Socialist Subversives

The Second Time is Farce: Frances Fox Piven Calls for a new Cloward-Piven Strategy for Today - Ron Radosh

The idea was to consciously create a fiscal crisis of the state. ACORN’s chief strategist, Peter Dreier, explained this in an article, “The Case for Transitional Reform,” which appeared in the journal Social Policy in February 1979. Dreier called for injecting “unmanageable strains into the capitalist system, strains that precipitate an economic and/or political crisis,” producing a “revolution of rising entitlements” that “cannot be abandoned without undermining the legitimacy of the capitalist class.” Once a “fiscal crisis in the public sector” occurred, the movement could push for creation of “socialist norms” being advanced as the only possible solution.

...

Writing in the current issue, Piven presents a clarion call for a new mass movement, one that the magazine publishes as an editorial statement representing its editors. (It is currently under the magazine’s firewall.) She begins by noting that nothing is taking place to deal with ending what she claims is an unemployment rate of 15 million people. To regain the 5 percent rate of 2007, she estimates there would have to be 300,000 jobs created each month for several years, something that is next to impossible.

Thus Piven asks a question: “So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?” In other words, the kind of action her protégé George Wiley fomented in the 70s with the NWRO. She admonishes the Left not to wait for “the end of the American empire and even the end of neoliberal capitalism,” but to up the ante at present to pressure for “big new [government] initiatives in infrastructure and green energy” that could “ward off the darkness.”

Climate Change Update

The Abiding Faith Of Warm-ongers - IBD Editorial

Karl Popper, the late, great philosopher of science, noted that for something to be called scientific, it must be, as he put it, "falsifiable." That is, for something to be scientifically true, you must be able to test it to see if it's false. That's what scientific experimentation and observation do. That's the essence of the scientific method.

Unfortunately, the prophets of climate doom violate this idea. No matter what happens, it always confirms their basic premise that the world is getting hotter. The weather turns cold and wet? It's global warming, they say. Weather turns hot? Global warming. No change? Global warming. More hurricanes? Global warming. No hurricanes? You guessed it.

Nothing can disprove their thesis. Not even the extraordinarily frigid weather now creating havoc across most of the Northern Hemisphere. The Los Angeles Times, in a piece on the region's strangely wet and cold weather, paraphrases Jet Propulsion Laboratory climatologist Bill Patzert as saying, "In general, as the globe warms, weather conditions tend to be more extreme and volatile."

Snowfall: ‘A very rare and exciting event’ - Anthony Watts

Now, for the second year in a row, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is covered with snow. Meanwhile, AGW proponents like the Guardian’s George Monbiot are furiously spinning to make it look like AGW causes more snow, rather than less, as the CRU scientist said 10 years ago.

WUWT commenter Murray Grainger writes:

The very same Independent has already published the rebuttal: Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists

Follow the link to see satellite photos of Great Britain covered with snow for the second winter in a row.

Christmas Music

Why This Orthodox Jew Loves Christmas Music - Michael M. Rosen

Yet Christmas music exerts a strong emotional and intellectual influence over me every December, for three distinct reasons, in increasing order of importance: its musical beauty; its deep-seated American-ness; and, most importantly, its powerful message of religious tolerance.

...

In his famous 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport, R.I., George Washington expressed this fervent hope: “May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Washington’s encomium reflects God’s solemn promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 that “those who bless you, I shall bless, and those who curse you, I shall curse.” In other words, Washington’s devotion to his faith sparked his ardent desire to protect “the Stock of Abraham” in the new United States.

This sentiment reaches its full expression in my personal favorite of the religious songs: “O Holy Night.” (I especially enjoy the version performed by Josh Groban, whose father was born Jewish but converted to Episcopalianism.) The music, naturally, is exquisite, but the lyrics nicely illustrate the philosemitic tendencies of the Christmas canon. Composed and written by two 19th-century Frenchmen, the song, while distinctly Christian, is a paean to religious tolerance:

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;

And in His name all oppression shall cease.

The song forthrightly acknowledges the religious obligation borne by all Christians to love the stranger, unchain the enslaved, and liberate the oppressed. It’s difficult to overstate the intellectual and emotional impact of such an approach on American Jews, whom the U.S. has welcomed with open, Christian arms. Thus, whenever I hear Christmas songs sung in English, I cannot help but swell with thankfulness that I’m allowed to freely practice my faith in such an extraordinary country, where, notwithstanding the caterwauling of extreme activists, (almost) all oppression has ceased.

Would that this tolerance were the norm around the world. Nowadays, where Christianity flourishes, Judaism thrives. But where secularism reigns, and where Islamism prevails, Jews find themselves under assault. Europe, home to the world’s largest Jewish population for centuries, has rapidly become the least hospitable place for Jewish communities to take root, as secular values and assertive Muslim populations have advanced. Tragically, oppression is on the march on the very continent that midwifed “O Holy Night.” Even here in the U.S., residents of San Francisco, the most secular of American big cities, now seek to ban circumcision.

Census Observations

Census: Fast growth in states with no income tax - by Michael Baron

First, the great engine of growth in America is not the Northeast Megalopolis, which was growing faster than average in the mid-20th century, or California, which grew lustily in the succeeding half-century. It is Texas.

Its population grew 21 percent in the past decade, from nearly 21 million to more than 25 million. That was more rapid growth than in any states except for four much smaller ones (Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Idaho).

Texas' diversified economy, business-friendly regulations and low taxes have attracted not only immigrants but substantial inflow from the other 49 states. As a result, the 2010 reapportionment gives Texas four additional House seats. In contrast, California gets no new House seats, for the first time since it was admitted to the Union in 1850.

There's a similar lesson in the fact that Florida gains two seats in the reapportionment and New York loses two.

This leads to a second point, which is that growth tends to be stronger where taxes are lower. Seven of the nine states that do not levy an income tax grew faster than the national average. The other two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, had the fastest growth in their regions, the Midwest and New England.

Altogether, 35 percent of the nation's total population growth occurred in these nine non-taxing states, which accounted for just 19 percent of total population at the beginning of the decade.

Mao's Legacy (2)

Mao's Great Leap to Famine - Frank Dikotter

Historians have known for some time that the Great Leap Forward resulted in one of the world’s worst famines. Demographers have used official census figures to estimate that some 20 to 30 million people died.

But inside the archives is an abundance of evidence, from the minutes of emergency committees to secret police reports and public security investigations, that show these estimates to be woefully inadequate.

In the summer of 1962, for instance, the head of the Public Security Bureau in Sichuan sent a long handwritten list of casualties to the local boss, Li Jingquan, informing him that 10.6 million people had died in his province from 1958 to 1961. In many other cases, local party committees investigated the scale of death in the immediate aftermath of the famine, leaving detailed computations of the scale of the horror.

In all, the records I studied suggest that the Great Leap Forward was responsible for at least 45 million deaths.

Between 2 and 3 million of these victims were tortured to death or summarily executed, often for the slightest infraction. People accused of not working hard enough were hung and beaten; sometimes they were bound and thrown into ponds. Punishments for the least violations included mutilation and forcing people to eat excrement.

