Tuesday, April 21. 2009
Left and Right participants, from Trotsky to Hayek, in the 20th Century’s debates over the role of government have agreed that a major danger emerges from the coming to power of the “New Class” of intellectuals and public policy managers whose primacy over the hoi polloi (some even refer to the commoners as sardines) is ensured by self-profiting politicians, together extending government controls into more spheres of society. (A brief summary of New Class thought at Wikipedia.)
This New Class debate lay at the core of understanding the essential corruption of morality, of true popular governance, and of state powers that ensues from the rise of this privileged New Class.
My friend Lorie Byrd tries to explain to the in-denial and in-disparagement New Class the Tea Party protests across the country by about 600,000 ordinary citizens: “many average, everyday Americans were not thrilled with the ‘change’ they were getting from the new administration.” This is not an intellectual movement, couched in fancy words, but is the hoi polloi’s recognition of a basic intellectual truth, that the New Class is robbing their resources for their own expansion of power and profiteering.
The rude – indeed classless -- disdain and insult expressed by so much of the liberal commentariat toward the Tea Partiers exhibits their deeper fears of their spreading rejection as more and more Americans realize and react to their gross power grabs. Their fear, and arrogance, propels their haste to ram through major redefining programs before they are stopped by the 2010 elections reducing their Congressional majorities.
2010 can’t come soon enough. So, it is proposed that Tea Partiers crowd the townhall-type meetings held by their Congressmen and Senators to drive the point home before 2010.
The New Class may lack class, but they will recognize their overstepping will undermine their own survival. Behind their crude attitude toward Tea Partiers is their recognition their window of opportunity to further aggrandize themselves is short.
The legacy media is rapidly being replaced by alternatives which do not insult or ignore the legitimate grievances of the hoi polloi. The captains of industry in-bed-with taxpayer bailouts for their excess greed and irresponsibility are recognizing the self-destructive deal with the devil relegating them to managers of the corporate state. The unions, whose demise in private industry has been offset by controlling the government bureaucracies, are seeing their legislative goals to increase their sway sinking, while their bankruptcy of public services through excess benefits is arousing the poorly served public. The leaders of non-profits, who use their tax-exemptions to indulge in obtaining taxpayer grants that feed huge compensation packages, are startled that they are being viewed as abusing their privileges.
Onward, Tea Partiers.
Thursday, April 16. 2009
The unions own the public schools. Not "the people" and not the parents. It's a darn pity. Betsy with details.
Schools began in America with families chipping in to hire a schoolmaster, and building a log cabin schoolhouse with their hands. And supplying the firewood too, from their woodlots.
Wednesday, April 15. 2009
 We post frequently on the sickness infecting Western liberal arts education - the spineless relativism which causes them to doubt, or to hate, themselves, and to denigrate everything that is cheerful, loving, grateful, positive, appreciative of their heritage (and of their work itself, which is as "Western" as can possibly be - "Western" to a fault), Judeo-Christian, and freedom-oriented.
Harvard Chaplain supports death penalty for apostates. Ah, the Religion of Death. He's probably not afraid to say that he wants death for me too, as a Christian who will not submit to Islam. That comes next. Not to worry: our flaccid generation will commit cultural suicide when asked to do so.
h/t, S,C&A
Tuesday, April 14. 2009
National Snow Coverage as of March 29th, in recent history:
2004: 9.1%
2005: 14.4%
2006: 14.7%
2007: 16.9%
2008: 27.8%
2009: 31.3%
Comment: The Eastern North American Snow/Ice coverage was the most observed in many years (even surpassing last year), helping to reproduce fresh pools of Polar & Arctic Air, and help invigorate those air masses when they do enter the contiguous U.S., beneath the 850 mb level.
