurious dichotomy jettisoned America's natural rights tradition reflected in the Ninth Amendment's protection of unenumerated rights "retained by the people."
The Courtneys' litigation is a little lever that could move the entire nation back toward the Founders' vision. It will do so if it advances the presumption of liberty. This, says Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett, is the principle that the government must be required to justify its restrictions on liberty, rather than requiring citizens to prove that the liberty they wish to exercise is somehow "fundamental" and therefore not an optional gift from government.
The Courtneys deserve judicial engagement where judges actively judge in defense of economic liberty. This means active enforcement of the principle that neither Congress nor the states are entitled to determine the limits of their powers. The Constitution made this determination before the mistakes of 1873 and 1938.
Washington state's creation of the ferry monopoly is what governments have increasingly done since courts misconstrued the Constitution in a way that licenses governments to dispense particular economic favors by restricting general economic liberty. It is now routine for government to have transactions with rent-seekers -- private interests who want public power used to confer advantages on them, or disadvantages on competitors
This case from a remote region of Washington state explains much about a Washington 2,200 miles away. Start with a misbegotten constitutional principle that denigrates economic liberty as less than fundamental, and thus licenses government to ration such liberty. You end with the pandemic rent-seeking that defines the nation's capital.
SOURCE
***********************
Unemployment rate actually 11.04 percent
According to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, employment needs to grow by at least 90,000 a month just to keep up with the growth of the population. But, since the fall of 2008, the civilian labor force has actually shrunk from 154.7 million to 153.8 million, a contraction of about 900,000.
It's not that fertility suddenly dropped or there was a massive plague. It should have grown by 3.24 million since then, but it didn't. Which means working age adults are simply not being counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.
They are fudging the numbers. Adding the 900,000 contraction to the expected growth, the total civilian labor force should be 4.14 million larger than is being counted, at about 157.94 million by now. And the unemployed should be about that much more larger, since if they could be counted as working, BLS would most certainly be counting them.
So, the amount of unemployed should really be measured at about 17.443 million, instead of 13.303 million, or a rate of 11.04 percent instead of 8.6 percent. And the underemployed rate should be about 17.8 percent instead of 15.6 percent, with 28.145 million people looking for full-time work that cannot find it.
More HERE
*************************
Butter-nomics: Protectionism and Food Shortages
Norway, a fully industrialized country and ranked first in the latest Human Development Index, a United Nations' metric that tries to quantify the quality of life across countries, is suffering through a butter shortage, a common food staple and an important input in the food industry. Food shortages wouldn't be out of place in places like Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and some poor Sub-Saharan nations; it is almost unfathomable that they occur in one of the most developed nations in the world.
Norwegian authorities seem puzzled by the shortage and subsequent rise in butter prices. They blame a new low-carb high-fat diet craze for the additional demand. Additionally, heavy rains during the summer affected grazing areas for cows, which resulted in reduced milk production. The shortage is especially alarming during the Christmas season, where many traditional recipes rely on significant amounts of the dairy product. Norwegians have actually resorted to churning their own butter, including a restaurant owner interviewed by The Wall Street Journal: "We have to [churn butter]. We can't get hold of any butter, not any at all. And it's right before Christmas, so we have a lot of customers. It's really strange. It takes a lot of time since we use hand mixers."
While the diet combined with unfavorable conditions for dairies has limited the amount of available domestic butter, it doesn't address the biggest issue for the limited quantities of the good: trade regulations.
Since Norway is not part of the European Union, imports from other nations are subject to tariffs and other protectionist restrictions. Butter tariffs in Norway equaled 25 kroner per kilo (about US$ 4.25), effectively eliminating any incentive to import butter from abroad. While the tariff was lowered to four kroner in December allowing Norway to import more than 750 tons of butter for consumers and 1,000 tons for industry, it will do little to solve the shortage, as it will take time for butter to become available to consumers.
The result: A black butter market. One seller on a Norwegian auction website offered 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of butter Tuesday for roughly 30 times the normal price. Two Swedes were arrested in Norway for smuggling around 550 pounds of butter into Norway. Danish and Swedish airports are selling butter at their free-duty shops. Swedish supermarkets are enticing Norwegian customers living near the border with free butter. In short, market forces and regulations have created some incredible situations in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
The government response has been unsurprising. As Agricultural Minister Lars Peder Brekk said last week: "The market regulations are important to uphold long-term stability in the production of food in Norway." Unfortunately for the Norwegian government, only free trade creates stable markets. Complete dependence on domestic markets leaves Norway open to unexpected local calamities that could make prices volatile. Free trade distributes risk among many different countries, so an event in one country will have a smaller effect on availability and overall prices of goods. Finally, given the Norwegian government's record on butter and unwillingness to change policies, Norwegians might face shortages in other goods as well.
SOURCE
***************************
Some simple conservative truths
An anonymous sage asserted, "God, can't alter the past, but politicians can." It's amazing how the importance of faith in God can be written out of American history and how the Founding Fathers' treasured equal rights can be transformed into today's entitlement to equal results.
Benjamin Franklin warned, "Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." We have so many leaks in our boat, many companies are rowing their lifeboats to a more welcoming shore! Wouldn't you love to have a budget that automatically goes up 8 percent every year no matter how much you made! If spending more than what you take in doesn't work in your home, what makes you think you can allow politicians to keep spending on your government credit card!
There's wisdom in this international proverb: "There's always free cheese in a mousetrap." Passing more and more programs to make life easier today when we don't have the funds to pay for them now or in the future is a deadly trap risking trading our treasured life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for national bankruptcy and economic chaos.
Bill Vaughan reminds us, "Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." Whether we're funding studies on how long shrimp can run on a treadmill or whether Twitter can predict the stock market, isn't it funny how research costs expand to fill available federal budgets! Hey, let the shrimp pay for their own gym membership.
Herbert Hoover didn't know how prophetic he was when he said, "Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." Don't you think there's something wrong with extending the payroll tax holiday to fund our "Black Friday" excesses while making future generations pay for our exploding national debt? Give to me now so others can pay later!
Will Rogers had fun with painful truths: "I remember back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money." When it costs you nothing to elect politicians who will take from your neighbor to do your "giving" to those in need, that's not caring--that's politically correct stealing.
Milton Friedman was another truth teller: "Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a large number of the populace that somebody else will pay." Do you really think the "rich" don't pay their fair share when the top 5 percent of the wage earners pay more income taxes than the rest of the 95 percent of tax payers combined.
Phil Gramm made common sense fun: "Change welfare so that people riding in the wagon are not better off than people pulling the wagon." How long will hard -driving producers keep pulling the wagon when you take more and more of their earned rewards, make them pull more weight, and blame them for being the problem.
Robert Nudelman observed, "If you throw more birdseed on the ground, you'll get more pigeons." The more programs governments create and the more rewards they provide for failure, the more people become dependent on government. Washington doesn't just throw the seeds on the ground; they advertise where the seeds are!
Let's end with Harry Truman's admission, "If you can't convince them, confuse them." In the coming months, you'll hear how a failed stimulus plan actually worked, how raising taxes on the people who could start companies and create jobs is a good idea, and how giving President Obama four more years of his "hope and change" is better than returning to the founding principles that made America great. You can laugh or cry. Either way, vote for a return to sanity instead of European-style socialism.
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)
****************************
There is an amusing paper in the forthcoming JANUARY 2012 NOTICES OF THE AMS (American Mathematical Society) which purports to show that it is only oppression of women by society which causes females not to do well in mathematics.
The paper was of course zealous to rule out genetic differences but that does rather leave them without an explanation for Chinese excellence in mathematics. Regardless of the country in which they reside, Chinese tend to be prominent among leading mathematicians -- and China itself is a major centre of mathematical excellence. Yet China is still in many ways a very traditional society in which the very notion of gender equality would normally be scoffed at. The way they abort girl babies is surely enough evidence of that.
Anyway, the paper more or less assumes what it has to prove. In a rather self-contradictory way, the authors seem to assume that educational performance fully indexes innate ability. The paper draws its "evidence" not from IQ tests but from various international measures of educational attainment. And educational attainment is the product of many things other than IQ. Hard work anyone? Social pressures anyone? So I partially agree with the first line of their "Conclusions":
In summary, we conclude that gender equity and other sociocultural factors, not national income, school type, or religion per se, are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both boys and girls
You note that they skate entirely over IQ.
They go on to argue that eliminating gender "inequities" is needed to lift female mathematical achievements. After decades of feminism and affirmative action it is hard to imagine how more might be done on that front in the USA other than by procrustean quota systems so the recommendation is as vacuous as it is irrelevant.
Women will always be up against their lower level of mathematical ability that IQ tests reveal so clearly. In recent years women have been pushed into mathematics to satisfy feminist dogma but few will rise to the heights.
**********************
Rabbit Raisers Defeat USDA, Won't Pay Any Fines!
This is a victory for all Americans and a warning about how hard-won such victories are under the vast bureaucracies that throttle America
Remember back in May when I reported disturbing news about John and Judy Dollarhite facing $4 million in USDA fines for selling too many bunnies? That news was followed by a dozen and a half posts about federal agents bullying the Nixa, Mo., couple as well as several others across the country - even magicians who pull rabbits out of hats! Well, there's finally some good news to report about this case.
On their Facebook page, USDA Bunny Tyranny of the Dollarhite Family, the Dollarhites announced victory Tuesday night:
"We have a signed settlement with USDA. It isn't everything we had hoped for because there wasn't an apology included for all the nightmares we have endured these several months. There is no fine. They stipulated a 2 year ban on obtaining a USDA license, which we never wanted, nor can I ever envision us wanting anything to do with USDA.
I take this as a sign that out-of-control government agencies can be brought under control when Americans band together to fight for what's right.
More here
************************
Testing the waters of economic liberty
In 1927, seven years before the board game was created, Washington state decided to play monopoly. It gave a private interest the exclusive right to operate a ferry on 55-mile long Lake Chelan in the northern Cascade Mountains. The state apparently will defend this folly until Judgment Day, when state officials will get an earful from the Creator who -- we have Jefferson's word for this -- endowed everyone, including Jim and Cliff Courtney, with the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Courtney brothers' happiness would be enlarged if they could operate a competing ferry. But 84 years ago Washington state asserted a principle much favored by all of America's governments, the principle that it may parcel out certain economic liberties sparingly and only to those who can prove to government that their exercise of their liberty will satisfy some government-concocted criteria.
