Author: Jacques Delacroix

National-Socialist Management Practices; No Obama Derangement Syndrome

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , ,

[Editor’s note: this essay first appeared on Dr. Delacroix’s blog, Facts Matter, on July 18 2009]

Quick update on health care on 7/20/09:

I have said before on this blog that there is something wrong with the way we deliver health care in America. It costs us twice more per capita than it costs Europeans and we die younger. That is true in spite of the fact that liberals lie a lot on the subject of health, especially, regarding the number of “uninsured.” The Republican Party missed that boat entirely and we are paying the price for it now.

The President’s insistence that bills must be passed before the August recess has only one explanation: He wants to avoid debate like the plague. Think it through. If our health care system is as bad as he says, it has been so for a long time and we can probably stand it for an additional three months, or six months , or a year. Decisiveness is not everything. (See below.)

After all, the President wants to dispose for the long run of 1/6th of our economy. Given the considerable slowdown in economic growth his other policies guarantee, given the aging of the population, it will soon be 1/5, or 20 % of the economy. There is nothing else like it. For comparison, national defense never took more than 5% since the Korean War.

Aside from anything I may believe about the influence of government on  effectiveness in health delivery, I am interested in the political consequences of the President’s plans, of all his plans. With health, he will make sure the government controls the economy to an unprecedented level. He is turning the US into a corporatist state. That’s another word for “fascist,” without the violent overtones. Continue reading →

Soft Fascism?

Jacques Delacroix Law, Liberty, Politics , ,

I am trying hard to avoid joining the current hysteria but I can’t help reading signals flashing right in my face.

The President is going to address grammar-school, and middle-school, and high-school students. That might be OK though I don’t see why or what for. He is not a king but our hired servant. What’s not OK is that the federal Department of Education is sending teachers everywhere follow-up packets of suggested topics for post-speech classroom discussion, some with the word “inspiration.”

That’s a classical, conventional totalitarian strategy. A liberal commentator who struck me, that time, has   argued that it’s not because the teachers don’t have to follow the suggestions. I am sorry but I am sure 80% and up of teachers, at all grade levels, are Obama devotees. They probably constitute the core of the silly, adoring Obama constituency. They will follow the suggestions. They can be counted on to establish the foundations  of  an Obama cult of personality.

I have been holding casual, short conversations with a young man I like around the coffee- shop. (He is very likable in general; I think everyone likes him.)  He is a student of philosophy at one of the University of  California campuses. I like him for this; it takes bravery to major in Philosophy rather than in, say, Accounting. He is an Obama supporter, of course, but a thoughtful one.  He represents the best of what there is to like in political liberalism, including  a striving for rationality and generous  impulses. Continue reading →

What I Did Not Write About Enough in 2012

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Climate change

Nothing new there. Alarmists keep lying, making up data, cherry-picking data, exaggerating grossly the consequences of what does happen on the climate front. Not really worth dealing with. Instead, go to the “What’s Up With That” blog every so often. There is a direct link to it on the front of this blog and here also, is the link: Masters, McKibben and Droughting Thomases.

It’s not exactly a dead horse though; it’s a new religion that will find its place among others and perhaps, next to the “Maya Calendar End of the World” cult. Or, maybe not, or maybe, it’s a little more: It looks like one of those widespread but lightly held beliefs. It may become soon like the rule that you don’t walk under a ladder. It might influence legislation yet, but, I think not in a major way. I believe we got off easy.

Belief in global warming plays an important role in my life though. It helps me separate in seconds those who are real skeptics, like me, from those who merely play at pretending to be skeptics in order to glean the social benefits of such skepticism.

And, in case you are wondering, here is my current understanding: There is no warming that is global, and of significant duration, and that’s man-made, and that constitutes an emergency for humankind. Continue reading →

Petaluma

Jacques Delacroix Liberty ,

Here is a poem I like:

No asphalt here, all concrete streets,
cracked, torn and rattled,
above centuries of adobe mud.

