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.

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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.

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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.

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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.