That principle lacks constitutional warrant and repudiates the nation's foundational philosophy. Hence the national importance of the Courtney brothers' litigation, which asks courts to correct judicial mistakes of 1873 and 1938.
The brothers live in Stehekin on the lake's northern tip and provide recreational services to people who manage to get there from Chelan on the lake's southeast end. But people can get to Stehekin only by plane or boat. And during the summer season, when the boat schedule is most convenient, the two boats operated by the state-conferred monopoly make only one trip a day in each direction, and both depart at the same time in the same direction.
But before the Courtney brothers can give travelers a better choice, they must receive from the state a "certificate of public convenience and necessity." The burden is on them to prove that the current monopolist's service is not "reasonable and adequate." At least four would-be competitors tried and failed to get such a certificate; the most recent attempt generated a 515-page transcript.
How did America reach the point where aspiring entrepreneurs, seeking to improve their lot by improving other people's choices, must approach government on bended knee to beg it to confer upon them a right -- the right to compete? How did America stray from its foundational principle that government exists to protect pre-existing rights, not to apportion such rights as it creates and chooses to bestow? Read on.
The Courtney brothers are represented by the Institute for Justice, which battles government infringements of individuals' liberties -- particularly economic liberties. In an 1873 decision, the Supreme Court (divided 5-4) defined Americans' "privileges or immunities" -- the 14th Amendment's language meaning rights -- narrowly. The court recognized only a few rights, mostly essential to national citizenship, and not including economic liberty.
In 1938, the court bowed to the progressive desire to empower government to allocate wealth and opportunity. The court decided -- without citing a supportive constitutional text, there being none -- that economic liberty should be assigned a status markedly inferior to that of "fundamental" liberties. This spurious dichotomy jettisoned America's natural rights tradition reflected in the Ninth Amendment's protection of unenumerated rights "retained by the people."
The Courtneys' litigation is a little lever that could move the entire nation back toward the Founders' vision. It will do so if it advances the presumption of liberty. This, says Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett, is the principle that the government must be required to justify its restrictions on liberty, rather than requiring citizens to prove that the liberty they wish to exercise is somehow "fundamental" and therefore not an optional gift from government.
The Courtneys deserve judicial engagement where judges actively judge in defense of economic liberty. This means active enforcement of the principle that neither Congress nor the states are entitled to determine the limits of their powers. The Constitution made this determination before the mistakes of 1873 and 1938.
Washington state's creation of the ferry monopoly is what governments have increasingly done since courts misconstrued the Constitution in a way that licenses governments to dispense particular economic favors by restricting general economic liberty. It is now routine for government to have transactions with rent-seekers -- private interests who want public power used to confer advantages on them, or disadvantages on competitors
This case from a remote region of Washington state explains much about a Washington 2,200 miles away. Start with a misbegotten constitutional principle that denigrates economic liberty as less than fundamental, and thus licenses government to ration such liberty. You end with the pandemic rent-seeking that defines the nation's capital.
SOURCE
***********************
Unemployment rate actually 11.04 percent
According to former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, employment needs to grow by at least 90,000 a month just to keep up with the growth of the population. But, since the fall of 2008, the civilian labor force has actually shrunk from 154.7 million to 153.8 million, a contraction of about 900,000.
It's not that fertility suddenly dropped or there was a massive plague. It should have grown by 3.24 million since then, but it didn't. Which means working age adults are simply not being counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.
They are fudging the numbers. Adding the 900,000 contraction to the expected growth, the total civilian labor force should be 4.14 million larger than is being counted, at about 157.94 million by now. And the unemployed should be about that much more larger, since if they could be counted as working, BLS would most certainly be counting them.
So, the amount of unemployed should really be measured at about 17.443 million, instead of 13.303 million, or a rate of 11.04 percent instead of 8.6 percent. And the underemployed rate should be about 17.8 percent instead of 15.6 percent, with 28.145 million people looking for full-time work that cannot find it.
More HERE
*************************
Butter-nomics: Protectionism and Food Shortages
Norway, a fully industrialized country and ranked first in the latest Human Development Index, a United Nations' metric that tries to quantify the quality of life across countries, is suffering through a butter shortage, a common food staple and an important input in the food industry. Food shortages wouldn't be out of place in places like Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and some poor Sub-Saharan nations; it is almost unfathomable that they occur in one of the most developed nations in the world.
Norwegian authorities seem puzzled by the shortage and subsequent rise in butter prices. They blame a new low-carb high-fat diet craze for the additional demand. Additionally, heavy rains during the summer affected grazing areas for cows, which resulted in reduced milk production. The shortage is especially alarming during the Christmas season, where many traditional recipes rely on significant amounts of the dairy product. Norwegians have actually resorted to churning their own butter, including a restaurant owner interviewed by The Wall Street Journal: "We have to [churn butter]. We can't get hold of any butter, not any at all. And it's right before Christmas, so we have a lot of customers. It's really strange. It takes a lot of time since we use hand mixers."
While the diet combined with unfavorable conditions for dairies has limited the amount of available domestic butter, it doesn't address the biggest issue for the limited quantities of the good: trade regulations.
Since Norway is not part of the European Union, imports from other nations are subject to tariffs and other protectionist restrictions. Butter tariffs in Norway equaled 25 kroner per kilo (about US$ 4.25), effectively eliminating any incentive to import butter from abroad. While the tariff was lowered to four kroner in December allowing Norway to import more than 750 tons of butter for consumers and 1,000 tons for industry, it will do little to solve the shortage, as it will take time for butter to become available to consumers.
The result: A black butter market. One seller on a Norwegian auction website offered 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of butter Tuesday for roughly 30 times the normal price. Two Swedes were arrested in Norway for smuggling around 550 pounds of butter into Norway. Danish and Swedish airports are selling butter at their free-duty shops. Swedish supermarkets are enticing Norwegian customers living near the border with free butter. In short, market forces and regulations have created some incredible situations in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
The government response has been unsurprising. As Agricultural Minister Lars Peder Brekk said last week: "The market regulations are important to uphold long-term stability in the production of food in Norway." Unfortunately for the Norwegian government, only free trade creates stable markets. Complete dependence on domestic markets leaves Norway open to unexpected local calamities that could make prices volatile. Free trade distributes risk among many different countries, so an event in one country will have a smaller effect on availability and overall prices of goods. Finally, given the Norwegian government's record on butter and unwillingness to change policies, Norwegians might face shortages in other goods as well.
SOURCE
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Some simple conservative truths
An anonymous sage asserted, "God, can't alter the past, but politicians can." It's amazing how the importance of faith in God can be written out of American history and how the Founding Fathers' treasured equal rights can be transformed into today's entitlement to equal results.
Benjamin Franklin warned, "Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." We have so many leaks in our boat, many companies are rowing their lifeboats to a more welcoming shore! Wouldn't you love to have a budget that automatically goes up 8 percent every year no matter how much you made! If spending more than what you take in doesn't work in your home, what makes you think you can allow politicians to keep spending on your government credit card!
There's wisdom in this international proverb: "There's always free cheese in a mousetrap." Passing more and more programs to make life easier today when we don't have the funds to pay for them now or in the future is a deadly trap risking trading our treasured life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for national bankruptcy and economic chaos.
Bill Vaughan reminds us, "Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." Whether we're funding studies on how long shrimp can run on a treadmill or whether Twitter can predict the stock market, isn't it funny how research costs expand to fill available federal budgets! Hey, let the shrimp pay for their own gym membership.
Herbert Hoover didn't know how prophetic he was when he said, "Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt." Don't you think there's something wrong with extending the payroll tax holiday to fund our "Black Friday" excesses while making future generations pay for our exploding national debt? Give to me now so others can pay later!
Will Rogers had fun with painful truths: "I remember back when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money." When it costs you nothing to elect politicians who will take from your neighbor to do your "giving" to those in need, that's not caring--that's politically correct stealing.
Milton Friedman was another truth teller: "Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a large number of the populace that somebody else will pay." Do you really think the "rich" don't pay their fair share when the top 5 percent of the wage earners pay more income taxes than the rest of the 95 percent of tax payers combined.
Phil Gramm made common sense fun: "Change welfare so that people riding in the wagon are not better off than people pulling the wagon." How long will hard -driving producers keep pulling the wagon when you take more and more of their earned rewards, make them pull more weight, and blame them for being the problem.
Robert Nudelman observed, "If you throw more birdseed on the ground, you'll get more pigeons." The more programs governments create and the more rewards they provide for failure, the more people become dependent on government. Washington doesn't just throw the seeds on the ground; they advertise where the seeds are!
Let's end with Harry Truman's admission, "If you can't convince them, confuse them." In the coming months, you'll hear how a failed stimulus plan actually worked, how raising taxes on the people who could start companies and create jobs is a good idea, and how giving President Obama four more years of his "hope and change" is better than returning to the founding principles that made America great. You can laugh or cry. Either way, vote for a return to sanity instead of European-style socialism.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Feds' War on Religion
Chuck Norris
Anyone who knows me knows that for my whole life, I've been a huge supporter of our U.S. military personnel, whom I congratulate about their victory in Iraq. But when our president and officials in the U.S. Department of Defense exchange a war abroad for a religious war at home, can't we see that something else is seriously awry in this administration?
It's one thing to watch "merry Christmas" be omitted from signs in your favorite department store but quite another to see Bibles withheld from wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It's true! On Dec. 2, the Family Research Council reported that it had discovered a memo released in September at the esteemed military hospital, in which Navy officials announced that "no religious items (including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit."
Thank God for those in the FRC, as well as Rep. Randy Forbes and other members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, who demanded to meet with officials at Walter Reed and in the Navy about the matter. Just a few days ago, Vice Adm. John Mateczun confessed that the memo had not been properly evaluated and was being rescinded, and Walter Reed posted a public apology on its website.
But imagine if the FRC had not found this memo. Imagine how many others like it aren't found and are circulated around the federal government.
