The French Presidentials and Cinco de Mayo

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

I have been busy producing a legible and clean copy of my memoirs: “I Used to Be French….” It’s an endless process. By the way, if you are an agent, don’t be shy about asking to read this remarkable and witty document.

While my back was turned, the world continued to turn. The French lost the battle of Puebla and they lost an election, all in the same day.

People in California celebrate Cinco de Mayo with beer and more expensive stuff. Few know what they are celebrating, Anglos, never, children of Mexicans, seldom, Mexican immigrants, often but not always. Myself, I celebrate too because I like beer, Mexicans and Mexican beer. I celebrate discretely though.

In the battle of Puebla, in 1862, under the presidency of Benito Juarez, a Mexican army achieved victory over a French expeditionary forces against all expectations. What happened is that the French thought they were on their way to Prussia to beat on that emerging power before it was too late. They turned right instead of left outside Paris by mistake. Somehow, they ended up in Mexico and the rest is history, mostly forgotten history. They left behind in Mexico, probably pan dulces, and less probably, the name for roving musicians in charro costumes, mariachis (“marriage”). Continue reading →

The American Parade

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , , ,

In the United States, a strong indigenous form of theater has not developed (middle-brow and high-brow forms were both imported from Europe when already mature). Had a specifically American variety of theater arisen, it would probably not have become tied to locality because of the high geographic mobility of the population. So, instead of theater, Americans have invented their own, strikingly direct kind of identity-enhancing performance: the parade.

In lesser American towns, parades are often a disorderly or downright messy mixture of military spit-and-polish, of crass commercial advertising, of ideological propaganda, of politicking, and of public declarations of self-satisfaction with one’s hobbies. In one very small, prosperous town on the West Coast, the last 4th of July parade included, among other attractions, the Kazoo Club, the Folding Lawn Chairs Marching and Drill Team, Zero Population Growth, the local Democratic Club, a grassroots group intent on gaining school district autonomy, and two old car buff clubs. These were followed by a lone couple (a pair) of tap dancers. There was also a moms’ club, whose sole purpose appeared to be Momaffirmation. (They did not seem to be bragging either about themselves or about their kids, who incidentally, were not even dressed up for the occasion.) Of course, there were several musical marching bands – at various levels of proficiency, from the superb to the pathetic – all much and equitably applauded. Continue reading →

Somaliland in the News

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law , , , , , , , ,

Reports the BBC:

Leaders from Somalia and Somaliland have held their first formal discussions on the future of the self-proclaimed Somaliland republic.

It broke away in 1991 and wants to be a separate country – but it has not been internationally recognised.

Mogadishu wants the northern territory to be part of a single Somali state.

Since declaring independence, Somaliland has enjoyed relative peace in contrast to the rest of Somalia, which has been plagued by conflict […]

It was the first time in 21 years that there had been formal, direct contact between the authorities in Mogadishu, and the Somaliland administration, which used to be a British colony, whereas southern Somalia was governed by Italy.

The two sides agreed the talks should continue and, in a declaration, they called on their respective presidents to meet as soon as possible – this could be as early as next week in Dubai.

They also called on the international community to help provide experts on legal, economic and security matters, which our correspondent says are all issues that will need to be addressed in clarifying the future relationship between Somalia and Somaliland.

This is great news! Continue reading →

Things You Need to Know About Germany, About French Culture

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

If you know this blog at all, you will not be surprised to learn that I am an expert in French culture, a merciless one. As luck would have it, I am also an expert in Europe in general and in Germany in particular. That’s because the media one uses to follow French affairs unfailingly tell you about European affairs.

Here is an example of my pan-European expertise: Do you know what German Chancellor Angela Merkel does with her old pant-suits?

She wears them!

The problem with stereotypes is not that they always carry falsehoods but that some are true but it’s hard to distinguish the correct ones from the urban legends and historical fables.

Here is a tenacious historical fable held even by lawyers: Under French law, the accused has to prove that he is not guilty.

It’s just not true, not even a little.

I read the French daily Le Figaro on-line almost daily. I see it as centrist as you can get. It’s well written (not a given with contemporary French press and the silly desire to appear with it*). It ranges far and wide.

There is a piece in it today that shows once more that the French are serious about their vacations. The title asks: “Can one copulate in the ocean?” It’ s clear  right after the third paragraph the question does not refer to fish or whales which do it all the time in the ocean, as most of us realize. The author implies the question for humans. Nevertheless, there is an allusion to dolphins who purportedly do it often and really, really enjoy it. (Damn, damn! Not only are they smarter than I am, they have a better sex life.)

Anyway, after supposedly consulting “sexologists,” author supplies a liberating positive answer to the question. Yes, she says, you can do it; it’s fun but if you do it where the water is over your head, make sure you don’t drown.

On the one hand, I exclaim: “N.S.!” On the other hand, I think: “What a way to go!”

French culture is interesting but not for the reasons you probably think. It’s a good counterpoint the better to understand American culture. Some wise man (or maybe a “wise old Latina” as a current Supreme Court Justice once said)  declared: “One who knows only one country knows no country.” You got to compare to understand.

French culture, like other contemporary European cultures, is strangely deficient in some area, in many areas, actually. Here is a link to an introduction to the topic, right on this blog:

French Movies, Sex, and the Welfare State

I don’t imply that you shouldn’t go to Europe this summer. It’s a quality museum. The food is quite good in some countries, in France, of course, and in Italy but also often, in Spain.

Of course, if you are under thirty and have no children and you vacation in Europe you are probably a wimp. When are you going to go to Burma, to Paraguay? When you are sixty-five?

* For the record: “au courant” does not mean “with it” or “edgy” as semi-lingual journalists seem to think. Those two words just mean “well informed,” and “up to date.” I don’t want to catch any of you making this mistake again.

Lost in the Hulaballoo

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Links, Politics , , , , ,

…was Ron Paul’s hearing on fractional reserve banking. Between the health insurance ruling and AG Holder’s scandal this excellent use of congressional air time has gone largely unnoticed. Congressman Paul brought three well-known economists to testify and I have linked to all three of their testimonies below (I haven’t read all of them yet).

If you manage to finish them soon, feel free to post what you got from them in the comments section.

Around the Web: ObamaCare Edition (Part 2)

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Links , , , , , , , , , , ,

There is a lot of great stuff out there on the recent ruling. Here are a few I found interesting:

I think I’m done blogging about this whole mess…phlegh!

Around the Web: ObamaCare Edition

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

Over at the Independent Institute’s blog, the Beacon, Melancton Smith worries about SCOTUS’s ruling and how it will be viewed by tax-hungry politicians:

Roberts is correct that Congress often uses the taxing power to influence conduct, but all the examples that he gives (taxes on imported goods, cigarette taxes, etc.), focus on discouraging conduct not compelling conduct. He cites no example of where Congress taxes someone for not doing something. I realize that this is a fine distinction I am making, but in my view Congress does more violence to the dignity of the individual by taxing him for not buying insurance than taxing him for buying a pack of smokes.

Yes, the taxing power is not equal to the full regulatory power of the government brought on by use of the Commerce Clause, but I fear that the Court has given power hungry legislators a road map of how to augment federal power using the tax power.

Yes, it’s true that the ruling on ObamaCare has given legislators a clear path to using the tax power, but this is precisely why the ruling is going to be good for federalism in the long run. Americans are notoriously stubborn when it comes to taxes (and I wouldn’t have it any other way baby!) and this new ruling is essentially forcing legislators to tax people directly rather than in the roundabout way (through the Commerce Clause) that has been done since the fascistic New Deal-era. Continue reading →

ObamaCare and the Long Game

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , ,

The Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday has garnered a number of ideas for me. I’ll admit that I was a little bit shocked when I heard that ObamaCare had been upheld. The lawyers who argued against ObamaCare were very, very good ones, and the pummeling that they administered to the Obama administration’s lawyers was so thorough, I thought, that I wasn’t even sure that the court would split along the traditional 5-4 line.

Alas. You can read the whole thing here (and I encourage you to do so).

I wonder about Roberts’s political calculations here. What I think happened is that Roberts took a two-pronged approach to the issue. Instead of calling it a mandate, the court ruled that ObamaCare is tax. This is not going to bode well for the Obama administration’s upcoming campaign once the dust settles. The second line of attack is actually a defensive one: the SCOTUS already issued Citizens United in 2010 and if the SCOTUS had struck down ObamaCare a mere two years later the Left would have been electrified. Roberts is playing the long game.

ObamaCare is now actually seen for the huge tax increase that it is. If Republicans are smart (and they are, despite the Left’s attempts to portray them as otherwise), they’ll go after Obama on this, and they’ll go hard. ObamaCare is by no means permanent, either. The Congress could very well dismantle it before it takes effect in 2014.  Continue reading →

A Real Town Meeting in the People’s Green Republic of Santa Cruz

Jacques Delacroix Economics, Politics , , , , ,

Tuesday night, I took in, in person, two and a half hours of town hall meeting with the same congressman, Sam Farr, in my own town of Santa Cruz, this time. Now, it’s important to understand that Santa Cruz is, overall, a seventies throwback, left-liberal to communist anti-American. To give you an idea, on my long street, downtown, there are only three American flags, two of which belong to me. When I make conservative noises in public, in spite of my considerable expressive talents, people think I am kidding.

I went to the meeting with my wife, under my own power. The only prompt I got is that one local radio station gave the time and place of the meeting on the air. It did so several times. It’s seen as a conservative station. (Full disclosure: I [used to] have a talk-show program on that station, KSCO 1080 AM, every Sunday 11AM-1PM.) Rush Limbaugh did not send me. The local Republican Party was pathetically absent in every respect. If there was any conservative or right-wing organization present, it escaped my attention and I was looking for one. There were no right-wing thugs in sight, with the possible exception of myself, and especially, my wife, Krishna. My wife is in very good shape indeed but, she is slight of built. She has never really divulged her age too me but her hair is all white. The only humans she has ever physically threatened were our children, when they were teenagers, and me, of course. I can’t tell you why she threatened me because I don’t like to brag.

I insist on the unorganized nature of the event in a spirit of helpfulness. The main problem most Democrats, including Congressman Farr and including the President face, is that they cannot conceive of a genuine grass-root movement of revulsion. George Beck, the Fox News-appointed liberal, of all things, said on television that he does not believe that the opposition to Obamacare is “spontaneous.” He is not a dumb man. He is associated in some fashion with George Washington University. I have heard him before and never caught him even in a white lie. Those people can’t conceive of spontaneous political action because it seldom happens on their side. Instead, they rely on tax-subsidized ACORN, and on a variety of radical front organizations.  Continue reading →

ObamaCare

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics ,

The SCOTUS should be handing down its decision sometime this week. Any thoughts?

Personally, I hope the whole damn thing gets struck down, and Obama’s lawyers got beaten so badly in court that this may be exactly what happens. Yet what I think we’ll probably see is large parts of it struck down and then the Congress will have to deal with whatever SCOTUS left intact.

August 15, 1971

Warren Gibson Liberty , , , , , , , , ,

People who were alive in 1941 can tell you right where they were on Pearl Harbor day.  I can tell you exactly where I was when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot.  We all remember 9/11.   Another day that I sticks in my memory just as clearly is one that is now remembered by few: Sunday, August 15, 1971.

There was no internet in those days and no cable news channels, so I was mercifully spared the news until the following morning at 8:15 when I opened my motel room door in Huntington Beach and saw the L.A. Times on the doorstep with a headline that said something like “Nixon Imposes Price Controls.”

I was shocked and disgusted for two reasons: though I was employed as an aerospace engineer, I was beginning to learn about free markets, having attended a FEE seminar the year before at which Mises and Hazlitt  – now saints of Austrian economics – lectured.  And I had voted for Nixon in 1968, naively believing the Republicans were the party of free markets.  The following year I signed up with the new Libertarian Party and never looked back on the Republicans until 2008 when Ron Paul ran.

Here is a video recording of Nixon announcing a 90-day “freeze” on prices and wages. Note the Orwellian references to the evils of price controls even as he imposes them.Image

So what was the big emergency that prompted such a drastic response?  Unemployment was running about 6%; price inflation at about 5%.  Nixon’s problem was that an election was coming up in the following year.  He remembered bitterly his narrow loss to Kennedy in the 1960 election which he attributed to a mild recession of that year. Now he was determined to goose the economy and get himself re-elected. Like FDR, Nixon loved dramatic strokes and never mind the consequences. Earlier that year the man who had made his reputation as an implacable anti-communist had made a sudden and dramatic overture to communist China.  So on that sleepy Sunday Nixon delivered another bold stroke, in an end run around the Democratic opposition.  Perhaps it worked: he won 49 states in the 1972 election with considerable help from his bumbling opponent, George McGovern.

His action was quite popular.  The stock market surged that Monday morning and polls showed a 75% approval rate.  But Milton Friedman was right when he predicted “utter failure and the emergence into the open of suppressed inflation.”  Another freeze was imposed in 1973 but this time the damage to the economy became evident.  As explained in the excellent video series “The Commanding Heights,” “ranchers stopped shipping their cattle to the market, farmers drowned their chickens, and consumers emptied the shelves of supermarkets.”  Inflation reached a peak of about 14% before the decade was out and before the powers that be accepted the fact that excessive money creation is the main cause of price inflation. George Schulz, Nixon’s economic advisor and a vigorous opponent of price controls consoled himself with the thought that Nixon had demonstrated dramatically how not to fight inflation.

Nixon wasn’t finished.  During that same Sunday broadcast he slapped a 10% tariff on imported goods, accompanied by some blather about fairness.  More significantly, he ended the Bretton Woods international monetary system.  That arrangement, conceived in 1944, had the U.S. dollar convertible into gold at $35 per ounce, but only for foreign central banks.  Not only could private banks and private citizens not convert their dollars, it was even illegal to own gold (with exceptions for dentists, jewelers, etc.).  I made a point of violating that particular law on principle before the prohibition was lifted in 1974.

In all fairness, the Bretton Woods system was doomed long before that August.  The gold exchange standard had persisted only because of a gentlemen’s agreement that European central bankers would refrain from exercising their redemption rights to any significant degree.  So many new dollars had been created to finance Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam and his “Great Society” at home, and so many of those dollars were parked overseas as a result of trade imbalances, that the U.S. government could not come close to honoring its Bretton Woods obligation in full.  The French under de Gaulle and his gold-bug advisor Jacques Rueff had become increasingly strident about the situation, but in early August the British ambassador showed up with $3 billion to be redeemed, and that may have been the straw that broke the camels back.

So on that same Sunday Nixon slammed the gold window shut (video here)  pushing us out of the frying pan of Bretton Woods, under which numerous wrenching devaluations had wracked international trade, into the fire of floating exchange rates, the system we have now.  The devaluations are gone but the wild swings in currency values, something that was not foreseen by Milton Friedman who was an early advocate of currency markets, are almost as bad.  Now, wonder of wonders, there is resurgent talk of some sort of gold standard.

Reagan tempted me with with some pretty inspiring rhetoric in his 1980 campaign about getting the government off our backs.  Not enough to vote for him, but I was glad he got elected and with the help of Fed chairman Paul Volcker he did break the back of inflation, but he never got spending under control and he didn’t deserve as much credit as he got for the fall of communism, which had been rotten at its core for decades.  But Bush I was terrible and in hindsight Clinton wasn’t all bad, yet I confess I was relieved when Bush II beat Gore in 2000.  I needn’t remind anyone what a disaster GWB was with his wars, his unfunded medicare expansion and his bailouts (OK, thanks for the tax cut).

I’m voting for Gary Johnson who won’t win, and I really don’t care who wins.  Gridlock is the least bad outcome, even if that means the despicable Obama stays in office facing a Republican congress.

“European Project Trips China Builder”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics, Liberty , , , , , ,

That is the headline of this piece in the Wall Street Journal. An excerpt:

Chinese companies have wowed the world with superhighways, high-speed trains and snazzy airports, all built seemingly overnight. Yet a modest highway through Polish potato fields proved to be too much for one of China’s biggest builders […]

It remains unfinished nearly three years after contracts were awarded to Chinese builders. The Polish government is warning there will be detours around the highway’s “Chinese sections” when the soccer championships begin […]

The project raises questions about Beijing’s strategy of pitching state-directed construction firms as the low-cost solution to the world’s infrastructure needs […]

Covec [the state-run construction company responsible for the failures] was thin on management expertise, lacked financial skills and didn’t understand the importance of regulations and record-keeping in public works projects in the West, according to numerous people involved in the project […]

Organizing actual construction proved harder. To manage the project, Covec brought in Fu Tengxuan, a 49-year-old railway engineer, who spoke only Chinese and appeared to have little authority, telling colleagues that headquarters in Beijing needed to approve even the purchase of an office copier […]

Although the funding of Chinese projects in other areas such as Africa and Asia is often murky, analysts say that Beijing regularly foots the bill […] Continue reading →

Tectonic History and Gondwanan Geopolitics in the Larsemann Hills, Antarctica

Brandon Christensen Links, Politics , , , ,

That’s the title of this article (pdf) in the Political and Legal Anthropology Review. From the abstract:

At the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, an Indian delegate proposed a new research base located within an environmental protection area, because it is where India and Antarctica were connected on the 125-million-year-old continent of Gondwana. How did this claim come to be successful for the Indian Antarctic Program? In the production of documents within international governing bodies, policy makers enroll allies, emphasizing particular aspects of their plans to members of diverse epistemic communities. Instead of trying to make nationally oriented ideas work through uniform procedural rules, international policy makers reshape the contours of acceptable policy-making procedure and the political possibilities of international governance.

The whole thing is interesting, especially if you have a weird obsession with Antarctica like I do! Possibly gated.

Around the Web

Brandon Christensen Links , , , , , , , , , , ,
  1. Conor Friedersdorf has a great piece in the Atlantic about defending the stay-at-home mom.
  2. In the New York Times there is a great read about how Mexican drug cartels earn their billions of dollars (via @MarketUrbanism)
  3. F.A. Hayek on why he was not a conservative. Good stuff on the confusion in the US about the term ‘liberal’, too. I recommend reading the book from which this article was excerpted, too also (the word ‘too’ has been used too many times).
  4. The Economics of Outsourcing.

Left-Liberal Hypocrisy and Bad Taste

Jacques Delacroix Liberty , , ,

Leftists always let their real soul slip through, somehow.

I know a young woman who lives in a country other than the US. She is not American. What she has in common with Santa Cruz, California liberals is, well, everything she says. (I can’t really know what she actually believes.) She says the world is fast coming to an end because of fossil fuels. She says, in so many words, that governments should take their money from the rich to give it to the poor (as defined by herself, of course). She says socialism is more fair than capitalism. (She has no idea what capitalism means.) Of, course, she talks as if the US government were a far worse terrorist than say, Osama Bin Laden. By the way, she does not want to talk about who was responsible for 9/11. I think she likes to feed ambiguity without paying the price deniers of terrorism pay in intelligent society.

This young woman also holds a responsible position in the service of a NATO government. She received an education from one of the very best schools in her country. Personally, I think that one-on-one, she is quite likable. At least, I like her in most respects.

Recently, I had a chance to look at her wedding pictures. They showed the bride in her bridal splendor, laughing guests, parts of a dinner party. Nothing more natural there. However, included in the set of published pictures was one of an expensive Mercedes convertible.

Why was the car treated as prominent member of a wedding party?

Weddings are about two individuals joining their lives together, in part, to rear children. It’s about their friends celebrating. It’s about people, isn’t it? Should be, especially among liberals who always act holier-than-thou in matters of material consumption, liberals who see themselves as are more spiritual than selfish, narrow-minded, gross conservatives like me.

What’s the flashy, environmentally unsound, insulting-to-the-poor, imported car doing in the middle of the wedding party? Do I detect such mind-boggling hypocrisy that the hypocrites don’t even recognize what they are?

By the way, no sour grapes here. I don’t care much about cars, never did. I only ask of a car that it protect me against highway drunks and that I don’t have to think about it. Conservatives are simplistic, for sure! I think expensive cars are the poor man’s art (and, I don’t mean financially poor! Wow, what a bitch I am!) The Mercedes in the picture did look good, not $100,000-good though. Think about how much you could do with that kind of money, for others, and even to cultivate your own self.

How utterly vulgar; how infantile; how astonishingly self-centered, how amazingly incoherent; how so very left-liberal!