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.
I received an email from my alma mater, the Maxwell School of Citizenship at Syracuse University. It was a request to join a social media campaign about professing what you believe citizenship is. The idea is to download a 'thought bubble', write your view in the bubble, take a picture of you holding it, then add the picture to a social media outlet with the #ToMeCitizenship on it. For those of you unfamiliar with hashtags, this is the social media equivalent of joining a discussion in a somewhat indirect fashion.
At first I considered joining, if only to share a slightly different viewpoint than the ones I'd seen posted (click and take a look). I saw comments like "Serving people & Loyalty to government" (loyalty to government? Why is this always absolutely necessary? What would Jefferson and Washington have said?). Or "Respect for Authority" (this is so wrong, I can't even think of where to begin. I'm not sure 'authority' is generated from winning a popularity contest). Then there are some really bizarre ones like "Identity, Belonging, Altruism" (not sure when being a citizen provided me an identity, helped me feel like I belonged and don't get me started on the concept of altruism).
So I figured, I'd start my own here and find out what Maggie's visitors consider citizenship to be. Here was my stab at it, the one I never posted:
To me, Citizenship is loving my country and the rights of the individual which are protected by the Constitution while questioning the nature of human authority. Acknowledge and respect individual rights while exercising individual responsibility which strengthens those rights. #ToMeCitizenship
A New Life for Dead Malls - Developers have had to to get creative when it comes to salvaging America's failing shopping centers, turning them into hospitals, churches, and even parks.
Let's face it. The Clintons are pond scum. Not even genuine Lefties, just opportunistically left-ish. No core, no integrity, nothing. Neither has held an honest job in their life.
We support Bernie Sanders as an honest Democrat-Socialist candidate. Would not vote for him, but honest at least. I think the Dems will soon decide they have had enough Clintonian slime.
People talk about how the shrinks are making all sorts of normal variants into diseases, but how much insanity are they now regarding as normal variants?
A Wellfleet beach this week. Proof of global warming, I'd say. The warming makes it colder. I understand that part, but it's a little too nuanced for most people.
The other day, our esteemed editor made this statement in one of his posts. It was a good post, though I don't agree with much of the bias in it (Dalio is very intelligent, and quite successful, so his working model explains much of why he can be successful, though it's certainly not a good explanation of how economic cycles operate).
I happen to agree with Bird Dog's statement, too. But I believe economists often do themselves a disservice. Usually it's the economists who make predictions about macroeconomic outlooks which do this. By and large, it's the economists with Progressive tendencies. Though certainly some in the Republican camp get a bit outrageous.
I'm fond of saying economists can't make predictions, nor should they. They should offer scenarios. That's what I tend to do. Options of potential outcomes. Economics involves far too many variables to be a predictive science, though the basic rules can explain many things we see quite well, and that's what science is for.
When I grew up, I thought the Democratic Party was the great friend of minorities and women. The party wanted a world of equality, I thought. Most people I knew believed that too. Sorry, I was an idiot.
You have to feel a little sorry these days for professors married to their former students. They used to be respectable citizens—leaders in their fields, department chairs, maybe even a dean or two—and now they’re abusers of power avant la lettre.
Who Wants to Live in Detroit? Four decades after 'white flight' began, tens of thousands of African-Americans have now left as well. What does that mean for the city's future?
Racism! Patriarchy! Sexism! Rape on campus! Christianity's bigotry! The reactionary average American! Republicans' hate speech and hate thought! US history, a litany of racism and oppression! All the founding fathers, hypocritical sonzabitches! All our ancestors, imperialist mongrels! Oppression of women, and gays, and transgenders!
(The only person, the only people, who come out positive in this (self-serving) world view are — surprise, surprise — the drama queens themselves! Also known as the wise men, and the wise women, arriving as knights in shining armor on their white steeds to fight for the victims and the martyrs of the world.)
Ginsberg and Breyer care more about leftist policy than about the Constitution. They are rather open about that, but it's not their job. Thus I have no respect for them.
Kevin Williamson has the ability to take on any topic and go straight to the heart of the matter. A guote from his piece about government roads:
There are two ways of allocating capital: through politics, or through markets. Our progressive friends generally prefer to use politics when there is a choice, because they distrust markets, thinking them disorderly, irrational, vulgar, and prone to being dominated by the top-hat-wearing and bemonocled Mr. Monopoly cartoons that haunt their nightmares. Using politics is, in their view, more democratic. Most of the evidence is contrary to that proposition. In politics, it is quite easy for a small number of powerful people — wealth is only one form of power — to get their way. In politics, one rich guy can make a difference. The theory of progressive planning is that government intervention allows the aggregation of the interests of the non-wealthy and the non-powerful, but in reality central planning accomplishes the opposite...
also,
Political institutions are incapable of rational economic planning, because they operate outside of the market environment and thus are cut off from the critical economic intelligence communicated by prices, and they are vulnerable to all of the temptations described by public-choice economics, because human beings do not cease to be self-interested once they win an election or are appointed to a highway commission or school board.
and
Most people understand and appreciate the difference between market performance and political performance in many areas, if only because they cannot help but notice that the Apple Store and the DMV are such radically different experiences. Poor, nonwhite people are as eager to send their children to private schools as are members of the country-club set in Greenwich, but political domination of the education system deprives them of the means to do so — and, cynically enough, purports to do so in their interests.
