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.
From guest writer Bruce Kesler, who seems to have found a comfortable new place to pitch his tent at Maggie's -
Economics fails us in the current economic travails, because of its inherent limitations and because it doesn’t deal with a root distortion of the factors considered.
Traditional economic theory has advanced over the past two hundred years, from simpler unifocal causation to multicausal, usually seen to operate mechanistically, which lends itself to mathematic modeling.In various ways, the emphasis is on rational decision making.Time lags are introduced to approximate learning and reaction curves.Neoclassical microeconomics has been aggregated in Keynsian macroeconomics, both lending themselves to feelings of efficacy in prescribing governmental actions.
More recent behavioral economics adds that the process, at the individual or societal level, is less than perfectly rational measured choices, and often irrational.Stated, real or perceived self-interests are imperfectly or not pursued, and experiential feedback is imperfectly or not heeded.
Experiments, data manipulation and controlled observations of inputs and results extend the testing and understanding of the many various approaches to economics.But, they still result in confusion, both by their battling contentions and lack of adequate predictability.
Still, governments and their advisors continue to argue for one course or another, largely based on these theories, and all of us are affected.
This isn’t to argue that such efforts at understanding and guidance are misplaced or unnecessary.It is to argue that more humility is needed in charting such courses.
It is also to argue, now even more importantly, that a major element is missing from current economic thought: some segments of society have grown so large or powerful they are treated as too big to either challenge or fail, which grossly distorts the operations of the economy and results in grossly excess costs that create greater lasting harms.
We use the term "Watermelon" to refer to those who are green on the outside and red on the inside. (We at Maggie's are ardent Conservationists and nature-lovers and studiers, but have never bought into the "Green" thing.)
Jonathan Adler (himself a global cooling denier) takes a look at Gus Speth and his new book. Speth is as green as they come, and Dean of the Yale School of Forestry. The piece in The New Atlantis, Green Bridge to Nowhere, is quite revealing. I'll just offer one quote:
Speth’s agenda is not confined to economics and the environment, however. He believes his sustainability agenda is intertwined with broader social concerns. “Sustaining people, sustaining nature—it is one cause, inseparable.” Thus he wants to replace the traditional focus on economic growth, as measured by GDP, with “good growth,” which he defines as “growth with equity, employment, environment, and empowerment.” While ostensibly focused on our environmental crisis, and calling for a “post-growth” society, the bridge he seeks to build is to a far broader and more ambitious progressive agenda:
Perhaps the most important prescriptions challenging unbridled growth come from outside the environmental sector...they include measures such as more leisure, including a shorter workweek and longer vacations; greater labor protections, job security and benefits, including retirement and health benefits; restrictions on advertising; new ground rules for corporations; strong social and environmental provisions in trade agreements; rigorous consumer protection; greater income and social equality, including genuinely progressive taxation for the rich and greater income support for the poor; major spending on public sector services and environmental amenities; a huge investment in education, skills, and new technology to promote both ecological modernization and sharply rising labor productivity to offset smaller workforces and shorter hours. People deserve more free time, more security, and more opportunity for companionship and continuing education. They deserve to be free of the growth-at-all-costs paradigm and the ruthless economy [of capitalist societies].
This agenda, Speth claims, is not only the key to sustainability, but also to greater human “well-being.” So too are limits on consumerism and consumption. The measures he outlines are the “hallmarks of a caring community and a good society” and must be imposed by government diktat. The role civil society and non-governmental civic institutions might play in this regard receives not a single mention. Capitalism and its attendant freedoms are not only bad for the environment, in his view, they are bad for people as well, and must therefore be controlled, if not eliminated.
Read the whole piece for full insight into this totalitarian movement.
Power grabs used to be "for the children," then they were "for the greater good," and now they are "for the planet." I guess any excuse will do for those who imagine that they know better than us regular benighted people. And as far as my "well-being" goes - if I want advice, I will ask for it.
Indeed, it is this failure--a failure to check the colonization of intellectual life by politics--that stands behind and fuels the degradation of liberal education. The issue is not so much--or not only--the presence of bad politics as the absence of non-politics in the intellectual life of the university.
Let me mention a couple of distinctions that I think we have lost sight of in recent years. The first is the distinction between academic freedom and free speech. Every time some wacko like Ward Churchill comes along shouting about the evils of American capitalism and the beneficence of Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Native American Indians, or whoever, his defenders rally round and say, "Well, I may not like what he says, but he is simply exercising his right of free speech."
