The Pitchfork And Musket Junta

Getting Involved in Civil Wars – An Alternative History of America

2011-03-28T12:08:00.002-05:00

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s reputation in Europe was failing. Much of the Europe saw him as a tyrant who ignored the rule of law, imprisoned political enemies, and turned a blind eye toward war crimes by his generals against the Southern rebels. That’s not saying that they supported the Confederacy. They were viewed as backwards, fighting to preserve antiquated slavery. The American Civil War was seen as an internal issue, of little concern for Europeans, and the North was winning. Everyone expected the United States to survive as a Republic, albeit with some changes. But then General Sherman started marching south. News of pillaging and burning of civilian homes, as well as rumors of executions and rape made it back to Europe. General Sherman gained a reputation similar to Attila the Hun or Genghis Kahn. The Confederate separatists were viewed as freedom fighters, not unlike the Colonials that won independence from England. All but the most adamant slavery opponents were won over to at least vocal support of the Confederate cause. Both the French and the English saw opportunity in this, and began to get involved. By supporting the Southern rebellion, they could weaken their new imperial rival with the support of many of their citizens.

England and France joined forces to attack United States cities from the sea.
They blockaded Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and shelled them from the sea. They provided munitions support to the Confederate cause, and even sieged New Orleans and allowed the Confederacy to retake it. Although poorly enforced, a trade embargo was placed on the United States, and it did weaken the North. This really bolstered the Southern rebellion, which was before thought to be in its last throes. The rebel forces were able to push the Northern armies out of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and much of Virginia. They held the war at a stalemate from 1865 through 1868. The war dragged on and on. Civilian Casualties in the Border States and the Northern coastal cities bombarded by European powers grew into the millions. The Confederate government in Richmond failed and was reorganized in Atlanta. Texas began talking secession, encouraged by the promise of a cease-fire with the United States. The Radical Republicans took over Congress in 1866 and emancipated the slaves in Northern slave states, although enforcement in Kentucky and Missouri was weak. Although many of his opponents expected Lincoln to use his war powers to cancel the 1868 elections, he didn’t, and chose to step down, endorsing his Vice President Andrew Johnson for the Presidency. Radical Republican Charles Sumner trounced Johnson for the Presidency, winning all but Maryland, who went for Johnson, and Missouri and Kentucky, who supported Democrat Joseph Holt.

Sumner promised to do whatever it took to win back the South, as colonies instead of states, and free the slaves. And he did. He significantly expanded the draft, ended exemptions for the well-to-do, and even sent troops to Canada to retrieve draft dodgers (and probably a few Canadians that he thought were American draft dodgers). Most importantly though, Sumner started a slave revolt in Virginia that spread through the formerly rich Southern states. He enlisted the help of the recently-freed slaves from Maryland and West Virginia, trained them as spies, and had some of them sold to large plantations in Virginia. Others set up a secret supply-chain to get weapons to them. The slaves were promised 40 acres if they joined the slave revolt, up to 160 acres if they could get enough other slaves to join them, and freedom for everyone. In Virginia, slaves on eighty of the largest 100 plantations rebelled against their owners, and were successful in fifty-six cases. Slaves took over plantations in the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. The Confederacy was forced to take over half of its troops from the front lines to quell the rebellion. This distraction offered the chance that the United States army needed, and it moved in, marched through most of the South, annihilating the weakened Confederate forces, burning Richmond, Charleston, Atlanta, Birmingham, Mobile, and New Orleans, before finally forcing an unconditional surrender at Shreveport in October 1869, after 6 million total Americans had lost their lives, almost 10 times the number before England and France got involved.

Colonial governments were established in the former Southern states, dividing the land up between those who had remained loyal to the Union, Northerners who worked in the colonial government, and freed slaves. For the first time, a two-tiered system was set up in the United States, where Northern States and Western States ruled and exploited Southern territories, which had limited political freedom. Many of the former Confederates escaped to the West and made up new identities for themselves, but the majority remained, most working as tenant farmers for the carpetbagger landowners who charged exorbitant rents.
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Of course, if you read this far, you know that none of this ever happened. Europe’s involvement was minimal; Sherman’s march to the sea was the death knell to the Confederacy; Lee surrendered at Appomattox in 1865; and the Liberal and Moderate Republicans were able to temper the Radical Republicans anger toward Confederates, and they were allowed back as full states, with a path to full political rights. At least, it never happened in the United States. Foreign involvement in the civil war in the Congo has extended that war for decades. If they left it alone, the strongest tribe would have won years ago, and the Congo would be stable. Foreign involvement in the Balkans allowed a defeated Muslim minority to set up a theocracy (though a liberal and relatively tolerant one) in Kosovo. The minority would be ruled by the majority, but there would be a form of peace. And the same thing may be happening now in Libya. Obviously the Libyan civil war and the American Civil War aren’t the same. Lincoln wasn’t a bad guy for his time, Sherman wasn’t nearly as bad as was rumored, and Qaddafi really is a bad guy. But just as the South wasn’t filled with just good guys fighting for their freedom, neither are the Libyan rebels. The reasons for the rebellion vary, but a significant number are fighting to strengthen the Sharia law in Libya, further oppressing women and religious minorities. The simple truth is that civil wars are often messy, and foreign involvement rarely helps.

Short Post on Public Sector Unions

2011-02-22T08:29:00.000-06:00

In regards to my last post: Lest we forget, public sector unions use taxpayer money to lobby the government for taxpayer money, and use taxpayer money to bargain contracts for more taxpayer money. Limits on this by government are perfectly reasonable.

Public Sector Unions, Liberals, and Shared Sacrifice

2011-02-20T22:51:00.000-06:00

Every time governments run into budget crises and cuts have to be made, liberals start talking about the need for shared sacrifice. The idea is instead of cutting every government worker necessary to balance the budget, you cut some people to make up some of the shortfall, asking the remaining workers to take a cut to make up some of the shortfall, and raising taxes to make up the remainder. The theory is that everyone shares in the pain. This is all well and good, but when public sector unions get involved, one of those options is taken off the table. The current situation in Wisconsin is emblematic of this. Governor Scott Walker has a plan where no public sector workers would have to be laid off, and no taxes would have to be raised, if state and local workers just agree to contribute a reasonable amount to their generous pensions and healthcare. If these reasonable cuts are not made, 6000 state and local workers will have to be laid off. The unions have said that they would prefer the layoffs to having to take any cuts. In states like California, where Governor Gray Davis was strongly supported by public sector unions, the budget gaps are almost all going to be made up layoffs. Shared sacrifice be damned.

The Mandate of the 112th Congress

2011-01-08T12:43:00.000-06:00

This week, a new Congress has been sworn in (well, mostly), with higher expectations by conservatives than any Congress in at least 2 years. And the first week has been full of a couple of good things, and a lot of good symbolism. One of the first things to happen was a reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House. One of the first bills that the House will pass is a repeal of Obamacare. A new House rule will require every bill to refer to the part of the Constitution where they were authorized, and other House rules will open up debate on amendments and expand floor debate in general. I support all of these things, but I don't care that much. While they are either small positive steps or good symbolism, they don't mean that much.

We have a $14 Trillion national debt, and a $1.3 Trillion national deficit. Japan and China, our two major creditors, are fighting their own fiscal issues, and have been unwilling or unable to buy very many of our bonds. The deficit has been financed by major US banks buying Treasury bonds, with money borrowed from the Fed at 0.25% interest rate, and the Quantitative Easing by the Fed itself. Both of these are inflationary measures with slow effects, because the money goes to the Government first. The debt and the deficit is doing major harm to the economy. Republicans have promised to cut $100 Billion in discretionary spending. Let's say that they do, and that the economy really starts to pick up steam, and grows by 3% in 2010 (increases tax receipts by about $65 Billion). And lets say that Obama has a rare fit of sanity and brings all the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan (saves $100 Billion). Even with all of that, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the media about lost medical science grants and bridges falling down and dumb children who can't learn without grants from the Department of Education, we'd still have $1 Trillion deficit.

And you can't solve the problem with taxes either. It is unlikely that the new Congress will recommend any tax increases (even those that involve lower, simpler tax rates, like Reagan signed into law), but even if so, the historical revenue limit says that would be limited to about 19% of GDP, and they're about 17% of GDP now. So the maximum increase in tax receipts would be about $300 Billion. If they did all of that, plus the reductions in spending mentioned above, there's still a $700 Billion deficit, and it's getting worse with every retired baby boomer. A country with a $14 Trillion debt and a $700 Billion deficit is in better shape than one with a $1.3 Trillion deficit, but it is still headed for default.

The new Republican-led house must pass major reforms to get the country's checkbook in order. They must get Social Security and especially Medicare on the table. They must start talking about things like Medicare vouchers, and admitting to baby boomers that they won't be able to give them what was promised. This won't be easy, but with everyone from Ron Paul to Paul Ryan to Paul Volcker talking about the dire situation of the national debt (in Paul Krugman bizarroland, we need a bigger deficit and I don't know what RuPaul thinks), it is possible. It will take compromise, but any compromise must still lead to financial solvency.

To the 112th Congress, I must say that I like the talk so far, and I like the symbolism. But if the American people wanted great talk and symbolism, we would have elected Glenn Beck and Lee Greenwood. Let's see some results.

Let the Bush Tax Cuts Expire

2010-12-13T17:21:00.000-06:00

I'm not for raising income tax rates. I'm almost never for raising any taxes. If a government entity really doesn't have enough money, and they can't raise enough money with bake sales to build their bombs, roads, sewers, or schools, then maybe, but that instance is so rare that it's not really worth discussing.

Besides that, letting the Bush tax cuts expire is counterproductive. Raising taxes on just the rich from 35% to 39.6% would increase revenue little, if any. The wealthy have the most elastic wages of all income groups. If you raise taxes on someone living paycheck-to-paycheck, you can get more revenue, because not only will they have to pay the taxes, they will have to work more to make up the lost income. The wealthy are much more likely to be in a position to choose whether or to absorb the hit, increase their income (through working more or whatever) to make up for it, or reduce their income due to the reduced incentive. A 4.6% tax increase wouldn't reduce incentives for very many wealthy people, but the marginal ones might make a difference in this recession.

All that being said, the Republicans in Congress should let Bush tax cuts expire. Basically, the agreement has been to extend the Bush tax cuts by two years, spend a lot of Federal dollars on stimulus measures that the President has wanted for some time, and add enough pork to buy off enough Democratic Congresscritters to get it passed. This isn't a good deal. Republican voters should demand more. Sure, taxes will go up January 1, but if the newly-elected Republican House gets on it and passes a better tax bill immediately, workers might only see the taxes for one paycheck. If only there were a ready-made tax plan that reduced rates for almost everyone, would have a stimulative effect on the economy, and reduced the deficit...

... Oh yeah, the plan from the President's Debt Commission. In a rare fit of sanity, the White House appointed a debt commission that ended up recommending a flatter income tax system with tax brackets of 9%, 15%, and 24%, and a corporate income tax rate reduced from an insane 35% to a still uncompetitive, but less onerous 24%. It'll increase revenue by including capital gains as income, and significantly reducing the number of deductions, but almost every taxpayer will end up taking home more. Also, it would greatly simplify tax returns. What's not to like? It has the backing of a bipartisan group from Tom Coburn to Dick Durbin, and the President even supports it. (My guess is only because he commissioned it, but I don't know.) House Republicans should be able to pass it as a package with an up-or-down vote, with no pork, and while the Senate may need to buy off some votes with pork, it won't be the crapfest that the Bush tax cut extension has become. Let's see if Republicans have learned their lesson.

How the new Republican Congress can work with President Obama

2010-10-29T11:45:00.001-05:00

Wednesday morning, we will wake up to a House of Representatives and potentially a Senate taken over by Republicans. Republicans have opposed all of the unpopular programs that President Obama has promoted and will be rewarded by the American people. Democrats and the liberal talking point repeaters have reminded everyone that will listen over and over that opposition to unpopular programs is not governing, and a Republican-majority Congress will have to govern. They're right. But it should be noted that the American people are not sending this new Congress to add Federal programs and laws and regulations, they're sending them to cut the Federal government and repeal laws and regulations. This election is a mandate to increase freedom. But with divided government, to make those cuts and repeal those laws and regulations, it will take bipartisanship. Speaker Boehner (or whoever) will have to work with President Obama, Democrats in the Senate (even if Republicans do take back the Senate, it will be narrow), and probably some House Democrats. To get this started on the right foot, I have a simple proposal: Make the cuts that the Democrats ask for first. Go to the President, and Democrats in Congress, and ask for a list of government programs and bureaucracies to cut (whole or partial), and laws and regulations to repeal. Everything should be on the table. Make those cuts first. This won't be enough, but it will be a start, and a start on the right foot. If Republicans let Democrats take some credit for the low-hanging fruit cuts, they should be more willing to work with Republicans when the cuts get harder. The current fiscal and economic mess is a hole that was dug in a bipartisan fashion. We'll need bipartisanship to get out of it.

Oil Sands Pipeline

2010-05-17T08:22:00.000-05:00

My letter to the Beaumont Enterprise editor:

The Texas Sierra Club is trying to make political hay of the Horizon disaster in the Gulf, and use the public sentiment to block a pipeline project that is necessary for the continued economic growth in Southeast Texas. TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline will bring synthetic and blended synthetic Canadian Crude Oil extracted and upgraded from Oil Sands to Nederland for use in local refineries. Currently the local refineries rely heavily on oil received from Mexico and Venezuela. Since these countries have nationalized their energy sectors, their production has been on a steady decline, and must be replaced with a more reliable source. The Canadian crude oil intended for Texas markets will be upgraded and/or blended to be as clean as or cleaner than the Mexican and Venezuelan crudes that they replace to ensure that the refineries can use them. Without this Canadian oil, some the refineries that thousands of Southeast Texans depend on for jobs may be at risk.

Ron Paul vs. Barack Obama Poll

2010-04-14T09:33:00.000-05:00

There are no details right now, but the Drudge Report is reporting a poll that says that if the 2012 Presidential Election were held today, and the candidates were Ron Paul and Barack Obama, 41% would vote for Paul, 42% for Obama. Now, I hope libertarians and traditional conservatives can unite behind a younger and better (mostly just younger) candidate, but this is encouraging. Despite all attempts to marginalize it, freedom is popular.

A Libertarian Debate on Slavery and Tyranny

2010-04-12T21:30:00.000-05:00

A really interesting debate has been going on between a couple of the contributors from Reason. It started with an article by Future of Freedom Foundation founder Jacob Hornberger where he laments the loss of freedom since the country's founding. In response, Cato executive Vice President David Boaz, writes about the great strides in freedoms that women, minorities, and non-property owners. Hornberger responds that while he certainly should have mentioned slavery and Jim Crow, the federal government had little to no role in most activities by citizens in say the 1880s. Boaz responds that because the antebellum South based its entire economy on slavery, it can't just be a caveat to a celebration of the freedom, and that women and minorities still weren't very free in those 1880s. That's where it stands right now, but I hope it goes a couple more rounds.

It's a great debate to have, and it's the kind of substantive civil debate that seems to only happen among great libertarian minds. Were we freer as a whole when only white men were completely free and the government was less oppressive? Or are we freer as a whole today with a more oppressive government, but with de jure discrimination almost completely eliminated? I don't know where I stand completely, except that I firmly believe that the fact that the United States were founded on the idea of liberty and justice for all led to the abolition of slavery in the West. I think that should be remembered when we try to judge the founding fathers.

You Can't Even Give It Away

2010-04-11T20:01:00.000-05:00

Crossposted from HALC.us

Original Editorial by HALC member Jeff Larson

Even your time doesn’t belong to you

Non-"For-Profit" Intern With Supervisor

Have you lost your job in the last year, or do you know someone else who has lost their job? Most of us have…these are hard times. When the economy gets tough, one strategy is to take an unpaid internship with an established business. The reasoning goes something like this: you’re not going to be working anyplace else for a while, and you’ve decided that you’re not going to have a job like your old one, for whatever reason. But, you have no experience doing some new kind of work that you think you’d enjoy. So, you talk someone into “hiring” you, working for nothing for a few weeks or months. You get relevant experience and on-the-job training without paying for tuition, and your new “employer” gets to try you out for nothing. He or she might even get some useful work out of you for nothing…or next to nothing, since you’ll be taking up time and space while you learn the business. At the end of it all, you might even be able to parlay your internship into a paid position…good for you, since you are no longer unemployed. It’s also good for your new employer, who gets to hire someone who already has a track record with the company, instead of some unknown who fails to live up to their resume.
So, in these precarious economic times, what could possibly be wrong with this arrangement?