Partly because of our temperamental skepticism, and partly from knowing the history of science (consisting of one discarded theory after another), we are interested in thinking about the idea (or is it a religion) of Scientism.
This is a challenging essay, The Folly of Scientism, but worth two or three readings. It begins:
When I decided on a scientific career, one of the things that appealed to me about science was the modesty of its practitioners. The typical scientist seemed to be a person who knew one small corner of the natural world and knew it very well, better than most other human beings living and better even than most who had ever lived. But outside of their circumscribed areas of expertise, scientists would hesitate to express an authoritative opinion. This attitude was attractive precisely because it stood in sharp contrast to the arrogance of the philosophers of the positivist tradition, who claimed for science and its practitioners a broad authority with which many practicing scientists themselves were uncomfortable...
One more quote:
Is scientism defensible? Is it really true that natural science provides a satisfying and reasonably complete account of everything we see, experience, and seek to understand — of every phenomenon in the universe? And is it true that science is more capable, even singularly capable, of answering the questions that once were addressed by philosophy? This subject is too large to tackle all at once. But by looking briefly at the modern understandings of science and philosophy on which scientism rests, and examining a few case studies of the attempt to supplant philosophy entirely with science, we might get a sense of how the reach of scientism exceeds its grasp.
When it comes to a question of "How important is this, really?" Net Neutrality usually gets pushed to the side.
Bigger than ISIS? Maybe or maybe not, but not as hair-raising. Bigger than Hillary using her personal email? Absolutely, but not as top-of-mind or intriguing. Bigger than Immigration Reform? Probably not, but interestingly the topics which are involved would play a role in hopefully reducing the influx of illegals by opening up markets more.
We are smarter than you, and we know what's best for you. Don't worry that you never voted for us, or that we are completely unaccountable. It's in your best interest.
Ultimately, it's a kind of boring topic. Which is why I like it, because it involves politics, law and economics. Economics being 'the dismal science', Net Neutrality has often been misconstrued and misunderstood in the media because it doesn't attract much thought beyond a populist angle. After all, most reporters and bloviators who comment on the topic work for companies that will benefit from Net Neutrality. Of course, they were never harmed without it, but hey, these populists are busy looking out for your best interests. Because, of course, nobody else will and you're simply not smart enough to know better. I'll be clear, I work for a company that supports Net Neutrality and conceivably benefits from it. Which is one reason the small level of anonymity which blogging provides is beneficial when writing pieces like this.
The passage, last week, by the FCC of a policy which treats broadband providers as "common carriers" under Title II of the Telecommunications Act basically means they are now utilities. Not completely, but close enough to make that claim without much disagreement. But what sparked this vote, why is it needed (or why do populists feel it is needed), and what does it potentially do?
We've had a few good times in Mexico, visiting ruins as ancient as Egypt's and fishing in Cabo. And great food, especially seafood, but I think we have checked it off our bucket list for now. Is Mexico (outside of the bad neighborhoods of Mexico City and the border towns) safe for travelers? Completely safe, and the people are wonderful, friendly, warm, full of life and good cheer. The opposite of Yankees.
Today, a thanks to the excellent (English-speaking) doctors in Cabo San Lucas who saved my father-in-law's life this week from an unfortunate cardiac event. The in-laws have liked to escape the northeast to Cabo for a couple of months each winter for many years, with all of their retired pals and new friends. Puerto Vallarta right across the Gulf is good, too, and more antique. Many Americans have houses there.
Also, thanks to the cousins from Boston who had been luckily visiting them with kids at the time, and managed everything with us via phone and email.
He is stable and on a chartered medical plane at this moment up to the amazing Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center at UC San Diego Medical Center, and Mrs. BD just hopped a plane from a snowy NY to beautiful SD to keep my mother-in-law company. I am sure the tough old guy will be fine and back up here to fight the snow fairly soon.
Thank God for family. We'd all be lost in this world without them. Who else do we turn to first?