If you think this is an isolated incident, consider the following dozen-plus examples reported in the past six months alone by the FRC and Rep. Forbes' office and a few of my own I found, which document how religious freedom and Christian liberty in particular have been limited, quarantined, omitted or outright obliterated.
--The Air Force Academy apologized for merely announcing Operation Christmas Child --a Christian-based charity and relief program designed to send holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world.
--Yet the Air Force is building an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship site for "earth-based" religions, including "pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths."
--The Marine Corps considered tearing down a Camp Pendleton cross meant to honor fallen heroes.
--Air Force officials stripped religious curriculum from a 20-year-old course on "just war theory."
--The Department of Veterans Affairs censored references to God and Jesus during prayers at Houston National Cemetery.
--The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate passed the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which included a repeal of Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which states: "Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy."
--The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new health care rules that ignore basic conscience protections for medical workers with faith-based objections to abortion and contraception.
--Officials at HHS denied funding for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' successful program for sex trafficking victims because of the church's teaching on human life.
--Administration officials refused to intervene in the closing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
--President Barack Obama has lobbied for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would trample on the faith of employers in hiring, firing and promotion decisions.
--The Pentagon released new regulations that force chaplains to perform same-sex "weddings" despite their religious objections.
--Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonized other countries' religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights.
--Just this past week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter to officials at Travis Air Force Base, demanding the removal or transfer of a Nativity scene and a menorah that are part of a larger holiday display on the base.
What is going on in the U.S. military? Why is it so difficult for the feds to understand the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which says they "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"?
And how many of these restrictions of our religious liberties are direct results of President Obama's being in office? And if these occurred in just the past six months, imagine what would happen in another four years if Obama were to be re-elected. Our service members, as well as our devoted military Christian chaplains, deserve better.
Gone are the days when the commander in chief rallied the troops and nation with a religious presidential call as Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt did. FDR declared in his Christmas address to the nation Dec. 24, 1944 (the first Christmas after D-Day):
"Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and Good Will. ... We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth, in which all the nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come."
SOURCE
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Why Thomas Friedman Abetted Anti-Semitism
Dennis Prager
After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things.
While not specifically about the left, a major new scholarly book, "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press), explores this phenomenon of people wanting to do good things yet ending up doing bad. It applies to The New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who has a deep altruistic urge to bring peace to the Middle East. But because he sees the world through the liberal/left prism, he says morally reprehensible things -- statements that individuals associated with hate-filled, non-altruistic groups and ideologies would make.
In his Dec. 13 column, yet another of his attacks on Israel and its supporters, Friedman wrote: "The standing ovation (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) got in Congress this year was ... bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
If a non-Jew had written this, he would have been severely condemned for writing something outright anti-Semitic. The notion that Jews manipulate the levers of power in Western societies for their own nefarious ends is probably the most enduring of all the West's Jew-hating myths. It was a staple of Nazi anti-Semitism and is the single most repeated charge of those in the Arab and larger Muslim worlds who seek to annihilate Israel, since its purpose is to convince people that non-Jews who support Israel have been paid off by Jews.
But Friedman, who is a Jew and a liberal, can get away with it -- even though it is so morally repulsive that Jew-haters can now assert they are merely quoting a well-known Jew. Who's going to call him on it? The New York Times?
To his credit, one congressman did condemn Friedman. Rep. Steven R. Rothman (D-N.J.) released this statement: "Thomas Friedman's defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish State of Israel, in his New York Times opinion piece today, is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the U.S. Mr. Friedman is not only wrong, but he's aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the U.S.-Israel relationship and its American supporters.
"I gave Prime Minister Netanyahu a standing ovation, not because of any nefarious lobby, but because it is in America's vital national security interests to support the Jewish State of Israel, and it is right for Congress to give a warm welcome to the leader of such a dear and essential ally. Mr. Friedman owes us all an apology."
Friedman's charge, as Rothman points out, is not only "scurrilous, destructive and harmful" to Israel, but it is also a lie. The Congress of the United States -- including Republicans who have virtually no Jews in their district or state -- supports Israel for the same reasons Harry Truman recognized Israel against the advice of the U.S. State Department, Richard Nixon saved Israel during the 1973 War despite his anger at Jewish liberals, and Dick Cheney vigorously supported Israel despite Wyoming's having almost no Jewish population. They all believed that Israel shares America's moral values, while Israel's enemies (who happen to hate America as well as Israel) do not.
So how does Mr. Friedman, whom I assume is an honorable man and well-intentioned seeker of peace in the Middle East, write something that is equally mendacious and hateful, that abets anti-Semitism and that labels every pro-Israel congressman and senator a political whore?
Because he is a man of the left. When good people adopt the leftist worldview, they eventually support ideas and say things that are cruel. Thomas Friedman did not write this anti-Semitic libel because he is an anti-Semite. Of course he is not an anti-Semite. He wrote it because he is a leftist.
Leftism poisons everything it influences -- from journalism to the arts to universities to religion to government to male-female relations. And ultimately leftism poisons character. This does not mean that everyone with left-wing views becomes a bad person, and it doesn't mean that everyone with conservative views is a good person. Both judgments are untrue and foolish.
But it does mean that leftism leads to pathologic altruism, i.e., bad things done by people with pure intentions. Just as Mahatma Gandhi's hatred of violence led him to tell the Jews of Europe not to resist Hitler, so too has leftism led decent people who would weep at Israel's destruction to mouth the very same lies about Israel as those who seek its annihilation.
SOURCE
*****************************
Should it be Gingrich?
Thomas Sowell
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years -- followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama -- and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
SOURCE
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ELSEWHERE
White House backs Biden on “Taliban isn’t US enemy”: "The White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden for saying that the Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite the years spent fighting the militant Islamic group that gave a home to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama bin Laden while he plotted the Sept. 11 terror attacks. 'It's only regrettable when taken out of context,' White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the vice president's remarks in an interview published Monday."
The death of privacy: "There is an important case that will reach the Supreme Court early next year that also relates to how the advances in technology impact on our liberties. It involves the police use of GPS positioning devices in investigations. Currently, the police use the devices without a court order or any judicial oversight. ... For many, the sheer volume of information obtained constitutes an illegal search and is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the case is much more important than that."
Soaking the rich won’t grow the economy: "We tried soaking the rich in the past, but the resulting revenue loss was more than we possibly could afford today. Individual income tax rates of 20-91 percent under Eisenhower brought in only 7.7 percent of GDP. Lower tax rates of 14-70 percent from 1964 to 1981, thanks to President Kennedy, brought in 8 percent of GDP. A top tax of 28 percent from 1988 to 1990 brought in 8.1 percent of GDP. By contrast, raising the capital gains tax to 28 percent from 1987 to 1996 thwarted stock sales and clearly cost the Treasury a bundle. What was fairer about high tax rates that were not paid?"
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)
****************************
Chuck Norris
Anyone who knows me knows that for my whole life, I've been a huge supporter of our U.S. military personnel, whom I congratulate about their victory in Iraq. But when our president and officials in the U.S. Department of Defense exchange a war abroad for a religious war at home, can't we see that something else is seriously awry in this administration?
It's one thing to watch "merry Christmas" be omitted from signs in your favorite department store but quite another to see Bibles withheld from wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. It's true! On Dec. 2, the Family Research Council reported that it had discovered a memo released in September at the esteemed military hospital, in which Navy officials announced that "no religious items (including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit."
Thank God for those in the FRC, as well as Rep. Randy Forbes and other members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, who demanded to meet with officials at Walter Reed and in the Navy about the matter. Just a few days ago, Vice Adm. John Mateczun confessed that the memo had not been properly evaluated and was being rescinded, and Walter Reed posted a public apology on its website.
But imagine if the FRC had not found this memo. Imagine how many others like it aren't found and are circulated around the federal government.
If you think this is an isolated incident, consider the following dozen-plus examples reported in the past six months alone by the FRC and Rep. Forbes' office and a few of my own I found, which document how religious freedom and Christian liberty in particular have been limited, quarantined, omitted or outright obliterated.
--The Air Force Academy apologized for merely announcing Operation Christmas Child --a Christian-based charity and relief program designed to send holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world.
--Yet the Air Force is building an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship site for "earth-based" religions, including "pagans, Wiccans, druids, witches and followers of Native American faiths."
--The Marine Corps considered tearing down a Camp Pendleton cross meant to honor fallen heroes.
--Air Force officials stripped religious curriculum from a 20-year-old course on "just war theory."
--The Department of Veterans Affairs censored references to God and Jesus during prayers at Houston National Cemetery.
--The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate passed the $662 billion National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which included a repeal of Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which states: "Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy."
--The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new health care rules that ignore basic conscience protections for medical workers with faith-based objections to abortion and contraception.
--Officials at HHS denied funding for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' successful program for sex trafficking victims because of the church's teaching on human life.
--Administration officials refused to intervene in the closing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
--President Barack Obama has lobbied for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would trample on the faith of employers in hiring, firing and promotion decisions.
--The Pentagon released new regulations that force chaplains to perform same-sex "weddings" despite their religious objections.
--Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonized other countries' religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights.
--Just this past week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter to officials at Travis Air Force Base, demanding the removal or transfer of a Nativity scene and a menorah that are part of a larger holiday display on the base.
What is going on in the U.S. military? Why is it so difficult for the feds to understand the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which says they "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"?
And how many of these restrictions of our religious liberties are direct results of President Obama's being in office? And if these occurred in just the past six months, imagine what would happen in another four years if Obama were to be re-elected. Our service members, as well as our devoted military Christian chaplains, deserve better.
Gone are the days when the commander in chief rallied the troops and nation with a religious presidential call as Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt did. FDR declared in his Christmas address to the nation Dec. 24, 1944 (the first Christmas after D-Day):
"Here, at home, we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and Good Will. ... We pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth, in which all the nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow throughout the world in all the years to come."
SOURCE
*****************************
Why Thomas Friedman Abetted Anti-Semitism
Dennis Prager
After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things.