Well, as reported in the New York Times, according to US Department of Labor Deputy Secretary Nancy Leppink, head of the Wage and Hour Division, “If you’re a for-profit employer or you want to pursue an internship with a for-profit employer, there aren’t going to be many circumstances where you can have an internship and not be paid and still be in compliance with the law.”
Huh? There’s a law against this? Well, according to Deputy Secretary Leppink, that would be 20 CFR 663; Section 203(e) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which you probably know better as the “minimum wage law”. But, if you’re not getting anything, how can it be said that you’re actually working at a job? The Department of Labor has developed six criteria to determine if you are a “trainee” or an “employee”. All employees must be paid the minimum wage plus time and a half for any overtime. (Apparently, they don’t have such a thing as a category for “volunteers” or even “wannabees”.) And you’d better believe that you must meet all six criteria for being a “trainee”, or the Department of Labor will sue your “employer” to force him to pay you all the wages that you deserve.
What are the six criteria? You can find them below or at this website:

The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction
The training is for the benefit of the trainees
The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation
The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded
The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period
The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training

Let’s take the first one, the one that practically requires the employer to run a vocational school. Have these people ever heard the phrase, “on the job training”? Well, I’ve worked at a very highly skilled job as a NASA contractor, providing mission support to the Space Shuttle (and later the Space Station). Before I could ever sit down at a console and strap on a headset, I had to read through over a thousand pages of manuals. What did that qualify me to do, as a paid employee? It allowed me to sit next to a “certified operator”, watch and listen to what he was doing, ask a lot of stupid questions, and not push any buttons. I also got to do his scut work…check the log to see when this or that happened, find out the address of the command he was going to send, even adding up columns of figures (it had something to do with some spacecraft’s power budget).
They didn’t even trust me with getting coffee. And I can assure you, that’s pretty much exactly how it went for every summer intern who was privileged enough to “sit console” with us…and most of them were thrilled at the opportunity to do so, even if they never came back to work “for real” for NASA.
My friends in other fields tell me that it pretty much goes the same way for interns at their businesses…run the numbers on the Faversham account to see if it’s worth keeping, go out with a line crew and take an inventory on the poles they are working on, stand on the corner of Main and Vine and do a traffic count between the hours of 9 and 11. It is work, it’s generally scut work, it’s never mission critical (unless the employer is dumber than a rock), and if you ask any intern, they’d rather be doing that than sitting in a classroom learning about how to fill out a time card, or the intricacies of how to fill a foreign order without running afoul of Federal export regulations, or some other nonsense. But for some reason, if it doesn’t look like a vocational school setting, to the Feds it isn’t training – and that means they have to pay you for it.
I suppose next employers will have to issue some sort of “Certificate of Training”, certifying that their intern trainee is now certified to, uh, actually do something in the industry. Maybe that would even be something important, like not sexually harassing his or her co-workers, or knowing how to work in a drug-free workplace. At least, that’s what the Feds seem to think that important employee training encompasses. Failing that, the intern employee will have to be paid at least the minimum wage, with Social Security, unemployment benefits, and now health care.
So, if some unemployed person you know tries to get a leg up on a new career by working for nothing, don’t be surprised if they tell you that they hear, “No internship for you!“

Today I was accused of wanting to suppress the vote

2010-04-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

Here in Texas early voting for the primary election runoffs is going on, and I voted today. There was exactly one race on my ballot, for Supreme Court Place 3. (I won't say who I voted for, but I voted against the candidate endorsed by Alberto Gonzales.) When I asked for a Republican ballot, the sweet little old poll worker asked me if I had a baseball bat in my car. I asked, "No, why?" She answered, "To beat voters with." Now she was joking, but the joke clearly represented some long-held bias. Forget the fact that her side has been much worse with voter intimidation recently, and that the Democratic Machine in Jefferson County doesn't exactly have a spectacular record on voting integrity. The truth is that this is why Conservatives have to have the utmost integrity. When Liberals cheat, their voters rationalize it as what's necessary to "do the people's work". When Conservatives cheat, it's part of a sinister plot. We have to be honest, we have to be fair, and we have to be civil, as Senator Tom Coburn has urged for.

The Falklands: Let's Give Neutrality a Try

2010-04-03T13:34:00.000-05:00

There's a new development in an old rivalry that has been well covered in this article by Doug Bandow on Tucker Carlson's excellent new website, The Daily Caller. Argentina has reasserted its long-held claim to the Falkland Islands, and now both Argentina and Great Britain want the United States to take their side. Great Britain has ruled the islands since the last war (and before) and they're calling in favors for supporting the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Combine that with the fact that the United States supported them in the previous Falklands Conflict, and they're sure that the United States should support them now. Argentina has been a strong US ally in Latin America, remembers the old Monroe Doctrine, and thinks that should count for something. Both have legitimate arguments, but they're not really strong enough. The United States has no real interest in the Falklands, and stands nothing to with either ally controlling the islands. We should stay completely, 100% neutral. We shouldn't even make a verbal statement that we support one nation over the other. Argentina has never attacked us. Great Britain hasn't for 180 years or so. Both are trading partners. Both have some claim to the islands. It's none of our business.

It's been a while since the United States tried neutrality, so we may not be very good at it. But the Falkland Islands conflict offers us a way to baby-step our way back into it. Who knows, maybe we'll like it. If it works here, maybe we can try it in Korea, Japan, Iran, or maybe even Palestine.

The 3rd Texas Gubernatorial Debate

2010-02-26T19:04:00.002-06:00

A 3rd Texas Republican Gubernatorial debate was filmed in secret and the footage released on the internet. The results are revealing. Here's the video:

Texas Gubernatorial Debate 3 from guerilla.effect on Vimeo.

The Significance of Debra Medina

2010-02-17T20:16:00.004-06:00

Article by Junta Member Will, also on halc.us and The Red Pub Magazine.

The 2010 Texas Governor’s race is arguably the most influential race in America. Texas is the largest conservative leaning state in the union and this implies that if Texas sets a good example then states may be willing emulators.

I first met Debra back in 2007 while standing in for proper leadership of the grassroots movement in Beaumont. She gladly drove the long trek to help remedy our hopelessly deep ignorance of grass roots politics.

Though she was knowledgeable, it was clear that she was merely just one of us, not having anything remotely akin to political super powers or that larger-than-life verve politicians often have. The only thing obvious about her was her sincerity.

To those involved in the Season of the Fix, that is the 2008 Texas GOP Convention season, where the party was enabling and rewarding bad actors, it is easy to say that for Medina, and the Liberty movement in Texas, it was a tough time. Debra was handed defeat after defeat by the entrenched elements in the party, and even some dissent about tactics by friends. Yet all of that disappointment evidently only fastened her resolve.

After these defeats, and contrary to contemporary wisdom, she decided to run for Governor; she started by tapping into the remnant of the grass roots movement, and tirelessly meeting every group that would have her, and some that wouldn’t.

Early on her opponents monopolized the money in the race, however, she had cornered the grass roots energy.

As a candidate she has one strategy: simply be the most prepared to lead. This means being more educated on the topics and not relying on sacred rhetorical cows. She has a very developed intellectual model of governance; policy is a function of the model not the other way around. In her model: men are best when free, everything else follows. Thus, men must be able to secure freedom and keep the fruits of their labor, implying that a government’s reason for existence is to maximize freedom.

One must bear in mind the new candidates must endure the scrutiny of a million opinions; a million sets of ideas battling their way to the top in the unfettered intellectual market place of ideas in the coffee shops, pubs and KC halls of Texas.

I cannot conjure the word for the opposite of a bubble, but if there is one it surely describes where she has dwelt for the last year.

And, what has a year’s worth of campaigning and time spent under the lamp wrought? Medina has simply become the most Coherent Candidate in this race in Texas and, potentially, in the Nation.

All that said, it does not do service to why she is important, for she is so because she is the realization of a simple thesis: Does the Toiling Class, those whose living is not based on the redistribution of wealth, have a Right to elect their own candidates?

It could very well be that Medina is an idea whose time has come; showing that a mere citizen with purpose, can develop the talents needed to free themselves, that politics need not be held solely by the political elite, in fact that the power does belong to the people, that is, We Texans.

News Flash: Bank Bailout Created Moral Hazard

2010-02-01T06:28:00.002-06:00

Someone at the Treasury is actually doing his job, and admits that TARP caused the big banks that took on too much bad debt in the past decade to get bigger and take on even more bad debt.

Link

The government's response to the financial meltdown has made it more likely the United States will face a deeper crisis in the future, an independent watchdog at the Treasury Department warned.
The problems that led to the last crisis have not yet been addressed, and in some cases have grown worse, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the trouble asset relief program, or TARP. The quarterly report to Congress was released Sunday.
"Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," Barofsky wrote.
Since Congress passed $700 billion financial bailout, the remaining institutions considered "too big to fail" have grown larger and failed to restrain the lavish pay for their executives, Barofsky wrote. He said the banks still have an incentive to take on risk because they know the government will save them rather than bring down the financial system.
Barofsky also said his office is investigating 77 cases of possible criminal and civil fraud, including crimes of tax evasion, insider trading, mortgage lending and payment collection, false statements and public corruption.

Who could have possibly predicted this? Well, basically anyone that has read Economics in One Lesson. It's too bad that the smartest financial minds are more concerned with inventing new ways to defraud American consumers, investors, and taxpayers than sound economics.

A Huge Win for Freedom

2010-01-21T22:41:00.002-06:00

No, not Scott Brown. That remains to be seen.

The biggest win for freedom this week came today. Today, the Supreme Court ruled as the 1st Amendment is written, and overturned the part of the Incumbent Protection Act, known more commonly as McCain-Feingold, that said that only corporations that could spend money on media time to support a national candidate or issue were media corporations. The Supreme Court reversed precedent from the Progressive Era and said that 1st Amendment Freedom of Speech includes political speech by corporations. This ruling still has a major gap. Individual contributions are still limited to $2400 per year per candidate. Hopefully, this will be cleared up soon. If I want to mortgage my house and donate all of that money to Bill Richardson in hopes that he releases Roswell Files, I should be able to do that, and the First Amendment gives me that right. That right was extended to corporations by Dartmouth College v. Woodward in 1874, but it's been afforded to individuals since the 1st Amendment was ratified.

The Real Lesson of the NY-23 Race

2009-10-27T21:59:00.003-05:00

The conservative blogosphere has been abuzz about the New York 23rd district special election, and conservatives have been lining up to pick sides. This reliably Republican rural district in way upstate New York, vacated when President Obama appointed John Hugh to Secretary of the Army. Instead of holding primary, the party county chairmen picked the candidates. On the left is down-the-line Democrat Bill Owens, in the center is socially liberal and economically moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava, and on the right is Doug Hoffman of the Conservative Party. Often, the Conservative Party endorses the Republican candidate, and Doug Hoffman initially sought the Republican nomination, and was nominated as a Conservative when the pro-choice, pro-gay marriage Scozzafava (who voiced support for the bank bailout) was nominated. Recent polls show Doug Hoffman leading, which would certainly empower the Tea Party movement, and the New York Times has declared the race a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. But the truth is that grassroots Republicans have already been indicted in this race. If they really wanted a down-the-line conservative, they should have been involved before now. If Conservatives get upset at the Republican Party, take their ball and leave, the moderates, neoconservatives, and liberals will take control of the Party. And when they do, don't expect them to pick anything other than moderates, neoconservatives, or liberals. If conservatives are upset with the Republican Party, that is all the more reason to get involved and try to change it. The process might not be democratic, but the Republican Party county chairmen unanimously chose Dede Scozzafava as their candidate. I'd like to think that involved conservatives would have changed that, and we wouldn't have to be dividing the center-right voters.

The Incompatibility of UN Goals

2009-10-18T22:52:00.004-05:00

Tonight was the premier of Not Evil Just Wrong, Irish director Phelim McAleer's new documentary that challenges the Climate Change religious beliefs and specifically, the claims of An Inconvenient Truth. I watched it streamed online courtesy of Andrew Breitbart. Overall, the film was somewhat disappointing to me, long on emotion and mood, and short on details, but central point is one that needs to be said more often. Environmental controls, especially those that restrict carbon dioxide emissions, create poverty. Since the UN has been so bad at achieving it's original goal, world peace, it's primary activities in recent years have been centered around trying to alleviate poverty and fighting CO2 emissions. I question the ability of the UN to do either, but the combination is impossible. Three things are necessary to get third world countries into the first world: a stable political climate, economic freedom, and cheap energy. Restricting CO2 emissions eliminates two of those necessary legs of development. Giving in to the extreme environmentalists will not only hurt the ability to alleviate poverty for workers or the developing world, it will likely create more poverty.

Tricky Chick

2009-10-11T11:43:00.003-05:00

Greatest photo of a politician this year.

What President Obama Should Do With the Nobel Prize Money

2009-10-09T17:13:00.004-05:00

As many could probably predict, I disagree with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Obama has slightly reduced military action in Iraq, and has started the process to close the prisons in Guantanamo Bay, but he has dramatically escalated the Afghanistan War, spread it into Pakistan, expanded the ability of the NSA to spy on American citizens, started major saber rattling with Iran, and supported a deposed would-be dictator in Honduras. I joked on Facebook that maybe it should be renamed the Nobel War Prize. Despite my unheard objections, the Nobel committee has given the Peace Prize to our warmongering President. That's water under the bridge. But since President Obama has promised to give the $1.4 million prize to charity, he could do something really meaningful with it. May I suggest he give it to one of the nominees that really deserved it. (A few here and here.) I would give it to either Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition, Denis Mukwege, or Sima Samar. By empowering one of these worthy causes, Obama would have done more for peace and human rights than anything he's done so far.

To be fair to President Obama, though, I don't think many politicians deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. Nelson Mandela deserved it for his efforts to end apartheid, but few others. For the most part, politicians create war and oppress individuals, and free people acting out of love improve the human condition. That should be acknowledged.

Saving Grace: Benkiser’s role in Perry Campaign an appeal to Evangelicals

2009-10-09T16:54:00.002-05:00

Cross-posted from halc.us, written by Junta member Benito.

On September 26, 2009, Tina Benkiser, now former Chair of the TX GOP, announced her resignation to join the re-election campaign of Texas Governor Rick Perry as senior advisor. According to the announcement made on Rick Perry’s website, her new role in the campaign was chosen because “she will be an important voice in promoting our message of fiscal responsibility and limited government.”

Perhaps, but it is more likely that Benkiser was tapped because of her significant, yet waning, influence with TXGOP leadership and strong Evangelical support. Since 2003, Benkiser enjoyed success in flooding the TX GOP with Social Conservatives. Now, Benkiser’s new role in the Perry campaign indicates a direct appeal to Evangelical Christians. Benkiser, an evangelical herself, has energized the social conservative base during her tenure with the Texas GOP, but her success in this arena alarmed many party faithful since evangelicals have been portrayed as being myopically concerned with social issues while tolerating fiscal and civic mismanagement.

Additionally, during the 2008 primaries, Benkiser, along with many GOP leaders, alienated the party’s liberty movement. She was accused of repeatedly breaking TX GOP rules to block their attempts at party reform through a genuine return to principles outlined in the platform. This even elicited a “fair convention” mini-movement, complete with shirts that bore the expression, “The GOP Rules! Let’s follow them”.

A Fresh Start for the RPT

Enrique Rangler, A-J Austin bureau chief, believes Benkiser’s move out is just what the GOP needs to begin rebuilding. He may be right.

