We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
There are many small ways of being quietly and undramatically herioc in life, short of going into combat. It's heroic, in a sense, for an agoraphobic to go to the store, for a drunk to go to AA, or for a man to do an unpleasant job his whole life to take care of his family.
Heather MacDonald has fun with the OWS people (who seem to be slowly getting less coverage and interest - and cold rainy Octobers are not fun times to sleep in a park) at City Journal: Get a Job! Working is (usually) more admirable than protesting. She begins:
Why is a month-long slumber party in a public park more heroic or newsworthy than getting up daily and going to work? “I’ve been here a week and I’m lovin’ every minute of it,” a jagged-toothed, self-described vet leaning against a planter in Zuccotti Park told me on Sunday. One of the biggest decisions that he and his fellow occupiers have to make each day is whether to eat vegan or to scarf down some saturated animal fats in the Dunkin’ Donuts that regularly make the rounds, thanks to the bounteous food donations that pour into the park on an hourly basis. (The most critical decision, of course, is which local establishment to invade for your sanitary needs.)
I am deeply concerned about a risk for obesity and constipation among these heroic protesters. Read the whole, amusing thing, and realize that this is a sort of lark for these people, a vacation from real life, party time in the guise of socio-political importance.
As he points out, this nonsense led indirectly to the terrible child abuse "hidden memory" epidemic which destroyed many peoples' lives before finally being fully discredited.
Liberalism has been unable to decide whether it is for or against more democracy for nearly a century now, ever since it underwent a radical transformation from a creed believing that advancing the cause of individual liberty meant limiting government power and protecting individual rights into the creed we know today of believing that larger and more powerful government is the primary means of securing the realization of individual liberty. None of the liberal complaints about “gridlock” are new; Progressives like Woodrow Wilson deplored the separation of powers and other limiting features of the Founding as obsolete years before he tried to ignore them as president.
To paraphrase Insty the other day, the message is "Government is corrupted by power and money, and we need more government with more money to run more things."
The saying, “charity begins at home”, gets at many issues at the heart of most learned discussions of the charitable deduction from income tax, but also raises a core issue that is too often missed. The income tax is not about charity and should not be given equivalency to charity, and even if many government programs are charitable individual choices to either give charity or not is preferable in most cases and should not be discouraged or dictated by government.
Charity should not begin, or end, wherever government says so. Government should begin or end wherever citizens say so. There's room between but to place government above private choice and enterprise is to misplace priorities and public good and benefits.
The US Senate Finance Committee just held hearings about the charitable deduction that mirrored the arguments that have been raised since the inception of the deduction with the federal income tax during World War I. The questions revolve, and revolve and revolve, around should there be a deduction or other scheme, how much should be allowed, by whom, to which type of organization. Reading a brief history of hearings on the deduction, there is an underlying premise that all of income is subject to government priorities.
I won’t argue for the most selfish interpretation of “charity begins at home”, that all of one’s means should be kept within one’s walls. The Jewish conception of what in English is called charity, tzedakah, makes it a high personal obligation, and unlike the frequently cited 10% the Jewish Testament calls for more as can be afforded. Christians and others of good faith or morality think similarly and give similarly.
On the other hand (as any good Talmudic discussion goes) “charity begins at home” also raises that it is voluntary and one should not abuse one’s personal responsibilities. In other words, the fruits of one’s inheritance or labor are primarily one’s own to decide their use. On the other hand, again, in the social contract we enter into for the personal benefits of being part of a larger order, government, we accept that we are taxed for the general good. In a democracy, cumulatively we choose how much that tax may be and on what. Of course, that is not perfect as there are differing ideas of how much and on what. But, public engagement and elections are available to weigh in.
Throughout the years of government debates on the charitable deduction the incentive has been on raising government revenues, with differing theories of who should pay how much and the relative efficiencies of the schemes and their effects on differing types of recipients being the details.
No one denies, all should abhor, that there are many recipient organizations that abuse the laws and donors’ good intentions to profit insiders and not the public good. That calls for increased enforcement through public exposure, investigations and criminal prosecution. But, on the other hand, that still leaves many recipient organizations allowed by the tax code to commit other abuses of common understandings of charity, such as being mostly political or their proceeds benefiting other than the needy poor. After much outrage and years of mulling this, I still have to come down on the side of the argument that says our money is ours and that there is inadequate justification for giving it instead to government that too often does the same as non-charity charities, not to mention profiting politicians, revolving-door or job-protecting bureaucrats, and government cronies.
