Monday, January 31, 2011

Eat Healthy or Die


The government is doing what we figured it would do. The new health care industry and the FDA are excersing their tyrannical abilities to regulate.




"The government is telling half of the U.S. population to drastically cut their daily salt intake."


"But it's unclear if the industry will be able to cut enough to satisfy the new guidelines. The Food and Drug Administration has said it will pressure companies to take voluntary action before it moves to regulate salt intake."


I think its funny that the FDA says that companies need to take voluntary action or it might have to regulate. Striking fear in private business is just what our government needs to do in a recession.


Another form of soft tyranny. This is the "caring for you" tyranny that C.S. Lewis talked about. This is nothing new to us RTPers.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Obama's State of the Union Address - Profile in Cowardice

As most Americans know, our country is in a severe economic predicament, caused chiefly by exploding entitlement programs such as Social Security, and Medicare, but exacerbated by exploding federal budgets, begun under the Bush II administration, and hyperinflated under the Obama administration.  In the State of the Union address, Obama would call this a "Sputnik Moment", which implied that this moment of economic peril was similar to the call-to-action that occurred when the Russians launched Sputnik, putting a satellite into orbit before anyone else did, and kicking off the US space program.  This would be an economic Sputnik moment, spurring the US to action against this dire economic threat.  But, as is demonstrated in this very well written article, Obama, as is his modus operandi, took the cowards way out.  Again, a read the whole thing article, but here are some good paragraphs:
The thrust of Obama's agenda follows Lenin's. The old jobs are gone. We must prepare for the future by educating our youth. The sturm und drang of the "We Musts" quickly becomes an argument for pandering to the teacher's unions. Only by empowering the teacher's union will we be able to compete with China. But China isn't strong because of its teachers, but because it has no independent unions, no minimum wage, no pollution laws and nothing to get in the way of the terrible machine of its industry. The People's Republic of China is not beating us in science or math, but in manufacturing cheap products with an undervalued national currency.

Handing out free educations to beat China is like going to college to fight a bear. Not only will it not improve your bear fighting skills, it actually gives the bear the upper hand. American math and science degrees are used to do research whose practical applications take the form of products manufactured in China. Even if all 300 million Americans all go to work as researchers, we are not going to "out-compete" and "out-innovate" by "out-educating" Americans. Russia has the highest percentage of college degrees by population in the world. China has the lowest. These figures have little to do with their economic success.

America already has a college degree program percentage rate on par with Sweden and Finland, countries that almost wholly subsidize higher educations. Greece subsidizes 99.7 percent of higher education, and yet has a lower degree rate than America and is in a state of complete economic meltdown. America has higher rates of graduates than many of the European countries which heavily subsidize their education systems. The takeaway is that state subsidized education does not ensure more graduates. And more graduates does not mean more jobs.
Basically, the whole thrust of Obama's speech was pure bull. What he is talking about is pap, not a call to take on the real problems in this country. Again, read the whole thing, I've got to go.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Closing of The American Mind


Jeff has quoted this book numerous times. I just started reading it and I can understand a little more of where he is coming from with a lot of his posts.


So far it is basically laying the foundation that Americans are losing what it means to be American. They enter the academic world with a "clean slate". Families "Sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life." I can reflect on this with my own family of three. Patrick is smart. He said the other day, "Rhinoceros' come from Africa." I did not teach him this. Dora did. My family is still very young though and I can influence Patrick and his value/moral system for the next fifteen years he is at my house.


I remember having a conversation with my friend Jake a couple months back. We were talking about raising kids. He asked me about my plans and methods. I told him that I want to raise him like my father raised me. I turned out pretty good so I figure this method will do fine. Jake seemed to emphasize the importance of allowing kids to find their own interests and their own beliefs. Somewhere in our conversation he warned me of manipulating Patrick's mind. Jakes beliefs are shared by most Americans. But what is dangerous about this is that we lose our traditions and values that were passed on from the great minds of the West. In a land of many immigrants a child can be raised on an imported and inferior value system. We are lucky that there is such a variety of history to lean on when making a decision in raising our kids the right way. Parents now days basically facilitate the natural growth of their child without actually educating them. The public schools and media do this for us. Whether it be laziness or indifference or both, I do not know.


