Saturday, January 8. 2011
Terry Eastland in Weekly Standard:
What might be called the unlimiting of the national government began to take place during the New Deal, when the Supreme Court understood congressional authority to be so capacious as to leave little that Washington could not regulate. Congress largely accepted the Court’s jurisprudence and extended its legislative reach, losing sight of the core purposes of government and building our big and costly welfare state.
Sunday, January 2. 2011
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times sums up the best that liberals can come up with for reducing income inequality: better education for the poor, to reduce The Upward Mobility Gap. He correctly points out that this goal is one of the few that Democrats and Republicans can agree upon. And, then he stops.
The goal is fine but how to get there is the question.
McManus says, “Opportunity in America isn't what it used to be.” Liberal nostrums fail to mention the biggest barrier to reducing income inequality – if considered needing reduction -- is government, whether one advocates more or less government programs.
To now, more government programs actually create more government workers, their pay and benefits unaffordable while diminishing basic public services. Less government programs tend toward wholesale cuts in unaffordable welfare and government worker benefits, while failing to refocus funding on productive education and related infrastructure.
As well, McManus passes over the “moral” or lifestyle elements that are necessary to taking advantage of educational and employment opportunities as being difficult to measure. Yet, these are crucial.
Three of the ways that the poor found rungs on the ladder of upward mobility, manufacturing jobs and small businesses, are under continuing pressure, while illegal immigrants reduce even sustenance jobs for citizens. US manufacturing employment has shrunk for repetitive tasks while requirements for technical education and skills has increased, overall production holding its own. Lesser costly environmental and workplace regulations, along with lower wages, has drawn much lower skilled manufacturing abroad. More government regulations and greater competition due to reduced transport costs and increased imports of staples has made small business less able to survive or thrive. Illegal immigrants – mostly uneducated -- mostly impact manual labor opportunities for the poorest American citizens, while consuming much government funding that could otherwise, maybe, hopefully, be redirected toward support and education foundations for poor American citizens.
Government programs that focus on useful job skills are un- or underfunded, in favor of expensive contemporary elite culture curriculums, especially victimology humanities. Legal immigrants – thankfully -- fill our sciences. Government programs that sustain or increase welfare dependency, and regulations that discourage risk taking, perpetuate a permanent lower income class. The virtues of stark choices may be overrated, but elimination of such choices is less virtuous. Corruption and self-dealing, either financial or ethical, is unacceptable. Fish stink from the head. The same standards must apply to chieftains of government as to of business. Lack of performance must not be tolerated in government any more than it is in private enterprise.
Two examples of the difference culture makes, my father and my son. The common thread, across the generations, is work habits, learned young, family emphasis on useful education, and behavioral skills and focus.
My father, born 1920 in Detroit, from a large poor immigrant family, dropped out of high school, did manual labor and worked for local retailers, then went to trade school to become a tool & die maker (others in the family had similar life-stories), thereafter earning a decent worker’s income. His choices were stark, the path up clear.
My son, born 2000 in California, from a middle-class family, is an A student. The caliber of primary education in his school district is high, the primary differences among schools and their scores being the lesser parental involvement at the schools in the poorer areas. My wife and I are pretty demanding and involved. There are almost no manufacturing jobs locally, the few being highly technical. There are few local stores, and laws forbid he being hired for anything. Anyway, what retail jobs there are go to otherwise unemployed humanities college graduates! New Years eve he watched MTV’s Jersey Shore revelry, before getting bored and going to sleep. Last night, he watched Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees. After the movie, he said to me that people used to act nicer. On one side of my house are the two, contemporary culture, lazy 20s boys taking four years to complete two-year AA degrees, their courses being weak humanities type. Their father had gotten them manual labor construction jobs and, though they are big and strong, the illegal immigrants outworked them. On the other side is a former Eagle Scout, majoring in a technical field at a top college.
Today’s choices are no less stark than they once were. The only real difference is between those who recognize that and those who avoid the choices or enrich themselves by sheltering those who would otherwise benefit from starker choices.