Pic is a crowded Pacific beach in Cabofrom one of our beach hikes
Are there no normal, balanced, wholesome, smart white males there who play sports, dig cute chicks, and like beer? They can be assigned the oppressor job.
The single most important price in all of capitalism is the money market interest rate. That is the price of poker in the Wall Street casino; it is the cost of production for the carry traders and gamblers who provide the marginal “bid” for risk assets.
By supplanting free market price discovery with an artificially pegged price of zero, the Fed is unleashing the furies of greed and reckless speculation in the financial system once again. So it has truly become a serial bubble machine headed by a babbler who apparently believes in make pretend.
The 2008 worldwide financial crisis was produced due to excessively easy monetary policy, which caused the largest debt driven mal-investment in housing, automobiles, and Chinese produced crap in world history. It was done purposely by a uber-wealthy ruling class who call the shots, rig the game, reap the benefits, and deny responsibility when their machinations create havoc and suffering across the globe for the masses.
The consequences of this debt bacchanalia should have been the orderly liquidation of the Wall Street entities that created the crisis, the writing off of trillions in bad debt, corporate and personal bankruptcies of businesses and people who borrowed recklessly, a sharp steep economic decline to cleanse the excesses, and politicians who immediately began the process of reducing budgets and addressing long term unfunded unpayable liability promises. Instead, the psychotic oligarchs did not want to lose any of their power, wealth or control over the proletariat. They have done the exact opposite of what needed to be done. You must deleverage to solve a crisis caused by excessive debt. The oligarchs have succeeded in further raping and pillaging the working class, but have only delayed the final reckoning and guaranteed a debt apocalypse when their futile schemes fail again. And fail they will.
Arrogant condescending central bankers, narcissistic Wall Street psychopaths, crooked bought off politicians, and narrow-minded government apparatchiks across the developed world have colluded to add $57 trillion of additional debt to the existing Himalayan Mountain of unpayable debt we started with in 2008. We’ve entered the NIRP phase of the currency debasement race for the bottom.
Man, do I agree with that. When do government fixes ever work?
Unfortunately, the Democrats no longer understand the middle class. They no longer hang out with the middle class, and an increasing number of them no longer come from it. Like Ms. Clinton, they belong to the media-lawyer-academic-coastal class. They are overly worried about things like the under-representation of women in $150,000 Silicon Valley tech jobs. They do not seem to be aware that while millions of middle-class men scrounge for work, millions of middle-class women are newly prospering in the booming fields of health care and government administration. Across vast stretches of the U.S. middle-class economy, it’s already a woman’s world. Ms. Clinton’s rhetoric about women’s disadvantage is simply obsolete.
We may be skeptical most of the time about most things, but we do pray for a return to the climate of the 1300s when Greenland was green and there were vineyards all over England
One of the unspoken political goals of Dodd-Frank was to give the government more influence over credit allocation, and this looks to us like an example. Politicized lending in time always leads to trouble. We thought that lesson had been learned in the housing-mortgage crisis.
What lesson, though, was learned by the people who matter? The sub-prime mortgage crisis worked out great for the government. Create a problem, then pretend to solve it by grabbing more power: what’s not to like? Liberals will be perfectly happy to do it all over again.
Obama blamed the Paris terror attacks on a failure to integrate. But Islamic terrorism is an attempt to integrate Europe into Islam. The bombs and bullets, like the Sharia patrols and the No-Go Zones, are statements by Muslims that they will not be integrated into Europe. Europe must integrate with them.
Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute tells a story about Julian Simon, the late and great economist.He was at some environmental forum, and he said, “How many people here believe that the earth is increasingly polluted and that our natural resources are being exhausted?” Naturally, every hand shot up. He said, “Is there any evidence that could dissuade you?” Nothing. Again: “Is there any evidence I could give you — anything at all — that would lead you to reconsider these assumptions?” Not a stir. Simon then said, “Well, excuse me, I’m not dressed for church.”
Here. Lawyers will get rich on this for many years, and Americans can rest comfortably knowing that our internet is in good hands, same as in Russia and China.
The problem with this, of course, is that most respectable medical research turns out to be wrong too. I recently read that coronary bypass has no value compared with the alternatives, but they are done constantly. I also read that prostate cancer surgery may be pointless after age 65 or 70, yet they are performed constantly.
...while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously. Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news?
When politics gets involved, it all gets worse. If you need a doctor, get one with grey hair (who has seen it all) and a male (not bound by all the idiot rules).
A book by a fellow blogger, Robert Stacy McCain: 
Top 10 secrets of Grand Central Terminal 
Pic from a reader in Yankeeland this week 
Home for Purim - 
Image via 
Climatic Jihad? 
Pic: Gwynnie's hawk du jour, trying to keep warm 
American ballet: