Healthcare proposals
Apparently the administration is going to back down on the commissar's option, the so-called "public option", which is a great thing. A few days ago when this was all still on the table,
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey wrote this editorial in the Wall Street Journal, which listed out a few fabulous, serious, reforms that would truly benefit the system. A friend sent it to me saying how wise it was. And, surely, it is - but I had also sent this friend
my own article from a year ago which said almost exactly the same thing. I need a better platform, or to stop caring.
Labels: healthcare, obama, policy, politics
Death Panels image
Something I just made up:
You can also
download the photoshop file here.
Labels: healthcare, imagery, obama, policy, politics
Cutting government: state salaries
The average state bureaucrat salary is $54,309. If you took double the educational rate of $43,664, which is $87,328 and cut all those salaries by 25%, you'd lower that 87k salary down to $65,496, still comfortably above the average. I don't know how much money this would save, but if the state refuses to lay off state bureaucrats, the least they could do would be to cut the salaries to make them feel the same pinch the rest of us are feeling.
Another thought: every dollar for a state employee past the average salary in the state ought to be considered a 'bonus' and if they receive more than that, it's conditional on budget surpluses. No surplus, no bonus.
Labels: budget, policy, taxes, theory
newspapers: mandatory subscriptions
While I was writing the last post, it occurred to me how they could 'save' the newspapers now that we're entering full-fledged socialism: mandatory newspaper subscriptions. Everyone who lives in an area will get taxed the subscription fee for the designated major paper, the tax will get collected, and then given to the newspaper of choice. It'll be done someway in which "government doesn't have control over the paper"... at first, but then morph into the local paper being the functionary arm of the state within a short period. I can already see my liberal relatives rejoicing at the paper being 'saved' and 'jobs' created, and also how great it will be that everyone in their area receives the paper! Colleges already do this, setting up huge distribution bins and taxing everyone for three copies of crappy papers no one reads. Welcome to the revolution, comrades!
Labels: journalism, obama, Pelosi, policy, politics, theory
Obama to release Gitmo detainees inside the U.S.
What could possibly go wrong with this plan? A follow-up from a post from a few days ago.
Labels: foreign policy, obama, policy, terrorists
Rewarding teacher quality: a rough draft on a measured system to do this consistently
Having heard the arguments that you can't measure teacher quality, I gave it some thought. Surely there's no perfect way to do it, but what if you tried.
First things first, every teacher deserves a healthy base pay, this would be above that in order to reward those teachers who had proven results with their subject. This is mainly a method to adjust the pay, but as I'm sure plenty could point out- pay isn't the strongest correlation to student performance. A bad teacher in a smart area can do well, and a great teacher in an area that has cultural dysfunctions will not prosper either. So, this is by no means a cure all and isn't meant to be: it's simply a way to structure a rewards system to justly compensate those teachers who have consistent performance.
A few preconditions:
structural:
1. end
social promotion2. variable class sizes
3. incentivize quality and quantity
4. mandatory, enforced attendance, or make it so that the student actually is there for the classes
5. regular standardized tests that are not simply multiple choice, can't be 'taught to' and measure aptitude separate from actual knowledge and skills.
6. embrace '
tracking' individual students, which means to allow students to take courses outside their proscribed age level, also encourage students who are behind not to advance (related to social promotion)
cultural:
1. reward entrepreneurship and academics
2. promote studying and self improvement
3. Stress academics and those things that are lasting over those temporary things such as physical prowess - the mind masters the body not the other way around
4. embracing standardized testing, perhaps by making them race-neutral to remove the most controversial components - we should treat each child like a human being and not an identity class
Now, of course, those things are never going to happen, thank you NEA/AFT. But, let's just assume they did.
You could measure teacher performance, this is likely going to be relatively obvious but I wanted to write it out, by formulating said equations:
student test at entry = STE
student test at exit = STEX
average student test at entry = ASTE
average student test at exit = ASTEX
(ASTEX-ASTE) = Average Improvement for the year = IMPROVEAVERAGE
(STEX-STE) = Student Improvement for the year = IMPROVEACTUAL
and if you took each grade level, up to 12, for each test, so that the 9th grade exit test was STEX9
then by taking (STEX9-STE9) and comparing that number to STE10, you could get an idea of both what was gained/lost over the summer, and also a nice control on STEX9 in order to factor in test anomalies.