Links and commentary at Instapundit

California in Decline

Two Californias - Victor Davis Hanson

Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border. Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

Book Safe

How to Make a Secret Book Safe - Brett & Kate McKay

Not only are book safes fun to possess, they also make a cool, unique gift.

Obama-Clinton Press Conference

Video:
Obama Ditches Tax Cut Presser, Bill Clinton Takes Control - Real Clear Politics Video

Commentary:
‘Something Very, Very Weird is Going on in Washington’ - Ed Driscoll

The headline is by fellow Bay Area blogger Bookworm Room, but we’ll get to her post in just a moment. But first, Allahpundit runs down today’s DC weirdness du jour — Bill Clinton taking over President — I think he’s still president, right? — Obama’s press conference:

I can’t do justice to what you’re about to see. The spectacle of the president bugging out of his own press conference to go to a Christmas party is weird enough, but having Clinton back at the White House podium fielding questions on the hottest domestic issue of the day shoots past deja vu and lands firmly in “am I hallucinating?” territory. (The good news: It turned Twitter into an hour-long snark free-for-all, with Michael Goldfarb taking first prize.)

Here’s how the New York Times reported the incident. (Link safe, goes to the Brothers Judd):

The president stood by Mr. Clinton’s side for several minutes as Mr. Clinton held court in front of the White House logo that often hovered behind him a decade ago.But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president excused himself, saying that his wife, Michelle, expected Mr. Obama’s presence at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during the month of December.

“I’ve been keeping the first lady waiting,” Mr. Obama said, excusing himself.

“I don’t want to make her mad,” Mr. Clinton said. “Please go.”

And with that, Mr. Obama departed, leaving Mr. Clinton to continue his extended conversation with the media. [...]

Mr. Clinton went on for at least 20 minutes, moving at one point beyond the tax debate and offering his opinion on the administration’s new arms control treaty with Russia and the ongoing crisis in Haiti.

Then there's this, from the freakishly prescient Iowahawk on November 24, 2008!

Obama Names Bill Clinton to Presidential Post - David Burge

WASHINGTON DC - Ending weeks of speculation and rumors, President-Elect Barack Obama today named Bill Clinton to join his incoming administration as President of the United States, where he will head the federal government's executive branch.

"I am pleased that Bill Clinton has agreed to come out of retirement to head up this crucial post in my administration," said Obama. "He brings a lifetime of previous executive experience as Governor of Arkansas and President of the United States, and has worked closely with most of the members of my Cabinet."

Clinton said he was "excited and honored" by the appointment, and would work "day and night" to defeat all the key policy objectives proposed by Mr. Obama during the campaign.

The Economy - December 2010

The Economic Incompetence Of The Political Class - Charles W. Kadlec

The sovereign debt crisis now threatening Europe, as well as major American states and cities, discloses the sheer incompetence of a political class that has over-promised, under-delivered and squandered vast amounts of their citizens' wealth.

Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, California, Illinois, Los Angeles and Chicago are simply the poster children for what happens when elected officials engage in reckless and irresponsible management of their economies, their banking system or their respective government's public finances.

U.S. Debt Clock
As predicted, The U.S. unfunded liabilities per taxpayer exceeded $1,000,000 during 2010. As Glenn would say, another grim milestone.

This is a good opportunity to quote myself:

We are promising benefits which cannot be delivered while simultaneously burdening future generations with expenditures they cannot afford.

The next time someone asserts that 'We are such a wealthy nation, surely we can afford to fund [insert pet social program here]" feel free to say "Well, no. Actually we can't. The total debt per U.S. household already exceeds $680,000. In addition, if you include unfunded future obligations for things like Social Security and Medicare, that number exceeds $2,000,000 per family. Just who exactly is going to pay that? Nobody can and nobody will. It's a Ponzi scheme and must eventually collapse like a house of cards."

Government liabilities rose $2 trillion in FY 2010: Treasury - by David Lawder

The biggest increase in net liabilities in fiscal 2010 stemmed from a $1.477 trillion increase in federal debt repayment and interest obligations, largely to finance programs to stabilize the economy and pull it out of recession.

A remedy for beggar states - George F. Will

A study by Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management calculates the combined underfunding of pensions in the all municipalities at $574 billion. States have an estimated $3.3 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities.

Nunes says that 10 states will exhaust their pension money by 2020, and all but eight states will by 2030.

States' troubles are becoming bigger. Hitherto, local governments have acquired infusions of funds from federal budget earmarks, which are now forbidden. Furthermore, states are suffering "ARRA hangover" - withdrawal from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a.k.a. the 2009 stimulus. With about $150 billion for state and local governments, it raised the federal portion of state budgets from about a quarter to a third. Also, in 2009 and 2010, states and localities borrowed almost $200 billion through the ARRA's Build America Bonds program, under which Washington pays 35 percent of the interest costs. Republicans, in another victory over the president in negotiations on extending the Bush tax rates, extinguished that program, which they say primarily produced more public-sector employees.

States taxing themselves to death - Dick Morrix & Eileen McGann

High taxes kill states. There can be no better evidence than the 2010 Census. The states that lost House seats -- because they're shrinking, relative to the nation -- had taxes 27 percent higher than the ones that gained seats.

Of the seven states that don't have a personal income tax, four (Texas, Florida, Nevada and Washington) account for eight of the 12 seats apportioned to the fastest-growing states.

New York and Ohio lost two more seats. Other losers -- down one each -- are Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Louisiana and Iowa. What do they all have in common? High taxes.

Texas, with the second lowest taxes in the nation, gained four seats, Florida picked up two and Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington state each gained one. All have low taxes.

The states that lost seats ranked an average of 24th in taxes and had an average tax burden of $2,267 per capita (weighted more toward the states that lost more than one seat).

The states that gained seats ranked an average of 39th in taxes and had an average tax burden (weighted) of $1,788 -- 27 percent lower than the losing states.

People vote with their feet and flee to low-tax states. It's not the climate; it's the taxes.

The West and the Tyranny of Public Debt - Jacques Attali

The history of public debt is the very history of national power: how it has been won and how it has been lost. Dreams and impatience have always driven men in power to draw on the resources of others—be it slaves, the inhabitants of occupied lands, or their own children yet to be born—in order to carry out their schemes, to consolidate power, to grow their own fortunes. But never, outside periods of total war, has the debt of the world’s most powerful states grown so immense. Never has it so heavily threatened their political systems and standards of living. Public debt cannot keep growing without unleashing terrible catastrophes.

Anyone saying this today is accused of pessimism. The first signs of economic recovery, harbingers of a supposedly falling debt, are held up to contradict him. Yet we wouldn’t be the first to think ourselves uniquely able to escape the fate of other states felled by their debt, such as the Republic of Venice, Renaissance Genoa, or the Empire of Spain.

...

Still, accumulating excessive debt is far too easy. Spending naturally rises faster than revenue. But once the fatal spiral begins, how can a state escape disaster? There are only eight options: (1) higher taxes; (2) less spending; (3) more growth; (4) more lenient interest rates; (5) worse inflation; (6) war; (7) external aid; or (8) default. All eight options have been used in the past, but only one of them is both plausible and desirable today: growth. A growing economy (which raises tax revenue) permits the absorption of debt and restores sustainable public finances. Then borrowing can resume—if it will encourage further growth. Responsible governments do not finance their everyday expenses by borrowing, and they keep their investments at a level they can repay.

Catching On to the Entitlement Disaster - John Hinderaker

The picture with regard to Social Security is considerably bleaker, if you are a baby boomer:

The same hypothetical couple retiring in 2011 will have paid $614,000 in Social Security taxes, and can expect to collect $555,000 in benefits. They will have paid about 10 percent more into the system than they're likely to get back.

A reader who is highly sophisticated in financial matters emails:

Another way of looking at it is that on the most conservative assumptions they are receiving no more than a NEGATIVE return of minus 1.9% on their "contributions"! LITERALLY....if they had buried the "contributions" in the backyard they would be better off!

Storm Photos

Eye of the storm: The jaw-dropping image of an enormous 'supercell' cloud - Daily Mail Reporter

Mr Heavey, 34, an amateur photographer, created the jaw-dropping panoramic image by stitching together three photos from the 400 frames he took of the violent scene he witnessed in July

Stuxnet

Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran's Nuclear Weapons Ambitions - Ed Barnes

Simply put, Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and was designed to jump from computer to computer until it found the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

The target was seemingly impenetrable; for security reasons, it lay several stories underground and was not connected to the World Wide Web. And that meant Stuxnet had to act as sort of a computer cruise missile: As it made its passage through a set of unconnected computers, it had to grow and adapt to security measures and other changes until it reached one that could bring it into the nuclear facility.

When it ultimately found its target, it would have to secretly manipulate it until it was so compromised it ceased normal functions.

And finally, after the job was done, the worm would have to destroy itself without leaving a trace.

The Criminalization of Politics

'The Criminalization of Politics' - Editorial, The Washington Post

THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns. Mr. DeLay's state political action committee accepted $190,000 in (legal) corporate contributions. A PAC official wrote a check for that amount to the Republican National Committee, helpfully including a list of candidates for the Texas statehouse and the amounts they were to receive. The RNC did Mr. DeLay's bidding - and the ensuing GOP takeover of the state legislature allowed Republicans to engineer a redistricting plan that helped defeat five Democratic incumbents in the next election.

This was a clear end run around the Texas election law. It is less clear, however, that this behavior fits the definition of money-laundering or should be prosecuted and punished using that criminal offense. Corporate contributions to political candidates are a felony under Texas law. But at the time of Mr. DeLay's actions, the state's general conspiracy statute did not cover election law violations. Texas courts threw out prosecutors' efforts to charge Mr. DeLay with a conspiracy to violate election laws - leaving only the charges of money-laundering and conspiracy to engage in money-laundering, of which Mr. DeLay was convicted Friday. In Texas, as elsewhere, money-laundering is defined as knowingly using "the proceeds of criminal activity," such as cash from drug deals.

But it was legal for corporations to donate to Mr. DeLay's political action committee, so it's fair to question how the cash sent to and from the RNC was transformed into criminal "proceeds." Mr. DeLay's lawyers presented testimony from three current and former RNC officials that such money swaps were common transactions for political parties.

Mr. DeLay's conduct was wrong. It was typical of his no-holds-barred approach to political combat. But when Mr. DeLay, following the conviction, assailed "the criminalization of politics," he had a fair point.

Starship Troopers - Robert A. Heinlein

Starship Troopers is the Robert Heinlein story about Juan (Johnnie) Rico and his experience in the Terran Mobile Infantry. Widely recognized as a classic in science fiction, it is nonetheless tagged as "The Controversial Classic of Military Adventure" by the publisher. Such tagging says as much about the publisher as it does the book. Here is a sampling of the controversial moral philosophy Johnnie is exposed to in high school and boot camp.

Page 26 (in History and Moral Philosophy class)

But on the last day he seemed to be trying to find out what we had learned. One girl told him bluntly: "My mother says that violence never settles anything."

"So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure that the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that. Why doesn't you mother tell them so? Or why don't you?"

They had tangled before -- since you couldn't flunk the course, it wasn't necessary to keep Mr. Dubois buttered up. She said shrilly, "You're making fun of me! Everybody knows that Carthage was destroyed!"

"You seemed to be unaware of it," he said grimly. "Since you do know it, wouldn't you say that violence had settled their destinies rather thoroughly? However, I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea -- a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts or Napolean Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at best. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

Page 27 -

Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. "You. What is the moral difference between the soldier and the civilian?"

"The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not."

"The exact words of the book," he said scornfully. "But do you understand it? Do you believe it?"

Page 54 (at boot camp)

Zim said almost gently, "You've got it all wrong, son. There's no such thing as a 'dangerous weapon.'"

"Huh? Sir?"

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We're trying to teach you to be dangerous -- to the enemy. Dangerous even without a knife. Deadly as long as you still have one hand or one foot and are still alive. If you don't know what I mean, go read 'Horatius at the Bridge' or 'The Death of the Bon Homme Richard'; they're both in the Camp library."

Page 97 (in History and moral Philosophy)

He had been droning along about "value," comparing the Marxist theory with the orthodox "use" theory. Mr. Dubois had said, "Of course, the Marxian definition of value is rediculous. All the work one cares to add will not turn a mud pie into an apple tart, it remains a mud pie, value zero. By corollary, unskillful work can easily subtract value; an untalented cook can turn wholesome dough and fresh green apples, valuable already, into an inedible mess, value zero. Conversely, a great chef can fashion of those same materials a confection of greater value than a commonplace apple tart, with no more effort than an ordinary cook uses to prepare the ordinary sweet.

"These kitchen illustrations demolish the Marxian theory of value -- the fallacy from which the entire magnificent fraud of communism derives -- and illustrate the truth of the common-sense definition as measured in terms of use."

Page 99

I fancy that the poet who wrote that somg meant to imply that the best things in life must be purchased other than with money -- which is true -- just as the literal meaning of his words is false. The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion ... and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself -- ultimate cost for perfect value."

See also, page 117 on capital punishment and page 125 on duty vs. rights.

A Thanksgiving Reminder

Paul Rahe: America's First Socialist Republic - Scott Johnson

Quoting Professor Paul Rahe:

On Thanksgiving, it is customary that Americans recall to mind the experience of the Pilgrim Fathers This year, it is especially appropriate that we do so -- as we pause, in the midst of an economic maelstrom, to count our remaining blessings and to reflect on the consequences of our election of a President and a Congress intent on "spread[ing] the wealth around."

We have much to learn from the history of the Plymouth Plantation. For, in their first year in the New World, the Pilgrims conducted an experiment in social engineering akin to what is now contemplated; and, after an abortive attempt at cultivating the land in common, their leaders reflected on the results in a manner that Americans today should find instructive.

William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Colony, reports that, at that time, he and his advisers considered "how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery." And "after much debate of things," he then adds, they chose to abandon communal property, deciding that "they should set corn every man for his own particular" and assign "to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end."

The results, he tells us, were gratifying in the extreme, "for it made all hands very industrious" and "much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been." ...

The moral is perfectly clear. Self-interest cannot be expunged. Where there is private property and its possession and acquisition are protected and treated with respect, self-interest and jealousy can be deployed against laziness and the desire for that which is not one's own, and there tends to be plenty as a consequence.

But where one takes from those who join talent with industry to provide for those lacking either or both, where the fruits of one man's labor are appropriated to benefit another who is less productive, self-interest reinforces laziness, jealousy engenders covetousness, and these combine in a bitter stew to produce both conflict and dearth.

Read William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation.

TSA Grope-downs

Instapundit round-up and commentary - Glenn Reynolds

FINALLY: Reader Tim Maguire writes:

I have one comment I have to make about these TSA “front-line grunts” who are “just doing their jobs.” The upper level administrators who make who make these terrible decisions wouldn’t be able to if it weren’t for the legions of low-level staffers who are willing to just do their jobs. They are decision makers too–they decide their own limits and they have decided that sexual assault is within those limits; they are the cogs that keep the wheels of oppression churning.

Don't blame us! We're only doing our job! - Eric Scheie

Because they have created an insular and near-anonymous system, no one is really accountable and there is no one to blame -- as even members of Congress discovered when they tried ever so gently to ask TSA administrator John Pistole if he might consider backing off just a little.

Airport 'Security'? - Thomas Sowell

What do the Israeli airport-security people do that American airport-security people do not do? They profile. They question some individuals for more than half an hour, open up all their luggage, and spread the contents on the counter — and they let others go through with scarcely a word. And it works.

Meanwhile, this administration is so hung up on political correctness that they have turned “profiling” into a bugaboo. They would rather have electronic scanners look under the clothes of nuns than detain a jihadist imam for some questioning.

Look for Terrorists, Not Weapons - Mona Charen

After 9/11, we were all under the impression that the newly created TSA, and its counterparts in other Western countries, would be particularly alert for certain kinds of behavior. Purchasing a one-way ticket, paying cash, having little or no luggage, looking nervous, and traveling from certain unstable parts of the world were all presumed to be red flags that would trigger action. Instead, we seem to have settled into a kind of bovine, tedious hunt for weapons. We screen everyone for guns, knives, scissors, nail clippers, tweezers (yes, I lost a good pair in November 2001), and now also shoe bombs and liquids and gels. In short, we look for weapons, not terrorists.

An Old Favorite

ANN OWED TWO THE SPELL CHECKER

I have a spelling checker -
It came with my PC
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea

Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished in it's weigh -
My checker tolled me sew.

A checker is a bless sing.
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when aye rime.

To rite with care is quite a feet
Of witch won should be proud.
And wee mussed dew the best wee can,
Sew flaws are knot aloud.

And now bee cause my spelling
Is checked with such grate flare,
Their are know faults with in my cite;
Of non eye am a wear.

Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed to be a joule.
The checker poured o'er every word
To cheque sum spelling rule.

That's why aye brake in two averse
By righting wants too pleas.
Sow now ewe sea why aye dew prays
Such soft wear for pea seas!

A. Nony Mous

More of the Same in California

California's Budget Blues Get Deeper - Brian Doherty

Read the whole thing and follow the links.

In a little more than month, the state of California lost over $6 billion in ground on its latest budget. With the deficit now thought to be $25.4 billion, Gov. Schwarzenegger calls a special session of the legislature to start on December 6.

Some Assembly Democrats think this is a political gimmick--what's changed in the 5 weeks since they last approved a budget that could make things better?--and their biggest priority is something that would make the deficit bigger, not smaller--reversing a Schwarzenegger line item veto of $256 million worth of day care.

California Suggests Suicide; Texas Asks: Can I Lend You a Knife? - Joel Kotkin

In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.

California has drifted far away from the place that John Gunther described in 1946 as “the most spectacular and most diversified American state … so ripe, golden.” Instead of a role model, California has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average. On Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced yet again to call an emergency session in order to deal with the state’s enormous budget problems.

Original Intent

Commemorating the Start of a Great Debate - Paul Mirengoff

Twenty-five years ago, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese launched a debate on "originalism" --the doctrine of constitutional interpretation that insists on the singular importance of enforcing the Constitution's original meaning. Meese did this in a series of speeches, first to the American Bar Association, then to the Federalist Society (on November 15, 1985), and finally at Tulane Law School. On Wednesday, I attended a symposium on originalism held at the Supreme Court to commemorate Meese's speeches.

Twenty-five years on, it may be difficult for some to realize that when Meese kicked off the debate, few judges and academics considered the words of the Constitution, and the intentions of its Framers, to be anything more than a jumping off point. The real project was to focus on what judges have said about the words, on history in general, on the interpreter's own values and sense of things, and on whatever else might be helpful in making the "living constitution" speak to our times. That such an approach to the Constituion did not really constrain judges was considered a virtue.

This was the view Meese challenged in the three speeches. Here is what he said at the American Bar Association convention:

What, then, should a constitutional jurisprudence actually be? It should be a jurisprudence of Original Intention . . . . A jurisprudence aimed at the explication of original intention would produce defensible principles of government that would not be tainted by ideological predilection. This belief in a jurisprudence of original intention also reflects a deeply rooted commitment to the idea of democracy. The Constitution represents the consent of the governed to the structures and powers of the government. The Constitution is the fundamental will of the people; that is why it is the fundamental law.

To allow the courts to govern simply by what [they view] at the time as fair and decent is a scheme of government no longer popular; the idea of democracy has suffered. The permanence of the Constitution has been weakened. A constitution that is viewed as only what the judges say it is, is no longer a constitution in the true sense.

Those who framed the Constitution chose their words carefully; they debated at great length the most minute points. The language they chose meant something. It is incumbent upon the Courts to determine what that meaning was.

Great Moments in TV

Wheel of Fortune in One Letter. Start to finish: 58 seconds.

Election Roundup

Americans Vote for Maturity - Peggy Noonan

On the established political parties:

"The people have spoken, the bastards." That would be how Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill are feeling. The last two years of their leadership have been rebuffed. The question for the Democratic Party: Was it worth it? Was it worth following the president and the speaker in their mad pursuit of liberal legislation that the country would not, could not, like? And what will you do now? Which path will you take?

The Republicans saw their own establishment firmly, sharply put down. The question for them: What will you do to show yourselves worthy of the bounty?

The Republicans won big, but both parties return to Washington chastened. Good.

On Barack Obama:

On Wednesday, President Obama gave a news conference to share his thoughts. Viewers would have found it disappointing if there had been any viewers. The president is speaking, in effect, to an empty room. From my notes five minutes in: "This wet blanket, this occupier of the least interesting corner of the faculty lounge, this joy-free zone, this inert gas." By the end I was certain he will never produce a successful stimulus because he is a human depression.

Actually I thought the worst thing you can say about a president: He won't even make a good former president.

His detachment is so great, it is even from himself. As he spoke, he seemed to be narrating from a remove. It was like hearing the audiobook of Volume I of his presidential memoirs. "Obama was frustrated. He honestly didn't understand what the country was doing. It was as if they had compulsive hand-washing disorder. In '08 they washed off Bush. Now they're washing off Obama. There he is, swirling down the drain! It's all too dramatic, too polar. The morning after the election it occurred to him: maybe he should take strong action. Maybe he should fire America! They did well in 2008, but since then they've been slipping. They weren't giving him the followership he needed. But that wouldn't work, they'd only complain. He had to keep his cool. His aides kept telling him, 'Show humility.' But they never told him what humility looked like. What was he supposed to do, burst into tears and say hit me? Not knowing how to feel humility or therefore show humility he decided to announce humility: He found the election 'humbling,' he said."

On the Tea Party:

What the tea party, by which I mean members and sympathizers, has to learn from 2010 is this: Not only the message is important but the messenger.

Even in a perfect political environment, those candidates who were conservative but seemed strange, or unprofessional, or not fully qualified, or like empty bags skittering along the street, did not fare well. The tea party provided the fire and passion of the election, and helped produce major wins—Marco Rubio by 19 points! But in the future the tea party is going to have to ask itself: Is this candidate electable? Will he pass muster with those who may not themselves be deeply political but who hold certain expectations as to the dignity and stature required of those who hold office?

On electability (e.g. Christine O'Donnell, Sharron Angle):

Electable doesn't mean not-conservative. Electable means mature, accomplished, stable—and able to persuade.

Conservatives talked a lot about Ronald Reagan this year, but they have to take him more to heart, because his example here is a guide. All this seemed lost last week on Sarah Palin, who called him, on Fox, "an actor." She was defending her form of political celebrity—reality show, "Dancing With the Stars," etc. This is how she did it: "Wasn't Ronald Reagan an actor? Wasn't he in 'Bedtime for Bonzo,' Bozo, something? Ronald Reagan was an actor."

Excuse me, but this was ignorant even for Mrs. Palin. Reagan people quietly flipped their lids, but I'll voice their consternation to make a larger point. Ronald Reagan was an artist who willed himself into leadership as president of a major American labor union (Screen Actors Guild, seven terms, 1947-59.) He led that union successfully through major upheavals (the Hollywood communist wars, labor-management struggles); discovered and honed his ability to speak persuasively by talking to workers on the line at General Electric for eight years; was elected to and completed two full terms as governor of California; challenged and almost unseated an incumbent president of his own party; and went on to popularize modern conservative political philosophy without the help of a conservative infrastructure. Then he was elected president.

The point is not "He was a great man and you are a nincompoop," though that is true. The point is that Reagan's career is a guide, not only for the tea party but for all in politics. He brought his fully mature, fully seasoned self into politics with him. He wasn't in search of a life when he ran for office, and he wasn't in search of fame; he'd already lived a life, he was already well known, he'd accomplished things in the world.

Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service. And you need actual talent: You have to be able to bring people in and along. You can't just bully them, you can't just assert and taunt, you have to be able to persuade.

Americans don't want, as their representatives, people who seem empty or crazy. They'll vote no on that.

A Return to the Norm - Charles Krauthammer

On 'wave' elections:

The conventional wisdom is that these sweeps represent something novel, exotic and very modern - the new media, faster news cycles, Internet frenzy and a public with a short attention span and even less patience with government. Or alternatively, that these violent swings reflect reduced party loyalty and more independent voters.

Nonsense. In 1946, for example, when party loyalty was much stronger and even television was largely unknown, the Republicans gained 56 seats and then lost 75 in the very next election. Waves come. Waves go. The republic endures.

Our two most recent swing cycles were triggered by unusually jarring historical events. The 2006 Republican "thumpin'" (to quote George W. Bush) was largely a reflection of the disillusionment and near-despair of a wearying war that appeared to be lost. And 2008 occurred just weeks after the worst financial collapse in eight decades.

On imposing liberalism on an unwilling populace:

Similarly, the massive Republican swing of 2010 was a reaction to another rather unprecedented development - a ruling party spectacularly misjudging its mandate and taking an unwilling country through a two-year experiment in hyper-liberalism.

A massive government restructuring of the health-care system. An $800 billion-plus stimulus that did not halt the rise in unemployment. And a cap-and-trade regime reviled outside the bicoastal liberal enclaves that luxuriate in environmental righteousness - so reviled that the Democratic senatorial candidate in West Virginia literally put a bullet through the bill in his own TV ad. He won. Handily.

Opposition to the policies was compounded by the breathtaking arrogance with which they were imposed. Ignored was the unmistakable message from the 2009-10 off-year elections culminating in Scott Brown's anti-Obamacare victory in bluer-than-blue Massachusetts. Moreover, Obamacare and the stimulus were passed on near-total party-line votes - legal, of course, but deeply offensive to the people's sense of democratic legitimacy. Never before had anything of this size and scope been passed on a purely partisan basis. (Social Security commanded 81 House Republicans; the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 136; Medicare, 70.)

Tuesday was the electorate's first opportunity to render a national verdict on this manner of governance. The rejection was stunning. As a result, President Obama's agenda is dead. And not just now. No future Democratic president will try to revive it - and if he does, no Congress will follow him, in view of the carnage visited upon Democrats on Tuesday.

On Barack Obama's post-election reaction:

The president, however, remains clueless. In his next-day news conference, he had the right demeanor - subdued, his closest approximation of humility - but was uncomprehending about what just happened. The "folks" are apparently just "frustrated" that "progress" is just too slow. Asked three times whether popular rejection of his policy agenda might have had something to do with the shellacking he took, he looked as if he'd been asked whether the sun had risen in the West. Why, no, he said.

The Economy - October 2010

If You Want To Understand What Makes This Recession Continue - Clayton Cramer

Ask the authors of Federalist 62. First, the problem of the health care reform bill that came to 2700 pages:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

The following paragraph explains why people like George Soros always back Democrats:

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.

And why employers are reluctant to hire right now:

In another point of view, great injury results from an unstable government. The want of confidence in the public councils damps every useful undertaking, the success and profit of which may depend on a continuance of existing arrangements. What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not but that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed? What farmer or manufacturer will lay himself out for the encouragement given to any particular cultivation or establishment, when he can have no assurance that his preparatory labors and advances will not render him a victim to an inconstant government? In a word, no great improvement or laudable enterprise can go forward which requires the auspices of a steady system of national policy.

The things you find, preparing for class!

Warning from Europe

A Warning From London, A Speech In Berlin - John Hinderaker

Wilders is more or less an outcast in Europe. As one with reservations about certain types of immigration, he is routinely classified as a "far right" politician, although by American standards he would probably be a liberal. He currently faces criminal prosecution in his native Netherlands for suggesting that the ongoing Islamization of that country is a bad thing. Wilders is a thoughtful opponent of Islam and defender of Western freedom, as his Berlin speech reveals. You really should read it all, but here are some excerpts:

Germany's national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: "A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism." Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology. ...

[T]he renowned Oxford historian J.M. Roberts wrote in 1985: "Although we carelessly speak of Islam as a 'religion'; that word carries many overtones of the special history of western Europe. The Muslim is primarily a member of a community, the follower of a certain way, an adherent to a system of law, rather than someone holding particular theological views." The Flemish Professor Urbain Vermeulen, the former president of the European Union of Arabists and Islamicists, too, points out that "Islam is primarily a legal system, a law," rather than a religion. ...