Season-to-Date Snowfall Totals & Departures of note:
Spokane: 93.8" [109% more than normal] *New Seasonal Snowfall Record*
Salt Lake City: 46.9" [17% less than normal]
Milwaukee: 75.9" [53% more than normal]
Chicago: 50.6" [39% more than normal]
Grand Rapids: 104.9" [51% more than normal]
Detroit: 58.3" [38% more than normal]
Cleveland: 77.4" [28% more than normal]
Erie: 142.2" [59% more than normal]
Syracuse: 148.9" [39% more than normal]
Philadelphia: 22.8" [22% more than normal]
New York City: 27.6" [26% more than normal]
Boston: 65.9" [57% more than normal]
Portland [ME]: 81.1" [28% more than normal]
{thru 3/31/09}:
Montreal: 221.7 cm [9% more than normal]
Toronto: 149.3 cm [36% more than normal]
 Author and Junk Science blog host Steven Milloy discusses (video) his new book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Ruin Your Life, at The Heritage Foundation.
I got a kick out of how CSPAN cut from Obama to go to Milloy.
Monday, April 13. 2009
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. P.J. O'Rourke
 The Martini Parties are a spontaneous grassroot national movement of the comfortable, but far from rich, edge of the American middle class.
We believe that all working Americans should pay income taxes, and not just the upper 50%. We're the folks who pay the bulk of the American taxes - lawyers, doctors, dentists, engineers, accountants and financial planners, small businessmen, managers, architects, pilots, ship captains, small-town stockbrokers, insurance agents, corporate VPs, B-school profs, consultants, medium-sized farmers, entrepreneurs, contractors, etc., etc. (The very highly-paid need not join and, of course, most household incomes of over $250 include two working adults.)
Our plan, designed over Easter brunch, is to figure out how to get our taxable incomes under Obama's $250,000 tax increase. It's a contest and a game. Since we already pay most of America's bills, we figure we are already doing our part and paying our fair share of the dues.
So our Yankee-based Movement is this: Get a group of friends together and hire some planners and accountants, and figure out a way to get yourself below the bar - even if it means donating more than 10% of your income to your charities (although they are trying to eliminate those deductions too), increasing your mortgage (although they are trying to reduce that loophole too), putting money in trusts, reducing one's charges for loyal clients - or plain old working less.
Let's all of us prosperous non-wealthy do the Limbo Rock and get under the bar - even if it means that we work less and play more like the lazy Europeans - more boating, golf, tennis, fishin', hangin' out in cafes drinkin', and shootin' and huntin' - and more vacation time with less expensive vacations.
I ain't slaving for 36-43 cents on the dollar (which is where I would end up after Fed taxes, CT income taxes in which the marginal rate covers all income if you make over 250, and property taxes. I am patriotic, but not stupid. I do not want to be a victim of plunder. I also tithe to church and charities, but that doesn't count: it's voluntary.
And if I end up poor, no doubt the government will take good care of me.
 Here's the real story about who is and isn't covered by medical insurance.
Not that the facts matter all that much in politics - and everybody wants a free Easter buffet.
Related: How the government plans to create its own medical insurance monopoly. (Just like public schools.) And once they have done that, they will drive through their rationing, rules, and controls. - and freedom in medical care will disappear. At that point, Doctor, your proud and noble profession will be transformed into involuntary servitude to the State rather than voluntary servitude to your patient and, at that point, patient, your treatment choices will disappear.
Then watch "doc-assisted" suicide for those over 60 become all the rage in government circles.
It's one more government power and money grab.
Sunday, April 12. 2009
 Watch this video of une agression dans un bus (h/t, No Pasaran).
The cultural divide is remarkable: the French are too passive to resist, and these immigrants are not fit for civilized society. Quel domage.
This will not end well.
Saturday, April 11. 2009
 I had a very pleasant lunch and visit with our Roger de Hauteville (Roger ll of Sicily - not Roger l) and the heir, the young Prince of Sicily, this afternoon.
Roger knows a thing or two about big city politics (and many other things), and he made a strong case that Obama is relatively non-ideological; that he is a typical self-important ward-heeler who got "nailed to the bow of a big ship," anointed to figure-head the plundering pirate ship which is the Dem party.