I say, No he is not. He is violating his obligation as a teacher to eschew politics and impart knowledge. There is an important distinction between the right of free speech--our rights as citizens in a free society to peaceful political dissent--and academic freedom, the more limited privilege accorded to suitably enfranchised members of a college or university to to pursue knowledge. As the sociologist Edward Shils once noted, academic freedom is "the freedom to seek and transmit the truth." It does not, Shils insisted, "extend to the conduct of political propaganda in teaching." In short, academic freedom is the freedom to do academic things: for teachers "to teach the truth as they see it on the basis of prolonged and intensive study, to discuss their ideas freely with their colleagues, to publish the truth as they have arrived at it by systematic methodical research."
Bottom line: Academic freedom is not the same thing as free speech. It is a more limited freedom, designed to nurture intellectual integrity and to protect those engaged in intellectual inquiry from the intrusion of partisan passions. The very limitation of academic freedom is part of its strength. By excluding the political, it makes room for the pursuit of truth.
I’ve never seen the attraction of prostitution. If a man wants quick unfulfilling sex with a woman who despises him, he should get married.
That's from Stumbling, with whom we have frequent disagreements. He refuses to consider the possibility that some entrepreneurial women might want to be whores.
It pays well, requires little higher education, and is a "cash business" (ie, no taxes).
We care very deeply about these expressions of who we are as a society, locally or nationally. Some people don’t want to see strip malls. Some don’t want to see litter. Some don’t want to see sexual advocacy in the children’s section of the public library. Zoning, historical districts, wilderness areas, nude beaches, prayers before football games, public smoking, girlie magazines at the convenience store, transvestites, mosques, loud music next door, ORV’s, communications towers, homeless people, Wal-marts…We don’t want to see it! Or we do. It says something bad/good about us as a people. We want to feel that the place is ours, that it expresses us. I don’t want to live in a society that…
Yes. We get to decide what we want around us, don't we?
Sometimes I think rationalist materialists like Stumbling need to listen more often to this great Supertramp tune and develop a bit of humility about his/their rationalism:
The following is from our regular guest poster Bruce Kesler:
We won the war, but lost the victory.
That charge can legitimately be made about Iraq. It could also be legitimately made about World War I, World War II, and Vietnam. In all these, initial goals were not achieved of either preserving the status quo or creating a more peaceful world order.
Inevitably, domestically and abroad, new inimical forces are strengthened or unleashed, encouraged by our turning inward. World War I led to the rise of state fascism and communism, as we focused on our own comforts.World War II led to Eastern Europe and China behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains, and Russia and China feeling able to take South Korea from our inattention.Vietnam (which was won, only to be tossed to the wolves of an overwhelming invasion) led to a generation of US defeatism and half-measures that encouraged today’s jihadism.
On the other hand, World War I spread the ideal of self-rule and led to the end of colonialism that sapped rulers’ wealth and honor.World War II led to the world-wide wealth-producing leadership of American free enterprise.Vietnam bought the time for emergence of vibrant economies among those that allowed greater freedom.
The Clinton years were the ascendancy of those whose lesson from Vietnam was, at best, half-measures in the face of clear threats and attacks.The irony of much these same people populating the Obama administration is not lost on aggressors, despite Obama saying during the campaign “The real gamble in this election is playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expecting a different result.”
While WMD’s were not discovered in Iraq, neither has the extant capacity to produce them survived.While sectarian competition simmers, none are subjugated nor victims of state oppression.While democracy has not spread through the region, neither has any power the strength to impose itself.While terrorist organizations continue their threats, their power and draw has been stifled and we have avoided domestic attacks.
What will Iraq bring that’s more positive?A recognition that others must take greater responsibility for their own fate would be welcome, but unlikely.Perhaps more likely will be a greater recognition and appreciation for the US’ leadership and sacrifices.But, that will only come after a period of suffering reduced US willingness to bravely lead and sacrifice.
The ending of prior wars led to our electorate relaxing and turning its attentions internally.That led to increasing the potentials for those with nefarious objectives to try their chances.We’ve done it again.And so will they. Comparatively, The US will emerge from the global economic meltdown as strong or stronger than ever, as our innate and predominant values of free and responsible initiative are strengthened while others are more committed to statist stultifying.