Washington, D.C. is the country’s wealthiest area, richer than Silicon Valley. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says “government jobs must take priority over private-sector jobs.” There are Republican and Democrat feeders at the government trough and who are profiting from crony capitalism. There is less to show from all their taxpayer expense than they would want us to believe. There is more to show in general public good from entrepreneurs, productive businesses, steering progress through private choices of what is needed or desirable.
I never have the free time to do all of the things I want to do. All I have is late evenings and weekends, plus stealing a few minutes to try to throw something of interest onto our website.
Besides work and taking care of kids, what productive, fun, or constructive (or unconstructive) things do our readers do?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Here's what I do: A little golf, a little horseback riding with the Mrs., Deacon at church, one committee in our town government, a committee at our golf club, a fund-raising committee for a conservation charity, a little fishing in season, a little shooting, unskilled labor on our place (field-mowing, tree-clearing, log-splitting, fence-repairing, some barn cleaning), spare-moments surfing the net, some book-reading every night, and a fair amount of socializing which I try to limit to two things per week. A quite ordinary American life for a fellow whose kids have flown the nest, I think. A nobody, or an everybody. I am blessed that my spouse, dogs, and friends like me.
I bartended in Vegas a number of years ago, and while I hated the traffic, I loved the general feel of the city. Seeing The Strip off in the distance was a constant reminder that You're in party town, USA, bub. It was frolicsome and fun. I have some observations here.
I suppose the word we'll be seeing for this debate is fiery.
The St. Paul speech only made manifest what is implicit in much of Obama’s presentation of himself. How could Obama have brought himself to utter such laughable pap? This is either one politician who takes himself way too seriously, or who holds his supporters in incredibly low esteem, or both.
If you’ve lived through the past four decades, does it really seem like America is no better off today? It doesn’t to Jason Furman, the deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council. Here is Furman back in 2006: “Remember when even upper-middle class families worried about staying on a long distance call for too long? When flying was an expensive luxury? When only a minority of the population had central air conditioning, dishwashers, and color televisions? When no one had DVD players, iPods, or digital cameras? And when most Americans owned a car that broke down frequently, guzzled fuel, spewed foul smelling pollution, and didn’t have any of the now virtually standard items like air conditioning or tape/CD players?”
No doubt the past few years have been terrible. But the past few decades have been pretty good—for everybody
“Again, if you can’t cut back the government bureaucracy in good times (because there is enough tax money and we have ‘unmet needs,’ etc.) and you can’t cut it in bad times (because we have to preserve those jobs as ‘stimulus’) when does the government stop growing? Has Obama even attempted to answer this concern?”
This is an oldie, but still good for a chuckle for me:
I know this is a boring waste of cyber-ink, but many of our readers may not be on the emailing list and perhaps Dr. Mercury might enjoy the game:
Friend --
If you've been able to sit through any of the Republican presidential debates so far, I commend you for your patience and commitment to the President.
With all the talk about "class warfare," "Obamacare," "9-9-9," and how Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme," the Republican candidates have tended to leave very little time to discuss constructive solutions to the actual challenges facing our country.
Well, there's another Republican debate tonight in Las Vegas. And if we can't convince the candidates to talk about jobs or how to provide economic security for the middle class, we can hold them accountable for what they choose to talk about instead.
The campaign has put together a debate watch game to make sure there's a real cost to all the attacks and nonsense. Here's how it works: You pick a word or phrase from the list below to sponsor, and pledge to give $3 or $5 (or however much you'd like) for each mention. So tonight, as the Republican candidates prattle on about defunding Social Security, ending Medicare as we know it, and everything else they support, they will literally be building this campaign.
We have to assume that the Republicans in this race are sincere about wanting to be President. But when so much of the discussion is about rolling back protections put in place by the Affordable Care Act and Wall Street reform, and instituting a tax plan that would mean middle-class families pay thousands more every year, we can question how sincere they are about helping to solve the very real problems millions of people confront every day.
Americans deserve a leader who takes the job seriously.
So I'm looking forward to seeing what you think they'll say this time. We should have some fun with this -- it's Vegas, after all.
But we're not just doing this for our own entertainment. We're building a campaign that can withstand a barrage of special-interest funded attacks from the other side, and make sure President Obama can continue the important work we have left to do.
Any donation you end up making tonight will be put to work right away to that end.
I have been returning to the theme of government as enterprise over the past couple of years, but the Knish Man put more effort than I ever did in fleshing out the concept: The Business of Government.