In other words, it's all about getting jobs and money to your friends, and winning votes with jobs and money until nobody else can compete. Local one-party Chicago politics, gone national. O's "We won" just means "We got the money." The Lefty gestures are just to keep the Left on board. He also opined that the Tea Parties are "cute," but miss the larger political point of what is going on. I tend to agree with that.
He also asserted that Hillary, with her "Stalinist heart," would have been far scarier.
I am not entirely convinced by his whole thesis, but I hope he will condense what he said to me today for us to read. He said he already posted it under Welcome to the Plunderdome, but he didn't. Or maybe he did - but not in his own words.
 On tribalism, from Gates. It begins:
“Irresolvable tribal differences cannot be considered to be mere political differences.”
The following essay by El Inglés is a sequel to the one published back in February. In this follow-up he extends his observations about tribal differences in modern Britain — and the rest of the Western world — by examining various tribal fractures which may be widened and inflamed during conflicts engendered by Muslim communities against their host society.
As usual, it’s useful to remember that El Inglés’ analysis is descriptive, and not normative. That is, something similar to what he projects here is the inevitable shape of things to come if Britain’s feckless political leaders fail to wake up to the severity of the crisis that is at hand.
Whole thing here.
Wednesday, April 8. 2009
Mrs. BD had increasing pain in her right shoulder, then running down her biceps, for two weeks, finally keeping her awake at night. Gets an appointment with the #1 shoulder guy in the world at the Hospital for Special Surgery in three days (last Monday). He is a kind, caring fellow who takes time with her. She gets a shoulder MRI two days later. Gets the diagnosis of early frozen shoulder one day later. Begins physical therapy and anti-inflammatory meds one day later.
Feeling better already. Even Fidel Castro couldn't get that kind of care and help, nor could Obama get better. Do I want my neighbor to pay for this for me? No - but thanks so much for offering to pay her bill. I believe in taking care of my own.
The bad news for her: no tennis for at least 2 months. The bad news for me: I gotta do all the cleaning and scrubbing, right when it's time to begin enjoying yard and garden work.
Well, we have snow flurries today, thanks to global warming climate change, so I guess the gardens can wait a while.
Monday, April 6. 2009
From Adam Kirsch's Europe's Last Man:
No sooner had humanity emerged from a century of hot and cold wars than Fukuyama was resurrecting Nietzsche’s admonition that a world of peace and prosperity would be a world of Last Men. “The life of the last men is one of physical security and material plenty, precisely what Western politicians are fond of promising their electorates,” he pointed out. “Should we fear that we will be both happy and satisfied with our situation, no longer human beings but animals of the species homo sapiens?”
While Fukuyama appreciates the seriousness of the Nietzschean warning, he hears it from the perspective of a partisan, not a foe, of liberalism. The danger he foresees is not simply that bourgeois democracy will cause human beings to degenerate, but that degenerate human beings will be unable to preserve democracy. Without the sense of pride and the love of struggle that Fukuyama, following Plato, calls thymos, men—and there is always an implication that thymos is a specifically masculine virtue—cannot establish freedom or protect it:
It is only thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence—it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers. And it is frequently the case that without such small acts of bravery in response to small acts of injustice, the larger train of events leading to fundamental changes in political and economic structures would never occur.
 Sunday's New York Times had an op-ed - a Sunday op-ed having particular prominence - by George Bisharat, “Israel on Trial.” Bisharat recites every charge raised by any source accusing Israel of violating international law in its treatment of Gaza.
Surely the NYT would defend its publishing of this screed as giving both sides of a story. A law professor who has known Bisharat, son of a Palestinian father, since law school remarks on Bisharat’s “Personal Intifada”:
Bisharat has devoted the past 25 years towards delegitimizing Israel. The links are too numerous to list, but almost everything Bisharat does and says is geared towards isolating and demonizing Israel. But Bisharat doesn't stop there, he also seeks to delegitimize Israel's supporters in the U.S.
One must wonder if the NYT publishing Bisharat’s op-ed means the NYT disbelieves its own reporting, and if the NYT is even sincere in its attachment to international law.
In January, the NYT examined the charges in long detail, “Weighing Crimes and Ethics in the Fog of Urban Warfare.”
Deciding requires an investigation into battlefield circumstances that cannot be carried out while the fighting rages, and such judgments are especially difficult in urban guerrilla warfare, when fighters like Hamas live among the civilian population and take shelter there. While Israel is the focus of most criticism, legal experts agree that Hamas, a radical Islamic group classified by the United States and Europe as terrorist, violates international law.
Shooting rockets out of Gaza aimed at Israeli cities and civilians is an obvious violation of the principle of discrimination and fits the classic definition of terrorism. Hamas fighters are also putting civilians at undue risk by storing weapons among them, including in mosques, schools and allegedly hospitals, too, making them potential military targets. While urban and guerrilla warfare is not illegal, by fighting in the midst of civilians, often in civilian clothing, Hamas may also bring risk to noncombatants.
But Hamas’s violations tend to be treated as a given and criticized as an afterthought, Israeli spokesmen and officials say. They say that Israel has never sought to hit civilians, medical workers or United Nations facilities or personnel. “The rules of engagement are very clear,” said Mark Regev, the government spokesman. “Not to target civilians, not to target U.N. people, not to target medical staff. All this is very clear in Israeli military doctrine.”
Continue reading "NYT Blows Itself Up In International Law Minefield"
Saturday, April 4. 2009
 This is a re-post from one year ago
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
At Maggie's Farm, we tend to suspect that issues such as medical insurance, gun control, health, and climate fears are indeed Trojan Horse issues (as Coyote terms them), advocated to increase goverment control over our lives and to reduce our choices, freedom, and self-determination as free adults who are capable of managing our own lives, in our own ways - for better or worse.
No, not "capable" - "endowed by our Creator" and our history with that privilege and that freedom. One must be suspicious of motives when vast, costly government-control solutions are offered to trumped-up or imaginary "crises."
"We the people" are smart enough to figure it all out for ourselves, despite what the self-anointed "elite" might think: not one of the "elite" is better educated, or more worldly, than we ADD-victim redneck folks at Maggie's are. As we like to snobbishly say, "Who are these people?"
"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
The people who seek control are not necessarily evil: they no doubt believe that they are not only benign but virtuously-intentioned, and especially qualified to make decions for us. They almost certainly believe that they are more "caring" than I am.
The single most damaging error of the modern age is the misperception of government as an agency of compassion. As a replacement for the "divine right of kings," this misperception has, for those in power, been an astonishing success. For the rest of mankind, it has frequently been a disaster beyond imagining. Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion, and the idea that it can implement compassion for us by force is simply a vile and cunning lie. It is cunning because people are primed and willing, even desperate, to believe it. - Glenn Allport
However, individual freedom does not enter into their equations as a caring virtue - or even as a virtue or American ideal at all. (We believe it to be a transcendent ideal, and a gift of God.) Hence what we view as the totalitarian or, as Goldberg and H.G. Wells would have it, "fascistic" proclivities of the Left.
"When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap." - Thomas Sowell
Since we at Maggie's view individual liberty, and the responsibilitities which accompany it, as an almost religious, if not religious ideal, we must view those who wish to diminish liberty as enemies of man and of human dignity.
"...every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Ammendment." -- Justice Louis Brandeis (Olmstead v. US)
Are we paranoid about State power? Given human history, and the course of US history, we do not think so.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
Furthermore, we do not wish to rely on the judgement of anyone who wants to run any part of our lives. As Milton Friedman asks in this entertaining YouTube, "Where are these angels who are going to run my life for me?"
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist #51.
"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power." - John Adams, 1788
No, we aren't anarchists. We do not object to drivers' licenses, or even hunting licenses. We will pay a fair share of taxes as a price of civilization. I do not even mind zoning if the people vote for it, and I am all in favor of national, state and local parks. But we are not willing to be "governed." That's where we draw the line. Being "governed" is for children (by "governesses"). Free citizens must learn to be self-governing as adults which, as our Dr. Bliss often reminds us, is no easy task but is a highly worthy and ennobling pursuit.
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutions, 1903
It's all about where you draw the line for government intrusion into one's life. Some of us still want to be Americans, not Europeans. But that's enough pontificating for now.
Top image: A photo of Westport, CT's Minuteman statue on Compo Road, near Compo Beach (via Dr. X). In my own, humble internet way, I want to continue our Minutemen's work and their radical ideal of individual freedom and responsibility in a country free of government tyranny. "We the people," (excluding those with their hands out) have more sense and more life experience than anyone in a government career, or any of the elites on the academic dole.
Lower image: An old lithograph of the Boston Tea party
Friday, April 3. 2009
There is no evidence for health risks with second-hand smoke. It's about control.
Congress approves $3.5 trillion budget plan.
If you need a laugh, read to the end:
The House bill streamlines President Obama's $3.6 trillion proposal and seeks to trim the deficit to $1.2 trillion in 2010, compared to the president's figure of $1.4 trillion.
"Streamlines." I see everyone went to Creative Non-Fiction class at Community College, and emerged with only an Unintentional Humor merit badge. Whatever. I'm simultaneously amused by Republicans talking about creeping socialism. You're creeping socialists, too; you just want to spend other people's money on the things you prefer.
But this Senate/Congress/TOTUS tripartite turd isn't anything like creeping socialism. Everyone in the chattering classes is so far wrong about this thing they can't even understand that creeping socialism isn't the bad end result we should expect, it's the infomercial come-on for the plunder economy someone's really after. Socialism is the carrot, not the slippery-slope outcome stick. Forget socialism; this is feudalism redux. It's the Chicago way.
Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.
Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain — and since labor is pain in itself — it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.
When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.
But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.
This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
Frederic Bastiat
Wednesday, April 1. 2009
I am back from Atlanta with this rather obvious thought: those of us who think about policies rationally, practically, and with a modicum of economic knowlege are hopelessly naive. Policies are foremost about politics, and achieving political advantage. It's a street game with no rules. I have always known that, but I keep forgetting it. Politics is where the action is, and people get termed "statesmen" when they don't seem to get the political games, or who find them distasteful. Especially true since the 16th and 17th Amendments (which I think were disasters).
I think this is why so many talented people either stay away from, or get discouraged by, politics.
This time, I am fully resolved to stop expecting reason or principle from public policy. I am sure this resolution will last about as long as most of my resolutions.
The Democrats have long had one-party control in California, aided by their radical environmentalist cohorts, and give us a good look at our national future.
They defeated an oil company's attempt to drill for oil off of Santa Barbara using slant drilling from shore, not an offshore platform. Their rationale was that it would 'only slow the switch to renewables.' Nobody had the nerve or knowledge to question “what renewables?”
They refuse to allow any more nuclear power here, so at the present time Los Angeles gets 50% of its electrical power from coal.
An earlier attempt to reduce vehicle emissions with MTBE in gasoline resulted in a lot of contamination of water supplies.
Now they are even considering banning the sale of black vehicles in California because they more energy to cool their interiors: Click here: California’s Plan to Reduce Emissions...
“The California Air Resources Board has withdrawn an unpopular set of plans that would have effectively banned black vehicles as a way to reduce emissions. . . . Never mind that black is the second most popular car color.
“Instead of black, paint makers fiddling with compliance were finding a color described as “mud-puddle brown. The air resources board’s rule follows the accepted fact that the darker the color of car, the more it takes to cool the car, thus the increased emissions.
“Now, after facing global ridicule, the air resources board says it has no plans ‘at this time’ to regulate the color of car paint, according to a Los Angeles Times blog.”
