Politics

From the Comments: Is US Economic Stagnation A Myth?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , ,

The short answer is “yes.”

In the ‘comments’ section of Dr Delacroix’s recent article on the myth of American economic stagnation, Dr Amburgey, who works at the University of Toronto’s business school, dropped three arguments at my feet. I gave him three responses and he chose to address Issue #2 first. I will await his responses to Issues #1 and #3 respectively, but I want to make sure that we are all on the same page before we get to Issues #1 and #3.

At the heart of this discussion lies Dr Delacroix’s observation:

So, the implication here is that when it comes to the unequal distribution or real economic growth you have to do two things:

A You have to slow down and make sure you understand what’s being said; it’s not always easy. Examples below.

B You have to decide whether the inequality being described is a moral problem for you or, otherwise a political issue. (I, for one, would not lose sleep over the increased poverty of the stock exchange players in my fictitious example above. As for the lady typists, I am sorry but I can’t be held responsible for people who live under a rock on purpose.)

With this in mind I think it is important to point out that because what we are discussing brings out a lot of passion, it is easy for people to look at some numbers and believe them just on principle. For example, Dr Amburgey writes:

The numbers I use come from [here]. Median household income for 1975-2012 in constant (2012) dollars. There is a picture on the wikipedia entry I gave above [found here – bc] that charts GDP per capita and median household income. Go look at it. It’s pretty much flat for median household income. In other words pretty stagnant. Numbers wise in 1975 its $45788. In 2012 it’s $51017 (less than it was in 1989 by the way). Plug the numbers into my handy dandy econometrics software and regress median household income on year and the average annual change is $232.32 per year.

I suppose ‘stagnant’ is in the eye of the beholder but I’d say that’s 38 years of economic stagnation for the American economy as a whole.

Can you see why Dr Amburgey’s statement above is untrue? I can spot two big errors in his logic (feel free to correct me or add your own in the ‘comments’ section):

  1. Median household income has, on paper, indeed stagnated. Yet this says nothing about economic decline or stagnation in the US because median household income cannot tell us what such income has been able to buy in the past 40 years. That is to say, the measurement used by Dr Amburgey, and the ensuing numbers they produced, tells us nothing about the purchasing power of the American consumer.
  2. This second error is huge in my mind. Dr Amburgey and others are plainly stating that the American economy has been economically stagnate for 40 years. This is a good example of looking superficially at some numbers and then kowtowing to proper social norms. After all, Dr Amburgey’s handy-dandy econometrics software was around in 1973, right?

None of what I am arguing denies that the US economy sucks today. I am not blaming this on the Obama administration (though it has certainly kicked us while down). Nor am I denying that there are real structural issues that need to be addressed. What I am arguing, and what I think Dr Delacroix is arguing, is that the numbers and the issues used by Leftist factions to push their beliefs through the political process are based on faulty assumptions and even faultier logic.

I am still waiting for Issues #1 and #3 to be addressed. Dr Amburgey actually has access as an author on this blog, so maybe Christmas will come early for me this year and I’ll be able to read one of his posts here at NOL.

From the Comments: Populism, Big Banks and the Tyranny of Ambiguity

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Andrew takes time to elaborate upon his support for Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Native American law professor from Harvard who often pines for the “little guy” in public forums. I loathe populism/fascism precisely because it is short on specifics and very, very long on generalities and emotional appeal. This ambiguity is precisely why fascist/populist movements lead societies down the road to cultural, economic and political stagnation. Andrew begins his defense of populism/fascism with this:

For example, I still have more trust in Warren than in almost anyone else in Congress to hold banks accountable to the rule of law.

Banks have been following the rule of law. This is the problem libertarians have been trying to point out for hundreds of years. See Dr Gibson on bank regulations and Dr Gibson again, along with Dr Foldvary, on alternatives. This is why you see so few bankers in jail. Libertarians point to institutional barriers that are put in place by legislators at the behest of a myriad of lobbying groups. Populists/fascists decry the results of the legislation and seek a faction to blame.

If you wanted to be thought of as an open-minded, fairly intelligent individual, which framework would you present to those who you wished to impress: the institutional one that libertarians identify as the culprit for the 2008 financial crisis or the ambiguous one that the populists wield?

And populism=fascism=nationalism is a daft oversimplification. I’ll grant that there’s often overlap between the three, but it’s far from total or inevitable overlap. Populists target their own countries’ elites all the time.

Sometimes oversimplification is a good thing, especially if it helps to clarify something (see, for example, Dr Delacroix’s work on free trade and the Law of Comparative Advantage). One of the hallmarks of fascism is its anti-elitism. Fascists tend to target elites in their own countries because they are a) easy and highly visible targets, b) usually employed in professions that require a great amount of technical know-how or traditional education and c) very open to foreign cultures and as such are often perceived as being connected to elites of foreign societies.

The anti-elitism of fascists/populists is something that libertarians don’t think about enough. Anti-elitism is by its very nature anti-individualistic, anti-education and anti-cooperative. You can tell it is all of these “antis” not because of the historical results that populism/fascism has bred, but because of its ambiguous arguments. Ambiguity, of course, is a populist’s greatest weapon. There is never any substance to be found in the arguments of the populist. No details. No clarity. Only easily identifiable problems (at best) or ad hominem attacks (at worst). Senator Warren is telling in this regard. She is known for her very public attacks on banks and the rich, but when pressed for details she never elaborates. And why should she? To do so would expose her public attacks to argument. It would create a spectacle out of the sacred. For example, Andrew writes:

Still, I’d rather have people like Warren establish a fuzzy and imperfect starting point for reform than let courtiers to the wealthy and affluent dictate policy because there’s no remotely viable counterpoint to their stances […] These doctrinaire free-market orthodoxies are where the libertarian movement loses me. There are just too many untrustworthy characters attached to that ship for me to jump on board.

Ambiguity is a better alternative than plainly stated and publicly published goals simply because there are “untrustworthy characters” associated with the latter? Why not seek plainly stated and publicly published alternatives rather than “fuzzy and imperfect starting points for reform”?

Andrew quotes a man in the street that happens to be made entirely of straw:

“Social Security has gone into the red, but instead of increasing the contribution ceiling and thoughtfully trimming benefits, let’s privatize the whole thing and encourage people to invest in my company’s private retirement accounts.”

Does the libertarian really argue that phasing out a government program implemented in the 1930s is good because it would force people to invest in his company’s private retirement accounts? I’ve never heard of such an example, but I may just be reading all the wrong stuff. Andrew could prove me wrong with a lead or two. There is more:

This ilk of concern trolls (think Megan McArdle: somewhat different emphasis, same general worldview) is one that I find thoroughly disgusting and untrustworthy and that I want absolutely no part in engaging in civil debate. Their positions are just too corrupt and outlandish to dignify with direct responses; I consider it better to marginalize them and instead engage adversaries who aren’t pushing the Overton Window to extremes that I consider bizarre and self-serving. They’re often operating from premises that a supermajority of Americans would find absurd or unconscionable, so I see no point to inviting shills and nutters into a debate […].

Megan McArdle is so “disgusting and untrustworthy” that her arguments are not even worth discussing? Her name is worth bringing up, of course, but her arguments are not? Ambiguity is the weapon of the majority’s tyranny, and our readers deserve better. They are not idiots (our readership is still too small!), and I think they deserve an explanation for why McArdle is not worthy of their time (aside from being a shill for the rich, of course).

I think populism/fascism is often attractive to dissatisfied and otherwise intelligent individuals largely because its ambiguous nature seems to provide people with answers to tough questions that they cannot (or will not) answer themselves. Elizabeth Warren’s own tough questions, on the Senate Banking Committee, revolve around pestering banks for supposedly (supposedly) laundering money to drug lords and terrorists:

“What does it take, how many billions of dollars do you have to launder from drug lords and how many economic sanctions do you have to violate before someone will consider shutting down a financial institution?” Warren asked at a Banking Committee hearing on money laundering.

Notice how the populist/fascist simply takes the laws in place for granted (so long as they serve her desires)? The libertarian would ask not if the banks were doing something illegally, but why there are laws in place that prohibit individuals and organizations from making monetary transactions in the first place.

Senator Warren’s assumptions highlight well the difference between the ideologies of populism/fascism and libertarianism: One ideology thinks bludgeoning unpopular factions is perfectly acceptable. The other would defend an unpopular faction as if it were its own; indeed, as if its own freedom were tied up to the freedom of the faction under attack.