I was motivated to make this simple post by the email that Melkor sent me. It is an article in the Quantico Sentry about the Marines in the Battle of Seattle.http://www.quantico.usmc.mil/Sentry/StoryView.aspx?SID=4871. Bud-D read it already. These sort of history lessons are important.


Does Emma know the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree? He was asked if he cut down the cherry tree and said, "I can't tell a lie, Pa."

Thursday, January 6, 2011

A Critique Of Libertarianism/Small Government Advocates: Is Such A System Possible?

"The Trouble With Liberty" is a good article that presents an opposing view on small-government libertarianism. The article has a lot of good points and questions that need to be answered by anyone who advocates less government and it also points out the impracticality of having a very limited government. In some cases the author is incorrect and in other places he correctly points out the problems that we face, but he fails to see the cause/causes of these problem and instead advocates a solution that is what caused the problem to begin with.

Do Western nations still have to fear socialism?
Ever since its publication in 1944, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been the anti-regulatory Ur-text. Hayek wrote the book in response to the spread of socialism—including National Socialism— which at the time was a genuine existential threat to Western society. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, though, socialism isn’t the menace it used to be. Hitler is long gone.
The author is wrong that socialism is dead. While what Hayek calls "Hot" socialism is dead, the more mild version of socialism that manifest itself as the welfare state is the system that we find ourselves with. Look at Obama and the people he has put around him and look at how they describe themselves and examine their political philosophy. The prevailing political philosophy that prevails among the left and to a lesser extent the right is inherently socialist in its nature. This point does not need to be expanded for this audience. Fascism/State Corporatism is becoming the dominate global system. A good book that illustrates this is "Liberal Fascism".

The author attempts to point out the impossibility of eliminating central banking.
Libertarian minarchy is an elegant idea in the abstract. But the moment you get specific, the foundation starts to crumble. Say we started from scratch and created a society in which government covered only the bare essentials of an army, police, and a courts system. I’m a farmer, and I want to sell my crops. In Libertopia, I can sell them in exchange for money. Where does the money come from? Easy, a private bank. Who prints the money? Well, for that we’d need a central bank—otherwise you’d have a thousand banks with a thousand different types of currency. (Some libertarians advocate this.) Okay, fine, we’ll create a central bank. But there’s another problem: Some people don’t have jobs. So we create charities to feed and clothe them. What if there isn’t enough charity money to help them? Well, we don’t want them to start stealing, so we’d better create a welfare system to cover their basic necessities. We’d need education, of course, so a few entrepreneurs would start private schools. Some would be excellent. Others would be mediocre. The poorest students would receive vouchers that allowed them to attend school. Where would those vouchers come from? Charity. Again, what if that doesn’t suffice? Perhaps the government would have to set up a school or two after all.

Money was created not though the efforts of a central entity, but instead evolved through the experiences of millions of people throughout history. A central planning entity such as a central bank does not posses enough knowledge to properly manage a nations money supply, a fact that is becoming very evident as the age of fiat money is coming to an end. But I disagree with those calling for the "end of the Fed". The Federal Reserve could only be replaced over a long period of time after a complete transformation of the global economy, changes that won't occur and are impractical given the current state of affairs.

On the issue of government charity, given the current state of the nation; I support government performing the role that the private sector used to perform in the area of charity. It is a dangerous thing for freedom for government charity to trump private charity. The main reason the author sees as the need for a government cushion or safety net, lack of jobs, is created by government action that interferes with the free market. In a free market economy there will be enough jobs for those that want to work. And another rational for the government maintaining a huge social safety net is economic downturns, caused by government intervention and central banking expanding and contracting the money supply. There is not one economic downturn that was not caused by government intervention is the free market. We don't live in a free market and the current state of the economy is leading to an economic collapse. The government has replaced private charity through its excessive expansion into the private sector and by inculcating in the people through the education system a belief that government should be the one providing for charity which has taken away the impetus for private citizens to provide for this charity. So when the economy receives a major shock, that will have been caused by excessive government intervention in the first place, it is in the government's and society's interest that there be some safety net to provide for the basic necessities of the people. This economic shock will undercut the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of human needs food, water, security of body, employments, and other basic human needs. When this happens people tend to riot in the streets and demand that these needs be meet. This usually leads to revolutions and or the election of a Hitler that promises to bring an end to all the chaos and provide these basic necessities. In the current situation, there needs to be a huge government safety net, even if huge government created the need.