Good thing, because we have also repeated the error of turning in, which will only encourage those abroad with nefarious objectives.
The operation will, again, have been successful, and the victory lost.
History continues, and future generations will pay the price.
Voters making over $200,000/year (which is upper-middle class, except in NY, CT, and parts of CA) voted well over 50% for Obama. Will Wilkinson discusses the demographics of the election with Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State.
Among many other topics, he attempts to understand how formerly Repub states like NY, CT and California became Democratic. Also, a bit on happiness and "progress."
A GOP strategist earlier this year, as quoted via Rick Moran in Will Nationalized Health Care Kill Conservatism? -
“Let me tell you something, if Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that’s it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail.”
Rick disagrees, but opines that further govt entitlement obligations will be catastrophic for the US. There's no doubt that a government grab of 14% of the economy would be a huge shift.
Democrats are delirious with glee at their opportunity to impose a national health care regime that gets us closer to their ambition of government-run universal health care.
Their launch point is the 98 page outline issued by Senator Max Baucus.Their point man is to be former Senator Tom Daschle, proposed as Secretary of Health and Human Resources, who has written of similar ambitions and is deemed to be able to wheel and deal toward that end.
Estimates of cost are in the area of $150-billion a year, and growing.Since it shares many of the aspects of Massachusetts’ plan, which is costing double estimates, similar larger real costs can be expected.
Although only about 20-25% of the 47-million who are uninsured are actually US citizens in financial or underwriting need, let’s for the sake of this exercise use the 47-million number.
At an average monthly premium cost of $158, according to a recent studyof actual individual premiums, that means $7.5 billion per month, or $90-billion a year.Make that $250 a month, to include broader benefits that government typically requires in its plans, more health conditions due to guaranteed issue, and more elderly with community rating that averages their costs down while increasing costs for the younger, and you have $11.75 billion per month, or $141-billion a year.
Cut that back by even half, to eliminate benefits for illegal immigrants, for the legal ones whose sponsors are supposed to be responsible, and for those who can afford coverage but choose to go bare, and you’ve got an annual $70-billion program.
Assuming that Democrats are determined to further bust the federal budget and place us deeper in debt, paying or subsidizing the premiums of the truly needy uninsured would be cheaper than their favored schemes.All that without a major disruption of the coverage, benefits, freedom of choice of everyone else, and without creating a huge new government bureaucracy that interferes with innovation in treatments or delivery.
So, is the Democrats’ goal increasing Americans’ access to health care?Or is it increasing their own access to control over Americans, with the increased access to self-enrichment that comes from government programs?
Kondratiev thought he’d check in on how Honda was doing while the Detroit Three were begging scraps from Congress. Not bad -- on October 27, 2008, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., announced a summary of automobile production, Japan domestic sales, and export results for the month of September 2008 and the first half of the current fiscal year (April-September 2008), including all-time records for worldwide auto production and production in regions outside of Japan for the first half of a fiscal year.
Honda Motor has announced that its worldwide vehicle production for the year-to-date increased 3.4% to 2,985,638 units, compared to the same period of 2007. 915,574 of those cars were made in Japan, and 1,095,828 were made in North America!
Honda began operations in the U.S. in 1959 with the establishment of American Honda Motor Co., Inc., Honda's first overseas subsidiary. Honda began U.S. production in Ohio in 1979, and began U.S. automobile production in 1982 at its Marysville, Ohio, auto plant. The company has invested more than $10.6 billion in its North America operations, including 16 major manufacturing facilities employing more than 35,000 associates and producing more than 2 million products annually, including Honda and Acura automobiles as well as motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, personal watercraft, lawn mowers, general-purpose engines, and other power equipment products. Honda currently partners with more than 650 North American suppliers and purchased more than $18.8 billion in parts and materials from North American suppliers in 2007.
On October 9, 2008, Honda Manufacturing of Indiana, LLC began mass production of the fuel-efficient, 4-cylinder Honda Civic sedan at its new facility in Greensburg, Indiana. The $550 million facility will ultimately produce 200,000 vehicles, and employ 2,000 associates at full capacity.
Nearly 900 Indiana associates have been conducting trial production for several months, refining new processes and equipment, and learning to meet Honda standards for quality, efficiency and flexibility. Today’s start up of mass production culminates several weeks of department-by-department production start-ups in stamping, welding, painting, plastic injection molding, body assembly and other areas.