The rewards to the teacher, then, would be to measure how much the individual student was able to outstrip the curve in terms of their learning that year in that subject. If you could take a student who started 9th grade science with a proficiency at a 10th grade level and was able to get him to the 12th grade level, that should cause a reward to the teacher. Now this also gets complicated as well because age becomes a bad predictor for one's skills within that area. Meaning that not all 9th graders perform as 9th graders on both Math and Science. So, one would probably want to adjust for that and place students based on their tested skill level. This could get hairy, though, and I recall someone quoting a study that said that students placed out of their age bracket in such scenarios, which used to be more common, felt a great degree of alienation and separation that could be unhealthy. Even though that concern seems ambiguous, it's worth considering.
Also, while I'm obviously a fan of standardized tests, even though I don't usually do well on them, they should be localized. Nationalization of our testing standards is an awful awful thing. Each area, state, locality, should be allowed to set their own standards. We want all "American" children to perform at a specific level, but we do so with the arrogance of not considering that perhaps people are happy with how they have things. As well, perhaps my system isn't meant for everyone - perhaps a specific area wants to teach only through oral tradition, or one solely through rigorous science devoid of the humanities. I wouldn't send my hopeful future family through such a place, but it ought to be encouraged to develop. We could stand to be a little less nationally concerned, and be so quick to label one part of the country 'behind' or lacking in one way or another.
And of course this is all very rigid, so maybe it's unrealistic, but I'm not a superintendent making policy, I'm just trying to sketch this out.
Labels: education, ideas, policy
On Closing Gitmo
So the GOP told us that to close Gitmo would just put terrorists back out in the field. Looks like
they were right. The strange desire to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay stems, it seems, from a very misplaced notion to always embrace one's attackers. It's the basis of a certain left-wing desire to have pure tolerance, and even hidden admiration for, those who hate the West. The left (said as though this amorphous blob of intellectual thought is a coherent, consistent organism) may presume that this will then result in more terrorists being given a nice show trial like they watch on Law and Order. But in reality this will likely mean that a 'no-prisoners' policy will be in effect on the battlefield, a significantly worse outcome.
Labels: foreign policy, leftists, military, obama, policy
Media softening the public to accept cocaine legalization
Proclamations about how the 'drug war' is failing are about as old as time. One wonders if cartels can afford unchecked spending how much it would cost to bankroll some interest groups, lobbying outfits and hollywood producers. As Ted DiBiase taught all us young kids through his theme song as a young WWF fan: "everybody's got a price."
We're told/sold that the war on drugs is lost, that it's a failure, even though it stabilized Columbia. We're told that after legalizing it, the crime will go down, even though as a drug it becomes an irrational desire, an unchecked addiction. We're told/sold that diseases and viruses will vanish because needles will be plentiful and safe. It's almost the same b.s. marketing around abortion and the pill: that sex will be safe and without consequence and everyone's marriages will improve and that human beings will live in harmony with one another. The liberal dreams are always nightmares in reality, and who knows, perhaps we'll be able to watch the disintegration of our communities at an even faster pace if Czar Obama, Caesar of the Ages, either decriminalizes, legitimizes or ends enforcement against hard drugs. By the time kindergartners are shooting up on the playground, Obama will be busy giving 250k speeches on the lecture circuit, so what does he care.
This also demonstrates that the economics of hard drugs, claimed by libertarians that the constricted supply artificially creates the destructive situation where violence flourishes is essentially a completely false premise: more drugs equals more violence. When a commodity is as precious and as desired, no amount of supply is going to stop people from doing whatever it takes to procure it.
Labels: drugs, government, obama, policy
Delaying children because of the economy
Considering that so much of the economy is perception, and the media has hit a constant drumbeat of pessimism, one feels lucky that there are any children running around at all. But this
bad story about declining birthrates,
coupled with Nancy Pelosi's idiocy that birth control promotes economic growth shows that people forget the economy isn't driven by robots or equipment, but by people: their innovation, ideas, hard work, labor, time, capital and training. The economy is a word that reflects the collective work of millions of people, and when we abort people away, when we contracept future generations and children, we artificially constrict our economy and our progress. Society thrives on children, on workers, on artists and engineers: on the 'unwanted' kid who works hard and raises a nice family and works his hands to the bone to make a good life for himself. Why have we forgotten that it is great to be alive, and great to be with people? Our resources are infinite if we continue to unleash the potential God gave man through reason, time and the many resources abundant all over.
Labels: abortion, children, contraception, Democrats, Economics, policy
Quick thought on a possible local referendum/local action
Sioux Falls, South Dakota has a very wise and interesting education reform mechanism as it allows students throughout the town to attend any government school within the town. This promotes competition between the schools and encourages each school to develop some niche and specialty. I don't know it's effectiveness measured statistically or how one could implement it elsewhere, but it's food for thought.