I’m from Petaluma and I never know
How to handle being home. Continue reading →

America and Firearms (Explained to Overseas Readers)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

The other day, I am watching the news on TV5, the international French language network. I am doing this to get away from the spectacle of the impending economic disaster in the US where I live. This is shortly after the massacre of school children in Connecticut. One item draws my attention: The cute, airhead French female announcer (or “anchorette”) states that last year about 28,000 people in the US lost their lives to guns.

Here we go again, I think. More half-assed information that is worse than no information at all. I have witnessed European media disseminating misleading information about the US for more than forty years. This time again, I have to intervene to help overseas of observers of the international scene who want to know about reality and who might happen to read this blog.

I can’t tell you how often I have witnessed the following: European commentators making sarcastic, superior comments about some American event or custom, or some American way of doing things and then, their society adopting uncritically the same American event, or custom, or way of doing things ten years later, or even later. Right now, for example, I would bet you anything that one of the novelties on French radio is 1990s American popular music. That would be especially true on the channel that calls itself without batting an eye-lash, “France culture.”

The tendency of Europeans to copycat the United States is so pronounced that it even affects social pathologies, the last thing you should want to imitate. Accordingly, it seems that the French expression for “serial killer” is: “serial killer.” N.S. ! (Would I make this up?) Continue reading →

Autism and National Public Radio

Jacques Delacroix Religion , , , , , , ,

I am obsessed with the question of widespread misinformation and even of stupidity among otherwise intelligent and formally educated people. That’s one big reason why I listen to National Public Radio.

On a recent episode of “Meet the Nation,” there is a far-ranging discussion of autism. The discussion begins well with a report on studies which show differences in frequency of diagnosis of autism according to socioeconomic status (some studies, predictably, with race as a stand-in) and also, according to spatial patterns. The latter, is important. It means that there are geographic clusters of autism. A New York sociologist showed that those patterns are not geographical in a simple physical sense but that they vary according to school district boundaries. Continue reading →

Race and Ethnicity

Jacques Delacroix History , , , ,

My Facebook friend, VXA who is a disgruntled Afghan immigrant but quite smart some of the time asks this question: What’s the difference between race and ethnicity?

I am a sociologist by trade and I think I know the answer.

Both are vague terms. Race is a well established habit to classify people according to certain selected physical characteristics. The physical features are selected generally according to their usefulness within a given social agenda. Thus the presence or absence of  hair on the second knuckle of the index finger never is selected because it’s not useful. Skin color and hair shape often are because they allow for quick classification.  Medieval Europeans had no category “negro.” They would describe people in physical terms without assigning them to a  social category “Du Guesclin, the Marshall, was very dark of skin and hair.” It turns out that famous French historical figure was probably a man of some African blood. He would have been considered “colored” in Georgia in 1850. Same goes for Pushkin, the Russian national poet. Continue reading →

No, Thanks.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , , , ,

I am not much on my blog these days because I am still trying to recover from the defeat. It’s not going well. As you can imagine, mine is not a case of doomed man-love for Gov. Romney. I am not Chris Matthew with the thing, the tingle, going up his leg when he thinks of Barack Obama, and the Governor is not Mr Obama.

I am musing about re-emigration. It’s ridiculous at my age, as well as impractical. Still, there is the strangest turnabout since the Soviet Union took Pres. Reagan’s invitation to get lost: Canada is doing better than the US economically as well as according to several of my values. I am remembering that treaty that put and end to the French and Indian Wars. I think it left the back door open for speakers of French.

And then, if I am going to live under statism why not do it under those who have much practice at it, and who also cook much better than Mexicans? (I am referring here to American restaurants here, obviously) I wonder if the French would take me back? Perhaps, if I promised to keep my mouth shut about the quality of French popular music? Some of you have noticed that I keep up with my French, just in case. That’s my Vichy side. (Look it up.)

This immigrant does not find much to be thankful for this year, for the first time ever. I think an economic disaster is coming to the USA. I hope I am simply wrong. By the way, where are my liberal critics who are always so eager to prove to me how completely and utterly wrong I am when I need them?

The Disaster: A Teenage Victory

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last Tuesday (11/6/2012) there was a vote about the future and the teenagers won. They now have the keys to the family car.