Government is indeed a bubble, as much in the US as in Greece. Just two of many possible good quotes:
Like most non-profits the real business of government was creating profits for its board, employees and their friends. This core business was funneled through constant busywork and massive projects and programs that existed to conceal the real business of government. Layered around it was chaos and incompetence that prevented even those on the inside from being able to fully evaluate the real cost of its operations.
and
The monopolistic nature of the business of government had created a company immune to outside concerns. But that bubble was being challenged by the consequences of its mismanagement and the growing public dissatisfaction at the value of its services and their cost. The collision was as inevitable as its timing was unclear and it would change how the business of government was to be conducted.
We may now have scores of sophisticated books written by highly esteemed PhDs and a well-tread, lollipops over Castor oil, time-outs over spankings parenting path, but our progressive march through human history has ultimately produced adults that are… well, still childish.
Worse, we’ve managed to add an extra decade to adolescence.
AVI gave us a free mini-post in his comment, here:
Journalism at present involves a great deal of believing that you know other people's motives. We are told that OWS has some legitimate complaints. Not because very many of them are actually clearly articulating legitimate complaints, but because journalists can think of reasons that people might be upset that sell better. This is common in the type of anti-American rhetoric we get explained to us: "Well can you blame them? America has done blah, blah, blah..." Those are not, in fact, the reasons why foreigners hate us. They are the reasons liberals hate us. They project this crap onto others all the time, because they really are that narcissistic and tribal.
So helping out OWS is just a natural extension of that. They are "giving voice to the voiceless, to the inarticulate rage of the disenfranchised, who deeply resent the inequitable distribution of wealth that allows people with unapproved attitudes to...oops, I mean, 'that saddles future generations...' no wait, I'm looking for the right words here... 'that finds a way to make a fortune even in hard times...' damn, this is hard..."
Because they see it as Us vs. Them, zero-sum, for cultural hegemony and prestige. That is the subtext.
Hegemony, prestige... and cash, AVI. OPM. That's what they really want.
Consider romantic Lord Byron, who had spent the previous Summer in a villa in Switzerland ruminating with other literaries about the issues of advancing science (which led to cohabiter Shelley’s Frankenstein), writing this drivel poetry the following December, Christmas eve 1816, in support of the Luddites:
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
When the web that we weave is complete,
And the shuttle exchanged for the sword,
We will fling the winding-sheet
O'er the despot at our feet,
And dye it deep in the gore he has pour'd.
Though black as his heart its hue,
Since his veins are corrupted to mud,
Yet this is the dew
Which the tree shall renew
Of Liberty, planted by Ludd!
Today’s self-declared intellectuals and media wannabes, similarly, extol the stand-against-the-machine OWSers in the parks. An essay from novelist Thomas Pynchon, maybe appropriately written in 1984, expresses the hope, “Is it OK to be a Luddite?” Pynchon traces Ludditism to belief in miracles against the “machine,” of modern life, then steps forward to today.
Machines have already become so user-friendly that even the most unreconstructed of Luddites can be charmed into laying down the old sledgehammer and stroking a few keys instead. Beyond this seems to be a growing consensus that knowledge really is power, that there is a pretty straightforward conversion between money and information, and that somehow, if the logistics can be worked out, miracles may yet be possible.
But, garbage in, garbage out. Now as then, retreat to fantasies misstate and contradict realities of how machines free labor to be more productive and remunerative, not only to investors but to the daily lives and liberties of workers. Now as then, it takes capitalists to exert practical imagination, risk capital, and bring to fruition and everyone’s table the produce. Not fairies.
See Polling the OWSers: "...the Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people." And with reality. They are miracle fairies for President Obama who will make disappear from consciousness all his abject failures and misdirections. Dream on as you drive into the wall of reality, President Obama. But, please spare the rest of us being further injured by your reckless driving.
First off, before the peanut gallery pipes up with "Not another debate, already!", I should note that the last debate was solely about economics, and that the previous debate was a month before, so it's been a while since we've heard Perry claim that Social Security is an illegal Ponzi Scheme and thus should immediately be disbanded, or Ron Paul screaming we should BRING OUR TROOPS HOME NOW! to thunderous applause from the Paulbots in the audience. Good times, good times.
As far as the current status of the election goes, I suppose the primary question is, can Cain actually, really, for-sure, possibly, maybe, somewhat, somehow beat Obama? Because if he actually, really, for-sure doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell, then the next Morning Meeting at MSM Headquarters post is going to be full of self-congratulatory remarks as the gang pats each other on the back for the plethora of Cain Would Beat Obama In Face-off, Poll Says headlines that have been floating around recently.