Wednesday, December 29. 2010
A quote from the piece at The Pope Center:
By the mid-1980s engineering and science curricula began their sea-change. Programs were “softened” in order to admit minorities and women. “Outreach” efforts were begun. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programs were funded to entice women, inner-city blacks and other minorities into disciplines like engineering and physics. Grant applications (to the National Science Foundation, for example) that once dealt only with engineering now had to address social concerns, outreach to minorities and women, and other issues with which engineers were wholly unfamiliar. Current NSF proposals require a minimum of 2 pages out of 15 on the integration of education, outreach, and enhancement of diversity under subheadings such as “Focused Diversity,” “Underprivileged Student Participation,” and “Participation of Women and Minorities.” That leaves at most 13 pages for the scientific content.
I always thought America was about some sort of social equality where all had equal rights and human dignity. Equality of wealth and income is another whole kettle of fish. A good piece by Kaus in Newsweek:
There are two big questions to ask liberal opponents of income inequality. 1) What, exactly, is it about greater economic inequality that's so bad? and 2) What you gonna do about it?
It's worth reading. One of the constants I find in Lefty writings (not in Kaus) is the assumption that wealth and income is zero-sum, like slices of a pie. That is, that there is a set total amount of income and/or wealth in the world. Whether they write that way to fool the ignorant, or really believe it, I do not know.
I suspect the former.
Tuesday, December 28. 2010
Friday, December 17. 2010
 The first time I was exposed to the Pledge was in kindergarten. I had no idea what the words meant.
As this piece at Reason tells it, it was a late 19th Century response to large waves of immigration.
It's not really about a flag. It's about "the Republic for which it stands." It's a way of testifying that you agree to the American social contract. In other words, "I agree to this deal."
Kids cannot know what that deal is. It's quite a serious deal, really, because it can cost you your life, plenty of your property, and some of your freedom. It's freely given, too, if you're old enough to give it. You can always move somewhere else. Tom Friedman can move to China.
I don't care whether Rousseau's social contract theory is valid or not; it's an essential concept anyway because it makes it clear that a conscious choice of citizenship is meaningful and important - even if secular and not sacred.
From a comment on Henninger's What Are Taxes For?
Assume for a moment that a command-and-control economy or a benevolent dictatorship were necessary for the U.S. to remain the world's pre-eminent economic (and military) power for the next generation. I'd rather have a less rich and and less militarily powerful America that is more free. Luckily, this is pretty much a hypothetical...
It's exempt from Obamacare rules, too: Medi-Share.
Readers know we hate government compulsion, and believe that government one-size-fits-all stuff fits about as well as a Mao jacket. My examples are, for a few, what if you're a Christian Scientist? What if you're wealthy and want to self-insure? What if you only want Major Medical (which I believe is the only thing that makes sense anyway)?
When they talk about medical insurance, they sneakily speak as if it were equivalent to medical care. It is not.
A reminder to readers on Medicare:
Give your doc a nice Christmas gift. He or she is losing money each time you see him in the office. A little - or a lot - of appreciation is in order, because you are the recipient of their charity and good will. They don't have to do it. Something special like this often goes over well:
Heck, I always give my docs a Christmas something even though I am not on Medicare yet.
I would not put this in the category of fun Christmas books, but it's an important book: The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life.
From the blurb:
One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was the fate of miserable victims of communist regimes who climbed walls, swam rivers, dodged bullets, and found other desperate ways to achieve liberty in the West at the same time as intellectuals in the West sentimentally proclaimed that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is being played out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from third world nations pour into Western states, the same ivory tower intellectuals assert that Western life is a nightmare of inequality and oppression.
In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life, Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia’s love affair with social perfection and reveals how that idealistic dream is destroying exactly what has made the inventive Western world irresistible to the peoples of foreign lands. The Servile Mind looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere “politico-moral” posturing about admired ethical causes—from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having the correct opinions has became a substitute for individual moral actions.
That is well-said. Conspicuous virtuous posturing is no substitute for private morality. But, I know - private morailty isn't hip. It isn't even groovy.
There is no escaping the mysterious allure of liberal fascism. It's a cult.