“If Benkiser had run for another term next year, Tom Mechler of Amarillo, Mark McCaig of Katy and others unhappy with her leadership would have challenged her.

Mechler, who remains a candidate for party chairman, and McCaig, who is no longer running because Benkiser is bowing out, wanted to oust her because under her watch Texas Democrats have made significant gains, especially in the House.

Yet, the prospect of a nasty power struggle was one some GOP loyalists – already worried about the damage the Perry-Hutchison fight may do the party – feared.

“The resignation of Tina Benkiser from the Republican Party of Texas provides a great opportunity for Texas Republicans to begin to right the ship,” said Debra Medina, who is also seeking the party’s nomination for governor. “The Republican Party of Texas is in serious trouble and more of the same will not save us.”

Culture War against Hispanics

Benkiser’s social conservatism included a culture war against Mexican immigrants. Immediately before the 2008 convention, she commented on immigration restrictions saying, “We believe that we are in a war for our culture, and our activists understand that the principles that we believe in are the principles that will make Texas a better place and make the lives of Texans better every single day.” Declaring war against the state’s fastest growing minority, however, runs counter to attempts by the party to reach out to Hispanics.

In what appears to be an attempt to reach out to hispanic voters, Perry’s campaign has hired Austin-based advertising agency, LatinWorks. The Austin company will be “helping on a number of message delivery issues, including Hispanic outreach,” said Mark Miner, spokesperson for Perry’s re-election Campaign.

Fiscal Woes

While some would hope that new RPT leadership would be more inclusive, perhaps the most room for improvement would be in how the business of the party is run. When Benkiser took over the reins of the state party, the party had $194,500 cash on hand and $70,000 in debt. She leaves the party with $52,000 cash on hand and $258,200 in debt. Running a party can get expensive, but to be fair to Benkiser, no one has ever accused her of being a fiscal conservative.

Financial Writer Blames Conservatives for Destroying the Dollar

2009-10-08T23:48:00.004-05:00

That's right. Instead of blaming the Fed and it's doubling of the money supply since last year, or blaming the government for their ridiculous spending that necessitated all that money printing, Reggie Abaca, blames conservatives. You see, by telling people that the Fed is printing an incredible amount of money, and explaining how that's bad for the value of the dollar, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck are destroying the dollar, and that's the reason gold went up this week. It's not the act of printing money that causes inflation, it's telling people about it. I think Mr. Abaca could use a little refresher course on how inflation works, courtesy of Scrooge McDuck and Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Glenn Beck is the new Oprah

2009-09-26T16:23:00.004-05:00

I have been a Glenn Beck fan for a while, mostly because I tended to listen to anyone from the right willing to criticize Bush, but recently, his show is getting wierder, and I like it less. I still enjoy his radio show, and I loved his CNN show when he still had it. Beck's Fox News TV show is becoming more popular, and I couldn't put my finger on what I liked less about it. Then yesterday, he had his patriot moms show, where he had a bunch of conservative moms, most of whom homeschooled their children, on for a conversation with them. They complained about issues that they faced with society and government, and he listened to them. You could feel his empathy, and the moms were obviously glad to have a voice and feel a part of something. Several of them had very real problems of harassment by bureaucrats at various levels of government. Then it hit me. Glenn Beck is using the Oprah Winfrey model to go after Oprah's viewers. He gives a voice to the voiceless, talks about problems that average, everyday women face, and gets viewers that care about those problems. Just like Oprah, he gets viewers that are involved in the show beyond just viewing. When he recommends a book, it flies to the top of best-seller lists. He challenges viewers to do something to make a difference in their world. And hundreds of thousands of them show up to Washington at his suggestion. Beck's new job as housewife hero is powerful one for entertainer/newsman, but that with that power comes great responsibility. I pray that Beck will keep his legions of followers pointed in the right direction.

Department of Energy Subsidizes Sports Cars for Millionaires

2009-09-25T15:58:00.004-05:00

A few months after the Department of Energy gave a $465 million sweetheart subsidized loan to Tesla Motors, to build two $100,000+ all-electric sports cars in the UK, now they've given a $529 million sweetheart subsidized loan to Fisker Automotive, an Al Gore-backed company that will build an $89,000 hybrid sports car. It is stupid that the Federal Government is taking money from Americans and subsidizing Finnish and British jobs when there is increasing unemployment in the United States (or anytime for that matter). It is criminal that the Federal Government is taking money from poor and middle-class taxpayers and subsidizing toys that only the very wealthy can afford. It goes to prove that big Government programs serve the most wealthy on the backs of workers and entrepreneurs.

Vote Yes on Prop 11 This November

2009-09-20T12:57:00.005-05:00

The Texas Constitutional Amendment election is Tuesday, November 3. In the upcoming weeks, I'll examine all of the proposed Texas Constitutional Amendments, but I want to give special attention to Prop 11, because it is worth campaigning for. Here's the text:

“The constitutional amendment to prohibit the taking, damaging, or destroying of private property for public use unless the action is for the ownership, use, and enjoyment of the property by the State, a political subdivision of the State, the public at large, or entities granted the power of eminent domain under law or for the elimination of urban blight on a particular parcel of property, but not for certain economic development or enhancement of tax revenue purposes, and to limit the legislature’s authority to grant the power of eminent domain to an entity.”

This is a rather narrowly-written amendment, but it represents a significant increase in property rights protection. The amendment was written in direct response to the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court case. This case ruled that an increased property value, and subsequent increased property tax take, was a public use, and therefore private property could be transferred from one owner to another if the new owner would pay more property taxes than the current owner. In the Kelo case, the City of New London, Connecticut, took Suzette Kelo's (and many of her neighbor's) home and gave it to Pfizer because the complex that Pfizer would build would be be valued higher and worth more in property taxes than the homeowners in the neighborhood. Proposition 11 would effectively prohibit governments in Texas from using eminent domain to take land for anything other than explicit public purpose. Eminent domain is one of the most anti-liberty powers that governments have, so it should be strictly limited. Prop 11 would apply some necessary common sense restrictions to that power.

Global Warming Hysteria Distracting From Real Environmental Problems

2009-09-13T11:13:00.003-05:00

I have a confession to make: I'm an environmentalist. I'm not the kind of environmentalist that pushes for international bans on DDT production based on weak science, allowing millions of African people to die of malaria, but I am an environmentalist. I think governments have a fundamental responsibility to promote responsible use resources and protect habitat and shared resources from contamination. I'm glad that I live in the most environmentally responsible major industrial power in the world. Now I haven't bought into the global warming hysteria, so I've been accused of being anti-environmentalist. But now, more and more environmentalists are realizing that the Global Warming religion has distracted environmentalists from major environmental problems in our world. From the BBC (Read the whole article, it's interesting):

As the UN climate summit in Copenhagen approaches, exhortations that "we must get a deal" and warnings that climate change is "the greatest challenge we face as a species" are to be heard in virtually every political forum.
But if you look back to the latest definitive check on the planet's environmental health - the Global Environment Outlook (Geo-4), published by the UN two years ago - what emerges is a picture of decline that goes way, way beyond climate change.
Species are going extinct at perhaps 1,000 times the normal rate, as key habitats such as forests, wetlands and coral reefs are plundered for human infrastructure.
Aquifers are being drained and fisheries exploited at unsustainable speed. Soils are becoming saline, air quality is a huge cause of illness and premature death; the human population is bigger than our one Earth can currently sustain.

Now some of that is overstated hysteria, especially the last clause, but a lot of that is true. Deforestation and habitat loss, especially in Central America, is causing more environmental damage right now than all the carbon dioxide that humans have ever produced. Fresh water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, and the air quality in China and India (among others) is becoming dangerously bad.

With all of these very real problems, why do environmentalists, especially government environmental regulators, seem so focused on whether the world is 1 degree warmer or 0.8 degrees warmer in 100 years? None of the real issues offer them governments the kind of opportunities for control that Carbon Dioxide emissions control does. Free enterprise, with developments in desalination technologies, can make a major dent in the fresh water shortage. Governments can preserve habitats, but landowners often do a better job, and land preservation doesn't offer government much behavior control. Western governments can't do much about China's and India's air quality. But humans emit carbon dioxide everywhere they go and with every thing they do, so carbon dioxide regulations offers governments control over everything in everyone's life.

Obama's Speech to Student's Leaked

2009-09-05T12:43:00.008-05:00

This is a Pitchfork and Musket Junta exclusive. Since the Junta have such a good relationship with President Obama's teleprompter, we occasionally get scoops. Here is the full text:

Good, um, afternoon, children of America. Thank you for, uh, letting me speak to you today. I'm going to talk to you about how you can be as successful as me, if you just work hard, have the right connections, and worm your way into the right, uh, elite circles. First things first: to all of you in public schools (which I would suppose would be all of you, since I can't imagine to many homeschoolers or private school kids wasting their time on this), get out now. Just like I had to do. Indonesian public school wasn't going to allow me to get where I wanted to be, so I moved back to Hawaii and enrolled in the best private school in the state. In the United States, with the politicized Department of Education that we have, you're at an even bigger disadvantage in public schools. Now, some of your parents don't have the money and are wondering how to pay for private school. Well, just get your, um, millionaire banker grandmother to twist some arms and get you a scholarship. It worked for me.

Some of you won't to listen to me, and will stay in those horrible public schools, but that's okay. Not everyone is cut out to be President or even a University of Chicago Law Professor or Community Organizer. We'll need you on welfare or in low-paying service jobs to help bully, I mean, influence voters.

While you are at your elite private school, make sure that you make all of the connections that you can. They will help you get into an elite liberal arts university, maybe even in the Ivy League. This is important, because to fully understand the direction of the country, you need to understand the evils of capitalism, and the best way to learn that is from the wealthiest communists in the world. Columbia and Harvard, and other important universities attract many great professors whose families have made so much money that they really understand the inequality that capitalism brings about, and who really want to tear down the opportunities for other people to have to suffer from having so much. Understanding the evils of capitalism will help you be a leader in this new America that we are trying to create. Make sure that you develop strong relationships with your most, um, radical professors, as these will help you succeed in Party politics in the future.

Now some of you are worrying how to pay for this elite education. Don't worry about that now. Just borrow the money from the Government, who will have the Fed print it out for you. If you learn well enough, you can move to Chicago, become a community organizer, do great work for the Party, and have someone else pay your student loans for you.

I thank you for your time, and, um, tell your parents that you need the healthcare bill to pass.

Minimum Wage Hike: Record Teenage Unemployment

2009-09-05T10:04:00.004-05:00

From the NY Times:

This August, the teenage unemployment rate — that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one — was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers over all who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history.... Increases in the minimum wage may have made employers reluctant to hire teenagers, said Marvin H. Kosters, a resident scholar emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the car wash where I got a job at 15 would still hire some of these teenagers part-time (I did survive a minimum wage hike while I was there - $4.25 to $5.15), but it has been shown over and over again that the effect of a minimum wage hike is to disallow the lowest quality, poorest, entry-level workers a job. I'm glad that the New York Times is at least reporting well-supported economic theory.

Real Live Homegrown Terrorism

2009-09-05T09:27:00.003-05:00

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has been extremely concerned about homegrown terrorism - putting pro-life activists, anti-government/anti-Federal Reserve activists, and returning veterans on terrorist watch lists. There have been a couple of criminal activities that have been painted as terrorism to ensure that these lists are taken more seriously. Meanwhile, in Washington, a real-live homegrown terrorist organization is active and committing acts of terrorism. The Environmental Liberation Front tore down a radio tower in Everett Washington, because they thought it might mess with trumpeter swan habitat. The ELF was once the #1 homegrown terrorist organization in the country. Now, as terrorism goes, this was relatively minor, and some of the individual criminal acts by "right-wing" extremists has been worse. But there has been no organized right-wing terrorist plot to justify the villainization of legitimate protesters. No matter how politicized and anti-citizen the Department of Homeland Security becomes, I hope local law enforcement pays attention to the real terrorists, and lets those who have legitimate complaints about government protest without harassment by law enforcement.

Iranian Revolution: The Neoconservative Legacy

2009-06-20T12:42:00.003-05:00

During the secondary justification of the Iraqi Invasion, after it had become increasingly clear that the WMD excuse was a farce, the neoconservatives began saying that by freeing the Iraqi people, they would put the spark of democracy in their neighbors. Now with incredible, brave resistance to their government by Iranians, I am sure some will claim that the Iranian people were inspired by a freed and newly stabilized Iraqis. There's probably some truth to this. But even if the young, brave Iranian revolutionaries succeed and establish a more liberal democracy, and the fledgling Iraqi pseudo-democratic government stabilizes and becomes more free, the neoconservative model should not be considered accurate. The fact remains that the best way to spread freedom remains the Washington/Jefferson model- "Act for ourselves and not for others," and "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none." Spreading democracy at the point of a gun is poor strategy and wasteful of valuable lives and treasure. Allowing trade and communication between Americans and oppressed peoples is still the best way to spread freedom, even if other strategies work at times.

Still, no matter the official position of our government, we as relatively free Americans should offer our support and our prayers

Republican Party of Texas Wastes a Legislative Session

2009-06-01T10:38:00.005-05:00

Here's a question for you Texas Republicans out there: What state issue is most important to you? Is it securing the border? Property tax reform? Getting rid of the franchise tax? Civil liberties protections, including gun rights? Or is it requiring that voters present one form of photographic identification or two forms of identification lacking a photograph before voting? If you chose that last choice, popularly known as Voter ID, good for you. Your state party went to bat for you this legislative session. They failed to get it through the House of Representatives over Democratic opposition, but they tried. If you careabout anything else, your state party failed to even speak for you.
I certainly think ballot integrity is a worthy cause, but right now, in Texas, it's a solution looking for a problem. There are rumors every year of voting irregularities in the Rio Grande Valley, and in some of the inner-cities, but most investigations seem to find only small amounts of localized fraud. I don't pretend to know how the inner mind of any of our state party leadership works, but, to me, the only logical reasoning for this was to win a public relations by getting Democrats on record "supporting voter fraud". Unfortunately, the Democrats might have even won the PR battle, as the media and much of the public seems to have accepted the Democrats ridiculous claim that Voter ID would disenfranchise legitmate voters.
On the other hand, Texas has many opportunities for real, meaningful reform: Some would like a plan to replace all of the very high Texas property taxes, which unfairly target small farmers, independent ranchers, and the elderly, with a small increase in the sales tax. Others have talked about replacing the anti-business Margins Tax with a 1/2% increase in the sales tax. (To their credit, conservative Republicans and Democrats in the legislature temporarily increased the exemption on gross receipts from $600,000 to $1,000,000 this year, with no help from the Republican Party.) Still others have talked about ending the diversion of gasoline tax money away from transportation, so that needed highway, rail, and port projects could be funded without increasing taxes. The Republican Party was nearly silent on all of these issues. They were completely silent on all of these issues until it looked like a gasoline tax increase might be passed, and they panicked and quickly threw together an opposition. I'm sure that those who care most about enforcing the border, civil liberties, religious liberty, parental rights, or health freedoms could give a similar list of worthwile legislative pushes that fit within Conservative ideology.
Although they have lost much of the goodwill and support that was fought for over many years, Republicans in Texas are still a majority, hold majorities in both houses of the Legislature, and hold every state-wide elected position. With that kind of clout, they should be able to pass meaningful reform that makes a real difference in citizen's lives. Overall, it was a pretty forgettable legislative session. There were many efforts to quash liberty, like the nearly-passed statewide smoking ban, but overall, not much good or bad legislation passed, and the status quo won. Still, I wonder how many conservative victories we could have had, if only we had a Republican Party with vision.

Junta Consults for New Texas Declaration of Independence

2009-05-14T15:22:00.003-05:00

Many thanks to The Pitchfork and Musket Junta's own Wesley Linder for his sage advice and revision suggestions on my inflammatory but thought-provoking new post on www.patriotwriter.blogspot.com .

Inspired by a recent trip to the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, I again read the Texas Declaration of Independence penned in 1836. Again, those timeless words struck me to my core. This time, however, I made good on my internal promise to update that fine document. My initial attempt is available for your viewing pleasure on my personal blog. Comments are welcomed!