The main factor driving big government are those that can't accept the fact that some people will always be poor. These people fail to see the two main causes of poverty: human nature and excessive government. And they fail to see what the solution to ending poverty leads to: poverty spread out among a greater number of people. Some people are poor because they choose to be and/or they suffer from being raised in a poor culture; and the government's attempts at eliminating poverty end up creating more poverty, look at the results from the "War On Poverty".
And so on. There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because 'states’ rights' had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

This crash was caused by the government and state-charted banks. While there was no official Central bank in 1907, state-chartered banks were allowed to print bank notes, money, in excess of their bank reserves--inflation. Without sufficient reserves of hard assets to back up these bank notes, these banks notes became inflated and could not be redeemed in the advent of a bank run. After the creation of the Federal Reserve the Country has experienced more economic downturns and and over all more turbulent economic cycle. Again government action is the cause of the problem pointed out by the author and is also the rational for a government solution.

How can we be sure that are doctors are qualified to be doctors without government licencing and certification?
There are all sorts of situations the private market isn’t good at managing, such as asymmetrical information (I know my doctor is qualified to treat me because he has a government license) and public goods (it makes sense for the government to cover vaccines, which benefit everyone, not just the consumer). There’s also a consistency problem: Why should the government be responsible for a public good like national defense but not air-quality protection?"

The private sector is more than capable of developing mechanisms to determine the quality of service a doctor provides. One modern example would be an Internet rating system like you would find on EBay. Another example would be a private rating agency whose existence depended on how accurately they rated doctors which would mean that they would have to bear the cost of their failure to properly rate doctors. A doctor will not do well in a free market if he provides a poor service as no one would do business with him. Government certification of doctors along with the Union AMA helps to limit the number of doctors and drive up health care cost. Government action has led to more expensive, less abundant, and lower quality health care; but somehow more government interference of the type that caused the problem is the solution.

Should the Big Banks have been allowed to fail or should they have been bailed out? My natural reaction would be to not support this bail out, but what would have been the ramifications of allowing them to fail?
Or, say, a stable world financial system? Most of the libertarians I spoke with said they would have let the big banks fail in 2008. “I wouldn’t have done anything,” says French. 'The key to capitalism is you have to have failure.'
The financial crisis was not an indictment of their worldview, libertarians argue, but a vindication of it. Letting the banks fail would have been painful. But the pain would have been less than it will be now that the government is propping up the housing, banking, and automobile industries. Plus, the economy would have recovered by now. 'You’ve probably never heard of the depression of 1920,' says French. 'You haven’t heard of it because it came and went in one year, because the government didn’t do anything to prop up failed businesses.' (Other economists argue that the government’s response was actually consistent with the philosophy of John Maynard Keynes.) Letting banks fail would also avoid moral hazard, say libertarians, since investors wouldn’t take such risky bets the next time around.

It’s a compelling story. But like many libertarian narratives, it’s oversimplified. If the biggest banks had failed, bankers wouldn’t have been the only ones punished. Everyone would have lost his money. Investors who had no idea how their dollars were being used—the ratings agencies gave their investments AAA grades, after all—would have gone broke. Homeowners who misunderstood their risky loans would have gone into permanent debt. Sure, the bailouts let some irresponsible people off easy. But not intervening would have unfairly punished a much greater number.

Then President Bush said that he was told by advisers he trusted that if he did not bail the banks out then we would have been looking at the second Great Depression and the collapse of our economy. So he had to "abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system". By the government intervening in the economy and bailing out these banks, the government has set up a future economic downturn that will be greater than what would have happened if he banks would have been allowed to fail and the necessary corrections in the economy to take place. When this collapse happens, many more people will be "unfairly punished" to a greater extent than if the banks would have been allowed to fail. Although, if by not bailing out the banks this would have led to a big economic downturn the people and government would not have been able to handle the shock that would have occurred and that could have possibly lead to a global economic depression that would have lead to lost of social cohesion and threatened global peace. Bailing out the banks just kicked the can down the road and delayed the day of reckoning, see what Neil Barofsky the special inspector general for the TARP stated. Again the government created a problem that required a government solution to avoid the possible disintegration of our society--a solution that will will still lead to the very situation it was designed to prevent.