I have never in my life so wanted to be wrong in my judgment. Here it is: President Obama’s re-election is an even worse disaster than his election was. Do I think that many of the people who voted for him gave serious thought to the giant national debt, to the impending entitlement implosion, to the tepid economic growth, or even to the unusually high rate of unemployment? No. Do I think a sizable percentage did? No. Do I think a few did consider all or any of this? I am not sure.

President Obama won re-election decisively. His margin in the popular vote was nearly three million votes. Apparently* there were none of the gangsterish electoral tactics that marred his 2008 election. This makes the results worse as far as I am concerned.

President Obama is still not a monster. It’s possible that he is manipulated by a brand of leftists we thought had disappeared long ago. It’s also possible that someone like me will nurture in his brain paranoid notions at a time of major anxiety, such as now. Continue reading →

How I Know What I Know. How Do You Know What You Know?

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , ,

Everyday life requires me to make decisions about many topics. In most cases, I have either a superficial understanding of the issue or no understanding at all. Yet, I manage and I have always managed, somehow.

The problem of my ignorance becomes even more acute when it comes to making the simplest of political decisions such as choosing to support a candidate against all other choices. To decide who I want to be President of the United States, I would have to know a great deal about arcane details of the political process, macro-economics, foreign policy, and the conditions in a dozen countries, at least.

Even today, when the Internet has made much knowledge enormously more accessible than it was only a few short years ago, those tasks are daunting. For one thing, there is the issue of specialized language, jargon one must tackle in every field of knowledge. Why, I don’t even know the language of the insurance companies on which my safety and my health rely! Continue reading →

Israelis Deliberately Slaughter Palestinian Civilians; Assad Cool!

Jacques Delacroix Current Events , ,

As I write, the Israeli Air Force has killed almost twenty Gazans including an important terrorist leader. It did this as a part of its never-ending self-defense against terrorism emanating from Gaza. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of Gazan dead rose to near one hundred in a short time.

In the past, Israel exchanged hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli captive. Once it was against the corpse of an Israeli. The same sort of strange arithmetic prevails with respect to the civilian victims of Israeli military action, according to world-wide liberal opinion. Collateral killings of Arabs by Israeli Jews are unspeakable atrocities. When Arabs deliberately target and massacre Arabs though it’s not really so bad, not really. Mark my word, it will take only days, if not hours, for the liberal media to treat the twenty, or the hundred victims, of Israeli action as more reprehensible than President Assad 20,000 ( and counting).

Look again: 100/20,000.

It’s pretty clear anyway that Arabs killed by other Arabs just get up and dust themselves off when the cameras are gone.

I hope the new Islamist government of Egypt understands that any Israeli government will nuke parts of Egypt rather than see Israel, the state, and even more importantly, its population, seriously threatened. I am not confident that it does understand. Islamists are a parochial lot (ah, ah!) with feet firmly planted in the seventh century. I fear their ignorant, bellicose fantasies. Continue reading →

Atomic Radiation and Mental Health

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Liberty, Religion , , ,

The average level of radiation to which inhabitants of the beautiful city of Denver  are exposed is .9 rem (zero point nine). The level of radiation in the hots spots around the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor was .1 rem (zero point one).  Yes, it’s nine times lower near Fukushima than in Denver.

Denver residents concerned about the effects exposure to radiation have on their health should evidently have moved to the Japanese hot spots for greater safety, it seems to me. I hear the price of real estate plummeted in that area.

The first paragraph is drawn from “The Panic Over Fukushima” in the Review section of the Wall Street Journal of August 18 – 19 2012. The article is by Richard Muller, PhD,  a Professor of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. (But what does he know?)

The cynical deduction in the second paragraph is mine, of course. Here are more.

Shouldn’t alarmists employ their high capacity for panic in connection with large and certain killers of people such as road accidents and the myriads of illnesses that unwashed hands cause?

How difficult is it to understand that nuclear energy is the cheapest and the safest alternative to poisonous coal emissions and to “blood for oil”? Yes, it’s that simple. Continue reading →

National Economic Systems: An Introduction for Intelligent Beginners – 3

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics, Liberty , ,

My Debt, your Debt and Future Poverty.