These are not just statements by opponents of Islam. Islamic scholars say the same thing. ... Abul Ala Maududi, the influential 20th century Pakistani Islamic thinker, wrote - I quote, emphasizing that these are not my words but those of a leading Islamic scholar - "Islam is not merely a religious creed [but] a revolutionary ideology and jihad refers to that revolutionary struggle ... to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth, which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam." ...

After Muhammad's death, based upon his words and deeds, Islam developed Sharia, an elaborate legal system which justified the repressive governance of the world by divine right - including rules for jihad and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers. Sharia is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states. It is also central to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which in article 24 of its Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, proclaims that "all rights and freedoms are subject to the Islamic Sharia." The OIC is not a religious institution; it is a political body. It constitutes the largest voting block in the United Nations and writes reports on so-called "Islamophobia" in Western Countries which accuse us of human rights violations. To speak in biblical terms: They look for a speck in our eye, but deny the beam in their own.

Global Warming Summary

The Global Warming Hoax: A Summary - John Hinderaker

Global warming alarmism is not science. It is a toxic combination of pseudo-religion and totalitarian politics. To the extent that there is any debate over climate science--the alarmists run from debate like vampires fleeing garlic--the "skeptics" always win. If you want to follow climate science controversies in a rigorous but accessible fashion, check out the Science and Environmental Policy Project's web site. Among other things, it features a weekly update on matters relating to the global warming debate.

This week's SEPP newsletter includes an excellent piece by Dr. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo astronaut who currently is an aerospace consultant. Dr. Schmitt reviews some of the basic evidence that the alarmists try to wish away. You really should read it all; here are some excerpts:

Policy makers at the head of government in the United States and elsewhere apparently want to believe, and to have others believe, that human use of fossil fuels accelerates global warming. They pursue this quest in order to impose ever greater and clearly unconstitutional control on the economy and personal liberty in the name of a hypothetically omnipotent government. There exists no true concern by the President or Congressional Leadership about the true effects of climate change - only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society.

There has been an absolute natural increase in global surface temperature of half a degree Centigrade per 100 years (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last three and a half centuries. Observational climate data and objective interpretations of those data strongly indicate that nature, not human activity, exerts the primary influence on this current long term warming and on all global climate variations. Human influence through use of fossil fuels has been and remains minor if even detectable. Claims to the contrary only find support in highly questionable climate models that fail repeatedly against the reality of nature.

California Budget Deficits

How to Save California: Outlaw Public Employee Unions - John Yoo

The one change that he said could restore the state's fortunes wasn't lowering taxes, cutting spending, or eliminating excessive regulations -- though these were all important. He said there was a deeper root cause: the power of the public employees unions. According to Wilson, public employee unions trigger a destructive dynamic. Public employee unions take money from their members and use them for partisan political purposes. They pressure government officials to cut them sweetheart deals, especially through things like job protections and pensions, that don't show up on the bottom line for years. They create a larger and larger interest group that demands more government spending and higher taxes, which drives out private entrepreneurship and swells their ranks even more. Reduce the power of the public employee unions, and you lower the size of government, reduce the costs of the state, and fix the looming pension problem.

Public Education Costs

Futility - John Hinderaker

It is no secret that education in America has lagged, by international standards, for quite a few years. The liberals' answer is always the same: spend more money. I would argue that we have carried out a laboratory experiment, and have conclusively proved that more money is not the cure for whatever ails the education system. This chart, just produced by the Cato Institute, makes the point with beautiful simplicity.

Follow links to see charts.

Government Intervention

Reynold's Law - Philo

I dub this Reynolds’ Law: “Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.” It’s easy to see why. If people don’t need to defer gratification, work hard, etc., in order to achieve the status they desire, they’ll be less inclined to do those things. The greater the government subsidy, the greater the effect, and the more net harm produced.

Federal Spending Out of Control

The Central Issue of Our Time: Federal Spending - John Hinderaker

The obviously unsustainable explosion in federal spending that the Democratic Congress has embarked upon since 2007 is the central issue of our time. Among other things, it is the genesis of the Tea Party movement. That which can't continue, won't; the only question is whether sane hands will take over the tiller and restore some sort of balance, or the federal government will crash in a fiscal disaster.

Voter Fraud

Fraudulent vote count keeps rising in 2008 Minnesota election - Jeff Davis

No one has been checking for detectable forms of voter fraud, let alone undetectable varieties. Convicting someone of this type of crime would require the perpetrator to voluntarily step forward and admit to the crime, because without photo ID, it is completely undetectable.

Still, despite the fact that we have found evidence of every detectable variety of voter fraud, our election officials are asking us to believe that the easiest, most undetectable and un-prosecutable variety of voter fraud doesn’t exist in a system that seems to invite it.

Massive, nationwide vote fraud is the among the most rotten fruit of ACORN-type activism

Since passage in 1993 of the National Voter Registration Act - aka "Motor Voter" - by the Democratic Congress that led to the 1994 GOP takeover, ACORN and a bunch of other radical liberal activists groups, many financed by George Soros, have been steadily growing their ability to increase vote counts for their candidates by stuffing ballot boxes with illegal votes on election day.

Citizens' Group Helps Uncover Alleged Rampant Voter Fraud in Houston - Ed Barnes

Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Steve Caddle, who also works for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.

U.S. Taxes and Migration

State Migration Trends, 1993-2008: From Blue States to Red States - Paul L. Caron

The Tax Foundation has released a State to State Migration Data calculator.

Mao's Legacy

Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years' - Arifa Akbar

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

Good Books

Better Books for Next Year's Beaches - Scott W. Johnson

Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne of the National Association of Scholars have compiled an absolutely great list of 37 books (plus a second list of six more difficult books) that they recommend for college "common reading" programs. The list follows up on the June 2010 NAS report on common reading programs. The NAS list of recommended books is included in "Read these instead: Better books for next year's beaches."

Other Book Lists:

• Robert Stacy McCain's 2008 Holiday Books
• Good Math Books At An Even Better Price
• Novels of the Right - John J Miller
• What Are the Best Political Thrillers? - John J Miller
• The Fraters Library
• Library of Economics and Liberty

Laser Pointers

Retinal Injuries from a Handheld Laser Pointer - Stefan Wyrsch, M.D.

The boy had ordered a handheld laser pointer with green light on the Internet to use as a toy for popping balloons from a distance and burning holes into paper cards and his sister's sneakers. The boy's life changed when he was playing with his laser pointer in front of a mirror to create a “laser show,” during which the laser beam hit his eyes several times. He noticed immediate blurred vision in both of his eyes. Hoping that the visual loss would be transient and afraid of telling his parents, he waited 2 weeks before seeking an ophthalmic assessment, when he could no longer disguise his bad vision. His visual acuity was so poor in his left eye that he was only able to count fingers at a distance of 3 ft, and it was 20/50 in his right eye.

Research in Repressed Memory

Research finds repressed memories don't exist - Karen Berkman

The idea that traumatised people, especially the victims of child sexual abuse, deliberately repress horrific memories goes all the way back to the 19th century and the theories of Sigmund Freud himself.