While not specifically about the left, a major new scholarly book, "Pathological Altruism" (Oxford University Press), explores this phenomenon of people wanting to do good things yet ending up doing bad. It applies to The New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman, who has a deep altruistic urge to bring peace to the Middle East. But because he sees the world through the liberal/left prism, he says morally reprehensible things -- statements that individuals associated with hate-filled, non-altruistic groups and ideologies would make.
In his Dec. 13 column, yet another of his attacks on Israel and its supporters, Friedman wrote: "The standing ovation (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) got in Congress this year was ... bought and paid for by the Israel lobby."
If a non-Jew had written this, he would have been severely condemned for writing something outright anti-Semitic. The notion that Jews manipulate the levers of power in Western societies for their own nefarious ends is probably the most enduring of all the West's Jew-hating myths. It was a staple of Nazi anti-Semitism and is the single most repeated charge of those in the Arab and larger Muslim worlds who seek to annihilate Israel, since its purpose is to convince people that non-Jews who support Israel have been paid off by Jews.
But Friedman, who is a Jew and a liberal, can get away with it -- even though it is so morally repulsive that Jew-haters can now assert they are merely quoting a well-known Jew. Who's going to call him on it? The New York Times?
To his credit, one congressman did condemn Friedman. Rep. Steven R. Rothman (D-N.J.) released this statement: "Thomas Friedman's defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish State of Israel, in his New York Times opinion piece today, is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the U.S. Mr. Friedman is not only wrong, but he's aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the U.S.-Israel relationship and its American supporters.
"I gave Prime Minister Netanyahu a standing ovation, not because of any nefarious lobby, but because it is in America's vital national security interests to support the Jewish State of Israel, and it is right for Congress to give a warm welcome to the leader of such a dear and essential ally. Mr. Friedman owes us all an apology."
Friedman's charge, as Rothman points out, is not only "scurrilous, destructive and harmful" to Israel, but it is also a lie. The Congress of the United States -- including Republicans who have virtually no Jews in their district or state -- supports Israel for the same reasons Harry Truman recognized Israel against the advice of the U.S. State Department, Richard Nixon saved Israel during the 1973 War despite his anger at Jewish liberals, and Dick Cheney vigorously supported Israel despite Wyoming's having almost no Jewish population. They all believed that Israel shares America's moral values, while Israel's enemies (who happen to hate America as well as Israel) do not.
So how does Mr. Friedman, whom I assume is an honorable man and well-intentioned seeker of peace in the Middle East, write something that is equally mendacious and hateful, that abets anti-Semitism and that labels every pro-Israel congressman and senator a political whore?
Because he is a man of the left. When good people adopt the leftist worldview, they eventually support ideas and say things that are cruel. Thomas Friedman did not write this anti-Semitic libel because he is an anti-Semite. Of course he is not an anti-Semite. He wrote it because he is a leftist.
Leftism poisons everything it influences -- from journalism to the arts to universities to religion to government to male-female relations. And ultimately leftism poisons character. This does not mean that everyone with left-wing views becomes a bad person, and it doesn't mean that everyone with conservative views is a good person. Both judgments are untrue and foolish.
But it does mean that leftism leads to pathologic altruism, i.e., bad things done by people with pure intentions. Just as Mahatma Gandhi's hatred of violence led him to tell the Jews of Europe not to resist Hitler, so too has leftism led decent people who would weep at Israel's destruction to mouth the very same lies about Israel as those who seek its annihilation.
SOURCE
*****************************
Should it be Gingrich?
Thomas Sowell
If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.
What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.
But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against this background, how much does Newt Gingrich's personal life matter, whether we accept his claim that he has now matured or his critics' claim that he has not? Nor should we sell the public short by saying that they are going to vote on the basis of tabloid stuff or media talking points, when the fate of this nation hangs in the balance.
Even back in the 19th century, when the scandal came out that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock -- and he publicly admitted it -- the voters nevertheless sent him to the White House, where he became one of the better presidents.
Do we wish we had another Ronald Reagan? We could certainly use one. But we have to play the hand we were dealt. And the Reagan card is not in the deck.
While the televised debates are what gave Newt Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years -- followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was Speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was Speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama -- and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as Speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Newt Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost." If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
SOURCE
***************************
ELSEWHERE
White House backs Biden on “Taliban isn’t US enemy”: "The White House on Monday defended Vice President Joe Biden for saying that the Taliban isn't an enemy of the United States despite the years spent fighting the militant Islamic group that gave a home to Al Qaeda and its leader Usama bin Laden while he plotted the Sept. 11 terror attacks. 'It's only regrettable when taken out of context,' White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the vice president's remarks in an interview published Monday."
The death of privacy: "There is an important case that will reach the Supreme Court early next year that also relates to how the advances in technology impact on our liberties. It involves the police use of GPS positioning devices in investigations. Currently, the police use the devices without a court order or any judicial oversight. ... For many, the sheer volume of information obtained constitutes an illegal search and is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the case is much more important than that."
Soaking the rich won’t grow the economy: "We tried soaking the rich in the past, but the resulting revenue loss was more than we possibly could afford today. Individual income tax rates of 20-91 percent under Eisenhower brought in only 7.7 percent of GDP. Lower tax rates of 14-70 percent from 1964 to 1981, thanks to President Kennedy, brought in 8 percent of GDP. A top tax of 28 percent from 1988 to 1990 brought in 8.1 percent of GDP. By contrast, raising the capital gains tax to 28 percent from 1987 to 1996 thwarted stock sales and clearly cost the Treasury a bundle. What was fairer about high tax rates that were not paid?"
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)
****************************
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
An iconoclastic analysis of Europe's problems
By economic historian Martin Hutchinson
The 1957 Treaty of Rome bound the members of the EU’s forerunner to an “ever closer” union. Last week’s political developments and the previous disturbances in the market for Eurozone government bonds suggest that this aim may be a mirage, ever receding and never to be attained. Apart from considering Britain’s own position, it’s worth thinking about where the EU itself may end up.
Contrary to much euroskeptic opinion, the euro itself has not been a disaster. If the EU leadership had been wise enough to forbid Greece from entering the euro on false data (helpfully manipulated by the odious Goldman Sachs) it’s likely no “Eurozone crisis” would ever have occurred. Even had the leadership possessed the simple common sense to expel Greece from the euro in spring 2010, when it had become obvious that Greek public accounts were a tissue of lies and that the Greek people were paid about twice what they should be, it’s likely that no broader crisis would have occurred.
In reality, Ireland’s problem was one purely of obligations deriving from its banking crisis, now well on the way to being solved. Portugal and Spain had got in trouble because of years of dozy socialist governments, both now replaced. Only Italy presented a real problem, because of the debt accumulated in its sloppy socialist deficit years of 1970-96. However Italy until a month ago was competently if eccentrically run, by a government that had retained most of its popular standing, and without the atmosphere of Eurozone crisis brought about by the Greeks would probably have done just fine.
The EU authorities’ attempts to deal with the Eurozone crisis, and their proposed solution to it last week, demonstrates the real problem with EU governance. Far from examining a market-based solution to the crisis, they replaced not one but two democratically elected heads of government, in Greece and Italy. They then proposed a new treaty that, without proper legal basis (because it will not be signed by all 27 EU members) will impose another central bureaucracy on the unfortunate European people, taking yet more decision-making authority from anyone who has been elected by a democratic process.
The EU’s central problem is that its solution to everything is to impose an extra layer of government, generally unaccountable to the European people except in the most theoretical sense. It cannot be necessary to have two EU chiefs, neither of them properly elected: Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission and Herman van Rompuy, the President of the European Council. Similarly, the diplomatic bureaucracy set up by High Representative Cathy Ashton duplicates not only the existing bureaucracies of the 27 EU governments, but also an existing EU diplomatic corps.
The downside of this approach were set out in a paper last month, “Economic Performance and Government Size” by none other than the European Central Bank. This finds a statistically significant negative correlation between government size and economic growth. If governments are grouped according to their institutional quality, then the negative correlation between government size and economic growth is greater for governments of low quality. In other words, it does not matter too much whether Scandinavian governments, efficient and non-corrupt, are oversized, but government bloat matters a great deal in places like Italy, Greece and the Balkans.
The negative correlation between government size and economic growth correlates with some less sophisticated analysis I did a few years ago using OECD data, in which I found that slightly over half the variance between annual growth rates was explained by two factors: the size of government and its rate of growth – so that governments that were large and growing rapidly usually plunged their people into a pit of stagnation or even prolonged economic decline. Still, it’s nice to have my work confirmed by so august an institution as the ECB, especially as the ECB’s masters are themselves one of the world’s most intractable oversized bureaucracies.
We can draw two conclusions from the ECB research. First, the EU bureaucracy has especially bad institutional quality, compared to other governments. Its top officials are duplicated three or four times, it has almost no democratic accountability, and its decision-making is both corrupt and ideological, with very little attempt to serve the interests of its citizens. Hence the inexorable growth of EU government can be expected to have an especially large negative effect on European economic performance.
Second, and this is a more positive point, the belief of the EU leadership and most commentators in “stimulus” is cockeyed. The 2009 worldwide burst of government stimulus spending achieved almost nothing other than destabilizing the finances of many world governments; by enlarging government at the expense of the private sector it retarded rather than accelerated growth. Conversely the reversal of stimulus by fiscal tightening will be generally beneficial to economic growth, provided that tightening takes the form of reducing public expenditure. This is why the Irish fiscal tightening appears to be working, as is that in Portugal, while the fiscal tightening in Britain, which so far has taken the form mostly of tax increases, has had a detrimental effect. In Spain, the advent of a center-right government, together with presence of easy fiscal tightening targets in the spending excesses and costly environmental boondoggles of the previous government, should allow fiscal health to be restored fairly easily, given time and freedom from Brussels meddling.
Had Silvio Berlusconi been allowed to remain in power in Italy, fiscal tightening would also have taken the form primarily of reduction in public spending. Under the center-left career bureaucrat Mario Monti, it is taking the form primarily of tax surcharges on millionaires, both on income and on capital, Naturally, the principal effect of these will be capital flight and economic decline. That’s why apart from the hopeless Greece, Italy is now the country in most danger of default.
