Steel City Cowboy

What Really Makes a Good President

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:49:00 +0000

Both sides in the current Presidential pre-campaign are claiming that members of the other ticket lack the experience to be President of the United States. Before you can really say who has proper experience or not, though, you should define what it is that a President needs to do. Here's how I think it breaks down:

1. Make the correct decision on executive matters (law enforcement, foreign affairs, dealing with Congress on legislation/budget issues) under time pressure, with less information than would be ideal. They also must be able to make these calls on the merits, not based on how much blow back they might get from the group that loses out.

2. Cultivate differing pathways of information. Relying on a single reporting chain will result in granting the gatekeepers of that pathway a certain amount of control over the decision making process. A President must not become a hostage to nor a dupe for his bureaucracy.

3. Correctly determine ulterior motives and willful deceptions in others with some degree of accuracy.

Those are the main skills. Of course, it helps if you're a "sleeps six hours a night or less" person like President Clinton. You can just get more done. It's science. Being able to give a good speech and having a knack for PR won't hurt you either. It's not a requirement, but will certainly make pulling off requirement #1 a lot easier.

So, which of the candidates currently running are qualified under these criteria? It's hard to tell. The best way to determine this would be to get everyone to agree on a set of criteria like this, then have the candidates directly address instances in their own past that demonstrate the desired behaviors. It would be like a targeted interview, instead of the sort of policy debates we have now which actually aren't very relevant to doing the job in my opinion. Policy is important, because it will suggest which way you break on certain situations (foreign policy crisis, showdown with Congress over budgetary items, etc.). The weakness of focusing purely on policy differences, though, is that it doesn't reflect how well the candidate will be able to decide between presented alternatives or how effectively they will be at coming up with their own.

What I would love to see would be a "National Job Interview" with each candidate sequestered like a real interview situation. It would focus not on policy issues and personal beliefs, but would function as a real job interview -- the questioner behind an imposing desk and the candidate facing them from a smaller standalone chair.

"Senator Obama, please tell us about a time when you had to make a specific policy decision, on a deadline, and had only been presented with sparse information. Also state the results of that decision."

"Senator McCain, give us an example of a time when someone was lying to you in a professional capacity, you realized it, and took (or did not take) action based on that knowledge."

"Governor Palin, explain to us how you have attempted to prevent your close group of advisors from achieving a strangle hold on information that reaches you."

The candidates would each get a chance to express a counter example about their opponents for the same question when things turned out poorly for them.

"Senator Biden, please explain to us why we are so totally lucky to be hanging out today with someone as cool as yourself."

Okay, that last one might not be real question, but I'm sure that Lunch Bucket Joe would be happy to talk about it until the next commercial break.

So now I'm wondering how I can convince CNN or Fox News to let me host something like this. I think it would be incredible, especially if I got to electro-zap them if they strayed off course into policy talking points. Well, I probably wouldn't do that to McCain or Palin, just because I'd be worried that they'd kick my ass in the parking lot after the show. And I get too much fun out of Biden to do that to him. Now who does that leave?

Maybe I wouldn't be the best host for the show.

Party Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 03:01:00 +0000

I just can't get jazzed about speeches given by candidates and politicians, even if it's the guy (or gal) I'm rooting for.

You see, scripted speeches in the context of a political campaign are one thing and one thing only: a party trick. Something they've either been born able to do, or picked up along the way. Yes, the ability to read the teleprompter or a sheet of notes and sound natural while doing so is a valuable fund raising tool while on the campaign trail, just like being a great juggler can make you a few bucks at the boardwalk. But don't mistake for anything more than what it is: a trick.

The first time I thought of the skill this way was after reading Joe Klein's Primary Colors, the pseudo-Clinton insider biography. The character (played by Larry Hagman in the movie adaptation) who is running against the pseudo-Clinton is portrayed as having a magical skill for "turning on" when he spoke to TV cameras. It planted a seed in my subconscious that bloomed within the last few years.

It does bother me, then, that people put such a huge amount of stock into the scripted political or campaign speech. For example, in 2004, I saw President Bush speak in person at a campaign rally. He wasn't bad. Certainly a better scripted speaker than 80% of the professors I had at Penn. But big deal. It didn't mean a thing, one way or another.

Candidates and officials usually do not write their own speeches, although they certainly give notes, make suggestions and grant final approval. So we can assume that they at least agree with what they are reading. However, it does not give any of the listeners a window into their thought processes, and isn't that what we really want? Personally, I find the unscripted town hall format far more illustrative of a candidate or politician's true demeanor.

This is not to say that scripted speeches are all insincere. They are probably not. The point, though, is that when watching anyone with a modicum of skill in this flavor of party trick, you simply won't be able to tell.

The darker side of this particular skill, however, is that it masquerades as its opposite. It tells us little about a candidate's true feelings, beliefs or intentions, yet gives the impression that it has told us everything. It is designed to make us feel, to touch our hind brains instead of our fore brains, yet gives the impression that it appeals to our intellect. It is a form of acting. Someone who has the skill can stand up there and deliver a great, moving speech regardless of how they really feel or think about the material, and yet people who lack the skill (or are ignorant of its very existence) are certain that no one could talk so passionately or knowledgeably about a topic unless they really meant it.

They are wrong.

And so, if you want to base your opinions of a person on how well they deliver a scripted speech, by all means do so. But don't delude yourself into thinking that a great speech is anything more than what it really is: entertainment.

The Lion or the Tiger?

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:29:00 +0000

Allegheny County Democrats, including our County Executive Dan Onorato, are about to saddle county residents with a false choice. At issue is funding for the Port Authority, which, despite claims that it has its financial house in order, is still a bloated mess that amounts to little more than welfare. It is over $70 million in the red for the year.

Allegheny County's solution is to raise revenue from the general electorate, and the only legal options they have to do that are through a series of drink/car rental taxes or through property taxes. So, the county instituted a 10% poured beverage tax this year, to much outcry from business owners.

After taking a lot of grief for it, the Democrats have decided to through a toddler-level hissy fit. On the November ballot will be a referendum that gives voters a choice between keeping the drink tax or raising property taxes. Clearly, they're doing it so that when everyone votes to not raise their property taxes, County Council (and other) Democrats can go back to the complainers and say "Look! The People voted for our tax! Suck it!"

Of course, it's just more dishonest condescension on their part, the same kind that has kept our region economically restrained for... well, forever.

"Well, you people didn't like the drink tax," they seem to be saying. "So, we have no choice but to do this!" As a parent, I know that I've used this tactic on kids who haven't thought through all of their options. Part and parcel of this tactic, though, is that there are often other options that aren't even mentioned. That's what is going on here.

County Republicans have made the point that the Port Authority needed just upwards of $30 million in revenues to balance, and that the drink tax so far this year has brought in almost $25 million. They concluded that the tax should be minimized for the rest of the year so that only the proper amount is raised, instead of the nearly $50 million it is on track to collect. Is that going to fly? Of course not. It would make too much sense. But a plan like that recognizes that those collected taxes aren't just magic money that materializes from nowhere. The Democrats don't seem to understand that if your tax takes $15 million more than its "goal," that is money that the government just sucked right out of the pockets of the local economy.

So, the Democrats try to sell us on the false choice of drink tax or property tax -- the lion or the tiger. Their talking point is that "this is all the state allows! We don't have any other way to generate the revenue!" By the way, I like how they always say that a tax "generates" revenue, when it does no such thing. People who work for a living and add value to products and services in their jobs generate revenue. People make. Taxes take.

Anyway, they keep repeating that line over and over to try to distract from the fact that there are other options, just not ones that are based on taking more money from people. They could try cutting the budget in other areas. County Republicans have made the point that there are still a number of areas that have yet to realize promised efficiency gains and savings in the current government structure. They could try drastically restructuring (or nuking and rebuilding) the Port Authority so that it actually reflects the current demand for mass transit in the region.

Or, and this is my favored solution, change the fares of the system to accurately cover the costs. How high would fares have to be in order to pay for the bloat they're enacted? Would anyone still ride if it cost $15 for a bus trip across town? We always hear how much more efficient mass transit is than the horrible, Earth-killing, selfish automobile. I wonder, though, if this talk of efficiency takes into account the massive subsidies that are needed in order to make such a system function at even a subsistence level.

The details of ridership numbers are hidden from us, and you have to wonder why. If we could see them, would it turn out that the Port Authority is just a gigantic welfare program? Would it turn out to have been more cost-effective to call a cab for every single rider last year? Or perhaps to buy them a cheap car, in which case they wouldn't have been beholden to the government's transportation schedule? Would that money have been better spent on something else?

In the end, it's obvious that county Democrats just want to continue business as usual at the Port Authority, propping up a system that has let them give patronage jobs to their friends and family and to provide another form of heavily subsidized services to the large but mostly penniless core voting block that keeps putting them back in office.

Let's Just Take Away Their Vote

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:19:00 +0000

To read and listen to many of today's pundits try to handicap the Democrat primary campaign heading into West Virginia and Kentucky, you would think that we should probably just not let those people vote. The nicest euphemism that's come up for these voters is "uneducated." I guess calling the people of these states who have inconvenient viewpoints "uneducated" is kind of like calling blacks or hispanics "voters of color," excepting the fact that it is used in a derogatory fashion. So, the more appropriate comparison would be if pundits referred to blacks voting for Obama as "those people *wink* *wink*." Of course, that would never fly, and neither should this other form of bigotry.

What's the criticism, really? I have heard one local talk show host go on for days about how Senator Clinton is courting the "stupid whites and hillbillies," suggesting that it's a shame if that's your only constituency. Far be it from me to defend Hillary as her domestic policies are about as far removed from mine as can be (although as Glenn Reynolds suggests on numerous occasions she might field a much more aggressive foreign policy than a Republican President), but I feel like I have to chip one in here for her, and for the people of Kentucky and West Virginia, both the educated and uneducated alike.

From an intellectual standpoint, choosing the President of the United States is a ridiculously complex task. Voters have to take a measure of a candidate, everything that they have said and done, decide how much of that is truthful and how much is show, then decide how any of that is relevant to the job. Then, they have to sort through the bad stories that the other side has unearthed or manufactured. The sheer amount of information available on which to base the decision is staggering. However in my opinion, there is no evidence so far that people with a superior education choose a superior candidate.

What is the job of President and how do people, even the Highly Educated (including myself: Ivy League, etc.), make that call? I think that when it comes down to it, people recognize that the job of President is in fact an Executive position. Yes, there are policy initiatives and speeches and all of that happy crap. But when it comes down to it, the President is there to act when a tough call comes across his desk. At that point he (or she) won't be going over how the different alternatives reflect on the policy paper they had on their web site during the election. They'll do what they think is the best thing to do. Exactly which forms of legislation will cross the President's desk for signature into law? We can guess, but we can't sure. It'll boil down the President's judgment.

The fact that most people understand this at a basic level means that despite any intellectual protestations to the contrary, they choose their President based to a large degree on how well they identify with that candidate. If you identify with the candidate, it means you feel there is a strong correlation between what you would do in a situation and what the candidate would do. And isn't that what all of us want in our President? Someone who would do what we would do when presented with the same set of circumstances?

That is why the pundits should just lay off the people who haven't been brainwashed at a four year institution of high indoctrination. In fact, one could make an argument that when it comes to making the Presidential decision (voting for legislators is a different thing altogether), their opinion, "uninformed" as it is, is just as valid as anyone else's. Well, it's informed, but not with the kind of information the talking heads prefer to distribute.

Why do you love the government?

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:20:00 +0000

Lately, I've been confronted with a growing number of people in both my church and work experience who are expressing a point of view that seems bizarre to me. Their view, though I'm not sure how far they've followed their premises to their eventual conclusions, is that there is a man, Mr. Barack Obama, who will be "good" for our country. As in, morally good. Capital "G" Good.

I have heard them speak adoringly of him, such that the phrase used in conservative circles, the "Obamessiah," really does seem to hit the mark.

"Oh, I love Obama," they say. "He's great. He's what this country needs."

Verbatim quote, that.

I have seen some people on the right note that Obama seems to be functioning as a secular spiritual leader for many on the left who have abandoned or never felt a religious spirituality. That may be true, but it doesn't explain the fervor I see in the eyes of otherwise religious people who appear to think of him as really something special.

From directly questioning people who express a great hope in Barack Obama, I have gleaned that they believe that Mr. Obama:

Is a moral man;
Wants to help people;
Will use the power of the Federal Government to give aid to the poor and needy;
Will use the power of the Federal Government to allay the negative aspects of capitalism;
Will stop a pointless, immoral war; and
Will increase the morality of the Federal Government.

That is my best attempt at an honest appraisal of the situation, stated as neutrally as I can manage. I don't think you would find too many Obama supporters who would disagree with those statements. That being the case, I now present a treatise on a different point of view. It's not so much a classically conservative perspective as it is a different way of looking at many of the basics that people who label themselves "progressives" take for granted.

Progressives purport to be open minded. Free thinkers. Compassionate. Tolerant of other views. My own experience has shown that there is a great divide between what they preach and what they practice regarding their tolerance of other viewpoints, so I have to wonder how many of them will be able to make it through this without simply discarding it because it differs from their orthodoxy at such a basic level.

Organizations are not moral entities
The first mistake that progressives make is that organizations and groups of people simply are not moral entities. To most people, there is no doubt that each individual human being is a moral entity, responsible for their actions and words, with a sense of right and wrong and good and bad. And most people, liberals and conservatives alike, would probably say that organizations (churches, community groups, corporations and governments) are also moral entities. They would be wrong.

History is replete with examples of the difference in moral volume between individuals and groups. It is as simple as looking to the diffusion of individual morality in a group that leads to no one taking action in a bad situation when many individuals in the group might have acted differently if presented with that same situation alone. But what about churches and community groups? Certainly they are moral actors in the world.

What is morality, though? Where is it located? For those of us who profess a religious belief, we would say it is a generational product of the soul and the mind. For are atheistic friends, we can say that morality lives in reason, which is a product of the mind.

What mind does a church have? What business has a soul? And what are the consequences of treating things that lack the basic building blocks of morality as though they had them?

Certainly, you can say that a church, a business or a government has organizations and structures analogous to a mind. But is it close enough to a mind and a soul that it meets the qualifications for admission to the sphere of moral entities?

If you believe that businesses, governments and organizations are moral entities, you believe as a consequence that their decision-making bodies qualify as a mind, and that, if you are religious, the "spirit" of the organization qualifies as a soul. Of course, that's an argument neither side can prove. We can't see the mind or soul of an individual or of a group, and the discussion would quickly descend into "yea-hu/nyu-uh" territory.

A different way to look at the problem, though, is through outcomes. We know the outcome of treating individuals as moral entities. It entails holding people responsible for their actions and words, rewarding those who we have deemed "Good" with our approval, and punishing those we have deemed "Bad" with our disapproval. The outcome is a fairly stable society of individuals, where good behavior is in general socially encouraged, and behavior that is detrimental to society is generally discouraged. A large part of that punishment and reward system is based on moral pressure.

But what do we get when we treat organizations as moral entities? As organizations cannot have morals, you lose the leverage of moral pressure, while at the same time expecting the organizations to behave as individuals. I'd suggest that what you get is the 120 million souls extinguished in the 20th century at the hands of people attempting to implement socialism, far more than religious wars have killed in the entire history of humanity, and far more than have died of want in a capitalistic society. The drive for socialism is the drive to hold government to the moral imperatives of the individual.

Why do people persist in a belief in socialism?
I suggest to you that capitalism -- the private ownership of property and the ability to dispose of that property as the owner sees fit without interference from outside powers -- is the natural state of humanity. "It's mine" is one of the basic of human impulses. Socialism, even of the ideal variety, flies directly in the face of that. Socialism, in which nothing at all belongs to the individual, is the exact opposite of one of the most basic human understandings. Is it any surprise that any time it has been tried, force has been needed to make it stick? In what other realm would we be so foolish to force a way of being on people which simply is not?

This isn't to say that all human impulses are good, or that we do nothing as a society and as individuals to try to mitigate the darker impulses we have. In fact, coupled to "It's mine" is also the natural empathy we feel (and yes, it's embedded in us at a bio-mechanical level) when we see another human being unjustly (or maybe even justly) suffering. "It's mine" is balanced by "Let me help you." That is a good thing, and it is so because we are moral creatures.

The great experiment of socialism was nothing more than an attempt to ignore "it's mine" -- to take the moral imperative of "let me help you" away from the individual and assign it to an organization. The results of that experiment are well known, and are to me the greatest indicator that attempting to do such a thing, to supersede the morality of individuals with the morality of an organization, end in disaster. The failure of socialism and socialistic policies is due to the fact that they require moral actions and accountability from an entity, the government, that is definitionaly amoral. Requiring a dog to be a good cat will not produce a good cat. It only makes a confused dog.

How can we decide which form of government and economic system to use, then? Certainly, socialism is seen as more moral than capitalism because its stated intentions are better. Socialism hopes that everyone should have everything, in plenty, and there should be no failure or competition. Capitalism doesn't care one bit. All it cares about is that individuals (and groups of individuals) can dispose of their property as they choose. But see how quickly looking at economic systems in those terms devolves into silliness? Capitalism doesn't actually "care." Socialism doesn't really "hope." They are philosophies, and describing them in this way, as I've heard almost every progressive I've ever talked with about this do, ascribes to them qualities they simply do not have. Thinking about philosophies in such a flawed fashion leads directly to bad policy decisions.

If we can't judge economic philosophies based on their supposed moral imperatives, what they "care" about, then what metric can we use? As I said before, I would look at outcomes. One of the things that progressives tend to go on about is the plight of the poor, and how socialism in the form of government action and programs will help them. Looking at history, though, which economic system has helped the poor the most? It turns out that national economies that lean to socialism create poverty. That's right. They actually create it, foster it and grow it. National economies that lean to capitalism, though they are less "moral" in the eyes of progressives, actually raise the standards of living for everyone, the poor included.

It can be argued that the citizens of the United States of America, through technological innovation driven by capitalism, are responsible for a greater increase in the standards of living for more human beings than any other group of people combined in the history of the world. Period. Socialism has produced almost nothing useful to the alleviation of human suffering. Capitalism is responsible for the simple fact that you and I live a life beyond the wildest imaginings of even the rulers of the world as recently as a hundred years ago.

So, when looking at outcomes, the choice is clear. If you can ignore that voice in your head that tells you the system you choose must be moral, even though systems are definitionaly amoral, you might just change your mind. Ask yourself, as a progressive, why you think that systems and groups are moral entities. If you cannot answer that question adequately other than saying "well... they HAVE to be!" you may need to rethink the way you look at economics and government policy.

What are governments good at?
If governments cannot be moral actors, then what are they good for? What purpose do they serve? The brief answer is that governments exist to project force. For and against whom they project that force helps to differentiate the types of governments. The Federal government of the United States has very few positive mandates (as originally constructed), but they all involve the application of force. Besides the normal powers presented in the Constitution (raise an army, declare and fund war) that are obvious uses of force, the rest, too, involve force involve force in more or less obvious ways. The levying of taxes and the ability to settle disputes between the states (and other financial powers and issues) are all backed by the use of imprisonment and lethal force. Never forget that taxes are collected at the barrel of a gun.