But now some experts are saying the evidence points the other way.

Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University's Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving experiences they would rather forget.

"It's the opposite. They wish they couldn't think about it," he said.

In a briefing to the US Supreme Court, Professor Richard McNally from Harvard University described the theory of repressed memory as "the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry".

The Economy - September 2010

NOTE: Thomas Straubhaar lives in Germany and wrote these columns for Der Spiegel.

America Has Become Too European - Thomas Straubhaar

A firm belief in the individual's ability, ideas, courage, will and a reliance on one's own resources brought the US to the top. The American dream promised everyone the chance of upward mobility -- literally from rags to riches, from minimum wage to millionaire. The individual's pursuit of happiness was seen as the crucial foundation for the well-being of society, rather than the benevolent state which cares for its subjects -- and certainly not the welfare state, which provides a social safety net for its citizens.

In the American system, every man was responsible for himself -- in good times and bad. No one could count on government assistance, not even the wannabe millionaire who did not make it and ended up homeless.

For many US citizens, the financial crisis has turned the American dream into a nightmare. Millions of Americans are struggling with high levels of debt, and not only because they bought overpriced houses during the housing boom and can no longer afford their mortgages. Often families are burdened with loans they took out during better times for cars, furniture, electronic gadgets or university tuition.

A Return to Traditional American Virtues - Thomas Straubhaar

Both the behavior of the American government and the Federal Reserve makes one thing clear: They do not see the solution to the US's economic woes in a return to traditional American virtues. Obama is not calling for the unleashing of market forces, as Ronald Reagan once did during an equally critical period in the early 1980s. On the contrary: Obama, driven by his own convictions and advised by economists who believe in government intervention, has taken a path that leads far away from those things that catapulted America to the top of the world in the past century.

The Obama administration's current policies rely on more government rather than personal responsibility and self-determination. They are administering to the patient more, not less, of exactly those things that led to the crisis.

Our Debt Is More Than All the Money in the World - Kevin D. Williamson

I have argued that the real national debt is about $130 trillion. Let’s say I’m being pessimistic. Forbes, in a 2008 article, came up with a lower number: $70 trillion. Let’s say the sunny optimists at Forbes got it right and I got it wrong.

For perspective: At the time that 2008 article was written, the entire supply of money in the world (“broad money,” i.e., global M3, meaning cash, consumer-account deposits, checkable accounts, CDs, long-term deposits, travelers’ checks, money-market funds, the whole enchilada) was estimated to be just under $60 trillion. Which is to say: The optimistic view is that our outstanding obligations amount to more than all of the money in the world.

Global GDP in 2008? Also about $60 trillion. Meaning that the optimistic view is that our federal obligations outpace the entire annual economic output of human civilization.

Interview With Marc Faber: It Is Not A Matter Of If With Hyperinflation, But When - Ron Hera

HRN: Do you think hyperinflation in the US is possible?

Dr. Marc Faber: The Federal Reserve doesn’t want to create a hyperinflation. I mean Mr. Bernanke may be incompetent, but he’s not an evil person per se. He just doesn’t have sufficient knowledge to be a central banker, in my opinion, and has misguided economic theories, but he’s not evil in the sense that he would not wish to debase the currency entirely. Clearly, if the US economy moves into a double dip recession and you have deflationary pressures reappearing, in the housing market, for example, and if the S&P drops from roughly 1,100 down to say 900, then I think further monetization will happen. I believe that because of the unfunded liabilities and the deficits of the US government, which will stay high for a long time; sooner or later there will be more monetization anyway.

It’s more a question of when it will happen rather than if it will happen. For sure it will happen but will it happen right away, say in September, or maybe only in two years time? Eventually, before everything collapses we’ll have an inflationary bout which may not be so strongly felt in consumer prices, as in stocks or housing or precious metals prices or in commodities like oil; or inflation could occur mostly in foreign currencies, in other words, in Asia where the currencies could appreciate.

Obama Stimulus Made Economic Crisis Worse, `Black Swan' Author Taleb Says - Frederic Tomesco

U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration weakened the country’s economy by seeking to foster growth instead of paying down the federal debt, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.”

“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Today, Taleb said, “total debt is higher than it was in 2008 and unemployment is worse.”

Tech Employment

Silicon Valley’s Dark Secret: It’s All About Age - Vivek Wadhwa

In their book Chips and Change, Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50. Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection). It’s not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

Modern Media

The MSM: Closed-Circuit TV for the Ruling Class - Ed Driscoll

Quoting El Rushbo:

When you turn on MSNBC and watch anything on that network, you get the sense that they’re doing that show not for an audience but for fellow journalists and for people in the White House and for elected Democrats in Congress. That’s their audience, that’s who they’re doing their shows for. Same thing for CNN; same thing for the New York Times. There is really a gulf. The media in this country really do look at the people of this country as an enemy. We’re not just a bunch of rubes, folks, we’re not just a bunch of unsophisticated Neanderthals. We are that to them, but we’re now actually the enemy. When they get this poll from Pew that says the number of people that believe Obama is a Christian is shrinking, the number of people that think he’s a Muslim is increasing, they do not look at the media themselves for maybe an explanation. They don’t look at the White House or Obama to try to find an explanation for this. They knee-jerk conclude that we are a bunch of imbeciles, or reactionaries or racists, bigots, or what have you.

I think the divide between media and public is as stark as it has ever been. Stop and think about this. The relationship that the media has with the people of this country is adversarial. It used to be that their relationship that was adversarial was with people in power. It used to be that people in power were those that had to be examined, had to be accountable. But now since they’re leftists, they’re not really media people, they’re leftists first, we know that, we are the enemy. We are a bigger enemy than Iranian nukes. We are a bigger enemy than Middle East peace. The American people, particularly American conservatives, but I think the American people at large.

U.S. Migration Map

The forbes.com U.S. Migration Map is a great resource for quickly assessing the net migration into and out of counties in the U.S.

Compare, for instance, Los Angeles County, CA (Red lines indicate outward migration. Black lines indicate inward migration.)



with Travis County (Austin), TX.

Botox Side-Effects

Botox gap in understanding emotion - Siri Carpenter

In a recent study of women undergoing cosmetic treatment with Botox, researchers found that the treatment, which blocks facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language.

"We know that language moves us emotionally," said the lead author, David Havas, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What this study shows is that that's partly because it moves us physically."

Those findings, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, complement earlier research showing that mimicking emotional expression triggers a matching emotional response, says Fritz Strack, a psychologist who was not involved in the research and who studies emotion and cognition at the University of Wuerzburg in Germany.

More comments at:
Instapundit

Perhaps this explains Nancy Pelosi’s recent ham-handedness.

Althouse

The Economy - August 2010

Presidents, Precedents - Kevin D. Williamson

News flash: This is not 1982, and Obama is not Reagan.

The important difference is this: There was a good reason for the Volcker-Reagan recession: defeating inflation. American voters may not be terribly economically sophisticated, but they sure as heck did notice when inflation went from 13.5 percent to 3.2 percent — in two years.