Labels: education, ideas, policy
Sobran: fear of the smear
By reading
an article at my favorite online magazine:
TakiMag, I ran across Sobran's article, "
Fear of the Smear" -- rarely when I read articles do the words resonate as loudly as they did in this article.
Labels: foreign policy, Israel, policy, politics, racism
Some thoughts on local policy change for Massachusetts
1- lay off 10% of government employees
2- end the stupid bottle deposit
3- end the police details on every road construction project
4- end mandatory health insurance
5- end two party consent for wiretapping
6- encourage homeschooling and private education
Labels: massachusetts, policy
The bailout blame game
Harry Reid just called off the Senate vote on an automotive bailout, and let's not forget that the Democrats control the Congress. When I was in Detroit, I heard the local NPR take callers who tried, even still, to blame Republicans for the lack of a car bailout. Yet, no one notices the obvious: that when the unions and the manufacturing industry blithely gives its votes, repeatedly, to Democrats that they get taken advantage of --
as seen by the Democrats' internal power struggle displacing Cong. Dingell in favor of Henry Waxman. The Democrats are carving up the auto industry, fat on the votes of unions who don't know better, and busy serving their real masters: the environmentalists.
Labels: Congress, Democrats, Detroit, Economics, policy
Economic chaos: Libertarian confusions
Citigroup is close to a firesale. GM and Chrysler are close to insolvency, and who are we to blame? A former boss chided me once for a lack of faith in the economy, saying that his think tank friends assured him that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. My libertarian friends' faith in the markets are not swayed. And while, yes, the world will not explode from this crisis, it will continue to be aggravated as long as the government intervention and control artificially prop up inefficient industries. The banks made bad loans due to government signals that credit would be forever extended, and the car companies comply with unreasonable regulations and live off of government subsidies and sentimentalism despite their union contracts ensuring their non-competitiveness with other car producers. We face, again, a crisis of government and yet Washington is only talking about increasing regulation. My friends' faith in the market is misplaced only because they think we have a market-based economy, and don't see that we really have a government-based one.
Labels: Detroit, Economics, policy
Detroit: Mitt Romney and I actually kind of agree
Mitt Romney wrote a recent editorial in the New York Times with some thoughts on the automotive bailout, and, other than having the government invest in research, I thought his words were surprisingly resonant and sound.
Labels: Detroit, Economics, policy
Center for American "Progress" featured again
Quite the darlings of the media establishment, the Center for American Progress
is profiled again as a central think tank for the incoming Obama administration. Besides profiling budgets, though, the article does somewhat of a sloppy job saying that all these groups produce "ideas" without really giving any indication of what that means. The Center, I will admit, have replicated many of the smart aspects of the conservative movement, and apparently are doing them with relatively little drama, use of new technology, ridiculous turnover and other aspects of conservatives shooting themselves in the feet that I've seen over the past few years. It also, of course, helps that all this is centered in one group well financed and not dependent upon direct mail donors and small donations. The left is using political technology much better than conservatives, and are winning as a result. We have a lot of catch-up to play.
Labels: conservativism, movement, policy, politics
When Social Scientists Lie: Covering up Abortion Reductions
A group "Catholics in Alliance" has joined a variety of pro-Obama enablers to argue that 'social justice' issues are the strongest ways to reduce the incidence of abortion in America. In general, as a broad abstraction, they may be correct. More directly, and more provable, however, is that sensible pro-life state-level restrictions have had an effect on reducing the abortion rate in the country. This is timely because President-elect Obama has promised to make FOCA (The Freedom of Choice Act) his first action upon seizing the Presidency. FOCA will overturn every state-level abortion restriction in the country. Therefore, this issue of what has truly caused the real reductions in abortion is a very charged one.
Joseph Wright attempts to critique Prof. Michael New's studies showing that state-level laws work. Wright fails miserably, and
Dr. New easily dissect Wright's sloppiness and shoddy reasoning. At some point one has to acknowledge that these are not reasonable and rational differences, they are not preferences, rather they are the systemic and deliberate misconstructions of those who seek to increase the number of abortions in the country by enabling a man who will remove everything that has successfully reduced abortion. Because they fight with words makes them no less evil.
Labels: abortion, obama, policy, pro-life, pro-life movement, science
11 thoughts on the election
1. This race was always winnable
2. The media is evil and should always be opposed
3. Moderate Republicans are entirely worthless
4. Bush has been a total failure
5. Certain people need to be written out of the movement
Tom DeLay
Newt
John McCain
6. Our donors need to get excited again
7. We need to prepare for an insurgency until we retake the control of government
8. No more playing nice or acting like bipartisanship is anything other than us getting screwed
9. No compromise, no surrender
10. Use this time to recruit and train, and also attack their support networks
11. Our people need to savage the other side when they misstep and overreach
Labels: election, policy, politics, theory
$35 trillion dollars worth of "choices"
Since 1970,
researchers estimate that abortion has cost $35 trillion to the economy. When you consider the senseless slaughter of millions, and the lives that those children would have had... the many researchers, chemists, lawyers, doctors, mothers, fathers, teachers, construction workers, bankers, soldiers, nurses... you start to realize what abortion-on-demand has done just in economic terms. The spiritual costs, the mental and emotional costs, I would guess, are much larger than the sticker shock on the $35 trillion number. We will never know how much pain this innocent slaughter has cost us.
Labels: abortion, Economics, policy
Economics Histrionics
The
UK Telegraph, more accurately Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writes about the end of economic time here. And while I think, definitely, that this crisis has the opportunity to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and I suppose that economically it already is, it will take government mismanagement to create a crisis worse than the Great Depression. Only government can cause massive changes in value and wealth. But, government has a possible solution: slash spending and encourage wealth-development and job creation:
1. Eliminate the capital gains taxes
2. Allow for oil and energy exploration
3. Fast-track approvals for nuclear power plants and oil refineries
4. Slash all needless government programs like NASA, FCC, privatize their services, and extend property rights into the areas formerly controlled by the state. That means, tangibly, to extend property rights into space, or permanently sell the airwaves.
5. Raise the Social Security retirement age to 75, add in part of the legislation to have it slowly raise to 80 in 15 years.
6. Means-test Social Security
7. End the federal highway fund, and put the burden back on the states where it belongs
8. Institute a graduated flat tax to save the costs of compliance
9. Sell the national parks
10. Rescind many/most EPA regulations
11. Means-test public education (i.e. if your family earns over 200k a year, then you don't get free government education)
12. Sell off/privatize most state universities
13. Pass Senator Coburn's health care bill to make health care cheaper and more efficient
14. Cut any program that doesn't clearly add value to the country
Simple enough.
Labels: budget, Economics, policy, politics
Why Bush is a failure
This small little drudge snippet says so much by saying so little. I wonder whether the White House has the courage to ask why its own party defected on an issue critical to Bush by a 2-1 majority? I doubt they do. And yet, never could it be clearer that the priorities of this President are irrelevant even to those who are his 'friends.' Indeed, I wonder whether this lame-duck President has any chits to cash with this Congress, whom he strong-armed into a bogus Prescription Drug Benefit, has drug through a now unpopular occupation and has demonstrated almost zero leadership in sustaining public support for, and has directly gone against the interests of most of his own caucus in proposing amnesty for illegal aliens. The Democrats since 2004 have been exceptionally well disciplined and well-organized, but that's only half of this President's problems, for his biggest problem is himself. And the lack of leadership from Bush, especially on any issue important to his base, is critical to this. Would that Bush extended half the energy he has to this bailout to gut the millions of federal dollars given to Planned Parenthood. Or an iota of this effort to real border security. If only his administration had a tenth of the attention to an exploding federal budget as he does to a bailout that helps such a fraction of the American people. No, we couldn't get any of that kind of leadership from George no matter how much we, his supposed friends, and even those who consider themselves "Republicans" begged. I don't know what else to say with a man who treats his 'friends' and his party like this, whose priorities are so out of line. Maybe history, time and an awful McCain/Obama presidency will leave us longing for Bush, but I doubt it.
Labels: bailout, Bush, history, policy, politics
Pointless Mars Research: 2 real goals
Reading the latest Mars lander news,
it looks like the ocean theory on Mars is correct. As a country, though, we ought to decide what our goal in space exploration is, either it's to advance 'research' and 'knowledge' as these broad and somewhat vague goals, or they ought to be more specific. Personally I think there are two reforms to our approach in space. I feel quite nerdy for writing this. First, I think we ought to
extend clear property rights to space and other heavenly bodies so as to encourage commercial development. Secondly, our national policy ought to include
terraforming other worlds as the ultimate goal. Granted, this is a long-term goal none of us would be likely to see in our lifetimes, but as national priorities I think it's ambitious and provides a focused and solid goal to pursue. And if terraforming is our real goal, as it ought to be, perhaps we should be wasting less time with Mars and spending more of it on Venus, which is much more likely to provide a stable habitat.