At the most, it's over the top. At the least, it's food for thought. Hopefully, however, it will spur us into action--in a higher gear.

God bless the patriots!

A Nuclear Armed World is a Polite World

2009-04-25T09:40:00.005-05:00

President Obama has been making a lot of noise about nuclear nonproliferation lately. One of his visions, which he has held since he first moved to Hyde Park and his education by the great progressive thinkers began, is a nuclear-weapon-free world. This is a very dangerous vision. The greatest deterrent to war that the world has ever known is nuclear power. Before the development nuclear weapons, industrialization had grown the size of war beyond everything that the world had known up to that point. In the two world wars of the 20th Century, a total of 98 million people were killed. Larger, more mobile, and more long-range weapons made it much easier to create massive destruction on a very large scale. But at the end of World War 2, a game-changing weapon made its debut. The atomic bomb.

The atomic bomb, and later development of the hydrogen bomb, has raised the threat of assured-destruction of anyone who starts a major war against a nuclear power. With all due respect to my hero, Barry Goldwater, it is not "just another weapon". To this day, no nuclear power has ever attacked another nuclear power directly, despite some of them being enemies: United States - Soviet Union and Pakistan - India, specifically. There is always a threat of nuclear arms falling into the hands of a suicidal madman, and we should work to prevent that. But for most countries and world leaders, even crazy ones like Kim Jong-Il, the threat of mutually-assured destruction is enough to keep them from using nuclear weapons. Even with world-dictator visions, the threat of France destroying Berlin and Munich at the push of a couple of buttons would have given Hitler second thoughts. And conventional weapons have advanced to the point that a non-nuclear world war could be even more destructive today.

Now I'm not necessarily saying that the steps President Barack Obama have taken so far are wrong. Just because the United States needs nuclear weapons to prevent world war doesn't necessarily mean that we need 10,000 of them, or 2500 on trigger-alert. A country having an enormous nuclear arsenal is like an individual having a 50-gun personal arsenal. The increased safety beyond having enough weapons to protect yourself is almost nil, and might be outweighed by the marginally increased chance of accident. It might be possible to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal significantly, and save some money in the process. He might even get to 5% of his desired $100,000,000 in savings by reducing the arsenal to some more reasonable size. It's just that his vision is dangerous, and would kill any eventual prospect of world peace.

Of Presidents and Prime Ministers

2009-03-31T22:38:00.008-05:00

The Year was 2002. Having made quick work of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and completed all military objectives that his administration had planned ahead for with little effort and little cost to American and Allied lives, President George W. Bush turned his eyes a little to the West. He really wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein in Iraq and implement a more America-friendly regime. Disobedience to UN mandates and intelligence suggesting there might be weapons of mass destruction gave him cover, but President Bush wasn't particularly popular abroad, there wasn't much support outside of the US for the Iraq invasion, and President Bush needed someone to support his plans.

Enter Tony Blair. The United Kingdom's Prime Minister was young, vibrant, moderate, reform-minded, and incredibly popular. There were newspaper articles about his meetings with the teachers of his children. He was seen as a man of the people, a Prime Minister that common people could identify with. In 1997, under his leadership, the "New" Labour Party had given the Conservatives their most devastating defeat ever. And importantly for President Bush, PM Blair wanted Hussein gone as much as he did.

It didn't exactly work as planned. Instead of PM Blair's popularity gaining support for President Bush's invasion, it killed PM Blair's popularity. The United States and United Kingdom had allies: Canada, Australia, Georgia, Spain for a while, and (don't forget) Poland, but many important, reliable allies like France and Germany refused to join the party. PM Blair was called as a Bush-loving neoconservative in his home country, and his support eroded to the point that he stepped down from his post in 2007.

Seven years later, while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are still being fought, the world has turned its attention to the worldwide banking crisis and recession. During the first days of the recession, the world seemed to want to work together. When credit froze up, most major countries bailed out their banks, expanded deposit insurance, expanded their currency supply, and did what they could to insure that bank failures were minimized. One leader wants to do more. Much, much more. UK's Prime Minister Gordon Brown fully believes in a government spending a country out of recession, and is prepared to print as many Pounds as it takes to do it. If the UK destroys its own currency to inflate itself out of recession, it needs its trading partners to do the same, or it will destroy the standard of living for UK citizens. Unfortunately for PM Brown, many of the UK's trading partners are refusing to spend their way out of the mess, and are preferring to clean up their regulatory systems and provide a growth atmosphere for a market recovery. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is off fighting windmills of competing currencies, and many of the rest of the G20 leaders from PM Stephen Harper of Canada to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to libertarian-leaning President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic (current EU Presidency) are taking a more conservative approach. PM Brown doesn't have the respect, and certainly doesn't have the popularity to convince them.

Enter United States President Barack Obama. He's young, vibrant, liberal, and incredibly popular. He's easily the most popular world leader right now. Some European commentators have said that his "Barackness" will convince their citizens and politicians. In November, he and his Democratic Party gave the Republicans their worst defeat in years. And importantly for PM Brown, President Obama wholly endorses the idea of governments spending their way out of recession. At this week's G20 meetings, PM Brown is counting on President Obama's popularity to give him cover and gain support for the borrow-and-print-to-recover economic plan. They will gain some support, but the President and the Prime Minister need most or all major trading partners to agree to go along, or their plan doesn't have a chance of making life better for their citizens. If France, Germany, China, Japan, or Russia decide to play a different game or take their ball and go home, PM Brown doesn't get cover, he takes President Obama down with him. If "Don't Forget Spain" becomes the next "Don't Forget Poland", President Obama's popularity will fade quickly.

Predicting a $2,000,000,000,000 Budget - Update

2009-03-20T11:23:00.002-05:00

On January 7, I made what I thought then was a bold prediction, that the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009 would be $2 Trillion. Today, the CBO projects a $1.9 Trillion budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009. Odds are that many more stimulus packages are on the way. I'd like to revise my prediction up to an immoral $2.5 Trillion. The words of Senator Tom Coburn are worth repeating: “The greatest moral issue of our time isn’t abortion, it’s robbing our next generation of opportunity. You’re going to save a child from being aborted so they can be born into a debtor’s prison?” However, my response to the Good Doctor is that at the rate we are going, we may not be able to afford to finance debtor's prisons. Federal bankruptcy is looking more and more likely every day.

Congress May Have Saved Us 0.045% of the Money They Wasted on AIG

2009-03-20T00:13:00.006-05:00

Hooray!

Sure, between the Federal Reserve and Congress $180 Billion of future taxpayers' wealth might have been wasted on AIG in two bailouts. Sure, untold tens of billions of dollars of that passed right through AIG and went to banks in Europe and Asia. Sure, these coordinated actions by Congress and the Fed has propped up zombie banks that destroy untold billions more wealth. But Congress is going to tax the bonuses on people work for AIG Financial Products, and make more than $250,000 per year, at 90%. If this action isn't challenged and ruled unconstitutional, they are going to get back 90% of some portion of the $170 Million in bonuses that represents less than 1/10 of 1 percent of the money that they've wasted on that one company this year. Good thing they're looking out for us and our children.

Reports of the Death of the GOP are Somewhat Exagerrated (Part 2)

2009-03-18T08:40:00.001-05:00

In the Generic Congressional Ballot poll, Republicans now lead Democrats 41%-39%. This hasn't happened in years, and Republicans have won majorities in years where they trailed by several percentage points. A general rule of thumb for Congressional races is that Americans generally like their Republican better than all the rest, and that they like all the rest of the Democrats better than the one that they're watching daily. Let them start to practice what they preach, and people really start to like the Republicans.

Zimbabwe

2009-03-12T11:34:00.002-05:00

The Junta's favorite governor, Mark Sanford, invoked comparisons to Zimbabwe in describing the stimulus package.

On Earmarks, Ron Paul, and Cognitive Dissonance

2009-03-12T00:21:00.007-05:00

All of the tubes of the internet are abuzz with a speech that Ron Paul made Tuesday, calling for more earmarks. Despite the fact that I actively supported Ron Paul's campaign for President and am supporting the Campaign for Liberty, I can't support this. Let me go through Dr. Paul's claims:

1. Earmarks are a tiny part of the overall budget. - Agree completely.
2. Cutting earmarks out doesn't take away from the budget. - Mostly true, but it ignores future costs. If you request $750,000 for Houston Memorial Hermann HealthCare system for Life Flight operations center in an earmark, odds are that is going to have ongoing costs. And as we know from New Orleans, if the Federal Government builds it, everyone expects the Federal Government to maintain it.
3. Earmarks add transparency to the budget. - Not true at all anymore. Since the Coburn-Obama Act in 2006, every dollar spent by the government is tracked at USASpending.gov. (Yes, I know that the bank bailouts aren't being tracked here. I think that's illegal based off this act, and I'm pretty sure that's the only off-the-record spending.)
4. Earmarking is a responsibility of Congress. - Not in any historical sense, and not Constitutionally. Since the beginning of the Republic, the Congress set the budget for the executive departments, gave them laws, and let them spend the money to execute those laws. More importantly, most earmarks, such as $25,000 to install security cameras at Fox Run Apartments in Victoria, are for specific welfare, and not general welfare as required by Article I Section 8 of the Constitution.
5. What's considered an earmark is confusing - An earmark is a line item in a budget that directs Federal funds to a specific project. That's not really confusing to me. Dr. Paul's example of a weapons system would be an earmark if picked by Congress, and not an earmark if picked by the Pentagon.
6. The Federal Reserve is worse than all earmarks, and should be audited - Agree completely.

The fact is that earmarks allow all sorts of things to be passed that would never stand on their own. Congressmen get to add things for their district, as long as they vote for things in other districts. It's an I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you'll-scratch-mine system that is rotten to the core. The fact is that as bad as bureaucracies are, they have laws that direct them in how they spend their money, and they have bid processes that get rid of some of the waste. Congress is making up the laws about spending as they go, and they may or may not have a good bid process.

Now I really don't have that much of a problem that Dr. Paul requested the earmarks. If he had said, "The people of the 14th district of Texas pay a lot of taxes, they've been devastated by a hurricane, and I'm going to make sure that some of their tax dollars come back to help rebuild," I wouldn't have a problem with it. But he defended the corrupt earmark system, and that's where he loses me.

Here's a solution for Dr. Paul: The one-subject-at-a-time rule. Congress has operated under this rule before. The concept is this: Spending must be passed on a by-department basis. No omnibuses. You can't fund National Park bathrooms in a Highway Administration bill. I know Dr. Paul's friend John Culberson supports this. Dr. Paul needs to get on board as well.

Pat Buchanan: Pitchfork Time

2009-03-03T09:38:00.004-06:00

When one of the Pitchfork and Musket Junta's favorite public figures, Pat Buchanan, writes an article called Pitchfork Time, the Junta takes notice. This article is a good one. Here is an excerpt:

In his campaign and inaugural address, Barack Obama cast himself as a moderate man seeking common ground with conservatives. Yet, his budget calls for the radical restructuring of the U.S. economy, a sweeping redistribution of power and wealth to government and Democratic constituencies. It is a declaration of war on the Right. The real Obama has stood up, and lived up to his ranking as the most left-wing member of the United States Senate....
...Where the U.S. government usually consumes 21 percent of gross domestic product, this Obama budget spends 28 percent in 2009 and runs a deficit of $1.75 trillion, or 12.7 percent of GDP. That is four times the largest deficit of George W. Bush and twice as large a share of the economy as any deficit run since World War II. Add that 28 percent of GDP spent by the U.S. government to the 12 percent spent by states, counties and cities, and government will consume 40 percent of the economy in 2009.
We are not "headed down the road to socialism." We are there.

Buchanan concludes his article this way:

The president says he is gearing up for a fight on his budget.
Good. Let's give him one.

I'm with you, Pat. My pitchfork is ready.

Happy Independence Day

2009-03-02T12:33:00.002-06:00

The Texas Declaration of Independence was signed in Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, 173 years ago today. It is worth reading today.

The Unanimous Declaration of Independence made by the
Delegates of the People of Texas in General Convention at the town of
Washington on the 2nd day of March 1836.
When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression.
When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants.
When, long after the spirit of the constitution has departed, moderation is at length so far lost by those in power, that even the semblance of freedom is removed, and the forms themselves of the constitution discontinued, and so far from their petitions and remonstrances being regarded, the agents who bear them are thrown into dungeons, and mercenary armies sent forth to force a new government upon them at the point of the bayonet.
When, in consequence of such acts of malfeasance and abdication on the part of the government, anarchy prevails, and civil society is dissolved into its original elements. In such a crisis, the first law of nature, the right of self-preservation, the inherent and inalienable rights of the people to appeal to first principles, and take their political affairs into their own hands in extreme cases, enjoins it as a right towards themselves, and a sacred obligation to their posterity, to abolish such government, and create another in its stead, calculated to rescue them from impending dangers, and to secure their future welfare and happiness.
Nations, as well as individuals, are amenable for their acts to the public opinion of mankind. A statement of a part of our grievances is therefore submitted to an impartial world, in justification of the hazardous but unavoidable step now taken, of severing our political connection with the Mexican people, and assuming an independent attitude among the nations of the earth.
The Mexican government, by its colonization laws, invited and induced the Anglo-American population of Texas to colonize its wilderness under the pledged faith of a written constitution, that they should continue to enjoy that constitutional liberty and republican government to which they had been habituated in the land of their birth, the United States of America.
In this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.
It has sacrificed our welfare to the state of Coahuila, by which our interests have been continually depressed through a jealous and partial course of legislation, carried on at a far distant seat of government, by a hostile majority, in an unknown tongue, and this too, notwithstanding we have petitioned in the humblest terms for the establishment of a separate state government, and have, in accordance with the provisions of the national constitution, presented to the general Congress a republican constitution, which was, without just cause, contemptuously rejected.
It incarcerated in a dungeon, for a long time, one of our citizens, for no other cause but a zealous endeavor to procure the acceptance of our constitution, and the establishment of a state government.
It has failed and refused to secure, on a firm basis, the right of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe guarantee for the life, liberty, and property of the citizen.
It has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government.
It has suffered the military commandants, stationed among us, to exercise arbitrary acts of oppression and tyrrany, thus trampling upon the most sacred rights of the citizens, and rendering the military superior to the civil power.
It has dissolved, by force of arms, the state Congress of Coahuila and Texas, and obliged our representatives to fly for their lives from the seat of government, thus depriving us of the fundamental political right of representation.
It has demanded the surrender of a number of our citizens, and ordered military detachments to seize and carry them into the Interior for trial, in contempt of the civil authorities, and in defiance of the laws and the constitution.
It has made piratical attacks upon our commerce, by commissioning foreign desperadoes, and authorizing them to seize our vessels, and convey the property of our citizens to far distant ports for confiscation.
It denies us the right of worshipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our own conscience, by the support of a national religion, calculated to promote the temporal interest of its human functionaries, rather than the glory of the true and living God.
It has demanded us to deliver up our arms, which are essential to our defence, the rightful property of freemen, and formidable only to tyrannical governments.
It has invaded our country both by sea and by land, with intent to lay waste our territory, and drive us from our homes; and has now a large mercenary army advancing, to carry on against us a war of extermination.
It has, through its emissaries, incited the merciless savage, with the tomahawk and scalping knife, to massacre the inhabitants of our defenseless frontiers.
It hath been, during the whole time of our connection with it, the contemptible sport and victim of successive military revolutions, and hath continually exhibited every characteristic of a weak, corrupt, and tyrranical government.
These, and other grievances, were patiently borne by the people of Texas, untill they reached that point at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. We then took up arms in defence of the national constitution. We appealed to our Mexican brethren for assistance. Our appeal has been made in vain. Though months have elapsed, no sympathetic response has yet been heard from the Interior. We are, therefore, forced to the melancholy conclusion, that the Mexican people have acquiesced in the destruction of their liberty, and the substitution therfor of a military government; that they are unfit to be free, and incapable of self government.
The necessity of self-preservation, therefore, now decrees our eternal political separation.
We, therefore, the delegates with plenary powers of the people of Texas, in solemn convention assembled, appealing to a candid world for the necessities of our condition, do hereby resolve and declare, that our political connection with the Mexican nation has forever ended, and that the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign, and independent republic, and are fully invested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations; and, conscious of the rectitude of our intentions, we fearlessly and confidently commit the issue to the decision of the Supreme arbiter of the destinies of nations.