Obvious Failure of Stimulus Becomes Obvious Even To Economists - Tim Cavanaugh

At City Journal, Guy Sorman notes how quickly the managed-market winds have shifted. When the credit unwind started, the papers, the TV and the newsweaklies declared capitalism dead in just a little less time than it took for Kent Brockman to declare his loyalty to the Space Ants. Less than two years later, you can't buy good press for the stimulus; the economy is frozen solid in August; the nation is rediscovering -- despite the herniated efforts of local, state and federal government -- the virtues of thrift; and if you search for Keynes on the interwebs, all you turn up are headlines like "How Dr. Keynes killed the patient."

How Dr. Keynes Will Kill The Patient - Michael Pento

And here's where the arrogance in Washington really kicks in. Scores of millions of American consumers have made a decision; they have decided on an individual basis, that what is best for them at the current time is to reduce their debt burden. But a few hundred individuals in government believe they know better than the collective wisdom of the entire free market. They have the power to confiscate our savings by leveraging up the public sector. In essence, they are preventing the healing process of de-leveraging from taking place by increasing government borrowing and spending.

It should be stressed that modern-day Keynesians do not argue for simply slowing down the rate of de-leveraging. They clearly seek to--at least in the short term--significantly increase the amount of debt in an effort to boost the aggregate demand in the economy. Then, once the mythical recovery takes hold from government spending, printing and borrowing, they concede it may be time to bring deficits under control. The only problem with this theory is that there is now a significant risk of suffering through a U.S. dollar and bond market crisis in the very near future.

Runaway College Costs

Administrative Bloat at American Universities: The Real Reason for High Costs in Higher Education - Jay P. Greene

Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent.

Why Does College Cost So Much? - Stephen Spruiell

The authors don’t bother to mention the argument, even for the purpose of dismissing it, that the primary factor driving college-tuition inflation is actually ballooning federal tuition support: Tuition keeps going up because the federal government ensures that students can afford to pay it.

Reagan vs. Libs

Christianity in China

In The Land Of Mao, A Rising Tide Of Christianity - Louisa Lim

No one knows exactly how many Christians there are among China's population of 1.3 billion. There are an estimated 21 million members of the government-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic movement, but nobody knows how many Protestants worship in unregistered house churches.

Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.

JournoList

When McCain picked Palin, liberal journalists coordinated the best line of attack - Jonathan Strong

In the hours after Sen. John McCain announced his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate in the last presidential race, members of an online forum called Journolist struggled to make sense of the pick. Many of them were liberal reporters, and in some cases their comments reflected a journalist’s instinct to figure out the meaning of a story.

But in many other exchanges, the Journolisters clearly had another, more partisan goal in mind: to formulate the most effective talking points in order to defeat Palin and McCain and help elect Barack Obama president. The tone was more campaign headquarters than newsroom.

Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright - Jonathan Strong

Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”

Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

California - June 2010

America as Texas vs. California: Who’s Moving Where Edition - Ryan Streeter

Texas’s low-cost, liberty-loving atmosphere has become an attractive alternative to California’s oppressive public sector and dysfunctional policy environment. No amount of heart-melting vistas, celebrity sightings, or traipses through wine country can make up for what almost appears a strategic attempt by one of the nation’s largest states to drive businesses and productive people away.

Thanks to an interesting interactive map at Forbes.com, we now can see some visual evidence of the trends we have been discussing. The map shows county migration in the United States in pictorial form. Black lines show inward migration to a county, and red lines show outward migration. The thicker the line, the higher the volume.

The Economy - June 2010

Before the Deluge - David Warren

Contrary to Leftist dogma, Arthur Laffer is not a joke. This is the economist who was saddled with credit for what we call the "Laffer Curve." He himself attributed the insight behind it to the great Berber sage Ibn Khaldun, died 1406, arguable founder of many social science disciplines. He has also mentioned John Maynard Keynes among various older economists who got the point.

Let us briefly remind ourselves of this proposition of "Reaganomics," that has long been an object of ridicule among the progressive types.

If a government has a tax rate of zero, there will be no revenue. (I hope this is self-evident.) If it has a tax rate of 100 percent, there will also be no revenue: because there will be no private income, or at least, none willingly declared. Between those two extremes are tax rates that generate revenue. (Those who "have a problem with this" can stop reading now.)

The question is what rate will maximize it? And to that question, Laffer and any sane economist would admit a number of considerations. They may argue the comparative weight of these. But universal experience shows optimum rates are low, not high.

The underlying reason is plain. As tax rates rise, the return on additional effort diminishes. On the other hand, the effort to conceal income, or move it offshore, increases. A government might actually collect more from a lower rate than from a higher. But whatever that case, high tax rates grind down economic activity, and so are counter-productive across the board.

In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, this same Laffer predicts that the American economy will go into tailspin at a predictable date: Jan. 1, 2011. This is the day the Bush tax cuts expire, and U.S. rates return to much more destructive levels.

The Gulf Oil Spill

Ship of Fools - David Warren

We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed.

So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can't accept, and therefore don't ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.

This is amusing, in a way: a memorable illustration of ... the sort of stuff I keep going on about. Which is to say, the law of unintended consequences, which pertains with especial virulence to all acts of government regulation.

The Sestak Scandal

How the Sestak job offer became a big deal - Chris Cillizza

The unfolding of events since Sestak told a local television host -- albeit obliquely -- in February that he had received a job offer from the White House speaks to one of the oldest political adages about the presidency: stonewalling almost never works. (The full White House report on the matter is here.)

Why did the White House contact Joe Sestak’s brother? - Michelle Malkin

Kurt Bardella, Spokesperson, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, responds: “If the White House is coordinating it’s response with the Sestak campaign, as Congressman Sestak has reported, it certainly explains why the President, when given the opportunity at a nationally broadcasted press conference, abdicated the opportunity to address the issue candidly and definitively. Instead, it appears as if the White House is taking time to circle the wagons and coordinating their message. This revelation that the White House initiated a dialogue with Sestak at the same time they are preparing their public response certainly leaves the impression that there is a coordinated effort going on. Of course, if everyone just did the right thing and told the truth, the need to speculate about motive and impartiality wouldn’t be necessary.”

Bill Clinton and the Sestak Scandal - Ira Stoll

The White House chooses the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend to unload the news -- in the form of a memo from the White House counsel, so that anyone he talked to about it is covered by both lawyer-client privilege and executive privilege -- that "The White House Chief of Staff enlisted the support of former President Clinton who agreed to raise with Congressman Sestak options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board." There's no explanation of why Mr. Clinton was enlisted for this task. If it would have been legal or appropriate for a White House official to do it directly, why bother getting Mr. Clinton involved? And if it would have been illegal or inappropriate for a White House official to do it directly, does the use of a cut-out, even if it comports with the letter of the law, match the spirit of the law or the administration's stated intention to set a high ethical bar?

Sestak was ineligible for job Clinton offered - Byron York

Why would the White House — normally pretty careful in such matters — offer Sestak a job he couldn’t take? Were there in fact other offers made to Sestak? So far, there has been little discussion of the fact that the Bauer statement said “options for executive branch service were raised with [Sestak].” The plural “options” certainly suggests that more than one job was presented to Sestak, but Sestak himself says his conversation with Clinton was very brief — less than one minute.