Meanwhile, funniest of all, Sen. Feinstein is pushing legislation to prevent the development of both solar arrays and wind turbines in the Mojave Desert. Click here: Watchdog Politics Examiner: Sen. Feinstein says no wind turbines in nearby desert
“Senator Diane Feinstein of California has made it known that she does not want to see new energy projects, including that creating solar and wind power, in the pristine desert. “The area she is concerned about is between the Mojave National Reserve and Joshua Tree National Park, off the old Route 66 between the towns of Ludlow and Needles. About 800,000 acres make up this area. The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing 130 applications for solar and wind energy development in the California desert, covering 1 million acres of public lands. “While Feinstein is being backed by the Route 66 Alliance, Myron Ebell, an energy expert with the pro-market Competitive Enterprise Institute said that this is ‘the first example of how hard it is going to be to realize President Obama's dream of a green-energy economy.’” However, Feinstein says that she is not engaged in a not-in-my-back-yard campaign. “I’m a strong supporter of renewable energy and clean technology--but it is critical that these projects are built on suitable lands. “The area she is concerned about includes desert tortoise habitat, wildlife corridors, cactus gardens and the Amboy Crater--an inactive volcanic crater.”
High desert photo by Gwynnie last week:
Meanwhile, one hundred miles northwest, is the great Tehachapi wind farm, about which a blog in – of all places – Germany has the following notation:
Wind Plants of California's Tehachapi Pass
The Tehachapi Pass is one of the world's largest producer of wind-generated electricity. The more than 5,000 wind turbines in the Tehachapi-Mojave wind resource area of Kern County generate approximately 1.3 Terawatt-hours (1,300,000,000 kWh) per year. This is enough electricity to meet the residential needs of more than 500,000 Southern Californians or nearly one million Europeans. The Tehachapi Pass is two hours north of Los Angeles and is frequently used by Hollywood producers for its dramatic scenery as in the movie Terminal Velocity. Every May the Kern Wind Energy Association and the Kern-Kaweah Chapter of the Sierra Club lead a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail to view the spring wildflowers and the wind turbines. The hikers shown here have stopped for lunch atop Cameron Ridge, which affords spectacular views of the area's wind power plants, the Tehachapi Mountains, and the Mojave Desert.” http://www.ilr.tu-berlin.de/WKA/windfarm/tehcal.html
There you have it folks – even the Sierra Club appreciates hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (the West’s equivalent to the Appalachian Trail) and looking at this vast wind farm. (However, the skeptic will note that the foregoing appreciation may not be the opinion of Diane’s desert tortoises or cactus gardens).
Nevertheless, visitors to the premier desert recreation area of Palm Springs, whether of human, animal or Hollywood origin, pass directly through California’s second largest wind farm area, the perpetually windy San Gorgonio Pass, and do so with no objection. Indeed, as we passed through the Pass last week, we experienced a sense of awe and respect for the pioneers of wind power. This area’s 3,500 wind turbines produce enough power for 350,000 people.
Now, folks, remember we said that 50% of the electricity in Los Angeles is produced by burning COAL! 800,000 acres of wind power would provide power for 3,500,000 homes.
However, unless someone who uses reason rather than pure emotion can communicate this concept to Senator Diane, wind power is a dead issue in the United States.
Oh, did I mention that she also wants the desert to be a no-go zone for solar power?
San Gorgonio Pass Windmills:
Tuesday, March 31. 2009
Did you read this: Oh What a Lovely Recession - Left-Wing redistributionists seize the moment.
Apparently poverty is good for us little people. We're just too dumb to realize it.
We had three pretty good posts here about making money yesterday (scroll down), so it seems timely to post Francesco's "money speech."
 The freedom to create wealth - indeed the very notion of the regular energetic person creating wealth if he or she wants to - is as essential an American freedom as all of our others. Ace reminds us of Francisco's famous speech. One bit:
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
The whole speech is here.
All of the doomsday computer modeling on climate rely on a positive feedback hypothesis, which has often been discussed by Watts Up and Climate Skeptic.