The bottom line on all this clear. Most of the peoples of Europe genuinely support the European ideal (this is less true in Britain.) However as Europe’s union has grown “ever closer” the Brussels bureaucracy has metastasized, duplicating its functions and becoming ever more Byzantine, corrupt and unaccountable. This in turn has put an ever growing burden on European economies, not simply from the cost of the bureaucrats themselves, but from the wasteful and economically counterproductive programs and regulations they devise. The EU public, asked to pay more and more in taxes to support a bureaucracy that is more and more corrupt and unaccountable and less and less in touch with their wishes, is nearing the point of open rebellion.
The new legislation, which will increase central bureaucratic control over budgets, taxation and fiscal policy and reduce still further the ability of European electorates to remove governments whose policies have failed or are contrary to their wishes, will cause unrest and dissension in most EU countries. Those with referendum provisions will attempt to circumvent those provisions, while those with parliamentary ratification procedures will find ratification of anything substantial very difficult, because of popular opposition. Already two governments, in Greece and Italy, have been removed by the EU bureaucracy and a third, the admirable Radičova government in Slovakia, has been destroyed by the need to fund the Greek bailout. That casualty list will be much longer before meaningful legislation providing for EU budgetary control is in place. Needless to say, it’s unlikely that markets will wait around for the snail-like pace of the EU legislative process, accompanied as it will be by successive government collapses throughout the EU.
In the months and years to come therefore, Britain, far from being isolated, may well find that the European Union, far from drawing “ever closer” is being pulled inexorably apart by the disconnect between an expansive bureaucratic Leviathan and the natural wishes of the European people to live in reasonable local autonomy, without excessive taxation and regulation. The EU was sold to its members as bringing prosperity, but in its current form it brings only economic decline. If we are lucky, Britain will find itself leading a pan-European movement to liberate the peoples of Europe from an EU bureaucracy grown monstrous. If we are not, the monster will win, and Europe will subside into a decline similar to that of the last years of the Soviet Union, with the magnificent economies of Germany and Scandinavia dragged down by endless cross-subsidization of a failure elsewhere that was not inevitable and by a bureaucratic monster whose appetite can never be assuaged.
For Britain, apart from encouraging fissiparous and anti-bureaucrat tendencies elsewhere in the EU, the main objective should be to tiptoe non-confrontationally towards membership of the European Economic Area (currently comprising Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and unofficially Switzerland). In such a status, Britain, while remaining in the Single European Market, would be bound by legislation over which it had no influence – but experience has surely by now shown that it has very little influence over EU legislation anyway. However EU control over British domestic institutions would be greatly lessened and the costs of membership reduced. Such a status would also give Britain flexibility. If the remaining countries of the EU succeeded in throwing off the Brussels bureaucracy, Britain would remain a member of an un-bureaucratic, low-cost Single Market. If on the other hand bureaucrat control tightened and the remaining EU become protectionist, impoverished and hostile, Britain could seek other relationships [NAFTA!] and would be not be dragged down by European failure.
The new EU treaty process, and the attempt to assert central fiscal control, has crystallized the position of both Britain and the EU as a whole. We should devoutly wish for its failure, and hope that both Britain and its EU friends and neighbors can gain greater freedom and prosperity thereby.
SOURCE
****************************
The profundity of Leftist ignorance
If Americans listen to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and once thing is clear--he is a man who is extraordinarily ignorant of basic economics, how jobs are created, and he abhors the free market. Reid has just reminded Americans just how little he knows (and baneful Reid has become) when, on Monday, Reid announced on the floor of the Senate that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns,”, “They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist.”
How silly! How delusional! How dunderheaded! How absolutely wrong!
Thousands upon thousands of jobs have been created by business owners across the United States and, while not all entrepreneurs are so fortunate, many become the "millionaires" that Harry Reid says he can't find. Having a great idea, forming a small business, working hard and watching it grow are, sadly, not part of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s knowledge base.
Reid simply doesn’t believe entrepreneurs exist. Worse yet, he goes out of his way to belittle and ridicule the very entrepreneurial spirit that has built America and made our nation so prosperous that he and his Democrat friends have ample opportunities to loot the wealth that others have created.
Reid's ignorance certainly explains why he and his fellow Democrats are so openly hostile to the business community and why they think only the government can create jobs. Yet, the real tragedy here is that Reid’s “unicorn” speech went largely unnoticed.
Small business owners create 3 out of every 4 jobs in this country. But, even after achieving success, the growth doesn't stop there. Business owners and entrepreneurs are responsible for helping others achieve business success through venture capital investing and Angel startup investing in thousands of small businesses across the country.
Ted Leonsis is a good example of a unicorn, a man who first worked and made millions (with AOL) then, re-invested those funds in new businesses (such as the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals sports franchises), then re-invested the fruits of those successes in countless small business technology startups, such as Groupon, Zipcar and Living Social. He created thousands of jobs in the process. Nor is Leonsis alone, for there are thousands of other unicorns just like him.
America is blessed with a vast network of , most of whom are wealthy people that are willing to provide an entrepreneur, the capital needed to help launch a business, build a product or service, and get it to market. Over 60,000 new businesses are launched each year in this way, creating millions of jobs in the process and serving as the engine to the American economy.
So why doesn't Harry Reid know this?
Why doesn't Harry Reid understand that what we are talking about is nothing other than the American dream?
It's a dream that has drawn countless millions to this country for centuries and is the reason why countless millions more desperately want to come to this country. It's a dream that with hard work, some tough days, weeks, months, maybe even years, with ingenuity and persistence, any good idea can become a business success.
True, this dream is not for everyone. Not everyone is willing to take risks. Not everyone is willing to sacrifice their time, their treasure, their youth to fulfilling the dream. Not everyone is willing to work fourteen hour days, seven days a week. Because, sometimes, that's what the dream takes. Nor is success guaranteed. And, there are many who try and fail. That's okay too, because the American Dream is simply the opportunity to try for the brass ring. No handouts. No guarantees. But still, Harry Reid thinks the American Dream is a myth.
So what does that tell you?
Yes, Harry Reid seems jaded and is willfully blind to the facts concerning small businesses, entrepreneurs and job creation. Reid is clearly ignorant of all the hundred of thousands of man hours that innovators and business owners have spent growing businesses that create the $14.5 trillion dollars of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for this country annually. And, it is the fruits of these "mythical" businesses that he, President Obama and others routinely shakedown for donations, and threaten, by passing arcane legislation, often in the middle of the night without much thought or debate, to make the job creator’s task even more difficult.
So what does that tell you?
First, that Americans should be concerned that someone so colossally ignorant and dangerous could rise so high in the Senate. Second, Reid's ridiculously obtuse statement shows that he is far more closely aligned with President Obama, and Democrat Marxist meanderings, because Obama doesn't believe in the American Dream either, and ridicules those who do.
Harry Reid believes that only government can create jobs and spur the economy. I know that he is wrong. And "yes, Virginia", you can thank your lucky stars that there are most certainly unicorns in America.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
NE: Judge rules for railroad in drug dispute: "U.S. border officials exceeded their authority when they imposed multimillion-dollar fines against Union Pacific Corp. for failing to discover illegal drugs in railcars that crossed into the country from Mexico, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon ordered the Department of Homeland Security to halt its fines against the Omaha-based railroad and stop seizing railroad equipment in drug smuggling that the company says was beyond its control."
Japan to buy US F-35 fighters for air force: "Japan's government on Tuesday selected the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter to bolster its aging air force, announcing it will buy a total of 42 aircraft under a multiyear deal. Japan has budgeted the cost of four fighters next fiscal year, which starts in April, said Noriyuki Shikata, deputy Cabinet secretary for public relations"
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity: "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."
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)
****************************
By economic historian Martin Hutchinson
The 1957 Treaty of Rome bound the members of the EU’s forerunner to an “ever closer” union. Last week’s political developments and the previous disturbances in the market for Eurozone government bonds suggest that this aim may be a mirage, ever receding and never to be attained. Apart from considering Britain’s own position, it’s worth thinking about where the EU itself may end up.
Contrary to much euroskeptic opinion, the euro itself has not been a disaster. If the EU leadership had been wise enough to forbid Greece from entering the euro on false data (helpfully manipulated by the odious Goldman Sachs) it’s likely no “Eurozone crisis” would ever have occurred. Even had the leadership possessed the simple common sense to expel Greece from the euro in spring 2010, when it had become obvious that Greek public accounts were a tissue of lies and that the Greek people were paid about twice what they should be, it’s likely that no broader crisis would have occurred.
In reality, Ireland’s problem was one purely of obligations deriving from its banking crisis, now well on the way to being solved. Portugal and Spain had got in trouble because of years of dozy socialist governments, both now replaced. Only Italy presented a real problem, because of the debt accumulated in its sloppy socialist deficit years of 1970-96. However Italy until a month ago was competently if eccentrically run, by a government that had retained most of its popular standing, and without the atmosphere of Eurozone crisis brought about by the Greeks would probably have done just fine.
The EU authorities’ attempts to deal with the Eurozone crisis, and their proposed solution to it last week, demonstrates the real problem with EU governance. Far from examining a market-based solution to the crisis, they replaced not one but two democratically elected heads of government, in Greece and Italy. They then proposed a new treaty that, without proper legal basis (because it will not be signed by all 27 EU members) will impose another central bureaucracy on the unfortunate European people, taking yet more decision-making authority from anyone who has been elected by a democratic process.
The EU’s central problem is that its solution to everything is to impose an extra layer of government, generally unaccountable to the European people except in the most theoretical sense. It cannot be necessary to have two EU chiefs, neither of them properly elected: Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission and Herman van Rompuy, the President of the European Council. Similarly, the diplomatic bureaucracy set up by High Representative Cathy Ashton duplicates not only the existing bureaucracies of the 27 EU governments, but also an existing EU diplomatic corps.
The downside of this approach were set out in a paper last month, “Economic Performance and Government Size” by none other than the European Central Bank. This finds a statistically significant negative correlation between government size and economic growth. If governments are grouped according to their institutional quality, then the negative correlation between government size and economic growth is greater for governments of low quality. In other words, it does not matter too much whether Scandinavian governments, efficient and non-corrupt, are oversized, but government bloat matters a great deal in places like Italy, Greece and the Balkans.