The Bill of Rights can be read quite directly as explicit limitations on the ways that the Federal government can apply force to the citizens of the United States. This is really basic civics class, but I find myself amazed at how few people remember those early lessons. The first governments formed to instill the authority of force within an individual or individuals to carry out the sense of justice of a local community. It was, essentially, field deputization. And although the scale of things has changed, that original purpose has not. Government, large and small, is there to use force or the threat of force to accomplish a goal. In the case of a legitimate government, that force will be used in accordance with law, as it is in most of the modern Western world. In an illegitimate government, that force will be used almost exclusively against the very people who live within the governmental system for the sole purpose of the retention of government power, as it is in places like Zimbabwe and China. This is not a binary situation, and all governments ride a line between these two extremes.

Even the most noble end of government, which according to progressives is helping the poor and oppressed, has at its basis the use of force. No government program with a grounding in socialist philosophy (the redistribution of wealth) would be possible without the taking of private property in the form of taxes. As was mentioned before, taxes are collected under the threat of force, whatever anyone may say about your duty to pay them. And so, we find ourselves in a situation where in order to have our government act like a moral individual and provide aid to the poor, we must use force against our neighbor to do so.

Of course, some amount of taxation is necessary. It is not good, but necessary. In America and other capitalist societies, we agree to give up a small portion of our private property (under threat of force) in order to ensure that the government can project enough force on our behalf against foreign and domestic powers that we can maintain our right to the rest of our property. The rest, from the standpoint of government, is all cost, and no benefit.

If you use a gun to feed a person and don't realize you're using a gun, it's not going to work out how you planned.
It stands to reason that to engage a entity like the Federal government to attempt a moral action, of which morality it cannot know, will produce a paradoxical result. You intend to help the poor. But all you do is take from others by force, without even accomplishing your primary goal.

If helping the poor were as simple as giving them money, this might actually create some net good. Unfortunately, that is obviously not the case. How many hundreds of millions of dollars in goods and services have been taken from people then redistributed (once the government eats away a percentage in its massive inefficiency) to no avail? What has it bought us? It seems that when you spend large amounts of money on poverty, you get what you pay for. More poverty. In your attempt to impose a moralistic structure on something that is by its nature amoral, you not only use force against your neighbor to take from them, but you don't even accomplish your original goal.

Yes, we should be helping our brothers and sisters in need. But as individuals, and groups of like-minded individuals who want to pool their own resources to do so. As soon as you step over the bounds of what is yours, though, and start requiring by force of government that others help, the battle is lost. You are no longer helping, because you have abrogated your own moral duty to an entity that is amoral. When a person asks another for help, it is the beginning of a psychological process in them and a personal engagement on the part of the helper that benefits both and has a great chance of success. When a person applies to a government agency for cash benefits, no such process begins. It is faceless. Soulless. There is no help -- only property that has been taken from someone else.

Here is the point where my understanding fails. In the face of the massive failure of socialism and government programs to allay poverty, how can anyone continue to put faith in the efficacy of such things? I think it is their overwhelming need for the government to appear moral to them. The actual outcomes don't matter or can be wished away. It is a horrible temptation to abandon our moral responsibilities and hope that somehow the government that never succeeded in doing so in the past will somehow work it out for the good, for the moral way, this time.

Direct Admonition From The Bible
Now is the point where progressives, especially religious ones, begin to look for justification for their faith in government power, because the facts are clearly not on their side. They say that Jesus advocated the changing of governmental systems. He was a rebel. He shook up The Man. Indeed he did, but that was by the way he lived his life as an individual and in the way he helped other individuals. The textual message of Jesus in the Gospels is very very personal. Of course, you can extrapolate things from his life. Almost any message you like, including the message that Jesus admonishes us to work for governmental change. Of course, most of the people I've met who argue that point of view want governmental change that advances "progressive" ideals. But the truth is one that I learned in college: don't ignore the plain meaning in favor of the one you've dug up.

I saw it innumerable times in literature classes, and it seems to be the same thing today. The professors would find some scant textual evidence for a contrarian point of view that was in vogue while they worked on their theses. No matter that the point of view was in direct contradiction to the clean meaning of the text. Somehow, that top level meaning was downplayed, as they strove to make points about the anagogical context with their fellow intellectuals.

I clearly recall hearing a professor who I know for a fact to be a very good person and self-sacrificing humanitarian go on and on about his theory that in Paradise Lost Adam and Even had not had pre-lapsarian sex. He found all kinds of things he considered hints, and deep hidden meanings that implied it. It was his pet theory, and he went on and on about it. In class one day, I had really had enough, so I asked why, if his interpretation were true, Milton had said straight up that Adam and Eve had "laid" together "in connubial bliss?" To this professor's credit, he took a moment, thought about it and said "You're right." He promised to reconsider his theory in light of the fact that the literal text shot it down.

I think that people who live deep within a text on a daily basis sometimes lose sight of the very plain meaning it presents. Jesus asks us to change ourselves, and to show that change to the world so others can have a chance to experience it. He demonstrates and explicitly advocates dealing directly with people and personally helping them. The only mention he makes of the government or larger systems is to say that they are what they are, and if we choose to deal with them, we will get what they have to offer.

It is no surprise to someone like myself who knows what government is good at (projecting force) why Jesus did not attempt to save people by signing up with the ruling powers, setting up salvation committees and sending centurions to every corner of the globe to preach his word. He chose to walk among individuals, to touch them, eat with them and help them as individuals. The text is plain about that. The message of salvation, the conviction of human sin and our duty to love our neighbors as ourselves is not one that will survive if we attempt to spread and enact it by force. To extrapolate the text into a message of "social justice" which by its very nature requires the iron fist of government runs directly counter the plain message. Now, if someone talks about "social justice" simply as the removal of legal barriers to equality that is one thing. I have rarely heard it used in such a limited fashion, though. Are they really ready to spread their interpretation of the Good News by force? I am almost sure that they have not considered that this is what they are doing, this is the true conclusion of their premises, whether they realize it or not.

The real problem, and what should not be done about it
I've already mentioned my take on taxation several times, so I won't repeat it. But with that in mind, it suggests both the real problem and a solution. We are told by both Republicans and Democrats that the problems we see in the world -- poverty, racism, violence, inequality -- can be solved through the judicious use of government. Problems in government like corruption and disenfranchisement can be solved through a more judicious use of... government. An interesting notion.

Could it be that these things are not problems in search of government solutions, but instead symptoms of the problem of governments that are too large and powerful themselves? I've written before about the deleterious effect of the tax code on business. When changing the tax code or regulatory structures becomes a route to a greater return on investment than conducting actual business, businesses will attempt to change the tax code and regulatory structure. Business, like other organizations and systems, is naturally amoral. Like the wind, it is a generated effect. "Business" is the overall picture we perceive when we look at the billions of data points that are individual financial decisions. You can control it as well as you can control the wind.

Capital is like electricity in a circuit or packets on the Internet. It will flow through the path of least resistance and greatest return. That is a law of nature, just like "It's mine." And just like the fact that organizations are not moral entities. Cut off the money, and you cut off the power. If you reduce the income of government and its ability to raise further income, you destroy its ham-handed attempts to be moral that are always doomed to fail. If you can manage to reduce its power, though, to shrink the caliber of the Big Gun, you return moral responsibility to the individuals of our nation, while at the same time destroying the government as a valid revenue stream for business, consequently removing the corruption.

Organizations are not moral actors. Why then would you put your faith in someone who promises to bring "better" morals to entities like business and government that cannot even have them, especially when we have seen what happens when you try to do so?

The government is a gun. Why then would you put your faith in someone who promises to use that gun to do things other than project force?

Rather, I would choose to elect as my public servants (not to follow as a leader as I hear so many progressives tout) people who understand that business is an amoral effect, the net result of individuals exchanging and disposing of their property as they see fit. People who understand that the government is indeed a gun, and attempt at every step to minimize its scope and power, and therefore, its ability to be used against us. Certainly, there is no one like that on the left. I see people filled with rapture at the thought of Senator Obama becoming President of the United States, and I have to wonder what they are thinking. Why do they put such faith in both a man and a government to solve problems whose solutions have already been presented to us two thousand years ago? Of course, there is no one like that running on the right at the moment either, but at least their words coincide with bits and pieces of this from time to time.

I urge anyone who thinks that Senator Obama will help to "heal" our country or help certain groups of people, to reconsider why they think that government is even capable of such things, and to look at the cost in history of trying to force it into being so.

From the standpoint of someone like myself who advocates for drastically smaller government, this standpoint is, ironically, just more of the same. There is no change here. Just a desire to make the government something that it simply is not, and the inevitable side effect that the Big Gun grows stronger. We need personal responsibility, within ourselves and to our fellow humans, but without the weapon of government prodding our backs. No one at all is preaching that this year, but I know whose message is the furthest from it.

Your Next School Board Meeting Will Be In Harrisburg

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:08:00 +0000

One of the major issues in Pennsylvania over the last couple of election cycles has been property tax "reform" or "relief." Personally, I think we should be grateful that Governor Rendell hasn't been able to deliver on one of the largest planks of his election platforms. The sort of reform he has pushed for is nothing short of an anti-market power grab for the strings of Pennsylvania's schools.

First, what's wrong with the Pennsylvania's local property taxes? The main criticisms of the current system, in which each school district levies taxes based on some sort of valuation of real estate, are that:

A: They aren't Constitutional. The Pennsylvania Constitution (Article VIII, S1) states that: "All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be levied and collected under general laws."

At least that's what a Court of Common Pleas Judge recently used to try to invalidate the property tax structure of Allegheny County. This seems to be quite a stretch to me, as it's pretty clear that this single sentence in the Constitution is there to prevent taxing authorities from capriciously slapping an onerous tax on an individual or class of individuals, eg. a minority group they are trying to run out of town. It simply means that within the area of a taxing authority, the tax laws have to apply across the board.

So really, the argument against Constitutionality is little more than a tactic in the battle against local property taxes with very little grounds in reality. This ruling is being fought, and, even if it doesn't fall, local tax structures will almost certainly blissfully ignore it without a magnification from some higher judicial or legislative authority.