It's at $1.75 Trillion Now

2009-02-26T09:44:00.001-06:00

Back in January, when everyone was yelling about a $1 Trillion budget deficit, I predicted a $2 Trillion budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2009. Well, President Obama sent his budget request to Congress, and it requires a $1.75 Trillion deficit. There will be more spending bills. My $2 Trillion projection may be low.

This is why it's going to get worse

2009-02-25T09:21:00.001-06:00

The Old Gray Lady has an article today by Hiroko Tabuchi that blames Japan's two lost decades and current depression, not on government-sponsored zombie banks, lousy central planning, and unsustainable deficit spending that kills investor confidence, but on consumer frugality. Now intelligent people gave up on The Times as a reliable source years ago, but many of the educated in our society still look at it as a respectable medium. Here's a simple lesson for Mr. Tabuchi: The root word in capitalism is capital. The basis of the economic system is that the economy is powered by those with capital. Consumerism, funded by ever-expanding credit is an unsustainable system that will lead to collapse. If you have good banks, a frugal citizenry, and a government that lives within its means and thus doesn't take the loans that would go to producers, your country will build capital, which can be lent to the productive class to increase production. With more production, you create more capital, and can sustainably consume more. The Austrian School has a famous saying: "Consumption is the reward for Production." The only things that will stop savings from being turned into increased productivity are: Government deficits crowding out good loans or zombie banks with bad balance sheets taking the savings without the ability to loan. (This is why those banks must be liquidated.)

I charge The New York Times to not print articles like this. They should be easy to spot. If anyone blames our current financial mess on too little consumption or poor consumer confidence, they don't know what they are talking about, and giving them a voice does a disservice to the country.

GM Business Plan

2009-02-23T14:53:00.001-06:00

Since GM needs so much help, I have a plan to get them profitable. First, they need to put all of those eliminated because of loss of sales back to work. So they can pay them to paint the factories and repave parking lots. Then they can get a few of them to replace their old, outdated natural gas power generation with new, efficient windmills. And since these will cause power reliability issues, they can put in new smart meters that shut production lines down when the wind doesn't blow. It might hurt production at times, but think of all the money they'll save on energy. Finally, to keep workers happy, they'll expand their health benefits, extend unemployment benefits for those who they can't re-hire, and give away their cheapest cars to the lowest level workers.

Of course, they'll have to borrow a lot of money to do all of this, and they're already pretty deep in debt, so they'll have a summit to discuss their profitability plan. In it, they'll promise to reduce losses by half in 4 years. They'll do this by 1) praying that sales recover somehow, 2) raising prices by 20% on Hummers, Cadillac SUVs, and Corvettes, and 3) eliminating any incentives available to their high volume fleet customers.

After all, this is the business plan that President Obama and his administration of the best and brightest has produced for the Federal government. It should work swimmingly.

Kid Rock for Commerce Secretary

2009-02-20T12:49:00.001-06:00

Kid Rock is getting a $700,000 stimulus check for his brewery from Michigan's Economic Growth Authority, and will create 400 jobs. That's $1750 in tax credits per job created. Since the Trillion Dollar Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Snowe-Collins-Specter national spending program is conservatively estimated to cost $225,000 per job created (~$170,000 in government spending, ~$55,000 in tax cuts and credits), it seems obvious to me that Kid Rock has much better economic sense than anyone that had input into the bill. So President Obama should use his expertise, appoint him as Secretary of Commerce, and let him manage the spending bill. If he has similar results, he might be able to offset all damage done by TurboTax Timmy at the Treasury.

Tyranny of City Planning and Zoning

2009-02-15T14:42:00.002-06:00

At the Pitchfork and Musket Junta, we tend to concentrate on State and Federal tyranny, because we generally believe that local tyranny will be taken care of by citizens voting with their feet. That tyranny still exists, though, and we should expose it when we come upon it. I recently have come across three examples of tyrannical local laws destroying opportunities for local citizens.

The first from San Francisco, where the Planning Commission refused to allow American Apparel to open a store in the Mission District. According to Caille Millner:

It is too easy to make fun of the people who packed Room 400 in San Francisco's City Hall to stop American Apparel from opening a store on Valencia Street in the Mission District last week.
They are not serious people. They live in a world where facts like 27 vacant storefronts on Valencia Street and 9.3 percent unemployment statewide and nearly 600,000 jobs lost nationally last month do not matter. The few who read books know no authors beyond Naomi Klein. They do not believe that the world has changed since the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. This accounts for both the static nature of their vocabulary - "no formula retail!" is their death chant, though anyone who has picked up a newspaper in the last five months could tell you that there isn't a single retail establishment with a formula today - and the juvenile nature of their worldview. They do not want to see businesses be successful. They do not want the Mission District to be welcoming to different types of people.

What they want is magic.
The word "magic" kept recurring during the hours of public comment at the Planning Commission meeting where the American Apparel store's permit was up for a vote. "Valencia Street is a magical place," one speaker said. Another claimed that "Our neighborhood is a dream, a delicate flower." Others spoke of American Apparel as a "parasite" on their "ecosystem." Several local business owners testified that it was their "dream" to operate in such a "magical" place, and noted, with horror, that they might have to make alterations to their business plans if a new store opened in the area.

Next, in Chicago, Walmart proposed building 5 new stores. Chicago has only allowed one Walmart to be built inside the city so far. It employs 400 workers at an average of $11.25/hour, roughly average for unskilled workers. You would think that, during a recession (depression?), Chicago would welcome 2000-2500 new decent jobs, and a retailer that consistently lowers prices to serve poor citizens. Chicago's planning board refused to rule and punted to city council. Chicago alderman are fighting it tooth and nail, because of objections by big labor.

Finally, in Beaumont, they've banned mobile food stands. According to Junta member Shane, who was at the council meeting and heard testimony to get the moratorium overturned, the objectors were all full service restaurant owners. These taco stands and barbecue stands provide cheap, quick lunches, and are frequented by the poorest workers in the city, many of them immigrants.

These three examples are all vastly different, but they have one thing in common. By abusing the zoning privileges of a city, they all will reduce choice for their citizens and will lower the standard of living for the poorest of their citizens.

This Would Make a Great Crime Movie

2009-02-15T01:20:00.004-06:00

Courtesy of The People's Cube:

I'm Respectfully Reject the Postition of Commerce Secretary

2009-02-13T09:19:00.003-06:00

Dear President Obama,

I understand that you are have trouble filling the position of Secretary of Commerce. I'm sorry, but I can't accept either. Unlike Governor Richardson, I have never traded government contracts for campaign contributions, but like Senator Gregg, I tend to think that our beliefs about the Federal Government's role in Commerce are irreconcilably different. Thank you for your consideration.* I am truly honored.

Good luck finding someone honorable that agrees with your ideology on Commerce. It may be difficult.

Sincerely,

Wesley

* - President Obama hasn't notified me about consideration for any Cabinet position. At the rate he is going through candidates, I assume my name is coming up soon.

Government - via Despair.com

2009-02-12T12:18:00.001-06:00

The First 435 People Listed in the Telephone Directory

2009-02-11T15:56:00.001-06:00

William F. Buckley famously said, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." Well, now the American people trust that randomly selected group more than they do those currently elected to Congress. According to Rasmussen:

Forty-four percent (44%) voters also think a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation's problems than the current Congress, but 37% disagree. Twenty percent (20%) are undecided.

Other highlights from the survey:

Americans trust themselves more than Congress.

When it comes to the nation's economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.

And the part that is most interesting to me:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) agree, too, that "no matter how bad things are, Congress can always find a way to make them worse."

As Will Rogers said more than 70 years ago, "This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer." It applies as much today as it did then.

Priming the Pump

2009-02-10T06:09:00.005-06:00

Last night, President Obama gave his first press conference to make his case for the spending package. He did a pretty good job of demonizing the opposition, and painted a pretty bleak economic picture. First of all, I agreed with him on two points: 1) Republicans, specifically Bush, got us into this mess. 2) Alex Rodriguez using steroids is a black eye on Major League Baseball.

For his main point though, Obama's defense of using massive government spending for stimulus is based on junk science. I don't remember him using the analogy, but the typical one used for this kind of stimulus package is "priming the pump". His idea is that the government can spend a lot of money on projects for a while, and that will create confidence, spark consumption, and at some point, spark private investment will create more long-term jobs. It's an idea right out of Lord Keynes' General Theory. The problem is that the theory has never been supported by evidence in the real world. During the New Deal, despite 5% of the workforce being employed by the CCC and WPA, unemployment remained relatively constant. The jobs created by government were almost completely offset by jobs destroyed in the private sector. We got some nice National Parks' buildings from the CCC, and nice paintings on Post Offices from the WPA, but no economic growth. Over the past 15 years or so, Japan has had a similar experience.

We will get some good infrastructure projects out of the spending bill and some wasteful ones. Some people who have lost their finance job that won't come back will get to stay in their house a little longer than they would earlier. Some state and local governments won't have to cut as many programs. What we won't get is stimulus.

The Most Egregious Act of Generational Theft in History

2009-02-07T09:51:00.006-06:00

Question: What's the difference between a Donkey and a RINO?

Answer: About $100,000,000,000 of future taxpayers' money. That's the amount of money that Democrats cut out of the $800+ Billion pork/welfare/state bailout/Medicaid/public art/maybe a little bit of infrastructure bill to get Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe to jump in with both feet. The bill that Congresscritters are calling a stimulus bill, despite the fact that Congressional Budget Office calls it harmful to the economy over the long term. (I figure that John McCain was holding out for another $15).

You've seen them in action. 61% of the Senate, and 56% of the House will shackle an enormous national mortgage to the the feet of their children to grow their own power. It is taxation without representation.

(Thread title borrowed from Tom Coburn's excellent op-ed on the same topic.)

Reports of the Death of the GOP Are Somewhat Exaggerated

2009-02-04T17:51:00.001-06:00

It's been popular since the election to pronounce the death of the Republican Party as a national force. Democrats have claimed that they own the West Coast, the Northeast, and the Middle Atlantic, and some even go as far as to claim the Midwest as solidly Democratic. They usually drag out this map that shows that for most of the country, the trend showed many more votes for Obama in 2008 than Kerry in 2004. And they have some evidence in their favor. After all, there are no longer any Republican Congresscritters in the Northeast. I've even been guilty of this, saying that the Republican Party's focus for the next four years should be on growing grassroots networks, and not really worrying about major elections. I wholly endorse the 435-district strategy, but I have thought of it more as a very long-term plan than most have.

But there might be another explanation for these trends. It not be realignment at all, but a one-year response to a much better Democratic candidate than Republican. Evidence for this:

First the weak evidence: In yesterday's Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman election, the Republican outperformed McCain by 10%, is 1200 votes behind, and still has an outside chance of pulling the race out once all the absentee ballots and provisional ballots are counted. Now, normally a Fairfax County election wouldn't mean much beyond Fairfax County, but with an RNC Chairman in Maryland and a DNC Chairman in Virginia, this was a bit of proxy battle.

Now the strong evidence: A Quinnipiac poll shows that Republican Chris Christie, former US Attorney, leads Democrat Governor Jon Corzine, 44%-38%, in very early polling for the New Jersey Governor's race. Cristie doesn't even have the nomination yet and he has a strong lead over an incumbent Democrat in a state that Obama won by nearly 15%. The New Jersey and Virginia governor's races are often bellwethers for the strength of the national Parties in the first post-Presidential years, and both states have been claimed as solidly Democratic by Democrats. We'll definitely keep an eye on them.

New Hampshire Legislature has some heroes!

2009-02-03T12:08:00.002-06:00

HCR 6 – AS INTRODUCED

2009 SESSION

09-0274
09/01
HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 6
A RESOLUTION affirming States' rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
SPONSORS: Rep. Itse, Rock 9; Rep. Ingbretson, Graf 5; Rep. Comerford, Rock 9; Sen. Denley, Dist 3
COMMITTEE: State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs

ANALYSIS

This house concurrent resolution affirms States' rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
09-0274
09/01

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Nine

A RESOLUTION affirming States' rights based on Jeffersonian principles.
Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 1, Article 7 declares that the people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State; and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right, pertaining thereto, which is not, or may not hereafter be, by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in congress assembled; and
Whereas the Constitution of the State of New Hampshire, Part 2, Article 1 declares that the people inhabiting the territory formerly called the province of New Hampshire, do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each other, to form themselves into a free, sovereign and independent body-politic, or State, by the name of The State of New Hampshire; and
Whereas the State of New Hampshire when ratifying the Constitution for the United States of America recommended as a change, "First That it be Explicitly declared that all Powers not expressly & particularly Delegated by the aforesaid are reserved to the several States to be, by them Exercised;" and
Whereas the other States that included recommendations, to wit Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia, included an identical or similar recommended change; and
Whereas these recommended changes were incorporated as the ninth amendment, the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people, and the tenth amendment, the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people, to the Constitution for the United States of America; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate concurring:
That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, -- delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress; and
That the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations, slavery, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore all acts of Congress which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory; and
That it is true as a general principle, and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the Constitution, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people;" and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, and were reserved to the States or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated, rather than the use be destroyed. And thus also they guarded against all abridgment by the United States of the freedom of religious opinions and exercises, and retained to themselves the right of protecting the same. And that in addition to this general principle and express declaration, another and more special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution, which expressly declares, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press:" thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press: insomuch, that whatever violated either, throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels, falsehood, and defamation, equally with heresy and false religion, are withheld from the cognizance of federal tribunals. That, therefore, all acts of Congress of the United States which do abridge the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, are not law, but are altogether void, and of no force; and
That the construction applied by the General Government (as is evidenced by sundry of their proceedings) to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate to Congress a power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imports, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers vested by the Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof," goes to the destruction of all limits prescribed to their power by the Constitution: that words meant by the instrument to be subsidiary only to the execution of limited powers, ought not to be so construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument: that the proceedings of the General Government under color of these articles, will be a fit and necessary subject of revisal and correction; and
That a committee of conference and correspondence be appointed, which shall have as its charge to communicate the preceding resolutions to the Legislatures of the several States; to assure them that this State continues in the same esteem of their friendship and union which it has manifested from that moment at which a common danger first suggested a common union: that it considers union, for specified national purposes, and particularly to those specified in their federal compact, to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the States: that faithful to that compact, according to the plain intent and meaning in which it was understood and acceded to by the several parties, it is sincerely anxious for its preservation: that it does also believe, that to take from the States all the powers of self-government and transfer them to a general and consolidated government, without regard to the special delegations and reservations solemnly agreed to in that compact, is not for the peace, happiness or prosperity of these States; and that therefore this State is determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact, (casus non foederis), to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them: that nevertheless, this State, from motives of regard and respect for its co-States, has wished to communicate with them on the subject: that with them alone it is proper to communicate, they alone being parties to the compact, and solely authorized to judge in the last resort of the powers exercised under it, Congress being not a party, but merely the creature of the compact, and subject as to its assumptions of power to the final judgment of those by whom, and for whose use itself and its powers were all created and modified: that if the acts before specified should stand, these conclusions would flow from them: that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism -- free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power: that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. That this State does therefore call on its co-States for an expression of their sentiments on acts not authorized by the federal compact. And it doubts not that their sense will be so announced as to prove their attachment unaltered to limited government, whether general or particular. And that the rights and liberties of their co-States will be exposed to no dangers by remaining embarked in a common bottom with their own. That they will concur with this State in considering acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States, of all powers whatsoever: that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with a power assumed to bind the States, not merely as the cases made federal, (casus foederis,) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent: that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories; and
That the said committee be authorized to communicate by writing or personal conferences, at any times or places whatever, with any person or person who may be appointed by any one or more co-States to correspond or confer with them; and that they lay their proceedings before the next session of the General Court; and
That any Act by the Congress of the United States, Executive Order of the President of the United States of America or Judicial Order by the Judicatories of the United States of America which assumes a power not delegated to the government of United States of America by the Constitution for the United States of America and which serves to diminish the liberty of the any of the several States or their citizens shall constitute a nullification of the Constitution for the United States of America by the government of the United States of America. Acts which would cause such a nullification include, but are not limited to:
I. Establishing martial law or a state of emergency within one of the States comprising the United States of America without the consent of the legislature of that State.
II. Requiring involuntary servitude, or governmental service other than a draft during a declared war, or pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.
III. Requiring involuntary servitude or governmental service of persons under the age of 18 other than pursuant to, or as an alternative to, incarceration after due process of law.
IV. Surrendering any power delegated or not delegated to any corporation or foreign government.
V. Any act regarding religion; further limitations on freedom of political speech; or further limitations on freedom of the press.
VI. Further infringements on the right to keep and bear arms including prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition; and
That should any such act of Congress become law or Executive Order or Judicial Order be put into force, all powers previously delegated to the United States of America by the Constitution for the United States shall revert to the several States individually. Any future government of the United States of America shall require ratification of three quarters of the States seeking to form a government of the United States of America and shall not be binding upon any State not seeking to form such a government; and

That copies of this resolution be transmitted by the house clerk to the President of the United States, each member of the United States Congress, and the presiding officers of each State's legislature.