Currently, Honda Manufacturing of Indiana is operating on one shift with plans to add a second shift in 2009. The Honda Civic sedan being built in Indiana features the 140-hp, 1.8-liter, 16-valve SOHC i-VTEC® 4-cylinder gasoline engine produced by Honda associates at a Honda engine plant in nearby Anna, Ohio.
Honda announced plans to build the Greensburg facility in June 2006, and broke ground for the new production facility in March 2007. The new plant is a comprehensive production facility that includes metal stamping, plastic injection molding, subassembly and final assembly and other processes. Honda Manufacturing of Indiana sits on a 1,700 acre parcel facing Interstate 74 in Greensburg.
Honda has designed the Greensburg facility to be a flexible, efficient and environmentally responsible auto manufacturing facility. The plant will be Honda’s second U.S. auto plant designed as a zero waste to landfill facility. It will help to boost Honda’s total North American automobile production capacity from 1.42 million units to more than 1.62 million.
Why do Liberals hate Conservatives so much? A quote from Ace:
...researchers determined that "there are five psychological foundations of morality, which we label as harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity." Conservative morality is based on some combination of all five of these moral foundations. There may not be an exact 20% input from each one, but they are all present. Liberal morality is based on only the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations.
"Conservatives have many moral concerns that liberals simply do not recognize as moral concerns... liberals often find it hard to understand why so many of their fellow citizens do not rally around the cause of social justice, and why many Western nations have elected conservative governments in recent years."
Read the whole thing, but the point is well-taken. Libs and Conservatives are coming from different places, with different basic assumptions. I don't think it explains the hatred, though.
Humans are genetically uniform, but one of those uniformities is a capacity for acquiring and transmitting culture, some of which is moral culture, from which comes variation in moral dispositions. Different institutional structures are possible only because cultural variation is possible. And a configuaration of institutions, once in place, exerts pressure on culture, which in turn exerts pressure on institutional structure, and so on. If more peace and prosperity is better, and the institutions and behavior that produce peace and prosperity are mediated by moral cultured, and moral culture is embodied as emotive and behavioral dispositions by the people within that society, then it seems evasive to deny that those people are “better” in a pretty obvious sense. People who are better at producing moral ends are morally better. It’s not wrong to visit a place rife with corruption, dishonesty, racism and cruelty and remark that “the people are horrible.” It may not be anyone’s fault that they turned out this way, but people do turn out that way, and whole societies, whole peoples, can and do get better. If behavioral dispositions were in fact invariant, and variations in peace and prosperity were entirely due to variations in institutional structure, Posner would be right. There would be no difference in the people. But since variations in institutions are themselves due in large part to variations in people, Posner is wrong. The evidence points to the conclusion that people in commercial societies are better, which is one of the best reasons to prefer commercial societies.
Comment from Dr. Bliss: Yes, I agree with WW that the always interesting U of Chicago Law Prof and blogger Posner gets it wrong. Institutions shape neither people nor culture: the relationship between people and their culture - and the institutions they produce - is circular and interactive, and an ecological sort of model applies better than a binary or unidirectional one. Funnily enough, I happen to be planning a post on the subject.
Researcher Robert Carter has a good summary of the realities of the AGW frenzy, with the above title. One quote from his essay:
...science reality in 2008 is that the IPCC’s hypothesis of dangerous, human-caused global warming has been repeatedly tested and failed. In contrast, the proper null hypothesis that the global climatic changes that we observe today are natural in origin has yet to be disproven. The only argument that remains to the IPCC—and it is solely a theoretical argument, not evidence of any kind—is that their unvalidated computer models project that carbon-dioxide-driven dangerous warming will occur in the future: just you wait and see!
He goes on to make the case that mankind can adapt to climate shifts, regardless of their causes, just as it has done in the past.
To our Canadian friends who do not believe that Free Speech is just "an American idea" but a fundamental human right and a central individual freedom from the power of the State, read this.