The negative correlation between government size and economic growth correlates with some less sophisticated analysis I did a few years ago using OECD data, in which I found that slightly over half the variance between annual growth rates was explained by two factors: the size of government and its rate of growth – so that governments that were large and growing rapidly usually plunged their people into a pit of stagnation or even prolonged economic decline. Still, it’s nice to have my work confirmed by so august an institution as the ECB, especially as the ECB’s masters are themselves one of the world’s most intractable oversized bureaucracies.
We can draw two conclusions from the ECB research. First, the EU bureaucracy has especially bad institutional quality, compared to other governments. Its top officials are duplicated three or four times, it has almost no democratic accountability, and its decision-making is both corrupt and ideological, with very little attempt to serve the interests of its citizens. Hence the inexorable growth of EU government can be expected to have an especially large negative effect on European economic performance.
Second, and this is a more positive point, the belief of the EU leadership and most commentators in “stimulus” is cockeyed. The 2009 worldwide burst of government stimulus spending achieved almost nothing other than destabilizing the finances of many world governments; by enlarging government at the expense of the private sector it retarded rather than accelerated growth. Conversely the reversal of stimulus by fiscal tightening will be generally beneficial to economic growth, provided that tightening takes the form of reducing public expenditure. This is why the Irish fiscal tightening appears to be working, as is that in Portugal, while the fiscal tightening in Britain, which so far has taken the form mostly of tax increases, has had a detrimental effect. In Spain, the advent of a center-right government, together with presence of easy fiscal tightening targets in the spending excesses and costly environmental boondoggles of the previous government, should allow fiscal health to be restored fairly easily, given time and freedom from Brussels meddling.
Had Silvio Berlusconi been allowed to remain in power in Italy, fiscal tightening would also have taken the form primarily of reduction in public spending. Under the center-left career bureaucrat Mario Monti, it is taking the form primarily of tax surcharges on millionaires, both on income and on capital, Naturally, the principal effect of these will be capital flight and economic decline. That’s why apart from the hopeless Greece, Italy is now the country in most danger of default.
The bottom line on all this clear. Most of the peoples of Europe genuinely support the European ideal (this is less true in Britain.) However as Europe’s union has grown “ever closer” the Brussels bureaucracy has metastasized, duplicating its functions and becoming ever more Byzantine, corrupt and unaccountable. This in turn has put an ever growing burden on European economies, not simply from the cost of the bureaucrats themselves, but from the wasteful and economically counterproductive programs and regulations they devise. The EU public, asked to pay more and more in taxes to support a bureaucracy that is more and more corrupt and unaccountable and less and less in touch with their wishes, is nearing the point of open rebellion.
The new legislation, which will increase central bureaucratic control over budgets, taxation and fiscal policy and reduce still further the ability of European electorates to remove governments whose policies have failed or are contrary to their wishes, will cause unrest and dissension in most EU countries. Those with referendum provisions will attempt to circumvent those provisions, while those with parliamentary ratification procedures will find ratification of anything substantial very difficult, because of popular opposition. Already two governments, in Greece and Italy, have been removed by the EU bureaucracy and a third, the admirable Radičova government in Slovakia, has been destroyed by the need to fund the Greek bailout. That casualty list will be much longer before meaningful legislation providing for EU budgetary control is in place. Needless to say, it’s unlikely that markets will wait around for the snail-like pace of the EU legislative process, accompanied as it will be by successive government collapses throughout the EU.
In the months and years to come therefore, Britain, far from being isolated, may well find that the European Union, far from drawing “ever closer” is being pulled inexorably apart by the disconnect between an expansive bureaucratic Leviathan and the natural wishes of the European people to live in reasonable local autonomy, without excessive taxation and regulation. The EU was sold to its members as bringing prosperity, but in its current form it brings only economic decline. If we are lucky, Britain will find itself leading a pan-European movement to liberate the peoples of Europe from an EU bureaucracy grown monstrous. If we are not, the monster will win, and Europe will subside into a decline similar to that of the last years of the Soviet Union, with the magnificent economies of Germany and Scandinavia dragged down by endless cross-subsidization of a failure elsewhere that was not inevitable and by a bureaucratic monster whose appetite can never be assuaged.
For Britain, apart from encouraging fissiparous and anti-bureaucrat tendencies elsewhere in the EU, the main objective should be to tiptoe non-confrontationally towards membership of the European Economic Area (currently comprising Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and unofficially Switzerland). In such a status, Britain, while remaining in the Single European Market, would be bound by legislation over which it had no influence – but experience has surely by now shown that it has very little influence over EU legislation anyway. However EU control over British domestic institutions would be greatly lessened and the costs of membership reduced. Such a status would also give Britain flexibility. If the remaining countries of the EU succeeded in throwing off the Brussels bureaucracy, Britain would remain a member of an un-bureaucratic, low-cost Single Market. If on the other hand bureaucrat control tightened and the remaining EU become protectionist, impoverished and hostile, Britain could seek other relationships [NAFTA!] and would be not be dragged down by European failure.
The new EU treaty process, and the attempt to assert central fiscal control, has crystallized the position of both Britain and the EU as a whole. We should devoutly wish for its failure, and hope that both Britain and its EU friends and neighbors can gain greater freedom and prosperity thereby.
SOURCE
****************************
The profundity of Leftist ignorance
If Americans listen to Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and once thing is clear--he is a man who is extraordinarily ignorant of basic economics, how jobs are created, and he abhors the free market. Reid has just reminded Americans just how little he knows (and baneful Reid has become) when, on Monday, Reid announced on the floor of the Senate that “Millionaire job creators are like unicorns,”, “They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist.”
How silly! How delusional! How dunderheaded! How absolutely wrong!
Thousands upon thousands of jobs have been created by business owners across the United States and, while not all entrepreneurs are so fortunate, many become the "millionaires" that Harry Reid says he can't find. Having a great idea, forming a small business, working hard and watching it grow are, sadly, not part of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s knowledge base.
Reid simply doesn’t believe entrepreneurs exist. Worse yet, he goes out of his way to belittle and ridicule the very entrepreneurial spirit that has built America and made our nation so prosperous that he and his Democrat friends have ample opportunities to loot the wealth that others have created.
Reid's ignorance certainly explains why he and his fellow Democrats are so openly hostile to the business community and why they think only the government can create jobs. Yet, the real tragedy here is that Reid’s “unicorn” speech went largely unnoticed.
Small business owners create 3 out of every 4 jobs in this country. But, even after achieving success, the growth doesn't stop there. Business owners and entrepreneurs are responsible for helping others achieve business success through venture capital investing and Angel startup investing in thousands of small businesses across the country.
Ted Leonsis is a good example of a unicorn, a man who first worked and made millions (with AOL) then, re-invested those funds in new businesses (such as the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals sports franchises), then re-invested the fruits of those successes in countless small business technology startups, such as Groupon, Zipcar and Living Social. He created thousands of jobs in the process. Nor is Leonsis alone, for there are thousands of other unicorns just like him.
America is blessed with a vast network of , most of whom are wealthy people that are willing to provide an entrepreneur, the capital needed to help launch a business, build a product or service, and get it to market. Over 60,000 new businesses are launched each year in this way, creating millions of jobs in the process and serving as the engine to the American economy.
So why doesn't Harry Reid know this?
Why doesn't Harry Reid understand that what we are talking about is nothing other than the American dream?
It's a dream that has drawn countless millions to this country for centuries and is the reason why countless millions more desperately want to come to this country. It's a dream that with hard work, some tough days, weeks, months, maybe even years, with ingenuity and persistence, any good idea can become a business success.
True, this dream is not for everyone. Not everyone is willing to take risks. Not everyone is willing to sacrifice their time, their treasure, their youth to fulfilling the dream. Not everyone is willing to work fourteen hour days, seven days a week. Because, sometimes, that's what the dream takes. Nor is success guaranteed. And, there are many who try and fail. That's okay too, because the American Dream is simply the opportunity to try for the brass ring. No handouts. No guarantees. But still, Harry Reid thinks the American Dream is a myth.
So what does that tell you?
Yes, Harry Reid seems jaded and is willfully blind to the facts concerning small businesses, entrepreneurs and job creation. Reid is clearly ignorant of all the hundred of thousands of man hours that innovators and business owners have spent growing businesses that create the $14.5 trillion dollars of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for this country annually. And, it is the fruits of these "mythical" businesses that he, President Obama and others routinely shakedown for donations, and threaten, by passing arcane legislation, often in the middle of the night without much thought or debate, to make the job creator’s task even more difficult.
So what does that tell you?
First, that Americans should be concerned that someone so colossally ignorant and dangerous could rise so high in the Senate. Second, Reid's ridiculously obtuse statement shows that he is far more closely aligned with President Obama, and Democrat Marxist meanderings, because Obama doesn't believe in the American Dream either, and ridicules those who do.
Harry Reid believes that only government can create jobs and spur the economy. I know that he is wrong. And "yes, Virginia", you can thank your lucky stars that there are most certainly unicorns in America.
SOURCE
**************************
ELSEWHERE
NE: Judge rules for railroad in drug dispute: "U.S. border officials exceeded their authority when they imposed multimillion-dollar fines against Union Pacific Corp. for failing to discover illegal drugs in railcars that crossed into the country from Mexico, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon ordered the Department of Homeland Security to halt its fines against the Omaha-based railroad and stop seizing railroad equipment in drug smuggling that the company says was beyond its control."
Japan to buy US F-35 fighters for air force: "Japan's government on Tuesday selected the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter to bolster its aging air force, announcing it will buy a total of 42 aircraft under a multiyear deal. Japan has budgeted the cost of four fighters next fiscal year, which starts in April, said Noriyuki Shikata, deputy Cabinet secretary for public relations"
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity: "There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."
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)
****************************
Monday, December 19, 2011
A need for a new conservatism?