Credit to Karl Denninger.

Don't Cry for Me, United States

2009-02-02T17:30:00.001-06:00

Philip Jenkins over at The American Conservative has a great article this week that compares the response by the United States to this financial crisis to that of Argentina to the Great Depression. It ain't pretty.

Side note: For those out there that are traditional conservatives or want to know what traditional conservatives think, The American Conservative might just have the best commentary available. It's worth a subscription.

Whither the Blue Dogs?

2009-01-29T09:24:00.001-06:00

During the 2006 mid-term elections, Democrats picked up a lot of seats in very conservative areas by promising to offer a fiscal sanity check to a Republican-led government that had went nuts on spending. Many of them were rhetorical deficit hawks, and the Blue Dog Caucus grew to be one of the largest and potentially strongest on the Hill. Now that they get their first test of the Democrat-led era, a $900,000,000,000 pork-filled welfare and infrastructure "stimulus" bill, lets look at it and see how they did. Of the 43 members of the Blue Dog Caucus, only six voted against the record spending bill. That's a 13% pass rate. These are your real blue dogs: Allen Boyd, Jim Cooper, Brad Ellsworth, Collin Peterson, Heath Shuler, and Gene Taylor. Call them or email them and thank them for standing up for the taxpayer. The other 37 are old-fashioned yellow dogs that didn't mean a word of their rhetoric. They were just Bush obstructionists who wanted to win in the South, West, and Rural East and Midwest.

Make-work Projects in Beaumont

2009-01-22T09:15:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I predicted that much of the so-called stimulus package would be make-work projects that don't really improve infrastructure. Today, the local radio station reported that Beaumont Mayor Becky Ames has been in Washington lobbying for her projects. Here's the list:

Amtrack train stop - $750,000
Block grant reinvestment zone housing - $5 Million
Landfill hydrogen project - $5 Million
Public Safety Headquarters - $272,000
Bus stop rehabilitaion - $1 Million

The current Amtrack station in Beaumont is a slab, because it gets no passengers. It's near my office, and I see the train stop there when it does in the afternoon. They could triple their ridership and still not get passengers on every stop. But it has nothing to do with new riders. The
mayor's justification was, "We want to move it to a nicer area so when the train stops in Beaumont, the passengers get a better view." She has called this her highest priority for stimulus money.

I have no clue whether housing block grants are needed, but it seems that every city asks for them every time Federal money is offered.

The landfill hydrogen project is a cool project. They reform the methane as it comes off the landfill and sell the hydrogen to local refineries. This project is already funded and will go forward without Federal funds. They're just asking for Federal dollars because they might be available.

I don't know anything about the Public Safety Headquarters. From the amount of the funds request, I think they're going to build a house for the Police Chief.

Bus stop rehabilitation is the only project of the bunch that is a good idea and not currently being progressed. Most Beaumont bus stops are just benches, and I often see people waiting for the bus out in the pouring rain. I'm really skeptical about the amount of economic stimulus it will
provide.

Buicks to the Moon

2009-01-21T16:07:00.001-06:00

The current congressional proposal for stimulus will borrow (or print, because God knows who would buy a Treasury bond at 0.05% interest, or whatever it is today) $825 Billion and throw some of it into the economy in various ways. Some of it will go to State and local governments, which means that we can kiss that money goodbye. Some of the other provisions: a small cut in Social Security Withholding that should help the poor, but puts one more chip in our fragile Social Security situation. About $358 Billion of it will go into so-called "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects, which someone somewhere in Washington thinks will be built in the next two years. Let me first say that within reason, infrastructure is the business of government. No country has ever successfully transferred the building of roads, bridges, water supplies, etc., to the private sector. It is cheaper to build infrastructure projects in bad economic times than in good. That being said, let's put this $358 Billion number in perspective:

In 2008 Dollars,

The entire Space Program through the Apollo Era cost $288 Billion over 18 years.

The entire Interstate Highway System Project cost $425 Billion over 35 years.

The entire New Deal cost $500 Billion over 18 years.

There is no way that this stimulus package will actually get spent on real, needed projects in two years. And the stimulus effect of infrastructure projects is greatly overrated. One only has to look at the US during the 1930s or Japan during the 1990s to see that. So I expect a whole lot of the money to be spent on time machines and bridges to the moon, which will neither have a stimulative effect nor provide meaningful improvement to our country's infrastructure. On a local scale, this is the equivalent of Houston looking at Reliant Stadium, calling it a success, and building 5 more.

I don't want to reject the Obama/Pelosi/Reid plan without offering one of my own. Cut the infrastructure grants to zero. Instead, offer very low interest loans (1% is probably possible) to any state, city, county, school board, or other local government who can pass a bond on the infrastructure need that they think they have. I'll bet gold to dollars that this would cut the short-term Federal expenditures by 75% or greater, cut the long-term cost to almost zero, and eliminate almost all of the make-work programs that don't improve infrastructure in any meaningful way.

Happy Inauguration Day!

2009-01-20T11:18:00.000-06:00

I congratulate President Barack Obama on his inauguration as the 44th President of the united States of America. I campaigned against him, and I disagree greatly with many of his ideas about government, but I wish him all the best. I hold out hope that he does a great job governing, but I have my doubts. I do have great hopes about one thing, though. For our 16 years of Baby Boomer Presidents, we have lacked real manliness and dignity in the White House. George W. Bush was closer to a gentleman than Bill Clinton, but his manliness trended more to machismo than the reserved masculinity that becomes a President. George H.W. Bush had it, as did Ronald Reagan. Barack Obama carries that air about him, and I have hopes that it holds true throughout his term. The lack of manliness has been reflected in our culture. (It may be a reflection of our culture, but I have to believe vice versa so that I can believe that it will get better.) With some luck, maybe, just maybe, American men will follow the lead of a gentleman President and "man-up" themselves.

Obama's Economic Recovery Plan ± 80%

2009-01-10T12:40:00.005-06:00

President-elect Obama used his weekly ~~radio~~ YouTube address to make bold claims about his stimulus package, the amount of growth that it will create (3.7%), and the amount of jobs that it will create (3,675,000). He based it all on this report that his incoming administration created. Everyone should read the plan. Why? It will show you the absolute lack of depth and judgment that Obama's advisers have so far. It reads more like a Freshman Economics term paper than something written by high-paid economic experts. There are nuggets in there that show that brilliantly. Here's one:

The final step is to take the effect on GDP and translate it into job creation. Not all of the increasedoutput reflects increased employment: some comes from increases in hours of work among employed workers and some comes from higher productivity. We therefore use the relatively conservative rule of thumb that a 1 percent increase in GDP corresponds to an increase in employment of approximately 1 million jobs, or about three-quarters of a percent. This has been the rough correspondence over history and matches the FRB/US model reasonably well.

In other words, Obama's team has no clue how closely GDP growth relates to job growth, so they made up a number. So I just decided to do run a check on their numbers: 1% GDP growth is $138 Billion per year. 1 million average workers in the US would make just over $25 Billion. Obama's numbers have no basis in fact. Denninger found the most egregious example of this, here are his thoughts:

Obama: You Need To Fire Everyoneinvolved in producing your American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
Why? In "Appendix 1"
We considered multipliers for the case where the federal funds rate remains constant, rather than the usual case where the Federal Reserve raises the funds rate in response to fiscal expansion, on the grounds that the funds rate is likely to be at or near its lower bound of zero for the foreseeable future.
Please tell me this is a joke. Obama really believes that The Fed can hold interest rates at zero for four years and they can spend without bound, while the bond market will blithely look on at $1-2 trillion deficits annually and the economy will begin to recover?
You're kidding, right?

To give the Obama team some credit, at least they admit how much they understand. From the Conclusion:

As emphasized at many points in the analysis, there is substantial uncertainty around all of our estimates.

Hold onto your shorts, folks. We're in for a rough ride.

Cow Fart Tax

2009-01-07T23:49:00.004-06:00

The EPA wants to apply Title V regulations from the Clean Air Act to agriculture. According to the Florida Farm Bureau, who ran the numbers, the Environmental Protection Agency want to make all ranchers with more than 50 head of cattle, dairy farmers with more than 25 cows, and rice farmer with more than 35 acres (plus others) file a Title V emissions report for the methane their livestock or crops release. That's right, ranchers will have to report their cow farts to the government, and pay a tax based on them.

Most of the published outrage has been about taxes, which are significant, but as anyone who has worked in refineries or chemical plants will tell you, the taxes are a small part of the Title V problem. Title V permitting is a long and tedious process that requires submitting a permit proposal to the government, who then sends it back to the company with their suggestions, and the process repeats itself until they can come to an agreement. One facility where I worked had 5 people who worked full time on Title V permitting for several years. This process would bankrupt all but the large corporate ranchers and farmers. If it passes, it will put all of the remaining independent for-profit farmers and ranchers out of business. Only corporate agriculture and really small-scale agriculture by hobbyists will remain.

God save the American Farmer!

Predicting a $2,000,000,000,000 Deficit

2009-01-07T23:06:00.005-06:00

You heard it here first: the United States Government's Federal Deficit for fiscal year 2009 (ending 9/30) will be much closer to $2 Trillion than $1 Trillion. As bad as Bush's budgets were, Obama's first year will be worse than any three of Bush's. He has already warned us of a greater than 1 trillion dollar deficit, which will Tom Coburn predicts will be $1.6 Trillion. Add to that $290 Billion for the first 9 months of Obama's stimulus bill, $100 Billion or so for Iraq and Afghanistan, and a conservative $100 Billion to bail out various industries that will come to Washington with their hands out (I expect GM and Chrysler to be back, builders, and God knows who else). That brings my estimate to a staggering $2.1 Trillion dollars. As Senator Coburn has said, “The greatest moral issue of our time isn’t abortion, it’s robbing our next generation of opportunity. You’re going to save a child from being aborted so they can be born into a debtor’s prison?” As I wrote Monday, the "Keynesian multiplier" is now 0.2. We are saddling our children with $2 Trillion more debt to grow (or more likely, slow the collapse of) the economy by $0.4 Trillion. That is immoral.

Two related side notes:
CNN will air I.O.U.S.A. this weekend. This is the most important documentary in years, and it's well done.

Proving that he is truly insane, Harry Reid is repeating his try to pass a Coburn Omnibus bill. Senator Coburn has a really simple litmus test for bills that he'll obstruct. If a bill spends money on a duplicated program, he will hold obstruct it by any means necessary. Reid is trying to combine a bunch of bills that have been held up by Dr. Coburn to pass. Call your Senators and ask them to stand with the honorable Dr. No and against Dirty Harry.

New blog I have been following and some interesting data

2009-01-05T18:46:00.004-06:00

I was recently turned on to Karl Denninger's blog, and his remarkably accurate predictions. He's been at least as accurate as the great Peter Schiff, and with more detail. This post and it's follow-up should be required reading for anyone who cares about this country.

But this is the one that really caught my eye: from October.

In short, it wouldn't have done anything because the economy only grows at a rate of about 20 cents for every dollar of debt taken on. That is, it takes five dollars of debt to generate one new dollar of GDP.

If you have been wondering how the bailouts needed to be in Trillions, this is why. The fundamental theory behind Keynesian economics is that a dollar spent by government multiplies itself in economic growth. It is a true theory, except that the multiplier is below 1 (throughout history, it's around 0.7). For the US, now it is 0.2. That's right, for $1 of Keynesian growth, we have to saddle our children with $5 in debt. It is immoral, and Paulson, Bernanke, and any legislator who voted for the bailouts should be imprisoned for it.

On Equality and the NBA

2009-01-05T18:12:00.005-06:00

When talking with a friend and fellow basketball fan last week, I made the observation that despite my Rockets having a so-so season so far, I haven't had as much fun watching basketball in over a decade. The Lakers, Celtics, Trail Blazers, and Cavaliers are all really good, several other teams (my Rockets, and especially the Hornets included) are pretty good, and there is a great game on almost every day. My friend disagreed, saying that with more concentration of talent on a few good teams, that equality is suffering. After much thought, I decided that I didn't care much at all about equality. I care about equal opportunity. If I were a fan of a miserably bad team like New York or Washington, I would be hopeful as long as my team had the same chance to improve as any other. But equality doesn't make basketball a more enjoyable spectator sport. Exceptionalism makes basketball a more enjoyable spectator sport. LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Chris Paul make basketball more enjoyable. Some of the world's greatest athletes performing at an elite level in the world's most beautiful game make basketball more enjoyable.

The same thing can be said about societies. No society progresses because it becomes more equal. Societies should have equal rights because it is: (a) the morally correct thing, and (b) the way to ultimate progress so long as opportunities are available for the exceptional. Progressivism has always been less concerned with Progress as equality. And even so, it never realizes equality. It makes those below the favored class more equal, but the gap between the favored class and the rest of the society grows.

In The Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater makes the assertion that individualism is sacred, and that "the conscience of a Conservative is pricked by anyone who would debase the dignity of the individual human being". In basketball, as in society, exceptionalism, which can only be found by individuality does much more good for society than equality ever could.

This Thanksgiving, Thank God for Capitalism

2008-11-26T11:00:00.005-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for many things this year. I am thankful for a wonderful, loving family, friends that I can count on, new challenging opportunities in my life, turkey, basketball, and the fact that I live in the greatest country that ever existed. And much like the Pilgrims that first celebrated Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the lessons of capitalism. Jennifer James of the Kid's Reading Room at the L.A. Times inspired me with her great story on this topic.

When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in December 1620, in addition to seeking religious freedom, they intended to create a communist paradise. They had initially landed north, but after skirmishes with Indians they moved down the coast. When they got to Plymouth, they were greeted by friendly, English-speaking members of the Wampanoag tribe who had friendly relations with the English fisherman that fished off of that coast. (They might have kept going south, but they were out of beer.) The Wampanoag taught them how to farm corn, and when Spring arrived, they went right to it. They set up a system where each family would grow what they could, it would be put into a common storage, and then they would be rationed enough food to survive. Unfortunately, it didn't work very well. Despite the famous Puritan work ethic (roughly half of the Pilgrims were Puritan), many didn't work very hard, and they had a poor harvest. Some people starved, some resorted to theft from each other, and no one had enough. The following year, they used the same system with the same result. Sharing was going to kill them.

Finally in 1623, after much prayer and deliberation, the governor, William Bradford, decided to implement a capitalist system. Each family was given their own plot of land and told that they could keep whatever they grew and profit from it. It was a resounding success. Here are Governor Bradford's observations:

This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Gov. or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content.

The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness, and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God. And the effect of their particular [private] planting was well seen, for all had, one way and other, pretty well to bring the year about, and some of the abler sort and more industrious had to spare, and sell to others, so as any general want or famine has not been among them since to this day.