Bailing out the auto industry offers no net gain to society. It is a straight transfer of resources from one sector to another: we tax money, or borrow it from a finite pool of capital available to the nation, and spend it on auto workers. The people who pay the taxes, or the people who would have borrowed that investment capital, now have less to spend. Whatever they would have bought goes unbought; whoever would have made it goes unemployed. To coin a phrase, what is made on the swings is lost on the roundabouts We have the illusion of a gain only because that other group of people is invisible. Even if we don't bail out GM, they will not be visible--we will never know who didn't lose a job or a business because we declined to spend one squillion dollars saving the Chevy Cobalt.
It's been as clear as day to everyone for years that the once-Big Three are lousy companies with lousy businesses, products that don't sell, and that nobody wants to invest in anymore - except politicians. We're a Toyota country now (except for the Ford F series).
But who ever said raw politics has to make logical sense? This is called vote-buying, and a big thank-you to Michigan for going blue by supporting existing union contracts. With our money. There is a certain sort of political logic in that.
Comment from The Barrister: What is often left out in these discussions is that bankruptcy would not put these companies out of business and these workers out of work. They would reorganize (and renegotiate contracts), or sell off their parts.
And from BD: Follow the money. Best I can figger, all that a bailout would bail out is the existing union contracts, and little more.
And from the NJ: I would not be happy to be working to support Michigan union benefits, which are so much more generous than mine - or those of most folks - that it's ridiculous. Why would I want to do that? Those businesses are obsolete, but somebody is going to try to sell us the notion that they need my money to go green, or some similar BS. Toyota already did that.
Political bloggers are having fun discussing whether they want to provide a genteel loyal opposition to a presumably hard-Left and seemingly grimly humorless White House and Congress, or whether to attempt the same sort of relentless knee-capping and smearing to which the Dems subjected Bush for 8 years.
Naturally, the soon-to-be-installed Federal pols and their supporters are urging Kumbaya peace and harmony - on their terms, of course. That will never happen.
You spent the last eight years engaged in a disgusting orgy of divisive political hatred and now you want to play nice and pretend we're all united now? I for one am not going to treat President Obama the way you treated President Bush. That doesn't mean, though, I'm going to just forgive and forget the fact that you've polluted the political landscape with your bile and patchouli-stanking spittle.
My opinion? My opinion doesn't really matter, but I'll try to stand for some humor and truth. (Plus we aren't a political website anyway.)
Marginal Rev makes the case that slipping housing wealth is the cause of this recession, not banking. A quote:
This is truly incredible. Homeowners have lost more than $5 trillion in housing wealth. There is a very well established wealth effect whereby $1 of housing wealth is estimated as leading to 5 to 6 cents of annual consumption. This implies that the loss of wealth to date would cause consumption to fall by $250 billion to $300 billion annually (1.7 percent to 2.0 percent of GDP). If you add in the loss of around $6 trillion in stock wealth, with an estimated wealth effect of 3-4 cents on the dollar, then you get an additional decline of $180 billion to $240 billion in annual consumption (1.2 percent to 1.6 percent of GDP).
These are huge falls in consumption that would lead to a very serious recession, like the one we are seeing. This would be predicted even if all our banks were fully solvent and in top flight financial shape. Even the soundest bank does not make loans to borrowers who it does not think can pay the loans back (except during times of irrational exuberance).
Link above. Of course, these things snowball with slipping markets further reducing wealth and causing people and businesses to feel more reluctant to spend. Finally, Springtime eventually returns once marginal and undercapitalized businesses have been swept away, and pricing finds its realistic level. I continue to insist that we folks are in an ordinary recession - but the banking biz is surely in a strange and ugly one.
I figure I have lost close to 20% of my net worth thus far, but that's measuring from the peak. One should never measure from peaks, because peaks never last. (Always measure things from historical trends.) Plus I really do not care what my home and land is worth, since I have no plan to leave it, I don't mind the bank holding title to it, I like having the mortgage interest deduction, and my equity line remains open (from which I used $150,000 for restoration work on the barns earlier this year - new roofs, new windows, plumbing, electric, repair rotten siding...). I have more wealth than I had 10 years ago, and that's what counts for feeling secure.
I am utterly relaxed about my hefty mortgage and home equity because I know that Obama will pay it for me, unlike that mean George Bush who never offered to pay my bills. And I can't wait to get my government pony. Ponies are cute and, if times get tough, you can eat them.
When a candidate or party loses an election, the tendency is to over-read it and to self-scrutinize, sometimes to a fault. When they win, the tendency is to over-read it and not self-scrutinize enough. Often, the process devolves into a circular firing squad for the former, and a circle jerk for the latter. We try to avoid both of those unseemly activities.