B: They hurt those on a fixed income. While it's true that people on a fixed income (which is political code for the elderly on Social Security or people on some other kind of government support) can be forced from their homes by rising local property taxes, the Constitution actually gives the Pennsylvania General Assembly the power to exempt or relieve from real estate taxes people who, "because of age, disability, infirmity or poverty" (Article VIII, S2, b, ii) as long as the state reimburses the local taxing authority for the lost revenue.

So, the first argument against local property taxes seems to be more of a legal tactic than any kind of real objection. The second has a built-in remedy that the GA could enact if that were what they really cared about. With both of those complaints out of the way, what is the real gripe with local property taxes? I think that it is an attempt to centralize control of eduction at the State level.

One of the benefits of the current tax system that no one seems to mention is that it provides families with a very clear network of choices that allow them to balance their cost of living against government services and, in particular, the quality and timbre of public education. Local property taxes are an excellent way of letting the free market work on government and education. Yes, you can choose to live in a very safe, exurban area with instant access to all amenities and a superb school district. That's a very popular combination these days. So, what's the best system we know of when to balance supply and demand?

Duh. The market system, and locally set property taxes function in exactly that way.

The more desirable configurations of location and services will end up costing more in property tax. And if you think this is just theoretical, it isn't. People, loads of people in Pennsylvania, regularly move into different taxing districts to fine tune their particular needs. Think taxes are too high? Move two miles west into the next district where they are considerably lower. Not too keen on the level of service and education offered there? Well, then, I guess that your current taxes weren't too high after all.

Don't have kids, and want to live in solitude with no one to bother you, including the government? You can choose to live in a rural community with very little in the way of local government services and rock-bottom real estate taxes.

The choice, currently, is yours.

What advantage would there be to changing the current system? Under the current proposals: none.

All of the remedies under consideration at the State level involve reducing local property taxes across the board, or eliminating them altogether, and replacing them with statewide taxes: either sales, income, or a combination of both.

If you think that getting your local school board to listen to you when you have a complaint is tough, just wait until you have to go to Harrisburg to do it. As soon as our local school boards, horrible though they are, are relieved of their ability to adjust local tax rates, they also lose their ability to set local policy. As if our schools, even the good districts, weren't already weighed down by the grimy stink of bureaucrats more interested in their own retirement funds than in helping to educate America's next generation of innovators, leaders and workers.

Get ready for "if you want that State education funding, you have to do what we say." Of course, that already goes on to a certain degree, and it's a great argument to me for school districts staying as far away from Federal and State funding as possible, but when your entire school district's revenue is dependent on State-level funding, then we'll get the same kind of educational wizardry we see from the geniuses who have turned PennDOT into the laughingstock of the nation.

Pennsylvania's system of local property taxes could stand a few tweaks to be sure, but to let the State of Pennsylvania effectively remove taxing authority from school districts and bring it all under its bloated, corrupt umbrella would be a colossal mistake, and most likely the final straw on the back of Pennsylvania's already tax-broken economy.

Do You Even Know What That Means?

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 11:47:00 +0000

A recent poll states that 45% of the American public wants President Bush to face impeachment.

In all fairness to the President, I think that any survey that asks such a question should follow up with these ones and likewise report the results:

1. Do you know what impeachment is? Please explain the process.
2. For which crimes, specifically, should the President be impeached?

Call me a crazy, conclusion-jumping kangaroo in man's clothing, but I'd be willing to bet that about 15% of the public (and not necessarily a full overlap with the 45%) could describe impeachment and removal with any kind of material accuracy. Actual crimes... that would be another tough one. Torture at Gitmo! Er... He's a Nazi! Or. Something. The pollster could then give the respondents a remedial civics lesson about what impeachment is, how it works, and how you actually have to have, you know, a law that's been violated. And just not liking the guy, or shouting "Abu Ghraib!" doesn't cut it.

Personally, I think the impeachment of Bill Clinton and subsequent trial was a pathetic, politically motivated smear tactic and a horrible precedent to set. And for the current President? You voted for him, you've got him for four years. Suck it up, people.

Ron Paul Would Be Proud

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:38:00 +0000

One of the current Republican Presidential candidates who has absolutely no chance of winning the nomination is Ron Paul. Not heard of Mr. Paul? That's no surprise.

His views are radically in conflict with almost any other candidate or political group you care to name. He's a libertarian. Actually, calling him a libertarian is kind of like saying that Jesse Owens could "sort of run." The guy is hard core to the point of utter impracticality. "Mainstream" libertarians, and we're not the most practical lot in the world though we think we are, shake their heads when he walks into the room.

Why do I even mention this?

Well, this morning I was behind a Subaru driver with a silly bumper sticker. His sticker read "I'd vote for Ron Paul" and sported a picture of Thomas Jefferson. Invoking the opinions of the dead is silly, in my opinion, and as long as you're going down the road of making up supporting blurbs from people who really aren't available to give them, you might as well go the whole way and just start making up quotes from God.

Back to Mr. Paul and the Subaru driver. One of the precepts of libertarianism, and one to which I ascribe, is a fairly strict reading of "my right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins." The current sense of the society in which we live seems to be more of "my right to think something ends when you're offended by what you construe might have been a dirty look." Many people are quick to sue or seek legal recourse against others for imagined or intangible slights, and that goes against my beliefs. I would extrapolate from Ron Paul's political philosophy that both him and his followers would take an especially narrow viewpoint of the aforementioned axiom.

So, imagine my surprise when the Subaru driver ahead of me spent a few seconds dumping his cigarette out the window of his car, then rubbing his fingers together to makes sure that no bits of tobacco remained. Littering like this is such a clear violation of libertarian principles that I was at first surprised, then pleased by the irony.

In economic terms, littering is saying "I have a cost, which is to properly dispose of my own waste products, that I will completely ignore and abrogate to humanity in general, and to my local government specifically." Libertarianism says that each person pays their own way. And the more strict your viewpoint on libertarianism, the more you should strive to take care of your own costs.

So, person in the Subaru, I'm sure Ron Paul and Thomas Jefferson would have been proud of you this morning. I can see them both walking around Montecello, shooting the breeze about personal responsibility and tossing their Snickers bar wrappers on the ground.

"Thomas!" says Ron. "How dare you cause others cost for your own unrighteous convenience?"

"Oh Ron,"Jefferson laughs, "I would never dream of such an affront! I've placed my billing address upon the wrapper, so that whoever picks it up may properly invoice my estate for the labor. In fact, I've created an economic opportunity for some poor sod!"

And Ron Paul would smile.

[Please note: comments regarding why Ron Paul is the only potential Savior of America will be removed, unless they are amusing to a general audience.]

Casual Misandry in Home Depot's Ad Department

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 13:12:00 +0000

Radio commercial from the way into work this morning:

[Sung] "It's all inside..." [Sears]

[Narrator] "Here's a thirty-second shopping tip from us to you..."

[cell phone rings -- all voices are through cell-sounding connection]

[Woman] "Hi honey!"

[Man] "Hey. What're you looking at?"

[Woman, in stupified, amazed voice] "Shoes. You should see these shoes."

[Man] "Ummm... didn't we agree we were here to get a washing machine?"

[Woman, still mesmerized] "Yeah, but these pumps... I already have your credit card in my hand..."

[Man] "Can those shoes do our laundry?"

[Woman, reluctantly] "I'll be right over."

[Sung] "It's all inside..."

"Sears"

Really bizarre, no?

Well, as you probably figured out about halfway through, that's not a real radio spot. How did you figure that out? There's no way that would ever make it on the air.

In reality, the spot was one for Home Depot in the exact same format in which a man slavers and drools over a new grill, while his wife sticks to the practical plan of finding the washing machine they agreed to. The bit about the credit card wasn't in there, but I thought it worked on the same level of stereotyping: men are stupid, easily-distracted beasts who only like shiny grills and meat vs. women are vapid, easily-distracted shopoholics who live to spend their husbands' future earnings on new shoes.

So, beyond the fact that this scenario simply doesn't happen (I mean, come on... when was the last time a guy wanted to, you know, detour shop when there was a clear plan for getting in and out of a store, while the gal was on an efficient one-product-only retail mission?), what's wrong with this ad?

The answer's obvious, of course. Why is it okay to make fun of guys in advertising and not the ladies? I know this has been talked about for a while now, but I was hoping that maybe it was a phase that these uncreative "creative" types were going through and that it would have pooped itself out by now. Apparently I was wrong.

I'm not saying that I think the above fake ad is okay. It's not. It's uncreative, dumb and not funny. I'm just saying that the real ad shouldn't have seen the light of day for the same reasons.

I think I'll start a website entirely devoted to putting up counter-ads to the large proportion of ads that use the "guy as dope" cliche to sell their service. I'll have to put scans of Berenstain Bears books on there too, with the text rewritten to reflect a broader reality of family life than just "Mom's are always smart and oh-so-wise, the kids are not far behind, but Dad's little better than an ex-convict with ADHD and an active meth habit."

So thanks, Home Depot, for taking casual shots at the very group of people who provide more revenue to your company than all other groups combined. Geniuses running that place, I tell you.

Honest - I'd Write An Unbiased Article, But The Government Won't Give Me Enough Free Money

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:50:00 +0000

Here's an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "Rallies fault Bush for public housing cuts"

This article is so biased toward socialism that I couldn't not say something about it. Let's look:

About 500 people marched in the Hill District yesterday to protest another year of federal cuts in affordable housing that likely will mean layoffs in Pittsburgh. The Philadelphia Housing Authority announced 350 layoffs Tuesday.

So, the government should never ever ever cut spending, because it will mean that people who work for the government will lose jobs. That's just phenomenal logic: we shouldn't cut the size of government, because it would reduce the size of government. I'm thinking that we should have the government employing the absolute least number of people possible. I also like how the article calls it "affordable" housing. Instead of using that loaded term, shouldn't the socialist writer have used something more accurate like "taxpayer subsidized" housing? Notice that not once in the entire article is there any mention that the money for all this comes from taxpayers.

In rallies and daylong shutdowns that involved almost 100 agencies across the nation, public housing advocates skewered the Bush administration for budget shortfalls.

Skewered? Have at you sir! The author must think that the rallies really stuck it to Bush. Why else use the word "skewered"? A less biased way to say it would have simply been "criticized". Then, they go on to call them budget "shortfalls", which are bad -- we all know a budget shortfall is bad right? -- instead of cuts. Could it be because most people think government budget cutting is good, and there's no way in the world this writer would portray it that way? Of course, all of this ignores the fact that it is the Congress that draws up and passes spending legislation, not the President, but since Congress are the good guys now, we can't say anything against them.

"We need to convey the severity of the single largest reduction in funding this agency has ever faced and what it means to the 20,000 residents we serve," said A. Fulton Meachem, executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh.

Of course this guy's pissed... he's losing his funding! Seriously, has any head of a government department ever said "We're having our budget cut and reducing the size of our agency. Isn't that grand!"?

Chanting "What do we want? Fair housing! When do we want it? Now!" residents of public housing, advocates of affordable housing and plumbers, carpenters, painters and security officers for housing authorities traipsed en masse from the Hill House to Freedom Corner along Centre Avenue.

Can someone explain to me what "fair housing" is? "Fair", in the normal sense of the word, means that everyone plays by the same rules. When you map that onto commercial transactions like rent, it simply means that you get what you pay for. No more, no less. That's fair. What they mean is that they want better housing than they can pay for. Which, on a limited basis I'm not entirely against. We shouldn't have people living on the streets. But the whole public housing system is entirely screwed, and there is little that public housing residents give back to society in exchange for us providing them with housing that they otherwise couldn't afford.
How's this for "fair" housing? If you're going to house yourself and your family on MY labor, you need to give something back to the community. What would that be? I'm not sure, but I'd say it starts with getting your kids and neighborhoods under control and not letting your housing development turn into a crime-ridden slum. What's that, you say? The police should be doing that? Wrong! Although it's not their stated intent, in real life, law enforcement's job is to look for the guy that shot you, not prevent it in the first place. Oh, sometimes they're in the right place at the right time, and get to prevent a crime. But the real responsibility for safe neighborhoods begins with the people who live there. Period.

Before the march, to a packed Kaufmann Auditorium, Frank Aggazio, executive director of the Allegheny County Housing Authority, said, "I've never seen a crisis like this."

Look! Another guy in charge of a Housing Authority is losing his funding. And he's not happy about it. I'm just as shocked as I was the first time.

Henry Wild, a resident of public housing in Ross, told the assembly, "Pick up a piece of paper and write those politicians and let them know how disgusted you are."

I want to see those letters! "Dear politician, I am so disgusted that you gave me less free money that other people earned this year. Please give me more free money next year, because I would like to get all the different HBO channels instead of just the one I have now."

This year's federal allocation is 76 percent of the amount the federal government's own formula says a housing authority needs to operate. Last year's allocation was about 85 percent. The year before it was almost 89 percent.
"Subsidies continue to get cut, and prices go up," said Michelle Jackson-Washington, deputy director of the Pittsburgh Housing Authority. "We're avoiding them [layoffs] for as long as possible.
"If we don't have the money to pay police officers at night, what happens to security?" she asked. "What happens to the maintenance of leaking faucets? Snow removal?"

So we have statistics cited without any kind of references. What formulas, exactly? Sounds to me like the writer just regurgitated some Housing Authority PR numbers without even taking ten seconds to understand them. I'm sure there's absolutely no statistical shenanigans going on there. It's the age of the Internet -- throw us a reference so we can confirm that you're not just blowing smoke. It's easy, really.

Demographers and housing experts have been warning of a coming crisis caused by diminishing housing options for the poor. Incentives to help low-income people buy homes, like tax credits, do not reach far enough to help the very poor, of whom many in public housing are elderly.
She added that more than 40 percent of the residents in public housing in the city work, "but they're not making enough to go to the private market."

Any mention in the article of alternatives to taxpayer funded public housing? I don't see any. All I see is a list of big government solutions to a problem that is largely its own creation. Apparently, the only solutions the writer can see reside with the government.

The federal cutbacks will cause an ever expanding economic ripple, said Ms. Jackson-Washington. "We employ 480 people who pay taxes, and we have a very large vendor list" of people the authority pays for services.
The Allegheny County Housing Authority already has reduced its staff drastically over the past three years, from 280 to 165.

Sounds like a good start. So now, according to Ms. Jackson-Washington, we should be employing people at taxpayer expense because... wait for it... they pay taxes on their income. The stupidity of that statement is stunning.

"What I'm hoping is that the climate in Washington has changed a little bit and that lawmakers can find it in their hearts" to reverse the misfortune, said Mr. Aggazio, whose housing authority oversees 3,200 public housing units at 36 sites, 10 of which are designated for the elderly. In nine others, most residents are elderly.

Wait a minute. I thought this was the President's fault. At least, that's what the headline says. But here, Mr. Aggazio says that it's up to Congress to 'find it "in their hearts" to reverse the misfortune.' I was under the silly impression that it was Congress that allocated funding, and Congress that could cut it or increase it. So there, Mr. Aggazio and I agree. But it make me wonder why the headline would then accuse the President of doing this, when even within the article itself lies the admission that it's Congress? Also, I like how it's once again not characterized as spending less of the taxpayer's money -- it's "misfortune". Just plain old bad luck.

And now we also see the tragedy of this whole situation: by the Federal government more or less monopolizing and subsidizing a culture of poverty, we are presented with the horrible choice of allowing an out-of-control government behemoth to continue to grow or... throw old people out on the streets. That sucks.

"It is not a stretch to believe that if the current trend continues, many housing authorities will simply go out of business," said Carl Greene, executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, who initiated yesterday's national protest.
If housing authorities start going out of business, said Ms. Jackson-Washington, "homelessness will be the alternative."

Another disgruntled Housing Authority director ready to lose his funding. Yawn. And Housing Authorities are a business now? I thought businesses did something like offer a product or service so they could make a profit. Don't get me wrong -- the mission statement for the Allegheny County Housing authority is a noble one. It really is. But when did people stop realizing that depending on large amounts of Federal tax money was a bad idea, one that was likely to bite you in the ass sooner or later? If a hammer devises a noble statement about driving screws into wood to the very best of its ability... well, it might be a nice sentiment, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the wrong tool for the job, or that the screws actually need to be set into concrete block.

"We're having an erosion in dollars for the lowest-income people," said Elizabeth G. Hersh, executive director of the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania. She said her agency will use a recent survey of Pennsylvanians to lobby for political will that's been lacking.
The survey of 802 registered voters, conducted last summer on behalf of housing advocates in the state, ranked affordable housing second only to affordable health care as the top concerns.
The report indicated that a majority of those surveyed failed to recognize that a shortage of affordable houses is a problem, but of those who did, 88 percent put it in second place.

I'd love to see the wording of those questions. At this point in the article, can you really trust the author that those questions weren't radically biased? They may not have been, but in light of the rest of the article there is no reason to trust them on it.

While public housing distributions have been cut for three straight years, a new federal formula has been devised to redistribute operating money from the Northeastern states to the Sun Belt. Donna White, HUD's national spokeswoman, said that is because a Harvard study showed that Southern states have been underfunded while Northeastern states have been overfunded.

So... why not interview all the poor people in the South who've had to suffer because the downtrodden in the Northeast have had more than their "fair" share of free money? Well, obviously because this a Pittsburgh newspaper. No problem with that. But this is just a demonstration of the socialist government mindset: to win in one place, someone has to lose somewhere else. And that's because the government doesn't actually produce or create anything of value. They just take from the people who actually do produce things and add value to society, remove their ever-growing cut, then hand it back out in a degraded state.
And let's finish with a completely political quote so loaded with Iraq war buzzwords that I'm not even going to bother to deconstruct it:

"I urge President Bush to reverse course and come up with a new strategy for affordable housing," said Mr. Greene. "Stop the cut-and-run policy and restore the value held by most Americans of helping the vulnerable among us."

This is certainly quality "news" reporting. If the Post-Gazette keeps writing stuff this good, they may be able to start syndicating their stuff to Socialist and Communist news weeklies around the world!

It Takes One To Know One

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 17:57:00 +0000

We're mostly good people here, and, as I tell my kids, good people don't usually think that others are up to bad things. It's the liar in us who looks for the liar in others, and the mugger in us who looks over his shoulder on the street at night. And it's not like that's a bad thing. It gives us a better read on threats than an amorphous fear of the unknown ever will.

It also means that we give the benefit of the doubt, sometimes even too far.

Before the second plane hit the South tower, we were all busy ignoring the warriors within us. Some of us desperately so. It's hard, almost impossible, for good people to seriously consider deliberately murdering thousands, if not tens of thousands, of completely innocent human beings on behalf of an ideology. That's why everyone sat there after the first plane hit and told themselves "what a horrible accident."

When the second plane hit, that thought became instantly invalid. It was no longer up to us to look for malice or good, to guess at motives. Others had made the presentation in an irrefutable manner, tied up in a package of concrete, steel and souls. When the second plane hit, many of us thought immediately of how many other planes were in the sky at any given moment, each one a potential missile, and ouradrenaline spiked. Then, the Pentagon. Then, Shanksville. How many more would follow before they could be stopped?

It was right after the second plane hit that I went to war with them. To some people, the attack spoke to their inner pacifist: when someone wants to kill you, have them over for dinner, because they probably just don't understand where you're coming from. It spoke to their inner self-doubt, cutting loose their anchor on reality already worn floss-thin by an entire lifetime spent in the temple of relativism.

Now, I am a Christian, a follower of the teachings of Jesus Christ. I strive to emulate them in the way I deal with others, both those who are kind to me and those who are not. At the same time, I am a student of Mark Twain, and remember the first time I really got one of the major themes of Huck Finn. Huck resolves that to turn (escaped slave) Jim in is the wrong thing to do, and even though every source of information available to him tells him he will go to Hell if he doesn't, Huck decides to do that thing he knows is right, consequences and Hell be damned. Likewise, I've heard various riffs on the passage from Jesus' sermon about "not resisting an evil man", and turning the other cheek when slapped, all trying to explain away the pretty clear direction present in His message. They all seem to be rationalizations put up to let us fight evil. Personally, I'm with Huck, and just don't bother. If resisting a mortal danger to your family and way of life is wrong, then I will be wrong.

How that squares with Jesus' words, I am not sure. It probably doesn't. I'll ask Him when I meet Him. But until then, people like myself will resist.

In their shortsightedness, the people who presented us with this war saw only one side of the equation. They saw the future, with America in tatters, her countryside freckled with mosques and echoing the sounds of the call to prayer. They looked at us, and they saw no warriors, because they were not warriors themselves. What did they call us? Weak. Ineffective. A culture steeped in decay. It was the only way they could see us from afar, such was the lens of their own person. But they were wrong.

And fifty years from now, it will not be the United States that is dotted with mosques and madrassas, but their own lands that will be covered in McDonalds and Wal Marts. Their own children educated in secular classrooms. Their own mothers and fathers seeing their children win the soccer game next weekend rather than practicing for a suicide mission, rolling their eyes instead of reaching for a knife when their daughters come down the stairs dressed for school in a belly shirt.

The men and women of the active West, those whose heritage is one of action, decision, courage and ingenuity, will not be beaten. We will not. And if someday we have to do horrible things in order to ensure that our grandchildren will not have to revisit these same shores, then those things will surely be done.

I feel that we stand at the edge of a great precipice, watching those on the other side with the part of our good selves that still wants to hope for the best. But the other part of us is ready, too, watching for the flinch of motion that signals war. Fortunately, we are clever, and have machines, structures and philosophies that allow us to stand at that edge and rain Hell on our enemies without fear that we will lose our footing. Our enemy, however, has only a crumbling cliff's edge on which to stand, while a long, dark fall stares up at them, waiting.

Life On A Suburban Cul-De-Sac

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 12:12:00 +0000

Your stated goal:
To kill both myself and my family, and push my house down the hillside into the river.

My goal:
To beat the piss out of you, and get the neighborhood to finally put you under house arrest, because up until now they've been letting you run around the cul-de-sac and inviting you over for tea.

What happens:
After weeks and months of you leaving flaming poop bombs on my porch and lobbing little bits of rubbish over the fence into my yard, you finally decide to sneak onto my property while I'm at the store. You grab my cat.

One of the neighbors left a message on my answering machine letting me know it was you, like there was any doubt to begin with, so I decide to not only get my cat back, but to make sure that you know there will be real and lasting consequences if you ever do anything remotely like this again. Also, despite your constant idiotic threats and braggadocio, our has always been a neighborhood that the police are loathe to disturb. In fact, I've gotten the distinct impression that the guys down at the station don't like my family and wouldn't mind seeing us just move the hell out. So anyway, part of my plan now is to force the police to take some notice and actually, like, do their freaking jobs.

Over to your house. You're on the front porch. Being a good citizen, I have a couple of guns at home, but decided that this would be better settled without them.

"What 'cha doin', jackass?" you say.

I waste no time. Crack. Right in the nose.

"Hey come on!"

Crunch.

"We was jus' defendin' our own!" you whine.

I continue to smack you around the porch. You've lost some teeth and your nose is broken.

"Give back our cat", I say.

You smirk. "We're goin' ta kill you. Bite me."

I opt, instead, to kick you in the balls. I notice that your kids are shouting and swearing from inside the house, and tossing any trash they can find out your windows and onto my property.

You get in a punch or two, but generally, I spend the next ten minutes beating you around your porch and south lawn. Five minutes ago, you were still going on about how you'd get me, my family and my little dog too. But now, I can tell you must think you're in trouble, because instead of the threats, you're yelling to your wife to call the cops.

The police eventually show up. They know that I already filed a report on the missing cat along with the eyewitness evidence, and have on record dozens of your death threats against my family, so there's really not a whole lot they can or will do to me. They're like the worlds lamest, most least effective peace officers, if you can believe it.

They ask me if I'll stop kicking the shit out of you. They ask pretty nicely for guys with guns. My arms are actually getting kind of tired at this point, so I agree, as long as they promise to station an officer between our houses to give me and my family some well deserved protection.

The outcome:
The cop is setting up shop right now. You've been seriously bloodied, and you're certainly going to think twice before pulling any shenanigans again. My family and I? We're still here. Our house is still here. You've made good on none of your threats. I've gotten exactly what I wanted.

Then I hear your family chanting over and over:

"We! Won! We! Won! We! Won!"

And I realize that you won't think twice before doing something like this again, because you and your family are quite possibly the stupidest, most self-deluded psychos on the face of this Earth.

I'll have to start carrying my .45.

Explaining Political Deadlock

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 14:20:00 +0000

Several people, both in blogs and to me in person, have remarked about the oddity of the current situation both in our own country and now surfacing in Mexico. It seems that the left and the right are almost exactly equal in proportion, at least when it comes to elections.

I wondered about this after the 2000 Presidential election, and came to the following conclusion: political thought follows a normal distribution. That's a weird notion, because you read it and think to yourself "I'm not a statistic. My political thoughts are my own." But really, you know that they're the sum of everything you've heard about, then accepted, modified or rejected. And you can, unfortunately, assign different but specific knowledge bases to the different socioeconomic groups, both here and abroad.

Given knowledge base A, the final outcomes distribute normally over THIS range. Given B, they distribute over a different one, but still follow the normal pattern.

But wait! I'm an independent thinker! I'm one of a kind! So consider yourself a part of the third standard deviation on one side or the other and grin smugly in your brilliant loneliness.

Well, presupposing that political viewpoints follow the normal distribution, then why are we seeing it come into effect now, as opposed to fifty years ago (or any other time period you choose to... um... choose)? In the last few years, due to the proliferation of the Internet and 24-hour cable news channels, the different classes of socioeconomic groups are more and more frequently sharing essentially the same information base. Yes, some groups pay more attention to events and politics than others, obviously, but I'm not convinced that politics and world relations are deep enough games that concentrating on them obsessively will give you any greater insight than paying light attention to a good set of summaries (I know that's heresy to the political junkies like me and, probably, you, but come on... we do this for fun.).

One could also say that the advent of the Internet, with it's freeform discussion, long screeds, ad hominem attacks, and even, occasionally, some genuinely good writing has taken us back to the early days of the printing press, though amplified, when debate was real and meaningful. People are hearing what others have to say, and refining and sometimes altering their own positions to suit. You can look at it as a process during which political viewpoints are being hashed out ad naseum, helping people resolve to which camps they really belong, thereby hardening the distribution.

You could argue that the information bases have been biased toward the left in recent history, and I would agree with you. The last several years though, again, have seen a significant balancing of that base, leading to a movement of the entire distribution to the right. And now, we see the center of the distribution right at the electoral sweet spot where national elections produce nearly 50/50 results.

There are also notions like the fact that although long term strategy for each party is to shift the entire distribution in their direction, tactical considerations at election time (and that's pronounced: always) dictate that they will attempt to win each contested race with the smallest amount of resources possible. And you do that by only capturing 51% of the vote. With other races to spend on, it's not worth it to try to win with more than that. And you can't do that unless the distribution hangs around 50/50. Do I think the regulars of either party are really smart enough to keep long term strategy in mind while they plan tactics for the next skirmish? Well, if you've read this blog before, you already know my answer to that.

Am I saying I believe this? Not really. I'm no statistician, although a good friend of mine, a Prof. at Cornell who knows more about stats than I ever will, had a long discussion with me about this five years ago, and he didn't completely discount it. Maybe he was just being nice. Twenty years from now, this all may be obvious as nothing more than a statistical blip. Make of it what you will.

If you're going to comment, please try to be more creative in your insults than just calling me an idiot.

Does That Star Spangled Place Mat Yet Wave?

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 13:37:00 +0000

I know the flag burning stupidity is over and done, at least for this election cycle, and even though my writing time has been severely lagging behind everything else I'm doing, I thought I'd weigh in, albeit late.

The notion of an anti-flag burning law is, at best, completely untenable. And as a Constitutional Amendment, it's even worse. I don't discuss internecine politics here because it's pretty much always the same old crap, recycled every couple of years, and hardly bears comment, so I won't address the internal political aspects of this issue except to say that when laws (or Amendments) like this are proposed that have such glaring faults, the cause is almost always petty politics. But, it's about protecting our institutions! Or something. Yeah. Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

Let's suppose for a second that there is a Constitutional Amendment allowing the states to enact laws banning the burning of the American flag. Let's say that Pennsylvania enacts such a law.

What if I burn an old-style stars-in-a-circle flag? Illegal? It's not our current flag. What if I burn what looks like an American flag, but actually has little white Care Bear patches on it instead of stars? What if I fashion a stars and bars but use the colors of the Dallas Cowboys and burn that at a Steeler tailgate party? Should those be covered by the law or not?

Well, after crap like that, the lawmakers get pissed that people are circumventing the spirit of the law by burning pseudo flags. So they expand the law. Now, burning these kinds of almost-flags is illegal.

I throw my Fourth of July picnic trash in the burning barrel. One of the disposable place mats had a large image of the American flag on it. My neighbor, whose had a grudge against me ever since I called him a "feckless turd burglar" at the town council meeting, catches it on video. I've just burned an almost-flag. I'm busted.

Okay, say the lawmakers, when my case gets trumpted on the local news. It's all about intent! We'll add an amendment to the law that allows law enforcement and the courts to scrutinize intent. Was the person burning the near-flag intending the act as political speech or simply going about their daily business? That ought to fix it!

So, the only people who would be prosecuted for burning flags or for defacing pseudo flags would be those who did it with the purpose of making a political statement. There. That should... work... oh wait. Crap. We can't do that. Pesky First Amendment.

Roll it back, then, to the point where only burning an actual American flag is against the law. Now, once again, any protester who wants to burn the flag and get on their local news can just burn an extra large flag place mat, or a flag with forty stars, or a flag with slightly wiggly stripes instead of straight ones. And from the viewpoint of most bystanders, including television cameras, what's the difference? Curses, says the legislature. Foiled again!

And that's the basic flaw with this sort of law. Unless it is made untenably broad -- covering all variations and incarnations of the flag -- it becomes desired effect can be easily circumvented. What's the difference between a retired flag being disposed of in the accepted fashion (burning) and a Hamas supporter torching Old Glory in the town square? Clearly, it's the intent of the participant. It's the point they're trying to make. And certain politicians try to say that this isn't about political expression. That's all it's about.

And I thought the Democrats were the jackasses. Well, they are. But.

Here's a thought to turn the mutliculti's weapons back on themselves (note -- this is an ironic theoretical, not a call to action. If you do this, I will not be paying your legal bills. But if you do it, please post the video on the Internet so we can all watch). The next time you see someone burning the flag, punch them in their stupid head. When you get hauled in front of a judge, claim that burning the flag in your presence constituted "hate speech" and that, as it was a form of expression, it was tantamount to "fighting words". And if the local magistrate is a cantankerous American cowboy who isn't familiar with the actual "fighting words" doctrine, he might just give you a wink, take that as legitimate and let you off.

All They Want Is An End To The War!

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Wed, 03 May 2006 14:11:00 +0000

From WTAE News comes a little blurb about a gas price war. The good bit is at the end.

WESTMORELAND COUNTY, Pa. -- There was a gas war in Westmoreland County on Tuesday, but it didn't last long... Two gas stations dropped prices dramatically to compete with each other.

Prices for regular unleaded made their way to $2.36 per gallon.

Pretty good. The free market at work! Apparently lots of people agreed:

Cars began lining up to take advantage, causing a traffic jam that included one minor accident.

And now, the fun part:

State police then asked the stations to end the price war, and both agreed and raised their prices.

That's right. The police showed up and, instead of, say, ticketing motorists who were violating the law by parking on an open roadway, or directing traffic around what could be considered a spontaneous public gathering, they asked the gas stations to raise their prices!

As an officer of the law, how exactly do you say that?

"I'm sorry, sir, but your gas prices are too low."

Don't you need a warrant to force someone to raise gas prices? I'm sure any judge would be happy to... oh wait. Law enforcement has absolutely no authority to do such a thing.

So now, the Pennsylvania State Police are no longer content to just try to change the attitudes of young people and eradicate bad habits. Nope. Now, they're insisting that stores not sell things at a price that people will really really like. Because it's... I don't know. Making their job harder?

See something you don't like? Don't think about it! Give an order!

So what's next?

"Excuse me ma'am, but your outfit is too sexy. If you're going to walk around downtown like that, you'll be distracting male drivers. You need to put on a longer dress. Here, we have this hijab in our trunk, and I think it's just your size."

Okay okay! I don't want to be too hard on the Police in general. When they do their job, and it is a hard one, they do it well. And we need them. But silly, stupid incidents like this remind us that they often think that they are in charge of us, the sheep of society, as opposed to being there to serve us.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, I'll offer them this alternative approach: "All these people want to buy this gas at this price, which is perfectly legal, so we should see to it that we can facilitate this in a way that doesn't harm public safety."

Would that have been so hard?

Some Basic Business Sense

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 14:34:00 +0000

Moving house... shorthanded at work... spending all available non-family time on personal IT projects for future billionaire-hood... not a whole lot of time to think about issues pertinent to the mission of this blog, let along to actually write anything... but...

A quick note to the completely idiotic socialists in both the U.S. federal and Pennsylvania state level governments: businesses are simple economic engines that match consumer capital with product. That product might be a physical object; it might be a personal service; it might even be something abstract like a legal right or an option to do something in the future. But in the end, all business endeavors follow this simple template: at the time of capital exchange, the business agrees to deliver (or has already delivered) a certain product. Period.

If the product costs more to make than consumers are willing to pay for it, then the product either will not sell, or (depending on the type of market) will sell at a loss, putting the business out of business. If the product costs less to produce (and by produce, I mean, produce and deliver to the consumer) than consumers are willing to pay for it, then the company makes a profit. Very, very simple.

That is all that business does. To a business, everything is either a revenue (money coming in) or an expense (money going out). The cost of materials is an expense. The cost of employees is an expense. The cost of insurance is an expense.

The cost of taxes is an expense.

To a business, the cost of taxes is nothing more than another expense. It has no special status. (Well, okay, it has a particular moral stench to it, as an expense, but from a General Ledger and numeric standpoint, it doesn't.) This means that any taxes levied on a business go into the necessary calculations of what the minimum price is that the business can charge for their product and still make a profit.

So, if you, say, levy some kind of penalty tax on a certain kind of business, like, say an oil company, you've just added a large chunk to their "expense" category. What then, under the very kindergarten-level rules of business and economics, will happen to the price that the business must charge?

That's right, Arlen Specter, Ed Rendell, Rahm Emanuel, Ted Kennedy and all of you crazy, can't-understand-basic-economics socialists in both government and private life: the price that business charges for that product will go up.

So, if they would enact some kind of "windfall profits" tax on oil companies, the price of gasoline would actually increase. But couldn't the oil companies just be forced to keep their prices the same? Prices artificially low on an in-demand product? Hello gas shortages. Hello board members and CEOs being brought up on charges, because they have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. Hello chaos.

Which really brings up the question: Are these people so unbelievably stupid when it comes to economics that even this most basic reality eludes them, or are they just trying to score political points during a time when the polity is annoyed enough to bitch, but not hard-pressed enough to go to the wild extremes of attempting to carpool with people from their neighborhoods? And, if the pols calling for a penalty tax on the oil companies are just trying to score points under the aforementioned conditions, doesn't that mean they're flat out lying? In either case, it makes them unfit for public office.

Maybe there should be a small test for potential candidates. It consists of this:

"Do you think socialism is a good idea, and it's only problem is that it's never been given a proper chance/implemented well enough?"

If you answer "Yes", we smack you in the back of the head and show you the door.

Click-It or Ticket. Or Bite Me.

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:01:00 +0000

I'm really busy in other aspects of my life (work, creative, personal/financial), so I've had almost no time to blog. This, however, is one of the few things that gets me, um, exercised, so here it is (from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette):

Headline: State police want law to allow traffic stop just for belt violation
Subhead: Lobbying for tougher seat belt law

Well of course they do. When was the last time you wanted less power and control in your own job? They're no different. Except that they carry guns and will almost certainly not face a penalty if you die in a you-said/they-said situation. And that's the crux of the matter, really. It's not that the police are bad... they're not! I'm a big fan of law and order and the police force, both state and local. They do a very hard job for little reward. But it doesn't mean we should let the legislature give them whatever they ask for.

Remember that once the State, in the form of federal, state, or local authority has decided to arrest you (which includes being pulled over), things can go wrong if someone (you/them/both) is having a bad day. And when things go wrong, you can end up in jail, injured or even dead. To me, that says that we, as a society, should only invoke that potentiality when we really need to. For example, when someone is driving clearly too fast for prevailing traffic or road conditions, they are a danger to themselves, and more importantly to others.

Somewhere along the line, the commander of the Pennsylvania State Police forgot that his job was to enforce the law. He seems to think that his job is protecting people from every potential harm they could do to themselves. Should we let the people whose job it is to enforce the law also be the ones who propose and push for legislation? That seems like a dangerous conflict of interest to me. Well, onto the article...

HARRISBURG -- The commander of the Pennsylvania State Police wants the Legislature to approve a tougher seat belt law aimed at getting more drivers to wear the safety devices.
Col. Jeffrey Miller contends it's a way to save the lives of more motorists who are involved in crashes -- as many as 75 more lives a year, studies have shown.

See? He's just trying to save lives. As many as seventy-five more a year! I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the revenue that could be produced by this sort of thing. Not saying that's his primary motive, but I'm sure the State would consider that a nice bonus!

At a hearing last week, Col. Miller told legislators that Pennsylvania has one of the weakest seat belt laws of any state.

Or, to look at it from a less-fascist perspective, one could say that Pennsylvania has one of the "strongest stances on individual liberties when it comes to giving law enforcement the ability to arrest citizens for petty infractions." I definitely like that better.

As a result, he said, only 83 percent of Pennsylvania drivers now use seat belts, compared with at least 95 percent in Washington state, which has the kind of "primary" seat belt law that Col. Miller favors.

Then I guess all of us wild, anarchist Pennsylvanians will eventually die out due to the evolutionary pressures of fiery car crashes, and the Washingtonians will inherit the Earth. How is this the state police's business?

Under current law, a state or local police officer cannot stop a vehicle if he notices that the driver or passengers aren't wearing seat belts. The officer has to have another "primary" reason for stopping the car, such as speeding, ignoring a red light, driving erratically or other offense.

And with the exception of speeding, which should really be termed "excessive speeding", I'm okay with that list of reasons to arrest someone... they all directly endanger other drivers. So, the commander is saying that, even though they can pretty much pull anyone over they care to because almost everyone in this state drives over the speed limit, they need yet another reason to pull someone over. Bullshit.