I told you in previous installments of this series of essays that we, in the USA, are not facing one economic crisis but two.

The fist crisis is a recession. It’s a common event in the long run of market economies. Recessions are defined by serious people (according to me) as two consecutive quarters or more of economic shrinkage. Recessions go away whether any government does anything about them or not. One school of thought (Keynesian), to which the Obama administration belongs, maintains that large government spending – stimulation- can lessen or shorten a recession. I argued that the Obama stimulus package of several months ago cannot possibly stimulate, even if you believe in the stimulation scenario.

The second crisis, by far the most serious, is the abnormally high debt the federal government has incurred since President Obama came to office. It disturbs me because the people, you and I, will have to pay interest on the debt for a long time, and eventually re-pay the principal. Else, the government will have to repay its debt in bad currency, in devalued or in eroded currency. If this happens, we will simply all be poorer, in real terms, If your dollar is worth half in ten years of what it is worth now, you will simply have to pay two dollars for what you buy today for one dollar. There is no reason to assume your income will automatically follow. This is a common fallacy (perhaps the topic for another essay): It takes about forty Indian rupees to buy a US dollar today and the same mountain bike that costs 400 US dollars in this country costs 600 US dollars in India. A good income in India would be 12,000 dollars per year. (That’s about twelve times the national average.)  Continue reading →

Le nouveau mandat d’Obama

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics

Selon ce que j’ai entendu à la télé française pendant la campagne, les Francais ont souvent du mal à comprendre le sytème électoral américain. Celui-ci est, à vrai dire, assez peu accessible à l’intuition.

Voici une précision sur l’élection présidentielles de 2012 qui aura échappé, je crois, à tous les commentateurs Francais. Obama l’a emporté en Floride, après un comptage épuisant, par 50% contre 49,15% seulement. Au plan national, Obama a gagné les élections de façon décisive avec 332 voix de grands électeurs contre 206. Cependant le proche examen du vote populaire impose une interprétation divergente du mandat que lui aura octroyé cette élection.

Un court article du Wall Street Journal du 14/11/12 fait observer qu’il aurait suffit de 333.000 votes supplémentaires pour Romney, répartis sur seulement trois états, pour que ce dernier l’emporte. Ceci pour un total de suffrages exprimés dépassant 120.000.000 (cent vingt millions), ou donc une proportion comme ceci: 333/120.000.

Je répète qu’Obama a indubitablement gagné. Cependant, il n’est pas possible de considérer sa victoire comme écrasante.

Ce fait explique en partie pourquoi beaucoup des conservateurs défaits par cette élection, moi y-compris, se prononcent déjà pour que le Parti Républicain se serve de sa majorité à la Chambre des Représentants pour faire de l’obstructionisme vis-à-vis des politiques fiscales à venir du président re-élu.

[Editor’s note: this essay first appeared on Dr. Delacroix’s blog, Facts Matter, on November 14th 2012]

National Economic Systems: An Introduction for Intelligent Beginners – 2

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics , , , , , ,

Part Two: Taxing the Rich.

I argue in Part One of this essay that the stimulus package could not possibly stimulate the economy the way a stimulus package is supposed to do. That is, the present stimulus package cannot shorten or lessen the current recession by stemming the growth of unemployment and by jump-starting the national economy, the way Keynesian economics has it. I suggested there had to be another agenda for this massive spending of public money.

Recessions – two consecutive quarters when the national economy contracts instead of expanding – are common under capitalism, in market economies. They wane, whether or not anyone does anything about them. This fact makes if difficult to assign credit to government measures designed to lessen or shorten recessions when economic indicators do look good. Economic indicators don’t look good right now, although some of the press is announcing the beginning of the beginning of the end of the recession.

At any rate, the recession will end eventually. That is, economic growth will resume. I would bet on it but I don’t know when. When growth resumes, we will be left with the second economic crisis facing us. That second crisis is less routine, more extraordinary, and more worrisome than the first crisis, the recession itself. It’s massive public indebtedness. I have to go into the reasons why the Federal Government is even able to incur massive debt. Continue reading →