These election thoughts by guest poster Bruce Kesler:
Jon Henke, over at The New Right blog, says “Republicans deserved to lose.” His argument parallels mine in Appearances and Mood that “it is among conservatives that reform must come….Rank and file conservatives mostly looked to this inadequate leadership instead of to ourselves to step forward and fight.”Henke writes:
The problem is a movement that plays small-ball and cedes responsibility for infrastructure to business interests, leadership that rewards those who make friends rather than waves, an entrenched Party and Movement support system that mostly supports itself, an echo chamber that has rotted our intellect, a grassroots that is ill-equipped to shape the Republican Party, and a Republican Party that has replaced strategy with tactics, substance with marketing.
From there it’s downhill in the Comments on Henke’s post, as the argument devolves into whether the Party should be with libertarians or traditionalists, economic or social conservatives, Hispanics or Southerners, and so forth.In other words, the arguments are for further splitting asunder the Reagan coalition.Insane.
Instead, the discussion should be on how to not only rebuild the Reagan coalition but how to enlarge it.
There were five primary slippages in Republican votes during this election.The younger voters who are the children of liberal Boomers came of age and along with their educated parents went Obama.The working middle class suffered additional economic loss on top of their struggles with taxes, tuition, mortgages, car payments and just getting by.The staunch conservatives didn’t see McCain doing much more for their priorities other than not surrendering in Iraq.The aspiring poor and working class didn’t see any vision presented by McCain of support for getting ahead. The large business interests, most entwined with government programs, either were inactive or shifted their donations to Democrats promising or controlling programs that would enrich them.All this was exacerbated by the major media’s evasion of examining Obama’s record and promises, indeed his lack of the former and illusory nature of the latter, but concentration of nitpicking McCain and Palin.
When volunteering becomes compulsory, it's not volunteering any more, is it? Same difference between charity and taxes. Same as the draft.
Plus, where I live, there are more volunteers than there are things to do. The chance to teach English to Hispanics has a long waiting list, and the Red Cross says "We'll call you if we need you." They have to form committees to try to "identify unmet needs." In other words, well-intentioned housewives and retired guys have to make up things to do because everybody who wants "help" already gets more than they can handle, and most New England folks seem too proud to accept help anyway. The old culture dies hard.
Are people really so helpless in America that they need pimply high-schoolers or condescending do-gooder college kids - who know nothing at all about life - to "help" them?
I very much doubt it. But I don't know anybody who isn't happy to cash a check or to take a freebie from the gummint to buy a new iPod. People are always happy to accept cash from "the gummint," because it doesn't feel so much like you're ripping off your neighbor.
A Commentfrom our News Junkie:
I have soured on do-gooderism. I have been to Katrina, to Appalachia, to NYC (where I now live), to Haiti and to Africa over the years with church groups, and every time I went the locals drank wine or moonshine or some kind of African hootch, and smoked in lawn chairs or lounging in the grass while telling jokes while we "helped." In Africa, the guys took occasional drinking breaks to visit the local whorehouse while we supposedly did stuff "for them." It's humiliating to all concerned, as if people were children; embarassing to the recipients and to the doers. Never saw anybody local ever offer to do so much as to pick up a hammer, a shovel, or a mop. I'm done with that approach to virtuousness. People have to want to help themselves, or there is not a damn thing you can do. "Wanting to help" is pure social imperialism of the most soft-headed sort. I once helped build a church building in Africa, and now feel foolish about it because a church is not a building - it's people. The building was insignificant except when it rained. They could have built a better one, better suited to their area, with poles and thatch (and much more cheaply) in a few days if they felt like it. What we built will no doubt be attacked by termites and fall down.
Live and learn. What people want is cash to spend the way they want to.
Liberals want to bring back the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" as their plan to put talk radio out of business. How would it do that? Because every subject has 30 different views on it. I doubt that the Dems would wish to extend it to The Daily Kos or to Maggie's, but who knows?
It always amuses me how Liberals cannot tolerate dissent. Let's all rely on NPR and become one beautiful, happy family of group-thinking "sensitive, caring" parasites.
Anyway, in honor of the Dems' and especially Chuckie Shumer's desire to reinstate the Fairness Doctine, and out of consideration for our lady readers who feel that our Cheesecake/Beefcake ratio is way off target, we offer these:
Political scientists love to discuss this topic. The short answer is simple, though: If they vote for my guy, they're rational - and vice-versa. Political scientists seem to think that voters should be more rational.
Of course, neither voting nor politics are entirely rational, nor should they be. Life is too complex for logic, and non-rational doesn't mean stupid.
The subject is discussed in Irrational Electorate by Larry Bartels, in Wilson Quarterly.
A quote from Robert Samuelson's The Poor aren't Poor Because Rich are Rich:
Judged only by economic inequality, the financial crisis is a godsend. It will probably narrow the gap — though still vast — between the rich and everybody else. But what good will that do? Economic inequality also declined in the Great Depression. The country wasn't better off.
By and large, the poor aren't poor because the rich are rich. They're usually poor for their own reasons: family breakdown, low skills, destructive personal habits and plain bad luck.
The presumption implicit in the criticism of growing economic inequality is that society's income is a given and, if the rich have less, others will have more. Up to a point, that's true. The government already redistributes much income, often for the good.
During the boom years, companies might have been less lavish with top executives and slightly more generous to other workers or shareholders. Some new fortunes stem from self-dealing and financial razzle-dazzle, not the creation of real economic value. It's just desserts that some of this wealth has evaporated.
But the redistributionist argument is at best a half-truth. The larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can't be redistributed because it doesn't exist. Everyone's poorer.
Read the whole thing. Of course, the whole Lefty populist mantra about "corporate greed" and "sharing" only appeals to economic illiterates, but America and the world have plenty of those.
It's difficult to create wealth if you are economically illiterate, so your own envy or greed will make you want to take it away from somebody else who created it with their creativity, effort, skill and drive.
The fallacy is the one we discuss so often: the notion that wealth is a zero-sum game. Wealth, as Americans understand better than most of the world does, is an infinitely-expandable thing. All it takes is peoples' desire and creative spirit.
Unlike material things, wealth is created from thin air - and wealth is destroyed leaving no residue.
Speaking of which, we were too caught up in the election flurry to post this video of Dem. Rep. Jim Moran discussing his thoughts on wealth redistribution. It's populist, socialistic - and either as ignorant as hell or manipulative as hell. Who does he think "owns" corporations? 2/3 of Americans "own" the corporations via being shareholders and bondholders. I'd like to see it advance to 100%.
I grew up in the 1950s, supposedly the heyday of conformity, but there was much more freedom of opinion back then. And as a result, you knew that your neighbors might hold different views from you on politics or religion. Today, the notion that men of good will can disagree has disappeared. Can you imagine! Today, if I disagree with you, you conclude there is something wrong with me. This is a childish, parochial view. And of course stupefyingly intolerant. It's truly anti-American. Much of it can be laid at the feet of the environmental movement, which has unfortunately frequently been led by ill-educated and intolerant spokespersons--often with no more than a high-school education, sometimes not even that. Or they are lawyers trained to win at any cost and to say anything about their opponents to win. But you find the same intolerant tone around considerations of defense, taxation, free markets, universal medical care, and so on. There's plenty of zealotry to go around. And it's hardly new in human history.
The media might stand as a corrective, cool and a bit detached, showing by example how to approach information and controversy. Instead, the media has clearly caught the fever of our intolerant times. Formerly, news people would never openly state their allegiance; young reporters understood it was poor form, and a senior person would carry the caution born of the experience that at least some of what one believes in the course of one's life turns out to be wrong. But it's a new era. Now, media reporters are proud to pound the table and declare their advocacy. Since so few of them have any training in science, they don't really know what they are pounding about, when it comes to global warming. They couldn't tell you even in general terms how the global mean temperature is calculated, for example. But it doesn't matter anyway. They just want to declare they believe what "everyone" believes. Who values such a news source?
Your Editor here at Maggie's will vote tomorrow (even though there is no point in ever voting) out of duty and citizenship. We promise no blame or recriminations towards anybody (except the press) if our preferred candidates lose in these elections which entail much more than just presidential elections, and we promise not to go hysterical, infantile, and paranoid like the Left tends to do if we don't get our way.(Well, but we may all move into Habu's cabin in Montana.)