The existence of a positive climate feedback loop, however, is purely theoretical and, as many have noted, nature tends to be more about negative than positive loops. Furthermore, the computer models have yet to show any predictive power.
Watts Up now has evidence for negative feedback loops in climate. It's time to start over with the climate models - and it's time for the modelers to show a little humility. After all, those genius Wall Street quant modelers haven't done too well, have they?
Monday, March 30. 2009
While it may be overly simplistic to divide people into the producers (of profits) and the non-producers, there is still something to it. And there is something to it psychologically too, because the non-producers often carry a small secret uncomfortable feeling about being more directly dependent on the effort and profit of others to produce the $ to cover their paychecks.
The creation of wealth is a kind of magic from which everyone benefits. I am sick of the CEO-bashing and business-bashing and bashing of commerce. The Left acts according to the foolish and economically moronic illusion that wealth (and poverty) are static, and operate on a zero-sum basis. That's what "Gimme yours" comes from.
When I think of producers and wealth-producers, I do not think of Ayn Rand's heroic industrialists, nor do I think of Wall Street deal-makers, bond salesmen, or money-managers. Those are a tiny number. No, I think of people like the alligator farmer they had on Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. I think of people like Sippican, who creates value out of a chunk of wood. I think of the high school drop-out who buys a gas station, adds a mini-mart, and ends up owning three of them and employing 40 people. I think of my gunsmith and his two younger apprentices who will probably buy the business from him someday. I think of a guy who buys an old building and fixes it up. I think of the gal who trained my hunting dogs. I think of my carpenter, who keeps my house from falling down. I think of the dairy farmer who uses some of our land for his yearlings. I think of our groom, a legal Mexican immigrant who built a grooming business and now has 12 grooms working for him - and now two blacksmiths too: he says he's too busy running things to do our grooming anymore. I think of Synthstuff with his general store. I think of the NYC bridge-painting contractor I met on a hunting trip who started out as a union apprentice. All independent, proud creators of value and wealth - out of thin air, sweat, hard work, and knowledge.
Those are the folks who pay all of the taxes, create the jobs, and make the donations. That is the beating commercial heart of America where anybody who wants to can still build a business and make money if that is what they want to do. Everything else depends on that and those folks, from government to churches to museums to opera houses to universities and every other non-profit, to bridges and airports and conservation and medical research. We should all be grateful to them for what they do instead of joining the silly few who look down their noses on commerce - while feeding off its magic.
Related to the previous post, via BL via Insty: Whose money? The new debate about freedom. One quote from Cianfrocca:
Because of the way the world is made, this means that some people will receive a lot more money than others.
But is there truly any injustice in this? Consider the alternative. If we say that a baseball pitcher, or a top movie star, a great trader, a gifted entrepreneur, or even a well-motivated and hard-working local beer distributor should submit to an arbitrary salary cap, then what happens? The extra value created by that individual will go to other people, who are quite likely to be politically favored. The inevitable outcome is pervasive corruption.
Another:
I’ve said from the beginning of the current bailout mess that government-assisted companies are necessarily to be deemed as failures. This includes everyone from Bear Stearns to General Motors to AIG to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to Citigroup. It’s simply not just to expend public dollars to prop up failed enterprises. I’ve said many times that we simply can’t let them fail in an unordered way, because the collateral damage is too great. But neither can we let them continue to operate indefinitely.
Common shareholders of assisted companies need to be wiped out, and the operations should be sold off or liquidated in an orderly fashion. That’s what I had hoped would happen to AIG, Fannie/Freddie, and GM. Instead, our current government acts as if it can run these businesses indefinitely, even as it says with its lips that it can’t and shouldn’t.
That’s a true injustice, and that does amount to rewarding failure with taxpayer dollars. That makes me mad as hell, mad enough to take up a pitchfork and march. But I won’t be marching to the neighborhoods where CEOs reside. I’ll be marching up Capitol Hill and the White House.
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