The Pilgrims were incredibly thankful for their prosperity, and were able to share with their Wampanoag friends for the first time. They had a great feast to celebrate and give thanks, and the Wampanoag were amazed by the production. They had enough to make it through the winter with plenty, and prosperity in the English settlements in America had begun. It is a lesson for which we can all be thankful.

Peter Schiff is Brilliant

2008-11-20T08:27:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure how great it is for setting policy, but Peter Schiff proves once again that the Austrian School predicts economic conditions better than anything. The three stock experts picking Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs is brilliant comedy after the fact.

More on Cuban and the SEC

2008-11-18T08:57:00.003-06:00

So Mark Cuban dares to challenge the smartest men in the room (Paulson, Bernanke, Frank, et al.), about the bailout. First he offers an alternative, privately-financed bailout plan that many think would work better, and he offers to put up the first $50 Million. His little company, sharesleuth.com, which does the SEC's job for them, sets up another watchdog site, bailoutsleuth.com to provide private oversight to the treasury and how they use the bailout money.

From Wired.com:

Already the site has lots of goodies. A contract between the Treasury Department and PricewaterhouseCoopers is blacked out over portions discussing the firm's bid as well as the name of the partner who signed the deal. Also blacked out is the executive compensation in the first contract handed out in the $700 billion bailout, to Bank of NY Mellon Corp.

On his blog, Cuban promised to try to roll out reports and exposes every day. "Without complete transparency, we will get from our government what we always get when it comes to finances, confusion."

Now, out of the blue, Cuban is facing insider trading charges from a stock sell he made 3 years ago, and wrote about on his blog:

I wanted to reference Mamma.com. I had purchased stock in Mamma.com in hope that it could be an up and coming search engine. I thought I had done some level of due diligence. Talked to the company management. Talked to some employees who worked in sales. Read the SEC Filings. I knew that they had a checkered past and had been linked to stock promoter Irving Kott, and that their law firm still handled some of Kotts business, but the CEO, Chairman, lawyers all said that things were reformed and the company was focused on its business.

Then the company did a PIPE financing. Im not going to discuss the good or bad of PIPE financing other than to say that to me its a huge red flag and I dont want to own stock in companies that use this method of financing. Why? Because I dont like the idea of selling in a private placement, stock for less than the market price, and then to make matters worse, pushing the price lower with the issuance of warrants. So I sold the stock.

If the PIPE financing hadn't been announced when he made the sale, it meets the requirements for insider trading, and it's illegal. He should probably repay the $750,000 that he would have lost had he waited until after the PIPE financing was completed. That doesn't change my opinion that Cuban isbeing targeted for daring to challenge the almighty Treasury. The SEC looked the other way while hundreds of bank executives, with no disernable entrepreneurial skills looted the public for billions, and then the Treasury gives them a reward of trillions in taxpayer money when they blow it all. But if an upstart billionaire dare challenge their authority and ask for a little sunlight, they'll attack him for the most minor infraction. It's like the Puritans and stocks all over again. Maybe we should subject him to a public beating.

As a matter of preference, Mark Cuban annoys me. I think he's a whiner, and I blame his complaining about referees for the Mavericks stealing game 5 from the Rockets in the first round of the playoffs in 2005. (Michael Finley was out of bounds.) Still, I cannot deny the fact that he is a great entrepreneur and savvy investor, and brave for standing up

New Dealing

2008-11-17T11:47:00.005-06:00

Since the Progressives have somewhat successfully pinned the blame for the recession on "deregulation" of banking, the popular sentiment is that the only thing that can get us out of this mess is a "New New Deal". Roosevelt worship is still prevalent in the modern Democratic Party and especially public schools. Heck, I'm even writing this post from my house on Roosevelt Avenue. The most common quote from public school history books is that New Deal programs "got us out" of the Great Depression. This is despite Milton Friedman changing the economic discussions in this country for 40 years. The fact is, as initially stated by Friedman, and recently confirmed by UCLA economists Howard Cole and Lee Ohanian, the New Deal not only didn't help the economy, but also turned a depression into The Great Depression. Wage fixing sent unemployment from the teens into the twenties, corporate favoritism killed entrepreneurship, and Social Security paid our most productive workers to quit working. The Great Depression lasted until Europe began ordering large amounts of military supplies from American manufacturers. Among economists, this is universally accepted, except by the few for whom ideology trumps facts.

Despite all of the historical evidence against the New Deal, many in and around government are pushing for another New Deal for this. Obama's pick for Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel has long been talking about his plan for a "New New Deal". Barney Frank has called for "a new dose of Keynesianism". Paul Krugman has called for a New Deal but bigger. Almost all of these proposals entail a huge investment in infrastructure and alternative energy production. Now there is a bit of logic to this. If there are roads and bridges that need to be built for commerce, they can be built more cheaply during an economic downturn when there is less competition for labor and resources. But Keynesianism is built on the theory that deficit spending increases the economy by some multiplier. That theory is technically correct, but that multiplier is 0.7-0.8. Every $1 Million in government deficit spending increases the GDP by $700,000-$800,000. And at some point in the future, the government will have to tax (and reduce the GDP) to pay for that bridge or road. So while it is a good idea to build necessary infrastructure during a downturn, using public works to provide economic stimulus is based on junk science, dangerously short-sighted, and unlikely to work.

Bailout Madness

2008-11-17T10:23:00.005-06:00

The smartest men in the room all told us that if we didn't bail out the banks/mortgage companies/insurance companies, the credit system was going to collapse. I thought that the question that no one was asking was if we do bail out the banks, what would happen? Well the answer to that came sooner rather than later. Some examples:

Newly nationalized AIG burns through $50 Billion of the $80 Billion in taxpayer money in just a couple of months, asks for, and receives $70 Billion more. To me, this is emblematic of the difference between private corporations and socialist entities. Governments tend to give money to those who "need" it most. Private investors tend to give money to those who are likely to make the most money with that investment. At times, the companies who need it most are in that position because of poor management, and are likely to lose more.

The Federal Reserve refuses to identify recipients of $2,000,000,000,000.00 in emergency loans. This was a bailout that wasn't voted on, and since the Fed is a government sponsored entity and not really a part of the Federal Government, it is exempt from Freedom of Information Act requirements. God bless him, Mark Cuban has funded a website called BailoutSleuth.com that attempts to track where the bailout money is going. (I still hope his team loses, but this makes me really respect the man. Edit: I just found out he has been sued for insider trading. I hope justice, whatever that is, is served. I tend to think that the Treasury has contacts within the SEC.)

Now every other struggling industry is lining up to receive their bailout. GM and Ford are first in line, and moreso thant the banks, they have a plausible claim that if they aren't bailed out, their failure will make a bad economy worse. The question that must be asked is: "If they are bailed out, will they survive?" The same issues that make GM and Ford uncompetitive will remain. I wonder if bankruptcy or bargain basement buyout wouldn't be a step toward sustainability.

What industry is next? I know that state and local governments have lined up for their share. Then what? Steel? If automakers can't sell cars, that kills the market for steel. Chemicals? Huntsman is up to its neck in debt. Retailers? Sears could say it's too big to fail. Restaurants? If wages start falling or unemployment goes up, people will start eating at home more.

John Sununu for RNC Chairman

2008-11-11T18:08:00.006-06:00

The biggest talk on conservative news and in the conservative blogosphere is who will be the next RNC chairman. The chairmanship seemed to be Newt Gingrich's to lose until he decided not to run. All of the current talk seems to be centered around former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele. He seems to meet all of the requirements: smart, well-spoken, from outside the South, and not a white protestant. He is very well-liked, performed well as Lieutenant Governor, and worked well with politicians on both sides. He presents a good face for the party. He represents the best of the "beltway" Republicans. He would do a decent job.

But I think that the RNC has a lot better choice available. Normally, being called the smartest Senator is faint praise, but for John Sununu, it's well-deserved. John Sununu is an engineer with degrees from MIT and Harvard, and considered by all who have worked with him to be a genius. He is also a consistent conservative record and has been brave enough to take dangerous stands. He went against his party and filibustered the PATRIOT Act, and he even touched the third rail of American politics by suggesting that we totally overhaul our Department of Agriculture and eliminate most farming subsidies. It is a shame that New Hampshire removed him for DNC candidate Shaheen, but New Hampshire's loss might be America's gain.

Would Chris Bell Please Go Away?

2008-11-09T22:27:00.007-06:00

I'm tired of seeing Chris Bell's face. I was tired of him during his no-hope run for governor. (Yes, I know he came in second, but he lost despite the Republican vote being split 3 ways.) Now he's in a run-off for Texas Senate District 17 with Republican Joan Huffman. Even though I'm not in SD-17 and don't get to vote, I'm watching the race closely because the district starts 2 miles from my front door. Today, they had a short debate on Gary Polland's show on Houston PBS-8. An independent analysis would probably say that he won the debate with smooth talk, but what he said was ridiculous. When they talked about taxes, Bell suggested that we needed to raise property taxes, expand the franchise tax to get the few small business owners that are able to avoid it right now, and add a state income tax. It angered me most when he was asked about income tax. He said that he doesn't support it right now because of political realities, but "eventually, we have to start having mature conversations about funding government". All of this despite the fact that Texas has created the best business climate in the country by holding taxes down, and has funded the government just fine without an income tax. Apparently, in Chris Bell's little mind, ignoring reality and promoting oppressive Progressive policies is a sign of maturity.

I hope he does two things next month. I hope he loses, and he's good at that. Then, I hope he goes away and stays away, which he hasn't been very good at so far. I'd be happy if I never had to see Chris Bell's face after December. If we have to have Democrats representing Texas, they should be good, honest representatives like Al Green, instead of slick-talking partisan hacks like Chris Bell.

Edit: After reading what I wrote last night, I realized how petty it sounds. Although Chris Bell annoys me, and I would like for him to go away, he shouldn't feel like it's necessary. Conservatives can always win the battle of ideas with Progressive ideologues. As long as he can keep accepting defeat, let him keep running.

The Most Important Victory in 2008, From California?

2008-11-09T21:31:00.006-06:00

Believe it or not, the most important conservative victory of this election cycle came from California. The media and Republicans concentrated on Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, but a much, much more important proposition also passed, and it got little support from Republicans and little media attention. That is Proposition 11, which removes redistricting power from the legislature and gives it to an independent panel. The 14-member panel will consist of 5 Republicans, 5 Democrats, and 4 consistent voters who are members of neither party. There are other rules to ensure that the panel has regular citizens instead of political insiders.

One of the things that they are charged with is making districts more competitive. In California, in 2002, 2004, and 2006, no senate or assembly districts changed parties, and 99% of incumbents have won this decade. State Senators and Assemblymen have gerrymandered their districts to make sure that their re-election is ensured, and when they are term-limited, they get to pick their replacement. The idea that communities should be represented by the same person, or that minority political opinions should have a voice haven't even been considerations. This has destroyed any accountability legislators should have had to their constituents.

Now with Prop. 11, a panel will draw the lines every decade, with the following considerations (from the San Francisco Chronicle):

Commission members would not be allowed to consider incumbent residences or impact on political parties when drawing the lines. Instead, they would be required to follow these criteria, in this order: Adherence with the U.S. Constitution, including equal population requirements; compliance with the Voting Rights Act, to protect the interest of minority voters; geographic contiguity of districts; respect for the need to keep cities, counties and "communities of interest" in the same district; compactness of districts; "nesting" of districts so that the 80 Assembly districts are aligned with the 40 Senate districts to the extent possible.

Prop. 11 passed 50.6% to 49.4%, with support by many interest groups and the Governator (and oddly, Michael Bloomberg), despite strong opposition by Nancy Pelosi and the state Democratic Party. Although it's unlikely that California will elect a lot more Republicans in the next few years, it will create more legislative turnover, and accountability. Texas and other states would do well to follow California's lead in enacting similar measures and make the democratic process distinctly more democratic. A healthy turnover in power tends to restrain politicians and preserve liberty.

The Truth and Myths of the Great Republican Defeat of 2008

2008-11-05T17:44:00.008-06:00

So Republicans got whipped like the team in Little League that lets every kid play. They got beat in the House, they got beat in the Senate, they got beat in the White House, and they got beat in many states, counties, and cities. Over the next couple of months, many conservatives and liberals will propose reasons why they "permanent Republican majority" lost. Here are some truths and myths:

Myth #1: This represents a rejection of conservatism
To be fair to the country, no one to the right of Arianna Huffington will assert this, but you will hear it from time to time. This is absolutely, 100% incorrect. The United States, which just elected a real Progressive for President, is overwhelmingly Conservative. According to the Battleground Poll, conservatives outnumber liberals 60%-36%. People who consider themselves very conservative outnumber those who consider themselves way left of center 20%-9%. Ronald Reagan was in the middle of America. Bill Clinton and George Bush were left of center. Obama is on the fringe.

Myth #2: Sarah Palin cost McCain the election
This will be brought out by many of the moderates in the Republican Party, and the vestigial Nixon-Rockefeller wing. They slam it as a rejection of Western, Conservative, individual liberty Republicans, when McCain should have picked a Northeastern middle-of-the-road, business-first, not so mean Republican (or independent). Sarah Palin motivated Republicans and was worth between 8 and 10 points to the John McCain campaign. Had he made a boring pick or a liberal pick, Obama would have a mandate, and many Southern states with large black populations would have went blue. If Tom Ridge won McCain Pennsylvania and lost him Georgia and Mississippi, I don't know if anyone would have thought it was worth it.

Myth #3: This represents a fundamental change in the election map
See 1992, 1996 for how wrong this is. Virginia might have too many bureaucrats to go Red again, but the rest of the switched states switched because of the historical nature of the Obama campaign and the distaste for Republicans. It won't last. If Obama pushes all of his economic plans through, in 4 years, New York might be a swing state.

Truth #1: This represents a failure of Rove-ian politics
This couldn't be more true. Personal attacks don't work. Nothing personal McCain tried to pin Obama with stuck, and they made McCain look desperate. They didn't even work for Bush. I know he won, but the strategy almost cost him both elections. As a popular campaigner who connected well, he almost lost to an unpopular Bill Clinton's Vice President. Any idiot could have beaten the empty suit John Kerry. He really was the Democrats' Bob Dole. And I couldn't be happier. It's time for a higher level of political conversation in this country.

Truth #2: This represents a rejection of Bush policies
Were I an outsider, I'd think that it's a little funny, because everything the public hates about Bush, Obama promises more. After the miserable failure of No Child Left Behind, Obama's promising more government involvement in schools. After the miserable failure of Medicare Part D, Obama is promising more government healthcare. After the long and difficult Iraq War, Obama is promising more interventionism, in Darfur and Waziristan. The neoconservatives and modern Progressives are both Troskyites. In fact, the first neoconservatives were just progressives who recognized the unpopular nature of their policies in practice and became slightly more Fabian on social issues.
I'm not an outsider, and I worry for my country.

Unknown: This represents a rejection of Social Conservatism
This is probably not true, but it's worth talking about. Really, since Bush took office, the conservatives haven't had a seat at the table. Republican policies were a mixture of mostly neoconservativism with a little bit of the Moral Majority's issues thrown in. What is now called social conservatism was especially offensive to the old Rockefeller Republicans, and Goldwater was also against it. However, I don't think it's gone. California and several other states outlawed gay marriage, and Republicans in the Bible Belt generally did well. It is possible that the social conservatives that lost did so because they were too closely attached to the neoconservatives. This remains to be seen.

Republicans will do well to re-evaluate themselves. There needs to be a self-evaluation. They have to offer policies that distinguish themselves. Big government Republicanism is not only destructive to the country, it is also a losing formula. The fact is that when Democrats try to run the country through Washington, they can do it more efficiently and more fairly than Republicans. They're just better at big government. Republicans must relearn conservatism. It won't be easy, but it is necessary. A quote from Barry Goldwater could help: "I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."

God Save the Republic!

Update: Interesting article from Scott Rasmussen.