Overall, libertarians just like communism or collectivism in general is a political philosophy that would only work if human nature could be changed to some extent. By human nature I mean the basically held philosophic beliefs that the vast majority of people hold. Modern Libertarianism does not admit or recognize this fact. They correctly view human nature as something that can not be changed, yet they fail to realize that this very fact makes their system impossible to be attained. John Madison, who some considered a libertarian, came close to stating this when he said "If men were angels, no government would be necessary". While no mainstream libertarian advocates no government, their view that government should be small and encompass a very limited sphere of an individual's life is incompatible with human nature and would only work "if men were angels". The fact that the average life span, about two hundred years, of a free society points to a flaw in human nature. The average person is not compatible with a free society as they are not vigilant enough to prevent their leaders from flattering them with pleasant words and promises of freedom from want nor are they vigilant enough to hold to the beliefs that are required for a free society. The early expositors of communism admits this need to change human nature when they stated the need to create the new "socialist man" and have attempted create such a man by eliminating around one hundred million people in the 20th century. What political system do we have? A middle-of-the-road system that can not permanently exist and fluctuates between the two extremes of anarchy and total government. It would be folly for any system to attempt to change human nature as the communist attempts at this have shown. A small government would require that a level of unattainable-perfection exist among the vast majority of people that could only be achieved by billions of people that refused to hold the philosophic beliefs required for a free society being eliminated( something that should not be done and has only been tried by the opposite political philosophy of libertarianism: communism). The best system that we can hope to obtain is a limited government that does not try to completely eliminate poverty or human misery and does not take on the role of God by trying to plan society; but instead creates a system that recognizes the imperfectability of human nature, protects private property, and creates a framework for the rule of law where human freedom can flourish; a system where people will accept the very unequal outcomes--a fact that is hard to accept for many people-- that results from this freedom and restrain themselves from taking on the role of God is the best we can hope for. In short there will be no perfect system of government and we must deal with the system we have which makes it impractical for small government solutions to be implemented: a system that it is leading to failure.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Typical Academia

I was so excited to take my first college history class (I took History of the Gulf War but even my teacher confessed that it was more of a government class) at MHCC this term. History of Western Civilization. Upon buying my book, I rushed to the school library to browse through it. When I read the preface I was disappointed to read the main author's credentials:

"Judith G Coffin received her Ph.D. in modern French history from Yale University. She has taught at Harvard University and the University of California, Riverside, and is currently associate professor of history at the University of Texas President's Associates' Award for Teaching Excellence. Her research inerests focus on the social and cultural history of gender, mass culture, slavery, race relations, and colonialism. She is the author of The Politics of Women's Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750-1915." (Western Civilizations Vol A)

Of course I get a book with a female author who's interests are gender, slavery, race relations, and colonialism. I'm sure this will be a fun term of learning how horrible the men of the west are. In fact, the tone is set in the introduction when the author tries to belittle the old teachings of the history of the west with her new reformed PC approach:

"Historians today are keenly aware of hw much such an account leaves out. It slights the use of force and fraud in European expansion. It also ignores the sophistication, dynamism, and humanity of the many cultures it sidelines. By neglecting the crucial importance of Byzantium and Islam, it even gives a misleadingly narrow account of the development of European civilization."

It's sad that highly regarded teachers are trying to diminish Western Civilization's exceptionalism. Sigh...gonna be a tough term.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

A Couple Gratuitous Obama Observation/Slams

We haven't delved too much into Obama's history on this blog as I recall.  We certainly can't be considered a hard core Birther site.  I'll bet that every one of us believe that Barack Obama satisfies the citizenship requirement in the Constitution to be President.  The problem is that one must use the word 'believe' because there has never been enough evidence presented to the public to establish beyond a doubt that he does.  We know very little of the normal things that everyone wants to know about a president.  The MSM has displayed its true bias by, on one hand, tearing with incredible zest into the micro-gyno-history and family of Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin (gratuitous Palin photo required), but being singularly uninterested in the many obvious questions about President Barack Obama's past.  A couple of articles discuss these things: the first is a 'What If?' scenario pointing out the unapologetic Marxism of Obama by presenting us with a hypothetical alternate candidate:

So I want to present you with a hypothetical. Let's say a leader were elected who had, during his childhood, been mentored by an avowed Nazi. Let us further say that his guardians had chosen this mentor for him, indicating that they were likely sympathetic to the man's beliefs. Now, let us say that upon reaching college, this future leader gravitated toward Nazi professors. Moreover, we then find out that a man who knew the leader as an undergraduate and was, at the time, a Nazi himself, said that the leader was "in 100-percent total agreement" with his Nazi professors and was a flat-out Nazi who believed in old-style Brownshirt tactics.


Okay, we're almost done. After graduating, the leader-to-be spends twenty years sitting in a white-power church, has an alliance with a self-proclaimed Nazi and ex-terrorist, and, apparently, becomes a member of a National Socialist party for a while. And then, upon being elected, he appoints an avowed Nazi to his administration and also a woman who cites Adolf Hitler as one of her two favorite philosophers. Now here's the million-depreciated-dollar question:


What would be nuttier: to claim that this man was a Nazi or to claim that such an assertion is out-of-bounds?

This is an EXACT description of Barack Obama, except replace 'Nazi' with 'Marxist' and replace 'White Power' with 'Black Power'.  Yet the MSM is not the slightest bit interested in these questions concerning The President of the United States.  Read the whole thing, there are a lot more goodies.

The next article lays out the bullet-point issues the Birthers are concerned about.  The author, as well as every other citizen of the USA should be interested in the answers, even if they are convinced Barack Obama is a bona-fide US citizen.  Again, why are these issues scoffed at?  Someone tell me exactly why resolving these issues is a ridiculous thing.  As the author says, every other president in the last 100 years has been able to satisfactorily resolve these issues:



To date the following are all undisclosed:

1) 1961 long-form, original, signed birth certificate
2) Marriage license between Obama’s father (Barak Sr.) and mother (Stanley Ann Dunham) — not found, not released
3) Obama’s baptism records — sealed
4) Obama’s adoption records — sealed
5) Records of Obama’s and his mother’s repatriation as US citizens on return from Indonesia — not found, not released
6) Name change (Barry Sotero to Barack Hussein Obama) records — not found, not released
7) Noelani Elementary School (Hawaii) — not released
Punahou School financial aid or school records — not released
9) Occidental College financial aid records — not released.
10) Columbia College records — not released
11) Columbia senior thesis — not released
12) Harvard Law School records - not released
13) Obama’s law client list — sealed
14) Obama’s files from career as an Illinois State Senator — sealed
15) Obama’s record with Illinois State Bar Association — sealed
16) Obama’s medical records — not released
17) Obama’s passport records — not released
Does wanting to see the records above seem unreasonable? It seems perfectly reasonable to me. So why scoff at the Birthers?  It seems to me that by far the bigger question is, why are all these perfectly normal things being hidden?

New Years Quick Hits - Renewable Power Costs

This article is written from the Green point of view, so attacking what the power companies are saying, but the point is, these two power companies: PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric, two Oregon electric utilities, are blaming their requests for rate hikes on the costs of incorporating green power into their systems:
The Citizens’ Utility Board (CUB), a Portland-based watch dog organization that has saved Oregon utility customers $3.9 billion since it was founded in 1984, has responded to news of large electricity rate increases for 2011, and clarified several issues with an article in the Oregonian that put much of the blame on renewable power for the 14.5% and 4.2% increases by PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric (PGE).
Being in the industry myself, I can tell you that the rate hikes are justified, and common throughout the country. I'm not going to copy the special pleading the Greenies on the Board make to say the utilities are phonying up these costs; read the article if you are interested. I know the costs are real. If you believe Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW) is destroying our planet, then maybe these costs are justified. I don't believe it, as there is absolutely no proof of it, and even if AGW were a proven thing, I'm not sure it would be a bad thing. Surely a warmer, moister planet would be better than another ice age. But, that's off the point. The point is, this backs up my claims about higher electricity costs to the customer due to adopting renewable energy policies. The customer always pays.