Thursday, December 16. 2010
I hesitate to file this under 'Politics', but since we don't have a 'Goofy Road Trip Adventures' category, into 'Politics' I suppose it must go.
I hadn't seen an old friend who lives in D.C. for a fair while, and since Jon Stewart's highly-anticipated "Let's Save America From The Racist Homophobic Teabaggers" rally and the election were just a few days apart, I decided to throw the ol' snow tires on my hot Firebird Formula...
...and hoof it up to D.C. for the festivities. Ever the impulsive one, I.
Below the fold I'll detail the highlights of my adventure, including my take on the rally, how I ended up scaring the hell out of scores of innocent passers-by at an energy expo, and how I got abducted by a busload of Tea Party revelers on election eve.
Continue reading "Road trip!"
Legal Insurrection reminded me of this:
"two-thirds of Americans believe that success is not outside their control. In Germany, 68% answered the exact opposite way.... By more than six to one, Americans believe failure is the result of the individual, not society… 71% of Americans believe people can escape from poverty. Only 40% of Europeans believe the same....Asked why people are wealthy, 64 percent of Americans say [it is] because of personal drive, willingness to take risks, and hard work and initiative." And why do others fail? When asked that question, 64 percent of Americans cited a lack of thrift, 53 percent ascribed the failure (at least in part) to a lack of effort, and a like percentage said that failure was due to lack of ability. ..... but “in Europe, a majority in every country – with the exception of the U.K., Czech Republic, and Slovakia – ‘believe that forces outside of an individual’s personal control determine success.'"
These really are different views of the world and of the human being.
Sunday, December 12. 2010
Excellent summary of the topic at The American by Arthur Brooks and Peter Wehner.
Perhaps I like it because it confirms my line of thinking, but says it better than I can. They begin:
The model of human nature one embraces will guide and shape everything else, from the economic system one prefers to the political system one supports.
At the core of every social, political, and economic system is a picture of human nature (to paraphrase 20th-century columnist Walter Lippmann). The suppositions we begin with—the ways in which that picture is developed—determine the lives we lead, the institutions we build, and the civilizations we create. They are the foundation stone.
It's one of the biggest topics on earth. Good job, guys.
Thursday, December 9. 2010
 Prof. Cass Sunstein is one of them. As Scott at Powerline notes,
By contrast with the doctrine of rights conferred by God and nature set forth in the Declaration of Independence, Sunstein holds, in Tom Palmer's words, "You owe your life -- and everything else -- to the sovereign. The rights of subjects are not natural rights, but merely grants from the sovereign. There is no right even to complain about the actions of the sovereign, except insofar as the sovereign allows the subject to complain. These are the principles of unlimited, arbitrary, and absolute power, the principles of such rulers as Louis XIV."
Having his own view of things is fine, but his views are profoundly un-American. He doesn't get what America is about. The American ideal is - or was - that we are born with freedom, and granted a tiny bit of it to the State for specific, limited purposes. For heaven's sake, Prof. Sunstein, we created the State in 1787 - it didn't make us, or give us anything.
Mind you, this guy is the Regulation Czar in the White House.
Furthermore, his arrogance is unbelievable. A 56 year-old University of Chicago Law Prof who probably never held a real job in his life wants to structure how I live? He knows more about life than me? Has deeper wisdom than I have? Give me a break. That's a bad joke. He's just a control freak - with power.
I have a much better idea: How about I tell him how to live? For his own good, of course.
Wednesday, December 8. 2010
 From Powerline's Scott in a piece of the above title, mainly about Obamacare:
The economic "rights" asserted by Roosevelt in his second Bill of Rights differ and conflict with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are claims on the liberty of others. If I have a right to medical care, you must have a corresponding duty to supply it. If I have a right to a decent home, you must have a duty to provide it.
The argument for the welfare state belongs in the same family as "the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." That's Lincoln again.
Lincoln memorably derided the underlying principle as "the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it."
It's too late now, but I'd like to see an experiment in which one state in the US would operate under the Constitution as it is written. See how it works out. See who would go there (me, for one) and see who would flee limited government power.