Labels: policy, politics, space
How to win friends and influence enemies: Nancy Pelosi-style
Nancy Pelosi's speech during the bailout is being partially blamed for its defeat. Her speech is idiotic, it's irresponsible. It demonstrates absolutely zero understanding of budgeting, of monetary policy and of economics in general. She launches into these broad statements, never mentioning the real causes of the crisis, nor real solutions. She talks about Clinton surpluses, as though they were indicative of anything but the tech bubble. And in many ways that false wealth created during that time, which later got dumped into the housing market after the tech bubble burst, which later got dumped into commodities after the housing bubble burst, is the real cause of this crisis. We have an inflationary time-bomb of fiat money floating in the system consuming chunks of our economy as we try to keep the lid on inflation by just moving it around and not taking the several years to just cook it off through a painful recovery. It'll either come out through a recession, inflation or both, and yet there's no one willing to admit that there's an appropriate amount of reckoning we need to accept. Possible, real, solutions would include cutting spending/entitlements, lowering corporate and/or capital gains taxes to promote growth or some other pro-growth agenda rather than trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Nothing coming from Washington and the Pelosi crowd even comes close to these two basic principles, and so we're in for quite a ride as this slow-motion train wreck continues. The worst thing they could do is enact some "baulout" or "reforms" that further encourage bad behavior on both the part of lenders and borrowers, and yet that's all they seem intent on doing. Punish the good and reward the bad? As someone else mentioned, welcome to Washington.
Labels: bailout, Economics, policy, politics
Putin giving nuclear help to Chavez: US left without an argument
So, Hugo Chavez, whose main crime other than being a jerk is
nationalizing industries, which is the
same thing Bush did last week to the insurance and mortgage industries which are considerably larger than any Venezuelan nationalization,
is looking to develop a nuclear program. One might think that having a nuclear armed Communist country nearby is a bad thing, and yet Russia, our supposed friend, is helping them out. This might have something to do with our continued
meddling in Russian affairs in places like Serbia,
Ukraine and
Georgia. And our outrage on the world scene to Russia proliferating nuclear weapons might have a bit of hypocrisy considering that we
gave Israel nuclear weapons in violations of our own treaty obligations as well. So, what are we left to do? Leftists blame Bush for ruining the international system, but it is Bush's failure to reject leftist internationalism that has caused the international damage. Our country's actions are relatively consistent despite whomever is in charge, and those actions are no longer in the national interest of the residents of this country, nor are they pursuing the economic interests of the citizens of this country. Perhaps someday we will once again get leaders who remember whom they are supposed to be representing.
Labels: foreign policy, policy, politics
Busting Budgetary Bailouts: An Alternative
If the federal government is going to blow through $700 billion in order to bail out these reckless banks, then why not offset that expense with the sale of other government assets? The federal government has a series of things it could do to raise capital to justify these expenses, and if this is as important as they claim it is, then it ought to justify getting rid of wasteful spending.
The CATO Institute has a nice convenient list of what government could sell to raise $81 billion right away, and shed about $5 billion in annual commitments. There's even
a handy guide from CATO about how to trim $300 billion from the federal budget with relatively little pain.
Labels: budget, Economics, government, policy, politics
George W. Bush and his Economic Destruction: "Compassionate" American Socialism
Leave it to Bush to bring about economic devastation, the legacy of compassionate conservatism is apparently that the 'compassion' is really code for 'I drown your economy in the bathtub when no one's looking'
We are going to see a 30% reduction in the quality of life, in the cost of essentials, over the next year and we won't even realize it. We are being strangled financially and when these costs rise, we'll wonder, "why did our rent just go up 30%" or "why did a gallon of milk get so expensive" and not wonder whether it has to do with the reduced purchasing power of the dollar.
Let us list out our various crises that King George has handled with such expert care:
1. Energy Crisis - no new plants = increased costs of production
2. Iraq Occupation - lots of good men overseas, huge costs = higher govt spending causing greater debt which causes inflation, and 250k men abroad means those wages aren't working within the civilian economy
3. Immigration Crisis - too many illegals = decreased wages, strained social services, higher taxes
4. Oil Crisis - regulations kill production and preventing new development = increased costs of production, inflationary pressures
5. Insurance Crisis - bad mortgages cause major investment houses to approach bankruptcy = possible spread of the insolvency to other banks, constriction in credit causing businesses to stop expansions and halt economic growth, bailing out the banks will cause a larger national debt which is a strong inflationary pressure, as well as the added inflationary pressure of the defaults on the economy
6. Mortgage Loan Crisis - lotsa bad loans = increase in foreclosures and people losing their homes, causes banks to go insolvent, puts individuals in higher-paying apartments which will cut into their disposable income causing less purchasing and a general economic slowdown
7. Healthcare Crisis - antiquated laws and enough socialism to kill the market forces = increasing inflationary pressures as healthcare costs skyrocket thanks to a total lack of political will to implement very basic reforms such as those proposed by Senator Coburn.
coming soon:
7.
Collapsing Dollar - inflationary pressures cause the value of the dollar to keep falling = we'll be selling companies in this country for pennies on the dollar in order to get foreign capital, most of the businesses in this country will become foreign-owned, our exports will also increase and imports decrease thanks to an inability to buy anything globally due to our weak dollar and while this sounds good on the surface we import so many things that it will ultimately drive up the costs of production even further.
8.
Entitlements Crisis - not enough babies = Social Security and Medicare bankruptcy, either old people will be bankrupt or on welfare, and medical costs will skyrocket as the demand overwhelms supply
Labels: Bush, Economics, policy, politics
Economic Destruction
The recent news over the past few days about the bankruptcy at Lehman, and the
falling stock prices, and the banking crisis should reach every American and produce a state of near-panic. The housing crisis isn't going away, and it's spreading to other industries and other aspects of the economy.
And I have come to a conclusion that I don't like: that whatever the merits of the Iraqi liberation and stabilization effort, our country simply cannot afford to keep it going and sustain the occupation. We ought to end our occupation as soon as possible and transition to a new government and withdraw the forces. We simply cannot afford as a nation to continue spending at the level at which we have become accustomed.
Solutions:
1- End the war in Iraq and Afghanistan
2- Remove our foreign presence from major military operations in Germany, Japan
3- Remove all restrictions to new energy creation (nukes, offshore, ANWR, anything)
4- Enforce a balanced budget amendment
5- Start drastically cutting social services and paring down the size of government
6- Privatize and sell off as many federal assets/liabilities as possible (the post office and Amtrak come to mind)
7- End the madness of promoting homeownership to those who aren't responsible enough to sustain it
Sadly, I don't think we have the political willpower for any of these, no matter how desperately needed.
Labels: Economics, foreign policy, iraq, policy, politics, war
Education deform
My friend Ed sent me
this link about the history and current situation of education in this country. To read this is to have one's eyes forcibly opened to what you've known but couldn't put your finger on. Apparently
they're making a movie about it, funny enough.
Labels: education, policy
The social conditioning of environmental sacrifice
The hype of environmentalism knows no boundaries, and certainly now transcends political parties. We can't lift a single federal finger to end the holocaust of abortion, and certainly have to be conservative and assert state's rights! state's rights! state's rights! when it comes to limiting abortion, but boy when it comes to climate change, everyone but the hard right and the faithfully anti-state libertoids realize that it's nothing more than political conditioning for leftist causes. It gives a much-needed moral component to leftist politics which without simply has too much perversity and depravity to be palatable. Climate change is the great red herring for people to assert on the left and consider themselves moral.
Environmentalism lets us
justify circulating so little water in a polar bear tank that its coat turns green. "Environmentalism" is
used as the pretext for the UN to start demanding that we adjust our diets by eating less meat. It's all a ruse, all a ploy. If the earth were cooling, the same arguments would come out. If the earth were static, you could just as easily say that the natural cycles aren't being followed, again, cause for panic. We get pretty worked up over 1-2 degree variances, and forget that the seasons provide a pretty reliable climate change all year long.
 |
Our coal power plants are even causing warming on Jupiter! |
And that hysteria about climate change has so far been limited to just this planet.
Jupiter's climate change hasn't caught the attention of leftists yet. I guess all of those CFC's are either creating a hole in the o-zone of Jupiter, or perhaps all the pesticides used to grow the eggplant I had for dinner caused too much carbon dioxide in this country, reflecting extra sunlight to Jupiter which caused the warming of its poles, readjusting its temperature mix and causing the warming, right? There's gotta be some explanation. Perhaps after Jupiter, they'll notice that other planets are suffering from America's materialism and overproduction of carbon dioxide.
It'd be more hilarious if it weren't more tragic. And for a group of people, leftists, who proclaim their love for the lower class, they have no problem advocating for these policies which will constrict growth and hurt that class the most. Leftists complain about outsourcing jobs, and then wonder why China has such a competitive edge, not wondering if the years of environmental impact statements and various regulations in this country hampers our ability to employ more workers. The temple of Gaia, our Earth-Mother, is too important to these people to submit itself to reason or the needs of our fellow countrymen. The insanity of environmental policies that promote these ridiculous prescriptions is nothing more than a clear effort to condition us to accept greater government controls, and lead us into statism.
Labels: environmentalism, policy, politics, society
Nationalization is Socialism in every country but this one.
The Treasury department has now
effectively nationalized Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, as this very lengthy Wall Street Journal article explains. And the rationale for this is that no one wants to default on these loans and start foreclosing on houses where loans shouldn't have been approved in the first place. If you want to read between the lines as to what this means, you'll have to consult
the always prescient Steve Sailer, who explains that
this is the "diversity recession" caused by foolish loans to those who were completely unqualified to handle them, but who benefited from having the right skin color. And now, after assuming this debt, the government gets to make another crisis within a current one, by writing loans to these clowns, and taking equity within the companies. Not only is the federal bank a perpetual donor, it is now going to be an owner. This will have disastrous consequences for the financial industry later on.
And we ought to be more outraged and more alarmed by this. We would call it socialism or nationalization elsewhere. The long history of antipathy towards Fidel Castro stemmed in no small part from his nationalization of industries in Cuba in 1959, we effectively okayed the assassination of
Allende in Chile in 1973 when he moved to nationalize industries there and institute socialism. And I don't point these things out in order to castigate them, rather, quite appropriately, to demonstrate how serious it is when this nationalization effort happens. It affects an entire country, it screws up the financial industry, and it throws economies into chaos. The US foreign policy gets criticism from all sides, but I don't think it's legitimate when it undertook actions to stabilize the world and provide the security for countries to keep doing business. A Pax Americana based on trade and free markets is at least a predictable, stable and a relatively fair one. But now, we are clearly in the midst of a rule by emotional appeal to the masses, mob rule.
When
Hugo Chavez nationalizes foreign industries, it's appropriately labeled socialism. When we nationalize our own financial industry to protect it against a preferred political class of voters, a de facto ruling elite (noting that the actual ruling elite simply relies on this class of voters), it's... somehow different.
When Bush
promises "
universal home ownership" in his state of the union, who was he appealing to? He was promising wealth from the homeowners to those who didn't have the means to own one. It was a power-play, and socialism. It is mindless "equity" in the most base of material ways. We think, "houses" and say, "happy" but we don't wonder whether the same things that cause a man to be in debt or financially unstable might cause him to lack the stability needed to keep that house. Or the many people in this country whose jobs are too transient to be in one place long enough for a 20-30 year mortgage. I recall discussing this aspect of Bush's policies with conservative friends, and everyone came back to the same essentially liberal line: that all our minority problems will just go away, crime will finally come down, education will go up, drug use will go away, when minorities are "invested" and are part of this great "ownership society" and feel like "stockholders" in their community.
How silly. How naive. And how foolish of myself that I didn't see through those arguments.
We are reaping what we have sown. We elected a soft socialist who didn't want "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and proclaimed how "compassionate" he was, and despite all the hype and hope, and the hyped hope, we got what it really was: socialism, just in small doses. Shame on us for not seeing this for what it truly was, and for trying to buy our way out of racial discord. The result will no doubt be more chaos and instability in the financial markets, and bring about more racial discord when these homes finally default, and will lead to greater government control over the economy which will, again, promote more inefficiencies and economic uncertainty.
Labels: Bush, Economics, government, policy, politics, race
Policy items for the local government activist
For anyone involved in local politics, I think there are a small set of key issues that ought to be on everyone's policy radar:
1. First and foremost: saving babies. And that can be through sensible restrictions on abortion clinics, promoting and supporting Pregnancy Centers, offering support to women through a variety of means including post-abortion counseling, anything that helps women and serves the unborn. Reference my previous posting heralding the first abortion free-state: South Dakota, which accomplished that amazing feat through the law and through reasonable regulations.
the rest are in no particular order:
2. Changing/reforming sexual education in schools
3. Restricting and regulating gambling, ending state lotteries
4. Encouraging school innovation through incentivizing private education
5. Cutting the tax burden on families, especially young families
6. Privatizing the services and functions of local government
7. Energy reform
8. Infrastructure improvements, such as building wider roads, more roads, improving bridges, etc.
9. General beautification through monuments, statues and art
10. Promoting transparency within the government and its functions, such as the police force
11. Removing any and all restrictions and regulations on reporters and the media, such as the oppressive two-party consent laws in 10 states.
Labels: movement, policy, politics
The first abortion-free state: South Dakota, now for some new goals
Planned Parenthood in South Dakota
has recently shut down due to a vigorous informed consent law, so there is plenty of good news. However, this is not the end of the battle, and pro-life and pro-family advocates ought to take things even further and start restricting and regulating all sorts of vice out of town, as these things go together. The pro-life warriors ought to start identifying ways to regulate sex shops, strip clubs and pornography out of their state as well. Kick out the support legs that produce the crises the Planned Parenthood attempts to solve, not to mention reform the government school's sex-ed classes so they don't teach perversion,
as they do in Massachusetts. Our goals should never end at what could be such a transient success, and the folks I worked with in 2006, namely the Unruhs, certainly have the fire in their bellies to keep that revolution marching.
Labels: conservativism, movement, policy, politics, pro-life, pro-life movement
Bankruptcy Week: No Oil to see here, keep moving on
This article at Business Week, "There may be oil offshore, but..." is testament to a strange phenomenon where business types barf back DNC talking points. Reading the article, one can clearly see that there are a great deal of natural resources yet to be developed, but this article goes out of its way to dispute the possibility of any possible development, even going so far as to say that no business will take a risk without clear "profitability" as though there were only sure-things in the business world. Has environmentalism so thoroughly taken over and infected the minds of rational human beings that they can no longer accept obvious statements? Are our eyes so blinded that we cannot see? We face an energy crisis and no one wants to create more energy! I found article author
Moira Herbst's personal blog, which had one slightly negative thing to say about conservative Hugh Hewitt, though overall nothing too damning of her. She seems a recent j-school grad, and though we shouldn't hold that against her, it occurs to me that this article was probably out of her league, and she had to rely on the DNC talking points because precious didn't know better. So, again, liberal bias caused not by a conspiracy but most likely from laziness, immaturity and inaccuracy. And the journalists can't understand why no one is reading their tortured constructions.
Labels: energy, media, messaging, policy, politics
Simple goals for any party at any level
I was asked a few times to strategize on the right goals and roles for a county party and a state party. And as one who enjoys getting to the point, or simply being pithy, I thought it would be good to outline what I thought as appropriate goals for a party of any size, in order:
1. Contest every election, heavy candidate recruitment
2. Increase the number of trained activists, and keep them busy
3. Set goals and look for results, try to engage and change the community
4. Use activism to support the goals, and give people smaller victories that will enable larger victories
5. Cultivate a donor class, to candidates, groups, projects, etc.
Granted these are pretty simple and intuitive, and the proof is always in the pudding-- in the application, but I thought these simple goals were worth writing out and saying since so few party organizations seem focused on doing these 5 together.
Labels: goals, mission, party, policy, politics
Leftist and Bush hypocrisy
One tragedy
you will rarely hear of is the continuing saga of Zimbabwe's implosion at the hands of tyrant
Robert Mugabe. The dark continent has its great deal of admirers, people in the Peace Corps and all sorts of relief missions, and Christian do-gooders, but for those who took the very real and very productive step of colonizing parts of Africa and starting farms to feed the masses, they are paid with brutality.
Will the mainstream media cover this? Will the attention of the government ever turn to Zimbabwe and Mugabe? Why would
Mugabe want 3 million rounds of ammunition? Would Hollywood ever make a
political movie about problems in Africa that don't relate to apartheid? Will anyone have the courage to ask if perhaps Rhodesia was a better state than Zimbabwe? Will the starvation caused by the destruction of these white farms cause some to question whether the problems in Africa are rooted in something other than colonialism and vague generic racism? Will Michigan State ever revoke their honorary degree to Mugabe?
How many missionaries would it take to bring stability to Zimbabwe? How many Peace Corps volunteers? How much aid would cause this violence to end?
And if those are not the answers, if you think those are straw men, then tell me whether our approach to Africa is meaningful other than to give people some sick pleasure that we're "helping" in some vague ambiguous way. Africa needs a noble tyrant to give it stability, peace and prosperity.
And where's our President on this?
Blandly talking about not recognizing Mugabe's fake elections, and entertaining the idea of more sanctions. The leadership vacuum is deafening. If this were Darfur, we'd have riots on campuses, but when the victims don't fit the right narrative, all the moral outrage evaporates.
Labels: Africa, African aid, policy, racism