Socialism and the Very Wealthy

2008-10-31T17:40:00.006-05:00

Shannon over at Chicago Boyz has a great post about how socialism benefits the very wealthy. It is based on a revealing article by the Tax Foundation about how the United States already has the most progressive income tax system among the wealthiest nations. And it goes back to a fundamental truth about socialism and it's sloppier brother Progressivism: While Marx's ideals were about worker empowerment, every time a nation becomes more socialist, the only ones who benefit are those in government and those who can influence government. It is a shame that when the Progressives claim to be fighting for the working poor and middle class, Conservatives never hit back with truth. When government grows its income, it has to spend the money somewhere. Only 60-70% of that money makes it back to the people in most governments, and 80% in the most efficient governments. The remaining 30-40% either stays in government or goes to the most favored outside of government, whether they be Wall Street bankers or Stuttgart military contractors with no-bid contracts. The same favored class lean on governments to regulate their competitors into a non-threatening position. Finally, when taxes are increased, they never destroy those producers already in power. They destroy those on the margin, which are small competitors and start-ups. Progressivism and increased central planning tends to create a small permanent upper class, and a large, poorer, more equal lower class. The only thing that allows greater class mobility is removed barriers to market entry (real deregulation), greater opportunity, and removed disincentives for investment.

The incomparable Barry Goldwater had this to say about progressive income taxes in his classic The Conscience of a Conservative: "What is a 'fair share?' I believe that the requirements of justice are perfectly clear: government has a right to claim an equal percentage of each man's wealth, and no more.... The graduated tax is a confiscatory tax. Its effect, and to a large extent it's aim is to bring down all men to a common level. Many of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that their purpose is to redistribute the nation's wealth. Their aim is an egalitarian society -- an objective that does violence both to the charter of the Republic and the laws of Nature. We are all equal in the eyes of God, but we are equal in no other respect."

Palin, Obama, and the French Revolution

2008-10-19T23:29:00.006-05:00

I've heard a disturbing saying a lot recently from my poor, misled Democratic friends: "I want my President to be elite, to be smarter than me." To be fair, I hope that our President is smarter than them, too, but that's not what they mean. The implication is that because Sarah Palin went to the University of Idaho, majored in journalism, comes from a small town in Alaska, and hasn't yet made any decisions about foreign policy, she's less qualified to be President than someone who went to Harvard or Yale, has been in Washington for years, and has made hundreds of bad decisions about foreign policy. It's a dangerous sentiment.

A huge part of the reason that the First Republic failed in France was because after tearing down the monarchy, the proletariat supported the sans-coulottes, who were the members of the bourgeoisie that promised the most to the proletariat, and they were elected to the Directory. As could have been predicted, the new bourgeoisie leaders promoted the bourgeoisie above other classes, just as the aristocracy before them had done for the aristocracy, and the proletariat was no better off. Had the French followed the example of the Americans and allowed most classes to be involved in government, the compromise of leaving each other alone would have been seen as viable, and it is possible that a republic would have worked.

Right now, we have three members of the American bourgeoisie running for President and Vice President: two long-time Senators, and one young Senator who has been brought along by those of the political establishment. Sarah Palin is different. She is a member of the proletariat who cared enough about her children to run for City Council to give them a better town. When she didn't have enough impact, she ran for mayor where she could do more. Then after she accepted a state appointment and saw how corrupt her state government was, she ran for governor to revolutionize it and make it work better and more honestly for all the citizens including the proletariat. And she's been incredibly popular, because she has done exactly what she promised to do.

In a rare trust in a member of the proletariat by a member of the bourgeoisie, John McCain chose Governor Palin to be his second-in-command. It is an opportunity that rarely occurs without revolution. We have been told by our leaders over and over again that we should trust them, and that they know best how to take care of us. Over and over again that when given the choice, they will tax the proletariat to pay for the excesses of the nobility and bourgeoisie. Hopefully, if we can elect a member of the proletariat to the executive, the bourgeoisie and nobility will start to let the proletariat decide some things for themselves.

The United States House of Lords are Traitors

2008-10-01T20:48:00.006-05:00

Not two days after the House of Representatives made the boldest stand for the regular guy in decades, the United States Senate voted 74-25 to spend $700 Billion more wealth created by regular middle-class guys and gals buying up horrible investments made by the biggest banks in America. After having told Pitchfork and Musket Junta member Will that the bailout bill has been opposed by a 200-to-1 margin by his constituents, John Cornyn voted for it. Apparently the Senate no longer believes that they are responsible to the American people, and vote based on the assumption that have a lifetime appointment. They have become the House of Lords. They either think that they and the bankers that have been testifying to them all week are smarter than us and that they know better than the entire country what is good for entire country, or they don't care what's good for entire country.

I had a viscerally angry reaction when, after the bill passed, Chris Dodd said that he thought the bipartisanship was in the mold of our founders. A little education for you Mr. Dodd: When Alexander Hamilton set up a National Bank, the last thing James Madison did was show bipartisanship. But then, politicians believed they had an obligation to protect the Republic from the monied interests in New York. And to be fair, the First Bank wasn't supported by taxpayers, although it did have a competitive advantage. Our founders rightfully acknowledged that whenever there's agreement in government, it's only to grow their own power at the expense of the freedom of citizens.

All of the likely suspects voted for this bill (except for Socialist Bernie Sanders), but scarily, so did some of the ones that Conservatives have come to believe that they can count on. Bob Corker, John Sununu, and Tom Coburn all voted for the bill, with promises that it doesn't signal the end of their conservatism. After January, it might not matter much. Angering conservatives (and most of everyone else) in an election year where the Republican brand is already damaged doesn't bode well for preventing a Democrat supermajority.

We've got one chance left to save the American people from this bill. The House will vote on the bill once more on Friday. The House leadership is going to be threatening committee assignments and chairmanships. We must continue to flood our Representatives with phone calls and emails, and tell them that the smart stand is with their constituents and against their leadership. If you have a few bucks, donate to one of the brave Congressmen's reelection campaign today. And pray. We're going to need some help.

God Save the Republic!

Notions of liberty: my inaugural Junta post

2008-10-01T11:02:00.007-05:00

"There is no question that if one were to ask whether we Americans are moving toward more liberty or more government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter – more government control over our lives. We might have reached a point where the trend is irreversible, and that is a true tragedy for if liberty is lost in America, it will be lost for all times and all places." - Walter E. Williams

I have been reading lately about the history of the Republican Party and its players. The hijacking of the GOP is nearly complete, and completely obvious to anyone who dares investigate. People with conservative principles have been systematically weeded out, if not completely destroyed. Promoted within the GOP are those weak-starred boot-licking generals consumed by a lust for personal power at all costs. They are experts at kissing ass and standing up for nothing.

Most of the GOP Hijackers' supporting crew have never pondered the proper role of government or any truly conservative principle. They care not for matters of liberty. They fall in line with the head puppetmasters--folks like GW, Rove, McCain, and Cheney--and salivate eagerly for any scrap of perceived power, or even just an "atta boy" from someone higher up on the political ladder. These spineless sergeants of the New GOP hold office at all levels in every state. It wouldn't occur to them to oppose big government legislation or shifts away from liberty because they don't operate based on a set of well-defined positions. The only position they understand is their current standing in the hierarchy on the ladder of power, and their lust for altitude.

The result for rank and file American patriots? We will only ever have the choice of two positions: kneel or fight.

Why the Crash Will Happen, and Why it's a Good Thing

2008-09-30T11:51:00.007-05:00

Over the past few years, much ado has been made about the dangers of a consumer-driven economy, the dangers of the horrible personal savings rate, and the dangers of the amount of personal debt in the United States. Cheap credit and federal mandates to lenders have fueled the debt explosion and discouraged savings. More than one financial experts have rightly noted that Americans don't save, they buy houses. Our GDP is driven, not by how much we sell, but how much we buy. It hurts our sustainability, and it increases our trade deficit, and it transfers wealth to other countries.

Americans have wised up. They have seen the folly of tying up most of their net worth in a house that they can enjoy, but never realize the return. Many are even rejecting cheap consumer credit. Savings rates have went through the roof. According to the Department of Commerce, personal savings rates have risen from -1% in the 3rd Quarter of 2005 to 3% in the 2nd Quarter of 2008. Rumors are that the savings rate in the 3rd Quarter of 2008, which ends today, are 7%.

This really hurts the big banks that are most exposed. Big businesses put their deposits in big banks and get their credit from big banks, but individuals and small businesses put a disproportionate amount of their savings in small banks and credit unions, while they also get their credit from big banks. People are spending less and saving more in small banks and credit unions, and consumer-driven big businesses are depositing less in big banks. So big banks, who have the most credit out and most bad credit out are getting fewer deposits, while small regional banks who were already less exposed are getting more deposits. If big banks continue to fail, small banks stand to benefit even more.

So if people are saving and not spending, what's going to happen to that money? It's going to be turned into loans, and much of it for producers. Manufacturing has been building for several years, and those projects are starting to produce. Existing small companies and entrepreneurs can borrow from the well-positioned small banks and credit unions to produce products or provide services to those producers. And if personal savings continue at these rates, that means more products available for exports, which will reduce our trade deficit, maybe convert it into a surplus, and make the country more sustainable.

This conversion to a producing economy will be painful to those who benefit most from a consumer-driven economy, especially lenders, but it is inevitable. It will hurt many on Wall Street, and many of those about to retire who are heavily investment in stock. Any bailout will just prop up companies with an outdated business model, and delay or prolong the crash. The good news is that once this crash is over with, new economy that we emerge with will be better than the one we left behind. Those of us who are young enough to benefit have exciting times ahead.

Disclaimer: I'm no economist, and these are just my observations. If they are wrong, I blame ignorance.

Rural Connectivity Administration

2008-09-28T16:35:00.003-05:00

Obama is talking big about putting major investment into bringing broadband to rural communities. It sounds awful familiar. Remember the Rural Electrification Administration? It was the commission that was charged with building electrical lines to small rural communities and little houses on the prairie. And it never went away. It continued taking taxpayer money and adding bureaucracy to the top of rural electrical co-ops. When we still had a significant number of fiscal conservatives in the House, this was a target of their scorn. The slick squirrels in Washington eventually changed the name to the Rural Utility Service to obfuscate the fact that it was a worthless hanger-on bureaucracy. Now Barack Obama wants to add a Rural Connectivity Administration to the mess. Expect it to last well past the destruction of the economy of the country.

To be fair to the New Deal Socialists and the Hope and Change Socialists, the Rural Electrification Administration was and is, and the Rural Connectivity Administration will be a tiny fraction of the Federal Budget. But it's a key example of how nothing that Washington gives us ever goes away, even when it's outlived its usefulness.

Provision That I'd Put In The Bailout Bill

2008-09-28T15:06:00.004-05:00

My friend Will has an idea for a provision in the bailout bill that's not just window-dressing, and that would really protect the taxpayer. Congress should add a provision that if any company is bailed out by this bill, their limited liability protections are suspended until the entire loan is paid off. If this plan were really absolutely necessary for the economy to survive, let the big bank owners put their own neck on the line. I doubt that it would happen. I'm guessing that if it got personal, the doomsayers would get a little less bearish.

The Bailout and the Squirrels in Washington

2008-09-26T09:47:00.004-05:00

We are being told that there's no agreement in Washington about the terms of the bailout, and huge debates are going on. But here's the nasty truth: There is no substantial debate among those in the Administration, those in the Senate, or those in the House committees about the bailout or the size and scope of it. Everyone that is currently involved in the process is committed to spending roughly a trillion dollars of American taxpayer money to buy terrible investments at above maket prices. The debate is all window-dressing. The debate is on three issues: 1. How much control Congress gets of the money flow, 2. Whether they will spend the money on stock of failing banks or near-worthless assets of those failing banks, and 3. Whether or not the government will get to set pay of the executives of the failing banks that they buy out.

Let's talk about these issues one by one:

1. Giving Congress more control over the money flow - In theory, I suppose this is marginally better than the original proposal. Congress would be able to cut the purse strings at $200 Billion or $350 Billion if they decided. And Congress is directly accountable to us and up for election really soon. The Department of the Treasury is only indirectly accountable to the voters, and the Federal Reserve isn't accountable at all. But I don't think it change the cost to the taxpayer at all. Congress almost never spends less than they can, and I don't think they'd start now.

2. Assets or Stock - This is a lose-lose situation. If the government just buys the assets of failing banks, they lose our money. If the government buys stock in the failing banks, they get all kinds of new control and they lose our money. It's a plan with Barney Marx Frank's fingerprints all over it.

3. Restricting Executive Pay - This has a nice populist appeal to it. Lets stick it to the criminals who did this to us. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this amount of money is pennies, and all of these executives made tens of millions just 3 years ago when bank profits often exceeded 30%. I don't think they'd hurt much, and it certainly wouldn't help the taxpayer much.

The fact that there is vicious debate on window dressing while the substantive plan remains unchallenged brings me to an observation. This often happens. Remember when the FISA bill was passed, and no one debated whether we'd reauthorize the ability of the Justice Department to tap our lines with only ex post facto paperwork filed away in a secret court that it's illegal to talk about? The only debate about was whether or not we would provide immunity to telecom companies who obeyed orders from the DOJ. It reminds me of watching a cat hunt a squirrel. The squirrel will sit and eat, all fat and happy, his big bushy tail twitching away. The cat will very carefully stalk the squirrel, but when it gets close enough will get distracted and pounce on the tail. The squirrel will scamper away unscathed. Washington is full of squirrels.

And that gets us to the rhetoric. Anyone who is against this bailout plan is getting blasted by Paulson as wanting to do nothing, and anyone who suggests that we scale it back significantly is demonized by Bernanke as wanting the economy to fail. The same fear tactics who got us into war with Iraq are being used by the Fed and the Treasury to get Congress to agree to waste taxpayer money on the mistakes of bankers. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have proposed solutions based on sound, proven free-market principles. If we return to free market principles, the bubble will continue to deflate, and there will be pain. But the pain will be short, the plans will spur investment, the economy will recover, and the country will be stronger long-term. I somehow doubt it will happen. Because as we've been told by Paulson and Bernanke all week (I paraphrase):
"If we don't let the Federal Government buy the banks, the Communists Win!"

Thankfully, there may be one group left in Washington with some courage and concern for the taxpayers. Republicans in the House of Representatives are showing intelligence and resolve that is all too uncommon in Washington nowadays. They are committing some additional taxpayer money to the FDIC, but nothing close to the risk that the current Paulson proposal (or Barney Frank's "compromise"), and they are taking steps to encourage investment. With a little luck and our support, these brave men and women may help us avert disaster to the taxpayer. That would be a breath of fresh air.

The Great New York Money Grab

2008-09-21T15:36:00.003-05:00

While cleaning up from Hurricane Ike and trying to put their lives back together, Texans got looted worse than any looting in the history of the world. In one short week, with the help of Congress, the President, and the Secretary of the Treasury, a few Wall Street bankers made off with 700 Billion Dollars of money made by hard-working people in Houston, Beaumont, Galveston, Port Arthur, Texas City, Pasadena, and Baytown (and Detroit, Cleveland, and other producing cities). That's $2500 for every American man, woman, and child living outside the 5 Boroughs, and over $6000 per non-New York taxpayer. It was an Western train robbery of which Jesse James could have only dreamed. It's a travesty. The South and West, and especially Texas has held up the national economy for a decade now, by holding taxes relatively low, attracting major investment manufacturing companies like Toyota, Honda, Shell, and GE. Texas has led the way in keeping manufacturing jobs in the US, keeping the existing energy infrastructure sound, and building the new energy sources. And what thanks does Texas get? When the chickens from the bad eggs laid in Washington and New York come home to roost, Texans get robbed to pay the farmer.

Never in the history of this country has State sovereignty been so important. We couldn't afford the Federal government before we had to bail out banks, we certainly won't be able to afford it now. The salvation of this country will not come from Washington. It has to come from the States. It's time for us to demand that Austin quit sending bad money after bad to Washington and New York, and declare the sovereignty of it's citizens. We can't afford to support our own citizens and New York bankers' mistresses, too.