Saturday, December 4. 2010
I know people usually do not feel that they have time to click on embedded videos, but this one captures so many conversations I have had, over the years, that I have to post it.
Thursday, December 2. 2010
A quote from the good piece I linked this morning, Can environmentalism be saved from itself?
Before they were sucked into the giant vortex of global warming, environmentalists did useful things. They protested against massive Third World dams that would ruin both natural and human habitats. They warned about invasive species and diseases that could tear through our forests and wreck our water systems. They fought for national parks and greenbelts and protected areas. They talked about the big things too – such as how the world could feed another three billion people without destroying all the rain forests and running out of water. They believed in conservation – conserving this beautiful planet of ours from the worst of human despoliation – rather than false claims to scientific certainty about the future, unenforceable treaties and radical utopian social reform.
I agree with all that. Furthermore, we non-politically-driven conservation types usually did the work ourselves - without asking governments and powers to do it. We even bought machines to restore filled-in and drained marshes (and even helped to undo Saddam Hussein's destruction of Iraq's vast marshes, which he did to eliminate those too-independent Marsh Arabs who wanted to be left alone).
For one example, Ducks Unlimited. Something like 12 million acres of wildlife habitat under protection now in the US, Canada (and some in Mexico), done with private donations. (59 million acres "influenced and conserved" - that includes things like farmlands operated in habitat-compatible ways supervised and assisted by DU). While warmist bureaucrats party in Cancun and try to figure out how to control the world, DU works to raise money and protect habitat from development and degradation every day.
Maggie's Farm supports DU.
Wednesday, December 1. 2010
 Unlike Leninism, Socialism, Marxism, Keynesianism, capitalism is not a theory. I may be naive to think that this is an important point. Capitalism is just what humans naturally and practically do to survive, to exchange things, and to try to thrive, when they are left in peace by Power. It's win-win transactions in which people get what they want without killing or otherwise using force against eachother. That's all it is - a benign and highly productive aspect of human nature.
Those Wyoming obsidians found on Long Island, NY, a few years ago in a buried Indian cache tell it all. I try to imagine the capitalist transactions involved, from wampum to beaver pelts to who knows what other currencies, all the way across the USA. Whether the item is obsidian chips or Italian credit-default swaps, it's all the same: if you want it, compensate the owner.
Adam Smith did not invent capitalism (or even use the term - yes, it was Marx who made it an "ism") - he just tried to explain what energetic and creative people do when they can do it peacefully, and by free choice.
Unless our kids take some real economics courses, or open a lemonade stand and figure out how the lemons got to them, or discuss real life with their parents, they won't get it at all. They are too insulated from reality nowadays, due to the prosperity of trade and capitalism.
At Wkly Std, More Adam Smith, Please . . .and less Barbara Ehrenreich.
In Socialist fantasies, I sometimes think they imagine that money and wealth come from Daddy. That's probably why the college kids like it.
Editor note: Re obsidian arrowheads, just Google the topic to find out how many people are knapping arrowheads, knife blades, and spearheads these days - for fun and profit. That's called capitalism, hard at work on the obsidian trade even today. Even real Indians are doing it to get into the game.
Monday, November 29. 2010
Re that Looking for Racism piece we (and many others) linked a while ago:
I spent most of the summers of my youth working side-by-side with black guys, doing manual labor. Mostly landscaping and in lumber yards, back before all the Mexicans arrived. My folks required us to labor during the summers. They did not wish to produce spoiled, snotty brats.
I loved those dudes, and they liked me. We were a bit culturally alien, but we all liked good music and thought about Jesus. They all grew up in the South. The differences made us more interesting to eachother. They'd invite me back to their places after work to listen to Kenny Burrell, smoke some weed (to which they introduced me), and drink cheap wine and smoke Pall Malls (the red packages - delicious unfiltered smokes) until it was time for me to wobble my parents' station wagon away from downtown back to Whitelandia. I miss them.
In my view, modern racism is an invention of the race-pimps and pols who make a good living off of inventing it and then exploiting it. Even Al and Jesse have trouble finding problems nowadays and, believe me, they do look for signs of them everywhere.