Related to that, our guest poster Bruce Kesler has some thoughts in anticipation of vox populi:
What McCain did right and conservatives wrong
By Bruce Kesler
Over the past four years, conservatives have debated whether the Republican Party is serving them and the country.This discussion was stirred by several proposals by the Bush administration -- particularly not vetoing some budget-busters, the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and the immigration reforms that didn’t prioritize border controls – and the failure to fire back at the gross distortions and language by opponents.
Bush earned respect for his stalwart stance in Iraq, but even there lost points for his failure to act earlier to change a troubled strategy and command.Seeming backpeddling and soft-shoeing on the threats from Iran and North Korea, though following closer to the liberals’ playbook, didn’t earn him support from liberals or conservatives.
The debate among conservatives and libertarians after this election is likely to grow much more heated, whether McCain wins or loses.
Although conservatives have stood most strongly behind McCain, conservatives do not expect much thanks or loyalty from McCain if he wins, and do expect McCain to continue his practice of alliance with many liberal proposals, as he has in the past.That alone will add heat the pot.On the other hand, conservatives will welcome his Trumanesque temper and bluntness replying to the likely continuation of intemperate Democrats in the Congress.
If McCain loses, conservatives will likely place most of the blame on him and his campaign for failing to take more advantage of Obama’s coterie of radical mentors, to alert more voters of their dangers.
At the same time, in defense of McCain’s campaign approach, those most likely to hold these associations as important are aware of them.Meanwhile, in a campaign during which the overwhelming portion of the major media have utterly failed to research or expose Obama’s lack of record and record of shady allies, McCain would likely not have gotten much further in educating the wider public.
So, McCain has concentrated on trying to woo marginal voters.Those non-partisans react more to appearances and mood.
McCain earned none of the points he should have for trying to tackle the credit-economic meltdown, even by comparison to Obama’s passivity.Neither did McCain draw attention to the Congress’ tainted hands in creating it, but there are many Republican members who sat by and prospered from the false sense of well-being that preceded the deluge.McCain did not throw the Congressional Republicans under the bus, as Obama repeatedly did every time a mentor was exposed.And, McCain did exhibit a bully optimism in reacting to the meltdown and focused on quick actions.
It is that indefatigable optimism and sense of fair play that has been highlighted and redounded to his credit.This is in line with his military and political record of bravely meeting challenges.Despite every odd, McCain has fought the election to a near thing.
Conservatives must recognize that, for any of McCain or his campaign’s failings, it is among conservatives that reform must come. Much of our NY-DC commentariat are corrupted by overlong proximity to comfortable power and cocktail circuits, exhibiting callowness, lethargy or outright capitulation.Their lack of principle and intestinal fortitude must be replaced.Much of our bloggers have been consumed by editorializing and not organizing.The think-tanks we built and many major donors have been cringing or avoiding confrontation.Rank and file conservatives mostly looked to this inadequate leadership instead of to ourselves to step forward and fight.
It will take a major overhaul to revive the conservative movement.As in 1964, it will not come from the establishment, but must depend on openness to new participants and leaders.Of course, that does not mean fringe elements or ideas.The crucial role that National Review played post-1964 in guarding against that will require a new central forum of conservative sanity and principle.
No one can predict where they will come from.But they must be encouraged, welcomed and supported when they appear.Indeed, each of us must see in ourselves the willingness and determination to be those participants and leaders.
Economics fails us in the current economic travails, because of its inherent limitations and because it doesn’t deal with a root distortion of the factors considered. 
We use the term "Watermelon" to refer to those who are green on the outside and red on the inside. (We at Maggie's are ardent Conservationists and nature-lovers and studiers, but have never bought into the "Green" thing.)
Democrats are delirious with glee at their opportunity to impose a national health care regime that gets us closer to their ambition of government-run universal health care.
Kondratiev thought he’d check in on how Honda was doing while the Detroit Three were begging scraps from Congress. Not bad -- on October 27, 2008, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., announced a summary of automobile production, Japan domestic sales, and export results for the month of September 2008 and the first half of the current fiscal year (April-September 2008), including all-time records for worldwide auto production and production in regions outside of Japan for the first half of a fiscal year.
Nearly 900 
Political bloggers are having fun discussing whether they want to provide a genteel loyal opposition to a presumably hard-Left and seemingly grimly humorless White House and Congress, or whether to attempt the same sort of relentless knee-capping and smearing to which the Dems subjected Bush for 8 years. 
From May of this year. h/t,