Wednesday, June 10. 2009
We posted Klavan's Why are Conservatives so Mean? video last week, which was very much based on de Tocqueville.
Samuel Gregg in the Phila Bulletin notes that this is the 150th anniversary of de T's death. A quote from his piece Despotism - The Soft Way:
For all their love of liberty, de Tocqueville stated, “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
Democracy, de Tocqueville argued, encouraged this fixation with equality because it requires people to relate to each other through the medium of democratic equality. This encourages us first to ignore, then to dislike, and finally to seek to reduce all differences that contradict this equality — particularly wealth disparities.
This is key to what de Tocqueville considered democracy’s tendency to “soft despotism.” Democratic despotism, de Tocqueville thought, would rarely be violent. Instead, it would amount to a Faustian bargain between the political class and the citizens. He predicted that “an immense protective power” might assume all responsibility for everyone’s happiness — provided this power remained “sole agent and judge of it.” This power would “resemble parental authority” and attempt to keep people “in perpetual childhood” by relieving them “from all the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living.”
Is America on the road to comfortable servility? “The American Republic,” de Tocqueville wrote, “will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” Since Roosevelt’s New Deal, America has slowly drifted toward a political economy of soft despotism. Despite the Reagan Revolution, the trend-lines of government-spending and intervention have been in the anti-liberty direction. Entire constituencies of people now exist who regularly support politicians who promise that, in return for their votes, their entitlements (corporate-welfare, bailouts for those “too big to fail,” the old-fashioned welfare state, etc.) will be maintained and increased.
The problem is that governments can only tax-and-spend so much before incentives to wealth-creation (as opposed to wealth-transfers) begin disappearing.
92% of labor unions’ political contributions have gone to Democrats since 1990. The unions are slated to get another payoff from Congressional Democrats’ proposed health care legislation.
Senator Max Baucus, lead on the legislation in Congress, the Washington Post reports, “told reporters that taxing employer-provided benefits is ‘perhaps the best way to raise money for an overhaul of the health-care system’ and offered details about the form that tax is likely to take.”
Among the details: “And it would be likely to ‘grandfather’ in health benefits set as part of a collective-bargaining agreement, he said, allowing union plans to remain tax-free until new contracts can be negotiated.”
This is in contrast to the contractual rights of bondholders in the heavily unionized auto industry being overridden (not “negotiated”), and unions given a disproportionate share of the reorganized companies to support their comparatively lavish health care benefits. The priority of unions and their bought Democrat legislators will be to preserve their overly large piece of the pie in such “negotiations.”
The latest count from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has 7.6% of private industry workers as members of unions, and 36.8% of public sector workers. Their often gilt-edged health care coverage is to be given higher protection than that of non-unionized workers. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics also reports, as USA Today relates:
Public employees earned benefits worth an average of $13.38 an hour in December 2008, the latest available data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says. Private-sector workers got $7.98 an hour.
Overall, total compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour — $11.90 more than in private business. In 2007, the gap in wages and benefits was $11.31.
The gap has been expanding because of the increasing value of public employee benefits. Last year, government benefits rose three times more than those in the private sector: up 69 cents an hour for civil servants, 23 cents for private workers.
Labor costs account for about half of state and local spending, according to BLS and Census data. Benefits consume a growing share of that, now 34%.
The rest of the two-thirds of the population under age 65 with employer-provided health insurance be darned, sayeth the Democrats with the union label.
While your reading, don't miss Ed Morrissey on Big Labor's Fiscal Insolvency, just desserts for where they're taking the rest of us.
If anyone deserves it, he does. From his speech:
... there should be a special award for Fox News. Fox has done a great service to the American polity -- single-handedly breaking up the intellectual and ideological monopoly that for decades exerted hegemony (to use a favorite lefty cliché) over the broadcast media.
I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting -- half the American people. The reason Fox News has thrived and grown is because it offers a vibrant and honest alternative to those who could not abide yet another day of the news delivered to them beneath layer after layer of often undisguised liberalism.
What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.
A few years ago, I was on a radio show with a well-known political reporter who lamented the loss of a pristine past in which the whole country could agree on what the facts were, even if they disagreed on how to interpret and act upon them. All that was gone now. The country had become so fractured we couldn't even agree on what reality was. What she meant was that the day in which the front page of The New York Times was given scriptural authority everywhere was gone, shattered by the rise of Fox News.
What left me slack-jawed was the fact that she, like the cohort of mainstream journalists she represented so perfectly, was so ideologically blinkered that she could not fathom the plain fact that the liberal media were presenting the news and the world through a particular lens. The idea that it was particular, and that there might be competing ones, perhaps even superior ones, was beyond her ken.
That's why Fox News is so resented.
The ethical case for boycotting GM and Chrysler. A quote:
The UAW was a major reason why the companies hit the wall, and now the UAW will be rewarded with major control and ownership. It is as if a rape victim were forced to marry her rapist. The result makes the crony capitalism we saw in Russia look clean by comparison; it, at least, was a kind of capitalism.
This situation is ethically repugnant form every perspective.
These folks waste no space on lawn, and seem to plant every spare inch except for grassy paths. But who does the weeding?
Tuesday, June 9. 2009
It's tough for doctors because we are often held responsible for people who either do not want, or do not accept, our help and advice. But, as long as their name remains on our rolls and as long as we persist in trying to be constructive, the lawyers can get us.
I have been burned several times by keeping them on the rolls in the charity clinic, only to be sued by them eventually for not doing a better job "taking care of them." What? I am not a professional mother and I do not "take care of" anybody. I am a doctor, not a caretaker and, despite the modern lingo, not a "care-giver" either.
Like all doctors, I try to work with my patients - and do not take care of them, or I to try to bring them around to where I can work with them.
If I were more self-protective, I would not even try and would just say "I cannot help you. Good bye," but that is not my medical tradition. My medical tradition is that you are a friend to your patients, whoever they are.
Novalis presents such a case. More practical docs than I am would just throw them out of the office. However, after being punished and hassled legally several times by going the extra mile, my heart grows harder.
Indeed, good deeds often are punished and yes, it does lead to some bitterness especially when it is performed on a charity basis. I have never been sued or hassled by a private, self-paying patient.
 John Quincy Adams, at Anchoress. Remarkable to me that we have a photo of him, in old age. Young country we have here.
Guy started spying during Carter, but they blame Bush anyway. Just one more greedy, money-hungry Leftist.
I cannot believe the Brits take this sort of thing lying down. What's the matter with them? How did our bold ancestors become so limp? Is it the food? They are becoming an embarassment to their descendents by behaving as if they have no penises.
Why doesn't she just admit that she enjoyed it? They raped me respectfully. There are none so blind...
Jobs "saved or created"? Pure BS, and everybody except the press knows it.
Obama to American businesses: Drop dead. A quote:
... last week, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer came to Washington to announce what Microsoft would do if Obama’s multinational tax policy is enacted.
“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said, “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S.” If Microsoft, perhaps our most competitive company, has to abandon the U.S. in order to continue to thrive, who exactly is going to stay?
At issue is Obama’s policy to end the deferral of multinational taxation.
The U.S. now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan among industrialized countries. That rate is so high that U.S. firms have an enormous disadvantage versus competitors. The average corporate tax rate for the major developed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 2008 was about 27 percent, more than 10 percentage points lower than the U.S. rate.
How Sociology majors destroy the world. SDA
Newt: The O has already failed. But he is so groovy.
How do you decide which minorities get affirmative action, and which do not? Betsy
China wants US debt in yuan, not dollars. Stupid they are not.
Very cool econo-graphs
The O graciously noted that the Americans on D-Day "did not behave dishonorably." WTH?
Does GM=Amtrak? We love Amtrak, but we dislike those subsidies.
Thinking vs doing in medicine. DB's Medical Rants
Who says we can't deport the illegals? Apparently we can when we want to.
Flunking history in Cairo: Almost every advance he attributed to the Muslims in his big speech should be credited to someone else.
But the whole purpose was to butter them up, I suppose.
 A few easy-growing salad (and I hate salad - rabbit food) greens for the garden that even I enjoy. I would never use these things in a mixed green salad, because you lose the flavor and character of the individual thing.
These are greens that you can plant every two or three weeks during the spring and summer, and harvest small and tender. Some of them will grow back after harvesting the leaves. They are often commercially grown hydroponically these days.
My favorite is Mache (aka Corn Salad), a sweet, tender mayonnaise-tasting leaf
Frisee, a member of the Chickory family. Bitter, tangy, crunchy: good to precede a game meal, grilled lamb, or steak. Never salad with the main course, in our view, unless it's a buffet, because salad dressing messes up the flavors of the main course.
Garden Cress, a member of the Mustard family. Sort of like Watercress.
Dandelion. Spicey with a bit of crunch.
Arugula. The strange kerosene flavor grows on you. Just try to ignore the fact that Liberals like it.
Is dating for adults only? Dating may be obsolete for the horny, thoughtless kids who just want to get into bed right away to accommodate their raging hormones and to find their animal pleasures, but married people still date all the time to maintain their relationships. From the piece on modern "relationships" (h/t, Insty)
"Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing," says 25-year-old Elizabeth Welsh, who graduated from college in 2005 and now lives in Boston. She says that among her friends, dating is a joke. "Going out on a date to dinner and a movie? It's so cliche — isn't that funny?"
From Dick Morris: Here comes medical rationing:
Now that the cameras have been put away and the media is no longer watching, their secret emerges: They are going to cut medical costs by cutting medical care. Right now, they cite four targets. They plan to:
1. Cut diagnostic imaging tests like MRIs and CAT scans.
2. Reduce the use of antibiotics.
3. Perform fewer Caesarean sections.
4. Cut care for management of chronic back pain
These decisions will not be medical but financial. They will not be based on a doctor’s opinion of what his or her patient needs, but a bureaucrat’s and an accountant s opinion of what the new health care system can afford.
Related: Obama's health care cost illusion. WSJ
Related: If you can save 30%, why not start with Medicare?
Related: Obamacare is like RomneyCare - sign up or get fined. Ace
Related: Neoneo suspects that they don't believe a word they are saying about costs, and I agree with that.
My opinion? I think much of medical "wasted spending" is to avoid lawsuits. "Please tell the jury, Doctor, why you didn't bother to get an MRI for Mrs. Jones' heachaches?" "Please tell the jury, Doctor, why you decided to do this when some recent studies show bla bla bla." In the end, "wasteful medical spending" is always the spending on somebody else - not on yourself.
Short growing season up here. Ours are just getting going, but I already have some blossoms. Please do not tell me what you have in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri. Fact is, I do like it here despite the high taxes and the short growing season.
We do not even bother with the Beefsteaks and Beefmasters. No point to it. Lucky to get a decent harvest of them before the first frost. Big Boys work, though, and they are OK. Each one of my plants is a different variety. I like the pear-shaped mini yellows, the orange ones, the sweet millions, the Big Boys and the Big Girls, etc etc.
Monday, June 8. 2009
 Of course I remember.
AVI wants some help remembering old 'Gansett commercials.
'Gansett, Knickerbocker, Rheingold, Piel's - I do recall them all. We are now just left with watery old Rolling Rock and the delicious Ballantine Ale - if you can find it.
The Maggie's Farm cafeteria refuses to serve fancy beers for breakfast or lunch, because beer ain't sposta be fancy (good stuff like Guiness is different - it's a meal, not a beer - and even more so if you stir one or two raw eggs into a pint for breakfast like they do in Ireland).
Wine is another matter.
A fun theory says modern humans are all about the home-cooked meal.
Make mine barbecued short ribs with sides of cheese grits and cucumber slaw, and a few Rolling Rocks.
 A Connecticut moral crusader and the YMCA.
I guess the Y has seen some changes over the years. A quote from the essay:
He might be grimly amused to see twenty-first-century social conservatives making their last stand over the odd issue of “same-sex marriage.”
And he would certainly conclude that he now stood in a very different country.
Old expression: If you want a friend (on Wall Street, in politics, etc), get a dog.
 Mnemosyne was impregnated by Zeus for nine consecutive nights, thus producing the nine muses. Among other things, she was a goddess of memory.
The number of muses increased over time from the original three. Poetic license and creeping specialization. I had been looking up Euterpe, the muse of music and of lyric poetry, called "the giver of delight." The muse of song, but got sidetracked on the general topic of the Muses.
I posted briefly on inspiration the other day, and we had "Sing, Goddess..." recently. It remains fascinating to me that our mental creations seem to come from "elsewhere," to the extent that we can imagine that they come from a supernatural source.
In my line of work, we say that such things come from the "preconscious" or the "unconscious," but that's not much different from saying they are gifts of a Muse.
Whenever a preacher says "May the words of my mouth, and the thoughts and meditations of my heart, be acceptable to You," he or she is echoing the classical plea to the Muses. Our civilization remains a Greek one.
This site tries to personalize the Muses.
Image is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Mnemosyne (1881)
The right side of the blogosphere is playing checkers, and the Democrats are playing Kill the Man With the Ball.
Roger de Hauteville, King of Sicily, at Maggie's Farm
Re BD's post on Rose Aphids yesterday: The reason you have them this year, BD, is probably because you over-fertilized them during a very wet and rainy Spring which resulted in an over-abundance of the soft, succulent growing tips which aphids love to suck on. But I could be wrong.
 Image on right via Driscoll's Newsweek meets Muggeridge's Law
From space biz to govt: Get out of our way
By far, America's best-selling vehicle
No sign of housing recovery yet
The effects of the proposed Weather Tax. Just the most recent excuse for another tax on the American economy to expand government's dominion over our lives. Governments are power-sponges, and I do not know why. Perhaps it's about their job security, since they probably can't do anything else.
Why would they blame Harvard for this? Sheesh. All Harvard did was to give her the chance of a lifetime, and she acted like a normal teenaged idiot.
Like we predicted: Stimulus Bill officially a failure. But not really, since its real purpose was election pay-off.
Related: George Will gets it -
The administration is determined to prop up GM as a jobs program for the UAW and Midwestern states rich in electoral votes. This frenzy will intensify as the administration's decisions deepen the debacle.
Propaganda or Economics? Elizabeth Warren and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Utterly Misleading Bankruptcy Study
The Kennedy bill would force employers to pay for medical insurance. More on the Dems' medical care plans, and how they want to pay for it (we will pay for it, of course). Their plan is to subsidize this "insurance" with tax dollars in order to drive private insurors out of business, and to reimburse docs and dentists and hospitals at Medicare rates - which will drive them out of business. I would term this a very aggressive Socialist plan to politicize medical care and to place medical care completely in the hands of the government, with their expert, cost-conscious panels deciding what you can do based on the data du jour and cost-effectiveness. By the way, this is "insurance" in name only - it's supposed to pay all of your medical expenses. That ain't insurance - it's an entitlement.
Anchoress:
Even Vanity Fair understands that the press is nothing to the man they love, but a bunch of useful idiots.
VDH via SISU:
In short, Obama reminds me a little of myself — at 26. I had left the farm for 9 years to get a BA in classics, PhD in classical philology, and live in Athens for two years of archaeological study — all on scholarships … I had forgotten much of the culture of the farm where I spent years 1-18.
Then after the requisite degrees I left academia, and returned to farm 180 acres with my brother and cousin — and sadly was quickly disabused of the world of the faculty lounge.
Cornell West's prophetic public intellectualism
 Via the IMF: Where Does the Public Sector End and the Private Sector Begin?;
Summary: The boundary between the public and private sectors can be defined on the basis of ownership of institutional units. Nonmarket government-owned entities and corporations that are owned or controlled by government units belong to the public sector. “Economic ownership” is more important than majority ownership. Joint ventures, public-private partnerships, and social insurance funds (including for public employees) can be unambiguously allocated to the public or private sector on the basis of international public sector accounting standards. Boundary problems within the public sector are just as acute as those between the public and private sectors, mainly because of ambiguities in distinguishing “market” from “nonmarket” activities.
From Peter Robinson at Forbes:
May I ask a question? Where does President Barack Obama's agenda come from?
Just a generation ago, you will recall, Reagan revitalized the nation, and then the Soviet Union, long calcified and staggering, at last collapsed. Free markets were good; statism, futile. Didn't everybody learn that lesson? Didn't it prove, in some utterly basic way, decisive?
I repeat, where does Obama's agenda come from?
Charles Kesler knows the answer.
The most troubling aspect of international security for the United States is not the killing power of our immediate enemies, which remains modest in historical terms, but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay any price and bear any burden” to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets and acceptable casualties—hostile, civilian and our own—continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves.
Lower photo from I Suck at Golf, via Theo, I think
Sunday, June 7. 2009
For biographical reasons, this tune brings me back to the Kentucky Bluegrass. This is from 1991:
 They say that fully healthy roses cannot be harmed by aphid infestations, and that may be true. However, we do not live in an ideal world, and it makes no sense to go out on strike until it appears.
We have abundant Rose Aphids this spring, but haven't seen them for the past few years.
We mix liquid dish soap at the rate of 1 tbsp/gallon in spray bottles, and spray the roses, especially their succulent tips, with it. Dead aphids by the thousands, without poisoning anything else. The surfactant suffocates the buggers. I brush off any Ladybugs first.
Mrs. BD claims that she is waterboarding them to death.
One treatment ought to do it. Best done before the first bloom. Had to do it today.
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I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug, and Terminally Self-Righteous