Listening to cool Kenny takes me back to those good old days.
Sunday, November 28. 2010
 At some point, we become inured to the shrill Chicken Littles who make a crisis out of everything they wish to control. It all makes The Englishman want to blow smoke in their faces.
Last I read, there is really no harm at all to second-hand smoke.
George Will, in today's Our puritanical progressives, says it this way:
Progressivism is a faith-based program. The progressives' agenda for improving everyone else varies but invariably involves the cult of expertise - an unflagging faith in the application of science to social reform. Progressivism's itch to perfect people by perfecting the social environment can produce an interesting phenomenon - the Pecksniffian progressive.
I have no desire to be improved, unless they can make me taller, smarter, richer, and better-looking - and a few years younger. I would pay money for those things. She Who Must Be Obeyed would pay money to get those things for me, too.
Wednesday, November 24. 2010
A h/t to Insty for this good find from Epstein at Forbes: Government By Waiver: The Breakdown Of Public Administration. He begins:
The past year has marked the passage of the two most massive legislative reforms in the history of American politics: ObamaCare for health care and Dodd-Frank for the financial sector. Their size and complexity dwarf those of any New Deal legislation.
These new laws require a stunning acceleration of the longstanding practice of relying on delegated authority to implement statutory commands. According to its New Deal champions, this welcome division of authority could cure the manifold defects of a market economy by combining the best of democratic politics with the best of administrative expertise. Under the new division of labor, the political branches of government set the broad direction of legislative reform, and then trust skilled administrative agencies to turn general directives into specific commands.
The sheer magnitude of the new legislative ventures has thrown this model–which, in truth, has never worked well–into disarray.
Like the man says, read the whole thing.
Tuesday, November 23. 2010
From an essay of the above title:
The Obama administration’s “Race to the Top,” at the cost of $4.35 billion, is the latest of a long line of lavishly funded federal education initiatives, joining “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB) and others that have failed to reform education. As is typical, there are high hopes for change but a low probability that any significant or lasting reforms will be implemented.
According to a report in Heritage Press, in April 2006, Neal McCluskey, a policy analyst with the Center for Education Freedom asserted, “Government programs have a troubling way of taking good ideas and ruining them with bureaucracy, unintended consequences and control by special interests.”
It's the government, so it's all politics. For the Dems, it's the Conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid. For the Conservatives, it's our Conspiracy to set you free from the government.
At Spiked. Indeed, a voice crying out in the wilderness of PC insanity and censorship. One quote:
Lukianoff says it is a consequence of the broader academic culture that students find themselves in today – an academic culture which instead of highly prizing combative debate and the unfettered freedom to scuffle over ideas and knowledge increasingly demonises such things as potentially hurtful and damaging. An academic culture, in short, which is destroying its own raison d’être – to foster thought, discussion, enlightenment – through its acceptance of the idea that actually, after all, words and ideas can be quite dangerous and thus should be subject to policing.
Monday, November 22. 2010
h/t, Moonbattery. It's just one part of the story. I like my guns because I like to play with them, and like to protect my family and property.
Friday, November 19. 2010
"Sustainability" is the latest greeny-Lefty fad, especially in academia. As with all Lefty fads, a tendency for threat and coercion quickly develops. At the same time, nobody is entirely sure what it means other than that some sort of conspicuous virtue with no meaningful effect seems to be involved.
From Thorne at NAS: The Sustainability Inquisition. It begins:
While using American University’s database for recording faculty publications, one professor noticed something unusual. After filling in information on authors, the title, the journal, the year, the volume, the pages, whether it was refereed, whether it was international, who publishes the journal, etc.—he came to a box asking whether this was sustainability research.
He was baffled. “What is sustainability research, anyway?” he wondered.
Read the whole thing. I think it's the replacement for the discredited Global Warming meme, or the Diversity meme, or whatever.
Whatever "sustainability" may mean to people, the only thing I know of with real sustainability is a perpetual motion machine. Or God. Everything else requires input, and the chemical destruction of something.
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