A Warm Welcome, and other assorted editorial duties

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

Hello all. I’m proud to announce and introduce Jesper Ahlin to the blogging team here at NOL:

Jesper Ahlin received his B.A. in philosophy from Linköping University and is now a graduate student in philosophy at Uppsala University. He has conducted Stureakademin, a study program run by the classical liberal think tank Timbro, and is the local coordinator for European Students For Liberty in Sweden. As a right-libertarianish thinker he enjoys reading Mises and Rothbard as well as Hayek and Nozick. He also likes ice hockey, music and traveling.

Jesper’s debut post can be found here. He’s currently hanging out in Washington and New York City, but do look for more of his posts in the near future. I, for one, am very excited to be blogging alongside Jesper.

In other news around the blog, Andrew is shocked – SHOCKED! – to find Senator Elizabeth Warren in the company of other rich, white (class-wise, of course) liberals. What would a “sincere and credible populist” be doing rubbing elbows with rich, white (class-wise, of course) Leftists? After all, Senator Warren, a Native American, was a law professor at Harvard. Think of all the glass ceilings she shattered. Do read the whole thing. As always, it’s very well-written.

‘Populism’ is just a quaint term for ‘fascism’ and ‘fascism’ is just a fancy term for ‘nationalism’. All three terms are useful if you want a society to be culturally, economically and politically stagnant. What, for example, is the criteria for being an ‘American worker’ (one segment of society that Senator Warren holds especially close to her heart)?

The guy who works twelve hours a day at a hospital, four days a week?

The guy who works twenty hours a week at a deli slicing pastrami?

And what, for example, characterizes an ‘American worker’ from, say, a ‘German worker’?

Nobody in Warren’s populist camp ever really defines what it means to be an ‘American worker.’ Policy matters, and policies targeting certain segments of society – whether for good or for ill – will only guarantee stagnation, especially if the certain segment of society is only vaguely defined. Not everybody can drive a BMW to work and, more importantly, not everybody wants to.

Elsewhere, Hank and NEO and Edmund argue about political power. It seems to me that they are simply arguing about how this power should be shared, rather than how it should be shorn. This is a dangerous precedent, in my opinion. Read Edmund’s whole piece, and the exchange that follows.

Personally, I don’t care which party is in office, as long as laws that are anathema to libertarianism can be repealed. Conservatives are often an embarrassment to themselves and to their countrymen. They rarely travel, are often less educated than their Leftist peers and usually possess a deep belief in the power of magic and sorcery to solve the social and personal problems that they inevitably come to face in life.

For all this, at least they aren’t Leftists.

Thanks for reading and, more importantly, for sharing your thoughts in the ‘comments’ section. Together, through arguing, we are doing the fine-stitching of democracy.

On the great and glorious skeeviness of “Lean In” and Sheryl Sandberg

muricaderp Current Events, Economics, History, Links, Politics , , ,

It’s even worse than I had realized:

Joining “the community” was just a click away. In fact, the community was already uploaded and ready to receive them; all they had to do was hit the “Lean In Today” button on their computer screen . . . and, oh yeah, join Facebook. (There is no entry into Lean In’s Emerald e-Kingdom except through the Facebook portal; Sandberg has kept her message of liberation confined within her own corporate brand.)

Thomas enumerated the “three things” that Lean In offered. (In the Lean In Community, there are invariably three things required to achieve your aims.) First, Thomas instructed, “Come like us on Facebook” (and, for extra credit, post your own inspirational graphic on Lean In’s Facebook “photo gallery” and “tag your friends, tell them why you’re leaning in!”). Second, watch Lean In’s online “education” videos, twenty-minute lectures from “experts” (business school professors, management consultants, and a public speaking coach) with titles like “Power and Influence” and “Own the Room.” Third, create a “Lean In Circle” with eight to ten similarly aspirational young women. The circles, Lean In literature stresses, are to promote “peer mentorship” only—not to deliver aid and counsel from experienced female elders who might actually help them advance.

The author, Susan Faludi, later mentions that Sandberg’s career was propelled by very targeted and effective university-president-to-student mentorship from Larry Summers. Those of you who follow idiotic political “scandals” will recall that Summers was drummed out of the Harvard presidency a few years ago for being a rank misogynist, as proven by his impolitic comments about women not being naturals at advanced mathematics. The buried lede in the Summers sexism scandal was that he was by most accounts a rank abrasive in general. If I wanted to hang out with his kind, I’d track down the prep school headmaster who shoved me up against a wall in a crowded hallway and screamed at me from a foot away for uttering something along the lines of “that’s fucking crazy.” These guys bear more than a passing resemblance to each other. I don’t care to keep the company of either of them.

There’s an unseemly and disturbing cult aura surrounding Sandberg. The language that she uses in “Lean In” programming is too meaningless and slick, and her you-go-girl followers are a bit too fawning for sane society. As it turns out, like high court functionary, like boy-king:

On Mark Zuckerberg’s birthday, the women at the company were instructed to wear T-shirts displaying his photo, like groupies.

Kate Losse, the former Facebook employee who recounted this birthday stunt, ascribed it to rampant workplace sexism: “It was like Mad Men, but real and happening in the current moment, as if in repudiation of fifty years of social progress.” It was also, I’d add, a repudiation of other important lessons of the mid-Twentieth Century, such as those of Synanon and Rajneeshpuram. Synanon’s founder and tyrant, a marriage-wrecking compulsory vasectomy enthusiast by the name of Chuck Diederich, presided over a compound in West Marin County where he used a pirate radio station to berate his followers to “get your balls clipped,” terrorized neighboring landowners, and corrupted the sheriff’s department to the extent that the county grand jury received an extended audience with the California attorney general and the incumbent sheriff was voted out of office in favor of a previously obscure San Anselmo police captain (i.e., East Marin outsider, over the hill from Synanon’s cohort of reserve sheriff’s deputies) who promised to clean house.  The Rajneeshees spent the early 1980’s vigorously attempting to subvert local governments and poison the townies in Wasco County, Oregon. Sure, Zuckerberg isn’t that bad, or at least he’s a different kind of bad, but only a megalomaniac orchestrates that sort of self-aggrandizing birthday party stunt. His is the sort of behavior that should be nipped in the bud, because if it isn’t, it may reach a point meriting attention from the state police.

Given that Sandberg reports to a smirking, self-important boy wonder who never quite looks like he completed puberty, apparently has quite vulgar taste in office art, and enjoys being worshiped, one might not expect her to keep particularly upright company at her side gig. Indeed: 

Sandberg’s mantra has become the feminist rallying cry of the moment, praised by notable figures such as Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Marlo Thomas, and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt. A Time magazine cover story hails Sandberg for “embarking on the most ambitious mission to reboot feminism and reframe discussions of gender since the launch of Ms. magazine in 1971.” Pretty good for somebody who, “as of two and a half years ago,” as Sandberg confessed on her book tour, “had never said the word woman aloud. Because that’s not how you get ahead in the world.”

The lovefest continues on LeanIn.org’s “Meet the Community” page, where tribute is paid by Sandberg’s high-powered network of celebrities, corporate executives, and media moguls (many media moguls), among them Oprah Winfrey, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, Newsweek and Daily Beast editor in chief Tina Brown, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, Cosmopolitan editor in chief Joanna Coles, former Good Morning America coanchor Willow Bay, former first lady Laura Bush (and both of her daughters), former California first lady and TV host Maria Shriver, U.S. senators Barbara Boxer and Elizabeth Warren, Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust, Dun & Bradstreet CEO Sara Mathew, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Coca-Cola marketing executive Wendy Clark, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, supermodel Tyra Banks, and actor (and Avon “Global Ambassador”) Reese Witherspoon.

Steinem’s feminism, as it happens, did not interfere with her shacking up with Mort Zuckerman, who has the most fascinating highbrow New York accent I’ve ever heard. Fonda is a second-generation movie star who polarized her country by going on a bizarre wartime mission to North Vietnam, quite arguably for nothing more than the publicity and the morality-whoring. Winfrey is a bottomfeeding charlatan who feigns histrionics for a living. Huffington is notorious for abusing unpaid staff writers at her for-profit publication, some of whom have begun suing for back wages. Boxer is a mediocrity at best who looks decent mainly because her most prominent colleagues in the California Congressional delegation, Feinstein and Pelosi, are morally hideous. Mayer is the girl you hated in high school for brownnosing all the teachers, being haughty because she maintained a 4.5 GPA, and talking shit about classmates for the lulz and the feeling of superiority.

What I find most worrisome is that Warren, one of the few sincere and credible populists in Congress, is also cradling this tar baby. The list is otherwise studded with exactly the sorts of oddities and sleazy operators one would expect, people who stand to lose much less esteem among the attentive for their involvement in this scam than does Warren.

And a scam is exactly what it is. By her own description, Sandberg scrupulously avoided saying anything about women until a few years ago. Then, as a high-powered corporate executive in her early forties, she suddenly started giving a shit about all this feminist empowerment stuff, as if after a career of being mixed up with Larry Summers and Mark Zuckerberg she was overcome with concern for other women and what she could do for them. One of my first suggestions would be to not offer them a chance to jump through hoops for an unpaid internship at a foundation run by a dot-com executive in support of her self-help racket. This isn’t about helping women, unless “women” is defined to mean Sheryl Sandberg and her cronies. It’s seedy marketeering sleaze. They would much more like to serve man. (Because, as Stalin put it, “of course it’s a fucking cookbook!”) 

Another way to look at it is as a sort of affinity fraud. Bernie Madoff didn’t swindle prominent New York Jews to make David Duke or Al Sharpton proud; he swindled them because he was one, and being one he knew their values, worldview, and cultural touchstones. Being a member of the same local ethnic and religious community also helped him build his victims’ trust, much like the guy who faked his own death in a staged plane crash in Alabama had done when he moved from Indianapolis to Atlanta to yuk it up about aviation with guys flying the big metal at the Delta crew base, then take their money in a pyramid scheme for pilots and run. If it doesn’t take one to know one, it takes one to dupe one. Sheryl Sandberg and her cronies are successful women, so they’re perfect marketeers for campaigns targeting less successful but aspiring women. By contrast, I wouldn’t succeed as a marketeer to teh wymmynz because I have the male perspective, and I’d have a hard time sealing deals with Madoff’s old crowd as a three-quarters goy son of a Staten Islander. 

These affinity frauds are all about exploiting and destroying the social capital built up by other people in high-trust communities. Why women as an overarching nebulous collective would be anything but a rock-bottom-low-trust community is inexplicable under any sort of logic, but it’s widely held to be the case. Meanwhile, it’s regarded as marginal and crazed (correctly so, I’d say) to make equivalent comments declaring a universal male solidarity bonding all men everywhere. This double standard has been established by little more than the sheer repetition of crude tautologies about differences between the sexes. Bizarrely, the activists advancing these tautologies simultaneously pride themselves on being sexual equalists. Whether they believe their own bullshit (about sexual equality, female superiority, or both) is debatable, but the language and imagery that they use certainly tend not to be conducive to introspection and sanity.

What they’re running on the public is a massive, often coordinated advertising campaign: in other words, a psychological operation, which is exactly what most modern advertising is. Whether it’s better for these psychological operators to be craven and sentient or to go fully native and truly believe the stuff is a matter of personal preference, dictated by whether one prefers to be manipulated by the consciously evil or by those who are simply out of their goddamn minds.

The end result of this process, however it operates, is that many women who would unabashedly describe specific female relatives or acquaintances as crazy bitches are convinced to place their complete trust in the judgment and morals of women utterly strange to them, specifically because they’re women and they’ve been declared leaders. Sure, my sister steals my sterling and china to feed her meth habit whenever she visits, then we catch her and she guilt-trips us about feeding her children and promises to get clean, but I totally trust this Sandberg lady because she says such nice things about empowering women. The key, of course, is that these thoughts are had subconsciously and separately; otherwise they’d be too ridiculous to grok. 

As Faludi shows, much of the “Lean In” programming is devoted to eliding class divisions by focusing on a meretricious sense of cross-class female solidarity. Here she understates her case, just as she does in only tangentially mentioning Arianna Huffington as a “Lean In” supporter without discussing her being a moneyed woman mooching off of unpaid labor to run her for-profit publication. Sheryl Sandberg is a very wealthy and well-connected corporate executive working in an era of extreme income inequality, diminished social mobility, and a ruined job market. She advanced substantially on the basis of her collegiate relationship with a future Treasury Secretary. Sandberg’s biography, as opposed to the self-help pap she’s marketing, is one of class solidarity with other members of the overclass, not one of gender solidarity with other women. Her example is relevant to men at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and to a lesser extent at somewhat less well-connected universities; it is irrelevant to women at College of the Redwoods or SUNY-New Paltz, let alone women with GED’s working as home health aides in Southie. If you’re wondering why Harvard women don’t hang out in Lowell, Faludi has an explanation: 

In 1834, America’s first industrial wage earners, the “mill girls” of Lowell, Massachusetts, embarked on their own campaign for women’s advancement in the workplace. They didn’t “lean in,” though. When their male overseers in the nation’s first large-scale planned industrial city cut their already paltry wages by 15 to 20 percent, the textile workers declared a “turn-out,” one of the nation’s earliest industrial strikes. That first effort failed, but its participants did not concede defeat. The Lowell women would stage another turn-out two years later, create the first union of working women in American history, lead a fight for the ten-hour work day, and conceive of an increasingly radical vision that took aim both at corporate power and the patriarchal oppression of women. Their bruising early encounter with American industry fueled a nascent feminist outlook that would ultimately find full expression in the first wave of the American women’s movement. 

…

The Lowell factory owners had recruited “respectable” Yankee farmers’ daughters from the New England countryside, figuring that respectable would translate into docile. They figured wrong. The forces of industrialization had propelled young women out of the home, breaking the fetters binding them to the patriarchal family, unleashing the women into urban areas with few social controls, and permitting them to begin thinking of themselves as public citizens. The combination of newly gained independence and increasingly penurious, exploitative conditions proved combustible—and the factory owners’ reduction in pay turned out to be the match that lit the tinder. Soon after they heard the news, the “mill girls”—proclaiming that they “remain in possession of our unquestionable rights”—shut down their looms and walked out.

 Farmers’ daughters working in factories: they must have been poors, no? Indeed: 

The Lowell turn-out was a communal endeavor, built on intense bonds of sisterhood forged around the clock: by day on the factory floor, where the women worked in pairs, with the more experienced female worker training and looking out for the newcomer, and by night in the company boarding houses, where they shared cramped quarters, often two to a bed, and embroiled themselves in late-night discussions about philosophy, music, literature, and, increasingly, social and economic injustice. As Dublin observed of the web of “mutual dependence” that prevailed in the Lowell mill workforce, the strike was “made possible because women had come to form a ‘community’ of operatives in the mill, rather than simply a group of individual workers.” An actual community, that is—not an online like-a-thon. Tellingly, the strike began when a mill agent, hoping to nip agitation in the bud, fired one of the more voluble factory workers whom he regarded as the ringleader. The other women immediately walked out in protest over her expulsion. The petition they signed and circulated concluded: “Resolved, That none of us will go back, unless they receive us all as one.” 

Yup. Icky poors working shit jobs and doing the community organizing thing because they had no alternative. These are the kind of people who obediently go home to the ass ends of Boston after finishing their shifts at Harvard Yard. One does not associate freely and equally with such people as a Harvard woman. And all this community stuff is le hard. It takes too much time away from Candy Crush Saga. 

The result is a nation whose women can’t make it to the Grange meeting either because they’re too busy being socially-climbing careerists or because the meeting conflicts with Oprah. I know, I’m indulging in sentimental agrarian populist fantasy, and that most of my friends would have to ask me what the hell is a grange, but the same thing goes for men who are too busy watching SportsCenter and UFC pay-per-view to get to union meetings or bowling clubs.

The issue here isn’t sex, but class. Get rid of all chauvinism in these downmarket organizations, and the overclass will still be discomfited. Sheryl Sandberg and company don’t want any of us hanging out at the union hall. They want us to mind our own business, not the community’s. They certainly don’t want anyone getting the idea that they’re winning at a rigged game. 

The Federal Shutdown, the Debt Ceiling and an Extremist’s Morning After

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

The fake government “shutdown” is already over. I hardly had time to enjoy it. I was just beginning to make a list of federal services that are “non-essential” according to the federal government itself. I was kind of hoping that the EPA, for example, would bite the dust. I does not seem fair.

The debt ceiling problem is also dealt with for the time being. It’s another expression of the same underlying problem that led to the “shutdown.” (See below.)

OK, after the crisis that just ended temporarily, it feels to conservatives like Great Britain in August 1944. The Luftwaffe rules the skies. Our few remaining pilots keep getting shot down. Our central city is bombed nightly. Everyone else who is civilized has already folded. Nightly, they are opening the Champagne in Berlin. We stand alone. It does not mean that we are wrong to stand.

Still, it also feels like the morning after. Time to look into it.

The so-called crisis is suspended for about four months. Nothing is solved. The Republicans collectively took a public opinion drubbing, it’s true. Speaking for myself, I will repeat what I said earlier: I am not attached to the Republican Party. I care only about limited government conservatism. Until now, the Republican Party was a not-so-bad vehicle for that view of the world. If it does not have the backbone to carry it further, so be it. Yes, I think that even if there is no other likely large vehicle in sight. I want to avoid pointless imaginings about my meaning by saying it clearly: What I fear most is not just another electoral defeat but a meaningless and useless electoral defeat such as the Republican Party suffered in the last presidentials. What hurts the most is the large number of nominal Republicans who just stayed home. Gov. Romney’s program was not the hill you want to die for. Gov. Romney was not the kind of commander who could induce you to die for that hill.

Here is the central conservative issue in a capsule. The phony government shutdown and the reappearing debt ceiling issue are parts of the same dark cloud:

A federal government that is deeply and routinely corrupt as well as shockingly incompetent keeps borrowing mindlessly to sustain the ordinary business of government.

It’s despotic; its’ a waste of resources; most of all, it’s immoral.

The mindless, nearly automatic borrowing is the worst part.

Myself, I think that I, my children and the federal government should only borrow under two circumstances:

  1. When the loan is to be applied directly to the acquisition of a tool that will contribute to greater earnings in the proximate future. I use the word “tool” liberally. Better freeways, for example, could easily qualify.
  2. When there is a strong presumption that we will earn more tomorrow . That’s with or without the condition in 1 above. This is separate. In the case of a country, for example demographic growth may by itself create such a presumption.

The present federal government’s borrowing fulfills neither condition. It’s borrowing to meet everyday expense. It’s as if I borrowed to buy bread for my lunch sandwich. There is also no reason so far to believe that the United States economy will grow a great deal tomorrow. (This could change the day after tomorrow if we had, for example, sudden access to new cheap energy. The Obama administration is doing its best to prevent precisely this from happening – Makes you think along dark lines, doesn ‘t it?)

Routine even legal, systemic federal government corruption: The widow of (wealthy) Senator Lautenberg received $174,000 from Congress because her husband took the trouble to die while in office. (WSJ 10/18/13, p. A12)

Federal Government incompetence: See the health insurance exchanges, in preparation for four years! Enough said! Note: I am not sure whether I am more afraid that its implementation will succeed or that it will continue to fail in exemplary fashion.

Mindless federal borrowing: It has become an integral part of the culture that the government must borrow to live. I said “integral part of the culture.” Below, an illustration I could not invent if I wanted to.

Larry Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, by some defensible measure, the largest investment firm in the world. Mr Fink said 10/16/13 or 10/17/13 (WSJ):

I have been in this business for 37 years. For 34 years I did not know there was such a thing as a debt ceiling.

Our point exactly! One of the highest placed business executives in the land takes government borrowing so much for granted that he does not know it’s subject to Congress-imposed limitations. He even sounds incensed when he learns the truth.

That’s what makes us conservatives, “extremists.”

Why do I care? I care because, unless there is another wave of fast economic growth lasting for several years, we are guaranteeing that our children and grand children will live in poverty. It’s wrong; it’s immoral.

And then, there is the growing phoniness of the public discourse including discourse by the mainstream privately owned press.

During the two days following the cessation of the pretend-government “shutdown,” the main media are eager to pretend that the multitudes feel great relief. They talk as if the average folks out there had experienced tremendous suffering because federal non-essentials were furloughed. I, for one, feel no relief at all. I don’t know anyone who does. (Agree, it’s an unsystematic sample but it’s a sample.) This is all the media’s deliberate exaggeration or a misplaced identification with federal public servants. It’s becoming more and more obvious that such public servants are overpaid and that they enjoy too many unearned privileges. (State public servants also, in some states, such as mine, California.) I don’t identify. It pisses me off. The more I know, the more pissed off I am.

They, the mainstream media, echo dumbly the noises coming from the administration about the alleged “costs” of the “shutdown” to the national economy. No one takes the trouble to do a net calculus, even to raise the issue of a net calculus. Isn’t it true that for each day certain federal bureaucracies are unable to do their job, some of the main producers in the nation are better able to produce? Again, the EPA comes to mind. And the IRS, of course. And a number of federal agencies whose names I don’t even know.

Besides, it’s an empty formula, a truism that (theoretical) wealth that fails to be produced usually is not regained, as the administration says gravely.

N. S. ! That’s what happens with Columbus Day and with Presidents’ Day, for example. (When only public servants and bank employees don’t work. When nearly the whole private sector keeps on producing wealth.) Why not cancel both holidays if non-production is a cause for worry? Why not make federal public servants come to work on both days if the president is worried? He only need issue an executive order. Bet you, he won’t even mention the possibility. And why do I have to state the obvious? Why aren’t the media doing their job? Have they been hypnotized? And, I almost forgot: if the president loses sleep over the missed production of federal employees, he could imitate the French in reverse and institute the federal forty-four hours work week. Would anyone notice?

Something else does not add up in the media’s discourse. For days, during the so-called “shutdown,” both administration officials and supposedly independent pundits threatened us with a world economic abyss because of number of non-essential federal employees were prevented from going to work. (I am not making this up; I am not exaggerating that we were told this ad nauseum; go back to those recent days, you will be amazed.) Yet, the day he current agreement is announced, the day we jumped form the edge of the supposed abyss, the markets reacted limply. The Dow Jones Industrial gained a lackluster 175 points that day. Now, that’s nice; it’s a gain for sure. However it’s no more of a gain than happens, for example, when the international price of the oil barrel comes down by ten dollars. The next day, the Dow Jones was flat. Trouble over; no big deal after all. Forget what we said yesterday. Forget the alarm. We were just kidding!

The Republican cave-in saves us from falling into the Grand Canyon and the market gives us a small hot dogs party by way of celebration! Does it make sense?

President Obama’s deftness never ceases to amaze me. No mistake seems to stick to him. On the day of the agreement, he declared that the new debt ceiling is not really debt. No one in the mainstream press questioned this absurd statement. Let me repeat, by the way, that I don’t think he is lying. He really does not know better. Academia is overflowing with his type of intelligent ignorance.

Perhaps, I am not grasping what’s going on, culturally. Perhaps, the reservoir of white American guilt concerning the long atrocity that was slavery, concerning racial segregation and discrimination also, is far from exhausted. Perhaps, the president can write checks on this for a long time to come. Or maybe, as Rush Limbaugh suggested, he struck a giant chord with the millions by giving them a chance to see themselves as victims. If you are a victim, almost any grotesque behavior is permissible. Soon only my wife, our grown children and I will be the only non-victims left in America. It will be a lonely existence. And, I wonder how long we will be able to support the victims because two of us are long retired (thus mirroring American demographics to come).

At one point one of Mr Obama’s servants referred gravely to the global reputational damage the shutdown has caused to the United States. (I don’t remember exactly who or when but I heard it with my own ears.) The “red line” in Syria about using chemical weapons does not in any way affect the credibility of the US, I suppose. The hundreds of civilians who died from chemical weapons died and all is forgiven. In the words of Pres. Obama’s former Secretary of State, “What difference does it make now?”

The day after the agreement the president gave another speech in which he advised those who don’t like something to just win elections in order to be able to change the something. I don’t think it was mistake. It was Freudian slip. President Obama does not believe that tea party Senators and Representatives who oppose him so tenaciously were just as elected as he was. It sounds familiar to me because I know history rather well and French history very well. The weakling tyrant, Louis-Napoleon, the Emperor Napoleon the Third (there was no Second) was initially elected. His supporters really thought that if you were elected by a sizable majority, you were morally allowed to do anything. They thought that was democracy. (There is a very nice readable piece by my old buddy Karl Marx on this topic for your reading pleasure where and when it rains: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Abstract of Chapter I.)

Thus do we drift fast toward a one-party state. I warned about this a long time ago, before Mr Obama was even elected. (See also on this blog: “Fascism Explained“)

The unspeakable Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said after the agreement was reached: “This is a time for reconciliation.” I don’t think so. I hope not.

Which is bigger Ponzi scheme?

Rick Weber Politics , , , , , , ,

A comment on my recent post made me realize that I’ve been wrong about Social Security this whole time. It isn’t quite a giant Ponzi scheme, but if we’re being flexible with our definition of Ponzi scheme it may still be the biggest.

Many people are happy to pay into Social Security thinking they’ll get a reasonable return on their “investment”. To the extent that that’s true, and that return is financed by other people paying in (rather than on actual investments) it’s a Ponzi scheme. But others don’t pay in voluntarily. To the extent that that’s true, it’s like theft but with the robber systematically dropping some of the money. Quasi-Ponzi scheme might be a better term. Social Security paid out $615B in 2008. Let’s guess $650B for 2012. If that was all happy money, it’s one big Ponzi scheme.

But the U.S. government has another project that more closely resembles a Ponzi scheme: Treasury bonds. Here people voluntarily fork over money for a return that is financed in part by later “investors” buying Treasury bonds. Of a $3.5T budget with a $1T deficit, 6% went to paying interest last year (that’s $223B). So 29% of the budget was deficit, and we might conclude that approximately $65B of interest (0.29*$223B) is “Ponzi-financed”.

So now the question is how much of Social Security is “happy money”? Anything more than 10% makes it the bigger Ponzi-scheme. But even if Social Security is heavily financed with “happy money” it is still taken at gun point while purchasers of bonds are there voluntarily. If the government were looking to save $223B and only Social Security benefits and interest payments were on the table, the more ethical choice is to default (if not repudiate). As I recall, I’m ripping off this point from Jeff Hummel.

What the Hell is a “RINO” Anyway???

Wood Liberty, Politics , , , , , ,

I have serious problems understanding the definition of the term ‘RINO’. The term is supposed to mean a Moderate Republican, i.e. a Republican that shares views with a Democrat. However, the term is used by so many contradictory parties that it lacks real meaning. Many people hold up President Reagan as the hard definition of a true conservative, with his quote of “the soul of conservatism is libertarianism”.

In the 2012 election, the four Republican candidates each represented a key demographic of the current Republican base. There was Mitt Romney, a Mormon westerner who had become merged with the moderate eastern Money Trust Rockefeller establishment. There was Rick Santorum, a right-wing Catholic obsessed with social issues and ready to wage a Christian jihad. There was Newt Gingrich, a Baptist-turned-Catholic career politicians who’d passed centrist legislation throughout the Clinton administration. And of course, Ron Paul, a libertarian carrying the youth vote, ironically carrying views of a politician born in the 1890s, who would have been a member of the bipartisan anti-Roosevelt Old Right coalition.

The idea of a RINO came into existence around the campaign of Barry Goldwater, an Arizona Senator, who won the 1964 nomination instead of Nelson A. Rockefeller, the grandchild shared by John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil and Senator Nelson Aldrich, who pitched the original idea for the Federal Reserve. Even though he won the nomination, Goldwater was written off as an “extremist” by many, and Rockefeller was considered a “moderate”. But what does this really mean?

As America was still very homogenous in 1964, most regions had a strong local culture. At the time, the Republican base was comprised of Midwestern Lutherans, Western Mormons, wealthy New England Episcopalians, and transient career military families. At the time, most Southern Baptists and Catholics were still largely Democrats. Goldwater winning Southern states in 1964 did not permanently secure the Solid South as red states, despite the widely toted myth. (Third party Wallace of 1968 and Democrat Carter of 1976 prove this.) As a general phenomenon, the lower-middle-class flyover demographics were known as the extremists, while the upper-middle-class city and suburban folk were known as the moderates.

Despite being categorized as a “right-wing extremist” in 1964, Goldwater still had little in common with the heartland evangelicals of today. Goldwater had no connection to fundamentalist Christianity like Governors Perry or Palin. One side of his family was Jewish, and the other side was Yankee Episcopalians, and Goldwater was an Episcopalian his whole life. Goldwater supported no legislation in regards to gay marriage, drugs, or abortion. Goldwater is directly quoted as saying, “Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and sure they’re trying to do so, there’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly these people frighten me”.

Everything Barry Goldwater predicted about the Christian fundamentalist hijack eventually came true. Now the term RINO has a whole new meaning than when two socially liberal Episcopalians were vying for the nomination in 1964. Many Republicans referred to John McCain (a career military man with no regional ties) and Mitt Romney (a flip-flopper from the far left state of Massachusetts) as RINOs or moderates. But when Obama ran against them in 2008 and 2012, his campaign spent countless efforts painting the two candidates as right-wing extremists

Since 2008, the mainstream liberal media outlets have generally painted all Republican candidates in the same stereotype: old, uncool, racist, sexist, cranky, corny, money-hoarding, miserly Mr. Scrooges, obstructing Obama’s hip-and-groovy “CHANGE”. It mattered little how moderate McCain’s and Romney’s records were, the media rhetoric implied that anyone running against Obama had a closeted agenda with the same motivations as the Thurmond, Wallace, or Duke campaigns. Vice President Biden shouted out to an audience during a debate with Paul Ryan, “Romney is gonna put you all back in chains”. The MSM saw no problem with this.

So what are the concrete issues that make or break the difference between the RINOs and a non RINO? Is it the military, war, and foreign policy? Is it economics? Is it Christian social issues? (a dead horse, as far as I’m concerned) Are the rants espoused by Limbaugh, Hannity, and other Fox News anchors the policies that anyone who runs as a Republican are “supposed” to have? Fox anchor Ann Coulter referred to libertarians as “pussies”, and implied that supporting drug legalization was RINO/moderate, by mashing  different ideologies from left and right. Everyone has different definitions of RINO.

So this brings up the question: Was Ron Paul a “RINO”? Fox News certainly said so in the 2012 election. Were Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater “RINOs”? Many Democrats who hate the Tea Party would say so today. Although one must acknowledge Ron Paul’s ultraconservative personal views, one should realize he would give power back to the fifty state governments, with the intention that each American demographic can carve out a haven. There is no point pretending that Ron Paul is a hip guy with young libertarian social ideas: his views have changed little since he was a medical student in the 1950s.

Despite this, Ron Paul had the potential to represent a purge of many issues that the left hates about the Republicans; policies relating to drugs, gays, abortion, corporate bailouts, but most importantly, the wars in the Middle East. This was only exacerbated by Rick Santorum’s extremist Christian authoritarian rants, and his comment that he wanted to “fight against libertarian influence in the Republican party”. Despite the Obama administration’s continued drone warfare allover the Middle East, the Obama 2012 campaign repeated the same 2008 rhetoric that this was Bush’s personal, Republican, corporate, Islamophobic war. Simultaneously, the other three Republicans called Ron Paul an isolationist coward for his foreign policy. Ron Paul could have been the perfect moderate with ideas compromising from both sides, and yet they trashed and defamed him every possible chance.

Unfortunately, it is the Tea Party, and not moderate Republicans or Democrats, who have been blamed for the government shutdown. Personally, I think the Republicans handling the shutdown is a poorly planned reactionary idea. This kind of political activism only works if the libertarian-leaning Republicans were to shut down the government about the wars in the Middle-East, or the incarcerations of non-violent drug offenders. Otherwise, the MSM will just paint them as quintessential obstructionist right-wing cranks, as they have done so far.

McCain’s machine of moderate Republicans have marched in lockstep behind Obamacare, in an attempt to make Ted Cruz and other libertarian-leaning Republicans look like the “extremists”, Obama-haters, and Confederate secessionists. Despite the fact that libertarians are supposed to share a good bit ground with progressives, Democrats and moderates are together pointing to libertarianism “the far right fringe”. Moderate Republicans need to keep in mind that when is all over, the liberal media outlets will put all Republicans, moderate and conservative, in the same category as tongue-speaking, back-alley-abortion-causing, end-of-times, Limbaugh-hypnotized, warmongering, theocratic neo-confederates no matter what.

If liberal Democrats prefer moderate ‘Rockefeller Republicans’, or big government Republicans, let them have each other. If they think the enemy is small town, small business people, let them feel that way. Democrats can have Republicans like the Bushes, an old New England Money Trust family, long term ally of the Rockefellers, with CIA connections and investments in the baby Standard Oil corporations. After all, when corporate exploitation, global imperialism, and war profiteering makes millions, they can cash in and use the money to look humanitarian later in life. Just don’t dress him up like a Texas good ol’ boy, and then blame flyover folk for him.

Not Reagan, Goldwater, Taft, Coolidge, Eisenhower, or possibly even Bush, Sr. would ever have done what George W. Bush did in Iraq and Afghanistan, or what Nixon did in Vietnam. (both cited for the claim: “Republicans are warmongers”) Meanwhile, Democrats Wilson, Truman, and Johnson started long wars based on the idealistic grounds of “spreading democracy”. It is the imperialist Republican war machine and CIA added to the liberal Democrat dream of international government that make a poisonous combination together.

Maybe a RINO is what we want. If RINO means secular Republican; with no evangelical Christian dogma influencing government policy, then RINO is good. If RINO means Republican who embraces science and new technology, then RINO is good. If RINO means anti-war Republican, who wants to cut military spending, then RINO is good. If RINO means socially liberal Republican, then RINO is good. If RINO does not recite unoriginal reactionary propaganda from Fox News, then RINO is good. If RINO is opposed to neo-conservative foreign policy, then RINO is good. Maybe RINO is what we need after all.

barry-goldwater-on-preachers

Financial Armageddon; Hello Mongolia; Hello, Uganda!

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Economics, Law, Politics , , ,

Today, this blog has had a hit from Mongolia and one from Uganda. I have no way of knowing whether any of these hits correspond to someone actually reading an item. WordPress, the sponsor of this blog, does not keep this kind of numbers. And, perhaps, it’s just as well. Visitors from outside North America are very welcome on this blog. They are also welcome to make requests. And I prize their rare comments.

This is the Nth day of federal government so-called “shutdown.” The American Left, the Obama Administration, various international pundits, have been predicting world financial Armageddon because of the shutdown and because of the budget battle that will probably follow. Instead the most common stock index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was up 62 points today. That’s not much but it’s not nothing. It’s up, not down. It’s not quite half a percentage point up (.42%). The French CAC40 was also up. Up is not down, no matter how you look at it.

The coming federal budget showdown (don’t confuse with “shutdown”) is about the executive branch borrowing money. It’s not borrowing money because it’s facing some extraordinary expense. It’s become routine. The belief that the federal government cannot operate within its financial means has become deeply anchored without ever being presented to the people for a vote or even for a talk. Conservatives object.

Many conservatives affirm that government borrowing should never occur except under dire and exceptional circumstances. Me, I am a wishy-washy moderate conservative. I could be convinced that federal borrowing is virtuous but I want the discussion to take place in the open. We are working on it.

There is a small technical thing that bothers me around talk of government “defaulting.” Perhaps, something can help me with this. Suppose I own government debt; suppose I own a Treasury Bond for $1,000 coming due on October first. If the federal government fails to give me my money on October 1st but, instead hands me on an IOU confirming it owes me $1,000 that it will pay soon, how worried should I be? Is my landlord not going to accept the IOU? Is the bank going to toss it into the waste basket?

And would the executive branch of government do something illegal, unconstitutional by issuing such an IOU?

La Fermeture du gouvernement fédéral

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , ,

Le gouvernement fédéral est fermé, enfin, en partie, enfin, un peu. C’est arrivé parce que les deux grands partis n’arrivent pas à se mettre d’accord sur le budget a venir. Jusqu’ici, on prend encore au sérieux ici la disposition constitutionelle qui fait du parlement la seule institution capable de décider du budget fédéral. Le Président peu tonitruer et pleurnicher tout ce qu’il veut; il n’est pas encore prêt à violer la constitution aussi visiblement.

Le gouvernement fédéral a été obligé de séparer ses fonctionaires entre les “essentiels” et les “non essentiels” pour décider qui mettre temporairement à pied. C’est un pas en avant pour le jour ou on fera vraiment le ménage.Il y a beaucoup trop de fonctionnaire fédéraux et ils sont trop payés; ils possèdent aussi trop de privilèges économiques inexpliqués.

Au raz du sol, la vie continue comme d’habitude sauf que le parc national du Grand Canyon a été fermé pendant quelques jours. La Bourse, elle, a haussée les épaules malgré les avertissements de Fin du Monde de l’administration Obama relayés et amplifiés par les presses étrangères aussi ignorantes que bebêtes.

Extremist Republicans Did the Right Thing

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

There is a poll suggesting that the Republican Party is taking a public opinion thrashing for provoking a government so-called “shutdown.” I don’t think there is much of a shutdown. And I don’t think a single poll means anything. If there were four convergent polls showing the Republicans being blamed, I would still support Republican e “extremists”, including Ted Cruz.

We will not get Obamacare defunded. That was hardly ever in the cards. It was just a good time to draw the American’s people attention to the abnormality that it the federal government. It’s a good time because its own actions right now illustrate both its pettiness and its gross incompetence. Keep veterans out of veterans’ monuments and fail just about 100% on the implementation of a vast ambitious program legislated on a completely partisan basis.

In addition, thanks to the crisis, many young people will be astonished to discover that, like them with their credit cards, the Federal Government cannot pay its bills to Peter without borrowing from Paul. Nothing new here; its’ just that many citizens don’t know this simple fact.

I don’t buy the argument that, of course, there was going to be technical glitches with Obamacare. Implementation of Obamacare is a big big project, of course, but it does not involve any novel technical challenge. And they had four years. And they could have asked Facebook, for example, to take charge. The federal government rarely does a small trivial thing well. There was no reason to believe it could do a big important thing well.

The main things Pres. Obama said four years ago about reforming health care turn out to be wrong, false. I don’t think he was lying then. I believe he and his advisers never had any idea of what they were talking about. They still don’t.

I am glad there were members of the Republican Party in Congress who manned up enough to point to the obvious.

If the Republican Party suffers as a result of the present crisis, I think it will have been worth it. Personally, I am not much invested in a Party that’s a little of everything and of anything. It’s conservatism that matters, the conservative perspective on the world. It’s the perspective that says that the best government is that which governs least. It used not to be a radical thought.

Yesterday, we buried my friend Filip. I had only known him for a few years but his departure leaves a hole in my mind and in my heart. At first, he was just a needed financial adviser. Then, we became friends around conservative politics and braised sweetbreads. We had both in common because we were both immigrants. We both detested authoritarianism and we both liked earthy foods. I was reared in France. My earthy food talents are good. Filip was reared in Communist Romania. His authoritarianism detector was superb. We were complementary.

An Exemplar of Governance: The United States and Chinese Citizens

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , ,

I’ve briefly pointed out the penchant of Chinese citizens to look to the US as a role model for governance before. As Dr Foldvary has argued, it’s about governance, not government. Foreign Policy‘s Passport blog takes a look at how the recent government shutdown in Washington is viewed by citizens of the Chinese state:

[…] both China’s state-run and private-but-state-supervised mainstream media outlets have thus far reacted with restraint. Meanwhile, users of the country’s bustling, often candid, often profane social web have found a silver lining in the political paralysis that would surprise many Americans […] In Chinese social media, meanwhile, the government shutdown became an opportunity to criticize the Chinese government […]

Some veiled their critiques. Xu Jilin, a professor of history at East China Normal University in Shanghai, wrote, “The government has shut down, but the country is not in disorder — now that’s what you call a good country where people can live without worry.”

The gridlock itself, decried by most commentators in the U.S., struck many Chinese as a sign of lawfulness. As one user remarked, “A government that can shut down, no matter how big the impact on everyone’s lives, is a good thing. It shows that power can be checked, and the government can’t spend money however it wants.” […] Others took more direct aim at their own government. As one user noted, “Comrades, no need to worry that the same thing will happen in our country!  In any event, delegates in our National People’s Congress [China’s […] legislature] cannot cast dissenting votes, haha.” Another wrote, “I wish China’s government would shut down and let corrupt officials have a taste of it.”

I think these admittedly anecdotal reactions are simply a testament of the age-old, distinctly human problem of confusing society with state. The Chinese people themselves don’t have beef with the US or its people. The American people themselves don’t have beef with Beijing or its people. However, both governments are engaged in a power struggle, and as a result, people suffer. Perhaps the most heartening development can be found in this statement:

The growing connections between China and the United States mean that no issue is strictly domestic for either country.

While some no doubt view the growing interdependence of the two societies with unease, I cannot help but see a future of peace, prosperity and harmony. This does not mean I see an absence of conflict, but only that such conflict will be handled according to rules and procedures that have been laid down in the past and that can be altered so long as it is done so in a manner conducive to yet another round of rule-following and procedures.

Statists applaud death of unarmed mother amidst faked Gov’t shutdown

L. A. Repucci Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , ,

Bedlam in Goliath.

Commentary by:  L.A. Repucci

Shots were fired in the Capitol today after a lone female fled a checkpoint in her car.  A child was in the woman’s vehicle, now presumably orphaned by law enforcement fatally shooting her dead outside of the black sedan, used to ram a newly-erected ‘Barrycade’ in Washington, DC.

House Majority Leader John Boehner praised the courage of the Fed’s security for gunning down the unarmed woman with an infant on the threshold of the halls of congress.  Shoot-to-kill seems to be increasingly the only tactical response for law enforcement, from the unarmed Tsarnaev brothers now to a weaponless, unstable mother, clearly outside of the vehicle she was driving.

Could ‘shoot-to-kill’ be a federal-level directive aimed at preventing the voice of dissent from surfacing in the media?

Police have yet to confirm rumors that the suspect is Miriam Carey a 34-year-old Stamford (CT) Dental Hygienist with ‘mental health’ issues.  It would seem the political landscape is saturated with partisan rhetoric to the point that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost in the Capitol faster than ever before.

Ultimate Party Hacker.

The partisan theater that is the current government shutdown has apparently struck a chord with a public increasingly suspicious of government, rather than one party or the other.  The abuse of power and authoritarian statism may have finally hit a pitch pushing the electorate from the customary partisan vitriol to a new, holistic hatred and mistrust of not just a particular government, but of governance in general.

This blog isn’t intended to assign blame to the ham-fisted-yet-impotent GOP or to the openly manipulative Democrat party — there are the usual pundits and party hacks more than willing to play the left-right game on this (and every other issue), and point the finger across the aisle.  In fact, it’s probable that the usual partisan coverage of one national crisis after another likely whipped the woman into the frenzy that resulted in her behavior and subsequent public death-by-firing squad.  Looking at the current national political climate of deepening partisan divides, it would seem this sort of thing is indeed inevitable.

From a libertarian perspective, it is evident that whether the woman is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist or a red-blooded conservative, the simple truth is that it is the false dichotomy of the two party system within the larger construct of a Goliath Government* that is fueling the schism among the current American political zeitgeist.  Libertarian ideals have found more support within the GOP than the Democrat party, but with the political landscape quickly evolving with left-leaning progressives increasingly autocratic and hawkish, and the right continuing to be the party of ‘smaller’ behemothic, socially-oppressive government, libertarian-influenced politicians may need to re-evaluate their alignment with the GOP and assert their own space on the political spectrum.

*The Mars Volta do not endorse this blog, the US Government, or governments anywhere, so far as I know.

By distancing themselves from the GOP, this current crisis could be the moment at which the principles of limited government and personal liberty fix in the minds of the electorate as the sole territory of the libertarian philosophy.  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul…the nation awaits your voices.  Use this opportunity to point out the stark failure of the current junta to fix problems with the force of statism.  Point out the fact that a ‘government shutdown’ seems to consist of closing parks and monuments that require little if any state management to simply exist as they do, and furloughing non-essential personnel easily replaceable with simple automation and elimination of redundancy.  Draw attention to the fact that of the 700,000-or-so suspended government functionaries are eligible and filing for unemployment benefits, drawing income from the same stolen tax revenues which are used to ‘pay’ them usually — and paying them not to work may be preferable than paying them to do their jobs, if the goal is shrinking the size of the state.  Be sure to reference the 1.2-or-so million bureaucrats that continue to serve the public by stealing their wealth and threatening their lives and safety with the full force of a statist totalitarian regime and a monopoly on violent oppression.

Government employees carrying firearms aren’t furloughed, nor are the three-letter agencies that spy on the public unconstitutionally and ‘appropriate’ our money as taxes.  The IRS isn’t really furloughed, despite reports to the contrary — they are needed (including their 16,000 gun-toting new recruits — yes, IRS agents carry firearms) to run Obamacare as ‘navigators’, who are paid on commission per signup to the new compulsory, unconstitutional insurance law.

In conclusion, if the Authoritarian government continues to fan the partisan flames with more political theater, they can expect a multitude of Miriam Careys to continue to go postal and throw themselves against the bulwark of the evil machine that has wrested liberty away from a free people.  You called down the thunder, politicians — now you will reap what you’ve sown for decades.  US foreign policy has been breeding terrorists for decades, and now it’s domestic policy will begin to do the same.  Maybe it’s time to rethink the ‘shoot-to-kill’ mentality…

Pax Humana,

–L.A. Repucci

Related articles

Around the Web: PoliSci edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Politics

Libertarianism is often associated with the discipline of economics, but here at the consortium we try to bring a variety of libertarian-ish views to the table. Here are a few political science blogs that I frequent:

  1. Crooked Timber. This blog is largely considered to be the standard-bearer for political science blogs. Recommended.
  2. Pileus blog. This is the polisci blog with the hardest libertarian slant, although I still haven’t found any anarchocapitalists lurking about.
  3. Mischiefs of Faction. This is a new blog and I really like what I’ve read so far.
  4. Duck of Minerva. International relations blog. IR is not explicitly associated with political science, of course, but in traditional undergraduate programs it often falls under the polisci rubric.
  5. The Monkey Cage. “Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.” – H.L. Mencken.
  6. The Reality-Based Community. A humble blog composed of mostly political scientists, but it has some economists and lawyers on board as well.

Political science, of course, is one of the many disciplines that is fairly hostile to libertarianism, although most political scientists I’ve studied under have still been liberals. This is in contradiction to other scholarly disciplines like anthropology and sociology – as well as all of the humanities disciplines – which still embrace classical and post-Marxist arguments in their undergraduate programs.

There are a ton of blogs around the web that are manned by consortiums of political scientists, but these six can be counted on to be fairly balanced and well thought-out most of the time. I learn from them every time I visit.

Cruz Barn Burner: Strawman or Paper Tiger?

L. A. Repucci Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Commentary

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) burned the barn to the ground with his 21 hour ‘fauxlibuster’ this week on the Senate floor.  Supporters of Cruz’ increasingly libertarian voice relish his statesmanship and clarity, and conversely, no doubt detractors and skeptics dismissed much of the material content addressed due to Cruz’ rhetorical devices, not limited channeling statist icon Darth Vader while lampooning Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

The usual political hay has already been spun by the  pundits, including Limbaugh and Coulter, providing color commentary and cold shots alike.  Senator Cruz’ profile is quickly rising, and he is being touted as a quill for the young libertarian porcupine within the halls of congress — alongside the likes of Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.  Indeed, Cruz is more than likely positioning himself for a cabinet post in potential Paul campaign 2016, bidding the GOP base against New Jersey’s increasingly progressive Chris Christie.

It is assumed Hillary Clinton will be the ochlocratic candidate.

Rafael Cruz (Ted’s father) makes impassioned appeals to the ideals of Americana-brand liberty for large crowds of supporters, evoking support from the base of the GOP with the family’s brand; scathing indictments of our Republic’s current state, drawing parallels to Bautistas’ fascist, then Castro’s communist Cuba and the horror of living under a totalitarian regime two times over.  Rafael Cruz escaped Castro and fled to the liberty and free markets in Canada, then here in the US, finding success through a technology connection to the petroleum industry — a familiar Horatio Alger-esque tale — Millitary Fascism to Communism and to Corporate Fascism in less than a generation..

…and then there is  Mrs.Heidi Nelson-Cruz, the senator’s wife.  Ted and Heidi met in the Bush White House, while she was working for Condi Rice.  A Claremont-McKenna and Harvard Business grad, Heidi Nelson-Cruz currently works for Goldman-Sachs as a Vice President.

Texas seems to have a GOP senator with strong ties to petroleum, the Bush White House and good ol’ Goldman-Sachs through his wife.  These observations, coupled with the current political landscape may provide insight the origin and intent of the Senator from Texas’ dazzling libertarian all-nighter.

Cruz may need to spend another 21 hours in an attempt to burn down his own straw man — free markets or corporatism?  If his wife works for the self-same Goldman-Sachs that profited from the TARP bailout rammed through the halls of Congress at the tail end of the Bush regime and spilling into the Obama regime; the Goldman-Sachs that boasts both parties’ presidents and cabinets in their pockets going back to (at least) the Clinton administration, would that not be a conflict of interest?  Cruz made open comment about the excellent health insurance provided Heidi’s Vice-Presidency with Goldman-Sachs.  The banking cartel’s involvement in  and subsequent manipulation of the political sphere is a common link between both ends of the popular political spectrum, and to assume that a politician’s libertarian common sense would be immune to the pressures and normalcy bias of the human condition would be naive.

Ted Cruz talks a good game.  He offers the concepts and economic pedigree libertarians have been waiting to hear from a GOP Senator other than Ron Paul, and presents these concepts in a clear and relatable way.  His voting record as a Senator approaches perfection.  Unfortunately, many of the Tea Party Rockstars* who held great promise for the cause of liberty have proven to be paper tigers.  However liberated Ted Cruz’ economic policy could be, the rigor of skepticism cannot be abandoned by liberty-minded citizens just yet.

As Patrick Henry, liberty lover and skeptic of government, famously remarked of the Constitutional Convention, I smell a rat…and hope on the bones of Lysander Spooner for our Republic’s sake, that I am wrong about the Senator from Texas.

*Rockstar Brand Tea flavored energy beverage is not endorsed by publisher or any so-called Tea Party Rockstars.

Qui Bono,

L.A. Repucci

A close encounter with a black hole of church/state derp

muricaderp Current Events, Politics, Religion

Some collisions of civic and religious forms of asshattery are just that powerful. Many approach the fray, but few who enter it ever leave. The stupid, it sucks. Literally. It’s a black hole. Abandon all brain ye who enter here.

Amazingly, this stuff is almost mainstream. Speakers who spout this kind of garbage at official events under the auspices of the Republican Party, one of the two major US political parties, are not banned from future events on grounds of moral turpitude, mental defect, or general embarrassment. They’re hardly even marginalized, except in rare cases of exceedingly clumsy language, as Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin can attest. The real sin for which the GOP’s kingmakers tried to bully Akin into falling on his sword wasn’t misogyny, but undue candor. Basically, dude fucked up the talking points pretty severely. It takes a special person to make Claire McCaskill, mediocrity of Blue Dog mediocrities, look like a beacon of principle. Todd Akin, authority on women who probably wanted it because they didn’t psychosomatically shut off their wombs while being raped, had what it took for Claire McCaskill to point at his train wreck of a platform and shut that whole thing down.

I totally heard a bird of Akin’s feather squawk at the nation on “Christian” radio this afternoon. He was a bit subtler than Akin, after a fashion. Akin was foolish enough to accuse women, a majority electoral demographic with above-average turnout rates, of being a bunch of tarts who enjoy the illegitimate kind of rape. Today’s speaker, whom I’ll introduce in due time, had the good sense to go after illegal immigrants, a constituency that by definition is disenfranchised. A cohort of foreigners working in a country under dodgy circumstances after having evaded normal immigration channels rarely has its host country’s sympathy. It’s the kind of demographic that a savvy asshat scapegoats if he doesn’t want to get beaten in his next electoral campaign by a charisma-challenged triangulator.

But what I heard on the radio today wasn’t just any screed against illegal immigration; it was a screed against illegal immigration in the name of Holy Scripture. Pretty brazen stuff.

Usually, when I get vulgar ideas in my head, I try not to justify them with scriptural references. If I muse about Tijuana’s de minimis regulatory approach to massage parlors and its huge potential client base, it isn’t because I learned about any of that from the Book of Leviticus. (Leviticus is merely an exhaustive list of licentious suggestions framed as prohibitions). Rather, it’s because I am, in Disraeli’s parlance, ape and angel, or, as Robin Thicke would have it, an animal.

In other words, a TJ massage parlor isn’t religion, but business. Similarly, immigration policy isn’t religion, but civics, although business interests certainly like to infest the debate, the better to concern-troll it. Business, civics, religion: these are nonoverlapping magisteria.

Not on the Bott Radio Network, they aren’t. I tuned in while I was on the road between Fresno and Merced this afternoon, just in time to hear some dude with a thoroughly neutral accent and affect calmly but sanctimoniously intone about illegal immigration and the Bible. Hoo boy.

I had no idea who this guy was, but I was transfixed. The biblethumping was exquisite. Defenders of illegal immigration, he told us (I paraphrase), often cite scriptural references to being a friend to the foreigner. What they don’t realize is that that there are three Hebrew words for foreigner, two of them referring to foreigners who have permission, and this scriptural reference in Leviticus refers to foreigners with permission, not those without permission. This was why Moses made a special effort to lead the Israelites around a kingdom that was blocking their way to the Promised Land, so that they wouldn’t illegally stray into its territory. (Forgive us our trespasses? Eh, never mind. And maybe the detour had something to do with not getting massacred? Again, never mind.) Furthermore, calls for amnesty ignore the Apostle Peter’s exhortation to submit to civil authority, which includes immigration authorities. Besides, if we provide amnesty to all illegal immigrants, how is that fair to the illegal immigrants who are waiting in line to be legalized under the current process? (Huh? He actually said something like that.) Now, people can have different opinions about illegal immigration (passive-aggressive-smarmy much?), but they shouldn’t use the Bible to defend the amnesty bill currently before the Congress. It just isn’t in there. It isn’t biblical.

It wasn’t until the end of this ridiculous authoritarian pastiche that I heard who was behind it: “I’m Kris Kobach, and this has been Kobach’s Commentaries.” The crazy had just gone into overdrive. I’d heard of Kobach before, usually in reference to his being an extremist Republican kook, and here he was carrying on about illegal immigration and the unfairness of amnesty on an aggressively “Christian” “family” radio station in the name of the Word of God.

Notice that he concern-trolled illegal immigrants who had allegedly found their way into some regularization process (despite having entered and worked in the United States illegally) and were waiting their turn in line, because WAAAAHHHH FAIRNESS. I was baffled by whom exactly he was trying to describe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the story was some kind of hard-right nativist myth.

To be clear, Kris Kobach does not give a damn about the welfare of illegal immigrants for the duration of their presence in the United States. He is a professional immigration policy troll who has worked in multiple states to litigate against policies benefiting illegal immigrants and to draft legislation to hound them out by any means necessary. He has also been involved in Voter ID campaigns, again on grounds of “fairness,” the fairness including vile arguments that if one can’t buy Sudafed without a government ID, one shouldn’t be able to vote without one. The obvious purpose of Voter ID laws is to disenfranchise the poor, i.e., mainly blacks, because they vote heavily Democratic.

Kobach has the evil, classic right-wing conception of fairness as a zero-sum commodity that is cheapened if someone else somewhere got more of it than you got or got it more promptly. By his reasoning, if all the prisoners are released in a mass pardon, this is unfair to the old lifers, and the lifers should be seething with resentment that the younguns got more time off than they did. If the 3:45 train is delayed by mechanical problems and its passengers are transferred to the 4:45 train, they should all be angry and resentful that they had to spend an extra hour in the depot because TEH FAIRNESS. If the layabouts who showed up in the vineyard an hour before sundown are paid the same amount for their work as the diligent squares who showed up at daybreak, the squares should be resentful–hey, that’s not what Jesus said, now, is it? Yeah, we’re Christians, so let’s ignore that buzzkill, what’s-his-name….

Basically, if there’s any kind of dysfunctional or cruel policy that finally gets fixed, but only after one has spent years trying to navigate the former, broken system, one should be angry at anyone who didn’t have to put up with just as much grief for just as long. If you were waiting in a checkout line at Safeway for half an hour only to see people in a nearby line get through in ten minutes because the backup cashier finally arrived, maybe you should go deck the backup cashier and hurl eggs and canned goods at his customers, you know, just as a matter of equity. That would even things out for you and everyone else who got in line before the backup cashier arrived, right? It might be a good idea to brandish a can in front of the lead cashier, too, in case she calls all available associates to checkout and lets some lucky bastard get through in five minutes.

That, folks, is hardline Republican policy in a nutshell: everyone will be reduced to the most degraded level of existence that I, resentful shit, have ever had to endure. Kris Kobach has words of encouragement for the whole barrel full of crabs.

Oh, and he’s the sitting Kansas Secretary of State. What’s the matter with Kansas, indeed. Once the spiritual home and nerve center of grange socialism, and now this. It’s a long way down.

By the way, I have very serious, visceral objections to current immigration policy in the United States. It’s a systemically corrupt clusterfuck, one that keeps many immigrants perennially in limbo, under constant threat of detention, deportation and separation from their families, and allows unethical employers (especially farmers) to run their recruitment and personnel operations as criminal cartel rackets. It badly needs to be reformed. The problem is that people like Kris Kobach will happily trash civil society in the process if they’re given free rein.

Good God, y’all.