Remember, as I noted in my very first election post, the plan is to always push the 2nd- or 3rd-place Republican contender in order to diminish the person holding the #1 spot, thereby keeping the masses in a state of flux. One thing we don't want is for anyone to actually be making any decisions out there. Keep 'em unsettled, keep 'em guessing, right up to the day of the election. Then, the American voter might still be so undecided when they hit the voting booth that they think, "Oh, maybe I'll just go ahead and vote for that nice Mr. Obama. He's so articulate!"
Utah readers, you'll be crushed to learn that Huntsman is boycotting the event because of the possibility that Nevada might move its caucus up on the schedule. That sounds a little thin, but the two states do abut each other, so there's bound to be a little rivalry between them and there might be more to this than meets the eye. An article on the debate is here.
Ana, for one, said she voted for Obama last time, but will now be supporting the Republican nominee, whoever it is.
"I don’t want promises," she said.
Short and sweet.
Tonight, 8 pm EST, CNN. Democratic lapdog Anderson Cooper is moderating, so it's possibleprobable inevitable that the questions just might will be slightly biased tilted dramatically in order to get the group to throw bombs at each other, but after last week's calm, measured round table debate, much of that early rancor might be gone.
Perry/Cain/Gingrich 2012?
(Hey, big businesses have more than one VP — why not us?)
While at first glance this might appear to be 'old news', I can assure you it isn't.
Because no more than a week ago I was reading some article and the guy was listing out all of the bad things our government has done in recent years (granted, it was a long article), and stuck right in the middle of his list was "lying us into an unnecessary war". This refers to Iraq, and how Bush 'lied' by telling us Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. As the lefty meme at the time declared, Bush lied, thousands died!
And, much like global warming, the 'Bush lied us into war' meme has become so ingrained and believed that even a conservative writer might include it on the list without even thinking about it. Either way, I couldn't fault the guy.
Below the fold is the single greatest collection of quotes I've ever seen, regardless of subject. They were stuck in the comments of some throwaway article a while back and I hate to see the effort go unnoticed.
One quote deserves particular attention:
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
Yes, Saddam had literally tons of WMD in his possession at the time. Bush and the CIA and the British, French, German and Israeli intelligence services were entirely correct. Estimates vary, but he'd already gassed somewhere between 100,000 and 350,000 Kurds with deadly Sarin gas and the like. The problem is that the anti-Bush MSM took 'WMD' to only mean nuclear at some point, ergo, if they didn't find any nuclear weapons in Iraq after the invasion, then Bush lied.
And, yes, we found tons of WMD, in the form of Sarin gas, in Iraq — but you never heard about that in the MSM, did you? Power Line was the one who broke the story, about eight months after the invasion. The army had found over 1,500 shells of Sarin gas in one underground bunker alone.
I don't expect you to be particularly interested in the list, but I'd like you to keep this post in mind the next time you see the 'Bush lied' meme dragged out and wish to respond. This is one of those things that simply cannot be refuted.
Neither in good times nor in bad does the middle class have a narrative nearly as compelling as those between which it is sandwiched. And it suffers accordingly.
Driving around today I heard this cut from Adele and had to crank up the sounds, almost to Rolling Stones decibels. It's a driving tempo, and if you remember "high" road trips it is driving music.
I wish the media would go down to Union Square and interview all the happy young people there. Here's my comment for these envious and hate-filled kids and their media-invented movement - self-important kids and superannuated kids who somehow have time to do street theater which I am sure must be fun and somewhat gratifying if you have no responsibilities in life:
To predict the demise of Capitalism, that is. Adam Smith did, too. So did my favorite economist, Joseph Schumpeter. Each one had different views on how it would end.
Marx foresaw the proletariat rising up and seizing the means of production. We all know how well that worked out.
Adam Smith believed an accumulative class would eventually collapse upon itself. Smith felt accumulation drove the market forward, but also felt accumulation for the sake of accumulation was wrong. He felt eventually, there would be nothing left to accumulate. Somewhat Malthusian in nature, and very unlikely based on his own concepts of markets and value.
Schumpeter went to great lengths explaining exactly why both these great minds were wrong. He felt Marx completely misunderstood the nature of markets. Schumpeter put the innovator, the entrepreneur, at the center of his economic model. It is the driving force of creativity and the desire to improve that keeps Capitalism and markets healthy. The value provided by this group of people helped offset the underlying problems of labor described by Marx.
Capitalism existed as a force for change, not a static system which was essential for Marx's system. Schumpeter was unabashed in his support for, and love of, markets and capitalism. He sought to destroy Marx's arguments, and did so in impressive manner.
US medical care 
Four Small Things
115 year old electric car