Some excerpts below from an article with which I disagree. There is a long history in conservative thought of respect for the individual and respect for individual liberty and that seems to me an ample foundation for opposing the Fascist instincts of Leftism and building a civil society. There has never been much of a conservative "philosophy" because none is needed. Cautious, humane and constructive instincts are all that is needed
The writer below also thinks that Leftists have a coherent guiding philosophy. He must not know much history. Fom Marx up until WWII, Leftists were enthusiastic antisemites, racists and eugenicists. Such views may still be in them deep down but it is far from what they now preach. Their only consistency is hunger for power over others
Modern conservatism grew up less as a return to first principles than as a reaction to the New Deal, the rise of Communism and an uneasy sense that a destructive social evolution was afoot driven by liberal intellectuals resident in increasingly powerful urban centers. Initially animated by fears over communist expansion, conservatism brought together free market economists, social traditionalists, state’s rights advocates, libertarians, anti-communists and others concerned that the original idea that was America was being lost in the headlong rush toward the implementation of the liberal schema through a vastly empowered federal government seeking control of the levers of American life.
It began to come into focus in the writings of William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and several others as they gave voice to those whose inchoate discomfort was beginning to turn into a real fear for the loss of the American ideal. But it was mainly reaction characterized aptly by Buckley’s formulation that it was conservatism’s purpose is to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop”.
It is simply not enough to define a political project by what it is against. It must be distinguished by what it proposes. Otherwise, it is amorphous and rudderless; its effort ad hoc and issue driven to no particular end. Because conservatives defined their ideology primarily in opposition rather than in affirmation, they missed the opportunity to develop an affirmative program geared toward reaching a goal instead of one whose mission was to dismantle that of its great adversary. This matters because if conservatives are only reactionary, they do not propose an organized program aimed at establishing something. Conservatism must not merely be a revanchist project.
The Left moves relentlessly toward a defined goal while the Right, when it has the electoral opportunity, merely stops the rate of Progressive change. But it does not legislate toward a goal because it has not adequately defined one. It is not enough to say one wants “smaller government” or “lower taxes” or “less regulation”. That does not define what government conservatives want, only what they do not want. They must describe their theory of government as government that “is”, not government that “isn’t”. They need to define a political philosophy as an affirmative project that sets forth the basis for government; its legitimate functions, its purposes and its scope.
More HERE
***********************
Government price fixing: health care edition
There's a very interesting recent paper which shows that the US health care system expensive as it is, is expensive because of government price fixing:
But something quite different seems to have happened. A big part of the story is that providers can choose from a number of different cardiac treatments, some of which are more expensive than others. PPS encouraged them to focus on the treatments where the marginal cost — the cost of providing one more treatment, in this case — fell below the average cost, even if there are more cost-effective treatments available. Kim suggests that PPS may account for one of the most distinctive aspects of the U.S. health system — our extraordinary overreliance on costly treatments.
In short, the bureaucrats fixed the prices for a specific treatment but left the doctors and hospitals free to choose an expensive specific treatment over a cheap one. With the obvious effect that everyone now gets the most expensive possible treatment for whatever condition it is that they have.
Now one could argue that having the wise, those in government (it is to laugh again!), fixing the prices right this time would beat that problem. That is, in part, a bet that your average drone at the UK Department of Health is cleverer than your average drone at the US equivalent: good luck with that one.
But the real answer to that is that it isn't in fact possible to calculate, in the absence of a market, what is the correct price. For as Hayek pointed out, the whole thing is just too complex for that: the market is what we have to use to calculate the correct price. Thus it is impossible for the wise governors (titter) to ever get the price right: which is why we don't want them setting prices.
I'm perfectly happy for there to be government involvement in health care. I can see a valid place for social insurance, I'm entirely fine with tax-financed health care of some kind. But in order to get the right amount of the best of it we're going to have to let the idiocy of the interaction of the marketplace replace all those very clever people in offices setting the prices for us.
SOURCE
****************************
Obama’s NIH Stimulus Program: $390,000 Per Job ‘Created Or Saved’
The stimulus gave about $8.2 billion to the National Institutes of Health to be used for grants to universities and other research institutions.
The Government Accountability Office released a report today examining “the number of full-time equivalent (FTEs) jobs supported by NIH Recovery Act funds.” By June 2011, about 21,000 FTEs were supported by the funds. Divide $8.2 billion by 21,000, and that comes to about $390,000 per job.
And these figures don’t just reflect jobs created. They also include jobs that were “saved.”
The GAO also conducted a select sample of 50 grantees. Of those, only 29% said the funds “supported jobs that did not exist prior to receiving NIH funding.” 54% replied that the funds “supported jobs that existed prior to receiving NIH funding.” (The other 17% did not respond to that question.)
Those 50 grantees received about $911 million in stimulus funds and “created or saved” 2,365 jobs. Doing the division reveals that to be about $385,000 per job.
So, who says that the clean-energy sector is inefficient? As a prior Capital Hill analysis pointed out, the Obama Administration’s grants for green jobs came to only $135,294 per job!
On the other hand, the NIH’s heftier price tag might be worth it. So far, no Solyndra-like scandal has emerged from these grants. So far ...
SOURCE
*************************
Economics Reporter from New York Times Has Accidental Encounter with Reality, Learns Nothing
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the person Obama put in charge of Medicare made some very interesting observations about prices, competition, and markets, but then drew exactly the wrong conclusion about what was needed to solve the third-party payer problem in health care.
We now have another example of someone producing very good information and then failing to learn the obvious lesson. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times wrote about how politicians used to be much more willing to increases taxes.
She obviously wants readers to conclude that bad, mean, wicked Republicans are being too dogmatic because they won’t agree to big tax hikes. But the chart she prepared tells a completely different story. The only budget agreement that actually produced a balanced budget was the 1997 deal, and that deal contained tax cuts rather than tax increases!
But don’t believe me. Look at her chart.
I suppose I also should say that her chart is misleading because it accepts the dishonest Washington definition that a “spending cut” occurs any time politicians increase spending by less than previously planned.
And even if one uses that dishonest definition, the make-believe spending cuts usually evaporate very rapidly. The tax increases, unfortunately, are far more durable. And the net result is higher spending and oftentimes more red ink.
But even with those two big methodological shortcomings, her chart is a strong argument that tax increases don’t work.
SOURCE
************************
Regulations FROM Dummies
Quick question: What is the most obvious thing keeping us from an economic recovery led by job creation? If you answered the increasingly burdensome mountain regulatory red tape from the government, you’d be in the heavy majority of the country who thinks that way as well. If you were to ask the current White House the same question, you’d get a completely different answer (and a list of excuses, blames, and finger pointing).
In a fantastic article this week in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Regulation for Dummies”, the Journal takes a look at the evidence of whether costly, job killing regulations have indeed increased during this Administration or not. (Hint: The answer is YES!)
This is not a shock or surprise to small business owners like myself or the millions of others around the country. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and historically have been where most job creation happens, when we are crushed by over regulation we can’t afford to expand or hire more people. To quote from the Journal:
If you only listened to the President or his top staff give speeches or media interviews, you would walk away convinced that they all understand that you can’t have a serious jobs recovery when Big Government is in the way. But if you follow the news stories out of the NLRB, EPA, HHS, Commerce Dept. or any other part of the Administration, you would see job-crushing regulations emanating at a unprecedented pace. As the Journal eloquently puts it, “Mr. Obama can claim he is the progressive second coming of Teddy Roosevelt as he did in Kansas last week, or he can claim to be a regulatory minimalist, but not both. The facts show he's the former.”
The President can reference Teddy Roosevelt all he wants in his speeches, but to quote Teddy Roosevelt, “Actions speak louder than words.” If this Administration were serious about real jobs recovery and real economic growth, they would be acting to decrease regulations, cut spending, and offering small business friendly reforms.
Final question: Why does the Administration talk one way and act another? The answer is unfortunately bought and paid for by Big Labor. The President’s re-election hopes hinge on convincing the public he is in agreement with them on the problems, while satisfying the demands of Big Labor to keep their money coming in.
SOURCE
****************************
U.S. to leave Iraqi airspace clear for strategic Israeli route to Iran
The U.S. military’s fast-approaching Dec. 31 exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better place strategically to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iraq has yet to assemble a force of jet fighters, and since the shortest route for Israeli strike fighters to Iran is through Iraqi airspace, observers conclude that the U.S. exit makes the Jewish state’s mission planning a lot easier.
Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Iraqi military will maintain radars to monitor the country’s airspace, but it has not taken possession of American F-16s to guard that space.
“The country has a capable and improving capability to see the airspace, a viable system to provide command and control, but no system to defeat incoming air threats until it gets either the F-16s or ground-based systems or, optimally, some of both,” Gen. Buchanan told The Washington Times.
Iraq made the first payment in September for 18 F-16s that will not arrive until next fall at the earliest. This means Israel would have a theoretical window of about 12 months if it wants to fly over Iraq unimpeded by the Iraqi air force.
Retired Air ForceGen. Thomas McInerney, who advocates a U.S. strategic bombing raid to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites, agreed that Iraq’s open airspace would make it easier for an Israeli mission.
“Yes, it will be,” he said. “However, it will be much easier for Iranian forces to get to Israel through Iraq via land and air.”
Gen. McInerney said he thinks there is a good chance that Iran, stretched economically by Western sanctions and fearing threats from Israel, will launch a war against the Jewish state through Iraq.
SOURCE
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Do we need big government?: "Federal-government spending now consumes roughly a quarter of all the goods and services produced in this country over the course of a year. Throw in state- and local-government spending, and it’s more than a third. And, according the Congressional Budget Office, unless there is a drastic change in our current policies, we are on course for government to consume nearly 60 percent of GDP by mid-century. And President Obama believes that government is still too small?"
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)
****************************
Some excerpts below from an article with which I disagree. There is a long history in conservative thought of respect for the individual and respect for individual liberty and that seems to me an ample foundation for opposing the Fascist instincts of Leftism and building a civil society. There has never been much of a conservative "philosophy" because none is needed. Cautious, humane and constructive instincts are all that is needed
The writer below also thinks that Leftists have a coherent guiding philosophy. He must not know much history. Fom Marx up until WWII, Leftists were enthusiastic antisemites, racists and eugenicists. Such views may still be in them deep down but it is far from what they now preach. Their only consistency is hunger for power over others
Modern conservatism grew up less as a return to first principles than as a reaction to the New Deal, the rise of Communism and an uneasy sense that a destructive social evolution was afoot driven by liberal intellectuals resident in increasingly powerful urban centers. Initially animated by fears over communist expansion, conservatism brought together free market economists, social traditionalists, state’s rights advocates, libertarians, anti-communists and others concerned that the original idea that was America was being lost in the headlong rush toward the implementation of the liberal schema through a vastly empowered federal government seeking control of the levers of American life.
It began to come into focus in the writings of William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk and several others as they gave voice to those whose inchoate discomfort was beginning to turn into a real fear for the loss of the American ideal. But it was mainly reaction characterized aptly by Buckley’s formulation that it was conservatism’s purpose is to stand “athwart history, yelling Stop”.
It is simply not enough to define a political project by what it is against. It must be distinguished by what it proposes. Otherwise, it is amorphous and rudderless; its effort ad hoc and issue driven to no particular end. Because conservatives defined their ideology primarily in opposition rather than in affirmation, they missed the opportunity to develop an affirmative program geared toward reaching a goal instead of one whose mission was to dismantle that of its great adversary. This matters because if conservatives are only reactionary, they do not propose an organized program aimed at establishing something. Conservatism must not merely be a revanchist project.
The Left moves relentlessly toward a defined goal while the Right, when it has the electoral opportunity, merely stops the rate of Progressive change. But it does not legislate toward a goal because it has not adequately defined one. It is not enough to say one wants “smaller government” or “lower taxes” or “less regulation”. That does not define what government conservatives want, only what they do not want. They must describe their theory of government as government that “is”, not government that “isn’t”. They need to define a political philosophy as an affirmative project that sets forth the basis for government; its legitimate functions, its purposes and its scope.
More HERE
***********************
Government price fixing: health care edition
There's a very interesting recent paper which shows that the US health care system expensive as it is, is expensive because of government price fixing:
This raises the question of what exactly changed in the 1980s. Daeho Kim, a graduate student at Brown University, offers a provocative hypothesis in a new working paper. As Kim explains, a 1983 Medicare reform created the prospective payment system, or PPS, which offered fixed reimbursements for the use of a medical technology. If a physician decides to use bypass surgery as a cardiac treatment, she won’t be paid on the basis of what it cost her to perform the surgery. Instead, she’ll be paid the national average cost. This way, there is a strong incentive to beat the national average cost of performing bypass surgeries, thus lowering, in theory, systemwide costs.
But something quite different seems to have happened. A big part of the story is that providers can choose from a number of different cardiac treatments, some of which are more expensive than others. PPS encouraged them to focus on the treatments where the marginal cost — the cost of providing one more treatment, in this case — fell below the average cost, even if there are more cost-effective treatments available. Kim suggests that PPS may account for one of the most distinctive aspects of the U.S. health system — our extraordinary overreliance on costly treatments.
In short, the bureaucrats fixed the prices for a specific treatment but left the doctors and hospitals free to choose an expensive specific treatment over a cheap one. With the obvious effect that everyone now gets the most expensive possible treatment for whatever condition it is that they have.
Now one could argue that having the wise, those in government (it is to laugh again!), fixing the prices right this time would beat that problem. That is, in part, a bet that your average drone at the UK Department of Health is cleverer than your average drone at the US equivalent: good luck with that one.
But the real answer to that is that it isn't in fact possible to calculate, in the absence of a market, what is the correct price. For as Hayek pointed out, the whole thing is just too complex for that: the market is what we have to use to calculate the correct price. Thus it is impossible for the wise governors (titter) to ever get the price right: which is why we don't want them setting prices.
I'm perfectly happy for there to be government involvement in health care. I can see a valid place for social insurance, I'm entirely fine with tax-financed health care of some kind. But in order to get the right amount of the best of it we're going to have to let the idiocy of the interaction of the marketplace replace all those very clever people in offices setting the prices for us.
SOURCE
****************************
Obama’s NIH Stimulus Program: $390,000 Per Job ‘Created Or Saved’
The stimulus gave about $8.2 billion to the National Institutes of Health to be used for grants to universities and other research institutions.
The Government Accountability Office released a report today examining “the number of full-time equivalent (FTEs) jobs supported by NIH Recovery Act funds.” By June 2011, about 21,000 FTEs were supported by the funds. Divide $8.2 billion by 21,000, and that comes to about $390,000 per job.
And these figures don’t just reflect jobs created. They also include jobs that were “saved.”
The GAO also conducted a select sample of 50 grantees. Of those, only 29% said the funds “supported jobs that did not exist prior to receiving NIH funding.” 54% replied that the funds “supported jobs that existed prior to receiving NIH funding.” (The other 17% did not respond to that question.)
Those 50 grantees received about $911 million in stimulus funds and “created or saved” 2,365 jobs. Doing the division reveals that to be about $385,000 per job.
So, who says that the clean-energy sector is inefficient? As a prior Capital Hill analysis pointed out, the Obama Administration’s grants for green jobs came to only $135,294 per job!
On the other hand, the NIH’s heftier price tag might be worth it. So far, no Solyndra-like scandal has emerged from these grants. So far ...
SOURCE
*************************
Economics Reporter from New York Times Has Accidental Encounter with Reality, Learns Nothing
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the person Obama put in charge of Medicare made some very interesting observations about prices, competition, and markets, but then drew exactly the wrong conclusion about what was needed to solve the third-party payer problem in health care.
We now have another example of someone producing very good information and then failing to learn the obvious lesson. Catherine Rampell of the New York Times wrote about how politicians used to be much more willing to increases taxes.
She obviously wants readers to conclude that bad, mean, wicked Republicans are being too dogmatic because they won’t agree to big tax hikes. But the chart she prepared tells a completely different story. The only budget agreement that actually produced a balanced budget was the 1997 deal, and that deal contained tax cuts rather than tax increases!
But don’t believe me. Look at her chart.
I suppose I also should say that her chart is misleading because it accepts the dishonest Washington definition that a “spending cut” occurs any time politicians increase spending by less than previously planned.
And even if one uses that dishonest definition, the make-believe spending cuts usually evaporate very rapidly. The tax increases, unfortunately, are far more durable. And the net result is higher spending and oftentimes more red ink.
But even with those two big methodological shortcomings, her chart is a strong argument that tax increases don’t work.
SOURCE
************************
Regulations FROM Dummies
Quick question: What is the most obvious thing keeping us from an economic recovery led by job creation? If you answered the increasingly burdensome mountain regulatory red tape from the government, you’d be in the heavy majority of the country who thinks that way as well. If you were to ask the current White House the same question, you’d get a completely different answer (and a list of excuses, blames, and finger pointing).
In a fantastic article this week in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Regulation for Dummies”, the Journal takes a look at the evidence of whether costly, job killing regulations have indeed increased during this Administration or not. (Hint: The answer is YES!)
This is not a shock or surprise to small business owners like myself or the millions of others around the country. Small businesses are the backbone of the economy and historically have been where most job creation happens, when we are crushed by over regulation we can’t afford to expand or hire more people. To quote from the Journal:
The evidence is overwhelming that the Obama regulatory surge is one reason the current economic recovery has been so lackluster by historical standards. Rather than nurture an economy trying to rebuild confidence after a financial heart attack, the Administration pushed through its now-famous blitz of liberal policies on health care, financial services, energy, housing, education and student loans, telecom, labor relations, transportation and probably some other industries we've forgotten. Anyone who thinks this has only minimal impact on business has never been in business.
If you only listened to the President or his top staff give speeches or media interviews, you would walk away convinced that they all understand that you can’t have a serious jobs recovery when Big Government is in the way. But if you follow the news stories out of the NLRB, EPA, HHS, Commerce Dept. or any other part of the Administration, you would see job-crushing regulations emanating at a unprecedented pace. As the Journal eloquently puts it, “Mr. Obama can claim he is the progressive second coming of Teddy Roosevelt as he did in Kansas last week, or he can claim to be a regulatory minimalist, but not both. The facts show he's the former.”
The President can reference Teddy Roosevelt all he wants in his speeches, but to quote Teddy Roosevelt, “Actions speak louder than words.” If this Administration were serious about real jobs recovery and real economic growth, they would be acting to decrease regulations, cut spending, and offering small business friendly reforms.
Final question: Why does the Administration talk one way and act another? The answer is unfortunately bought and paid for by Big Labor. The President’s re-election hopes hinge on convincing the public he is in agreement with them on the problems, while satisfying the demands of Big Labor to keep their money coming in.
SOURCE
****************************
U.S. to leave Iraqi airspace clear for strategic Israeli route to Iran
The U.S. military’s fast-approaching Dec. 31 exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better place strategically to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iraq has yet to assemble a force of jet fighters, and since the shortest route for Israeli strike fighters to Iran is through Iraqi airspace, observers conclude that the U.S. exit makes the Jewish state’s mission planning a lot easier.
Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Iraqi military will maintain radars to monitor the country’s airspace, but it has not taken possession of American F-16s to guard that space.
“The country has a capable and improving capability to see the airspace, a viable system to provide command and control, but no system to defeat incoming air threats until it gets either the F-16s or ground-based systems or, optimally, some of both,” Gen. Buchanan told The Washington Times.
Iraq made the first payment in September for 18 F-16s that will not arrive until next fall at the earliest. This means Israel would have a theoretical window of about 12 months if it wants to fly over Iraq unimpeded by the Iraqi air force.
Retired Air ForceGen. Thomas McInerney, who advocates a U.S. strategic bombing raid to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites, agreed that Iraq’s open airspace would make it easier for an Israeli mission.
“Yes, it will be,” he said. “However, it will be much easier for Iranian forces to get to Israel through Iraq via land and air.”
Gen. McInerney said he thinks there is a good chance that Iran, stretched economically by Western sanctions and fearing threats from Israel, will launch a war against the Jewish state through Iraq.
SOURCE
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Do we need big government?: "Federal-government spending now consumes roughly a quarter of all the goods and services produced in this country over the course of a year. Throw in state- and local-government spending, and it’s more than a third. And, according the Congressional Budget Office, unless there is a drastic change in our current policies, we are on course for government to consume nearly 60 percent of GDP by mid-century. And President Obama believes that government is still too small?"
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
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