Besides the need to increase drivers' safety, Col. Miller said, a tougher seat belt law could help change attitudes of younger people. When children riding in a car see their parents not wearing seat belts, it makes the children think seat belt use isn't important, and perpetuates bad habits, he said.

So now we learn that his errant notion about protecting people from themselves isn't the end of it. The job of the state police, as he sees it, is to change the attitudes of younger people. That's their job! To change the attitudes of younger people! I think there's a position for this guy in China. They like to let the police change the attitudes of younger people, too. Okay, that's unfair. He's just trying to help.

But that's not his job.

And speaking of things that aren't his job, note that he also wants to stop the perpetuation of bad habits, too. Perhaps the police should be able to arrest people for not washing their hands after they use the bathroom, because that's like, you know, a bad habit.

Ongoing publicity about the importance of seat belt use has gradually caused belt usage to rise in Pennsylvania, even with a law that state police consider inadequate. Usage stood at 68 percent of all drivers in 1998 and rose to 83 percent in 2005, according to the state police Bureau of Patrol.

So, even though simple educational measures seem to be working, state police consider the law inadequate.

But Col. Miller wants to get it closer to Washington's rate of use.

I wonder what kind of performance incentives are in his contract? Maybe none. But I'm certain it doesn't hurt someone's prestige in professional circles if they can say things like "We upped our seat belt usage to the highest in the country!" Once again, I want to make it clear that I'm sure the commander's motivations are almost entirely good. But I want to make it equally clear that no person on the face of this planet does not consider how a certain thing will benefit their own position, even if it is otherwise for the common good.

"We could save more lives every year with a primary seat belt law," he said.

And also by a 24/7 curfew law, too. But we don't do that.

...other legislators, speaking privately, say such a tougher seat belt law could be a tough sell in Pennsylvania, where many conservatives think government shouldn't dictate every aspect of a person's life.

See that? It's conservatives who don't think the State should dictate every aspect of a person's life. The horror! How dare those conservatives. I wonder if the Post Gazette realized the inverse implication of stating the position that way?

Many drivers could become angry, legislators fear, if they get stopped by a police officer and receive a ticket for not wearing a seat belt.

Do you think?

Use of a belt should be considered a matter of personal choice, some lawmakers said.

Amen, brother.

The article then goes on to talk about possible legislation regarding cell phone use while driving, and limits on passengers in cars driven by minors, which I'm not going to bore you by continuing to address.

Suffice it to say that the police's position can be summed up by this quote by another officer, in regards to both of the aforementioned issues: "It's all about distractions -- we need to eliminate distractions."

And again, it's not about enforcing the law. It's about social engineering. No conspiracies necessary. Everyone (well, almost everyone) wants to make the world a better place. Some people, including a lot of those who have invested their lives in law enforcement, see the power of the State as an effective way to make that happen. Hi. I'm a hammer, so you must be a nail. You're not? Well, let's pretend you are anyway.

The emergent behavior of a complex system is not necessarily possible to predict by looking at its individual components. Which is another way of saying that a large group of good people who mean well, situated within a system that is supposed to be around for our benefit, can bring about a bad outcome, even when no one intended it.

We have a system in our house for the acquisition of new stuffed animals by our children. If someone gives them a new stuffed animal, unsolicited, our kids have the option of not keeping it, or of getting rid of one of their older stuffed animals. Discarded plush goes to the local community outreach program, so it's not like they're thrown into the burning barrel. Lest you think I'm a draconian father, this policy is in place only because my kids have so many stuffed animals that they could not sleep on their beds if the plush were piled there. The second part of the policy is that if they actively pursue a new stuffed animal (save money for a Build-a-Bear, beg for Puppy Surprise for Xmas, etc.), they have to give up two old ones.

Maybe we should try something like that for legislation. You want a new law? Then pick two old ones of equal scope to repeal first. Can't find any? Too bad! That means your new legislation is either so trivial that it shouldn't have been brought up in the first place, or so utterly sweeping that it should probably be a Constitutional issue anyway.

I wonder what two laws Col. Jeffrey Miller would be willing to part with to obtain his primary seat belt law?

Some True Stifling of Dissent

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:17:00 +0000

I'm used to hearing leftists whine that their dissent is being stifled when someone in the government criticizes them or verbally disagrees with their viewpoint in a high profile manner. Their claims look even sillier than usual though, when contrasted with the real deal:

Last year, the corrupt and insulated Pennsylvania legislature, with the help of some in the judiciary, gave themselves a pay raise, in direct contradiction to Pennsylvania law. As pay raises cannot take effect until the next term begins, lawmakers gave themselves immediate "unvouchered expense" accounts to bridge the gap. Lovely.

The Pennsylvania media - mainstream newspapers, local talk radio, blogs - all went ballistic. People who generally didn't pay much attention to the slimy actions of their elected representatives had little choice but to hear about the whole thing, and they were pissed. Months of continuous pressure from the aforementioned sources resulted in the legislature repealing the pay raise and in many reps giving back the unvouchered expense money they had already received. There is a pending lawsuit demanding the return of the rest of the money. The incident has also sparked a number of groups, like Pennsylvania Clean Sweep, who are attempting to mount a massive "throw the bums out" campaign. I hope they succeed.

Now, though, it looks like the legislature is preparing to fire back. This article from WTAE-TV claims that Pennsylvania lawmakers are attempting to gut local newspapers' revenue streams. Un-freaking-believable. These people have absolutely no sense of who is working for whom here.

You work for us, you sons of bitches, and don't forget it. You obviously did not learn your lesson when you got your greedy asses smacked for giving yourselves a pay raise in a midnight session last year. And now you're directly retaliating against newspapers?! Are you completely insane? A lot of people can argue fine points of what the First Amendment applies to and what it doesn't, but I a sneaking suspicion it applies to things like, oh... newspapers and citizens writing articles about lawmakers who have been stealing our money.

Good luck at the polls.

How the United States is not Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:12:00 +0000

It has come to my attention that certain people still make the direct and serious comparison, despite it's prima facie silliness, of President George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler, and of the United States to pre-WWII Germany. I began a response email to one such person, and found that it turned out well, so here it is. Something for the folks who just don't seem to get it...

Post WWI Germany was a grim and embittered place. There was a huge amount of resentment amongst Germans for the power they had lost on the world stage since the debacle of the Great War. Their currency was horribly devalued (I'm sure you remember from your school days the cartoon picture of the German person taking a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread, etc.). They had had their pride completely destroyed as a national movement. Many Germans actively wanted and advocated for an actual dictator, thinking that facism was the only way back to world prominence.

Now, I don't know about you, but it's my viewpoint that even the poorest Americans have large TVs in their houses and expanded basic cable. They're fat, which means they have plenty of food. Stuff is cheap. We are not anywhere close the financial situation of Post-WWI Germany. Anyone who thinks we are is clearly lacking in their grasp of history and of the current standards of living in the United States.

Also, I don't see anyone wanting George Bush to be our dictator. Really. A lot of leftists say that he acts like a dictator, but those accusations are basically silly, as comparing the actions of the administration as a whole to the actions of any dictatorial regime in history will show. In fact, the best argument against that viewpoint is that those critics who say such things haven't been hauled away in leg irons because, well, that's what dictators do to their critics.

Nazi propaganda placed the blame for all of that not on the German people themselves, but on the Jews. It also put forward the notion that Hitler was Germany's last hope against the infiltrations and machinations of the evil Jews.

While the Republican party does contend that most Democrats are soft on national security, that is a far cry from the old Nazi line. Clearly, there are many people on both sides of the political divide who are capable of running our executive branch in a manner that enhances our national security. It is to the Democrats shame that their last Presidential nomination was NOT one of the people. If John Kerry had been even remotely believable about national security, he probably would have won. But his actual unsuitability to the situation does not mean that the other side was claiming that George Bush is our last hope against the invading Muslims. Indicating (correctly) that one person is unsuitable is not the same as saying that you are the sole person who is.

In fact, I'm still waiting for the administration to say that: "George Bush is America's last hope against Muslims." I haven't heard it yet, and as such, the comparison to Hitler will have to wait just that much longer.

In addition to everything else he did, Hitler was a populist. He promised something to basically every group in the country. In contrast, GW does not mind pissing off his opponents. I think that he kind of has "a thing" for it, actually. I know that I do. Now, were GW promising the lefties their socialist utopia, and the righties their isolationist dreamworld at the same time, we'd know he was pandering. Unfortunately for that point of view, GW has delivered on much of what he promised in his campaigns, and it has made him very unpopular with a lot of people, the exact opposite of what Hitler was doing.

Hitler was a brilliant speaker. He could work a crowd like Marshal Mathers. President Bush might be a lot of fun at a cookout, but I've personally seen the guy speak, and he's no Hitler. As an orator, he's only so-so. Probably subpar, if we're being honest. He won't be selling any used cars, so the "power of personal persuasion" thing that Hitler had goes right out the window for GW.

And finally, the stupidest part of the argument that George Bush is somehow like Hitler, and that the U.S. is similar to pre-WWII Germany: Stormtroopers. Oh, we've heard the talking heads refer to certain people or groups as "brownshirts" or "stormtroopers" or the "gestapo", but let's remember for a second what these groups did in Germany. They kidnapped German citizens from their homes, from their jobs and off the street. They kidnapped ("arrested") dissenters, critics, and anyone they thought might disagree with them. They took them to prison. Then they tortured them. Then they killed them. That's it. And it wasn't like this only happened at the end. ("Oh it's coming!" the leftists say.) This was how Hitler and his squad rose to power. When other tactics failed, they silenced their opposition through brutal physical intimidation.

It seems to me that people who makes comparisons like this have lost all sense of magnitude. To them, an official statement that the administration disagrees with an opponent's position is the same as an actual abduction. After all, it's an attempt to "silence dissent."

But what they fail to realize is that degree really does matter. There is a big difference between shooting someone with a water gun and a shotgun. But, as we've seen in the ludicrous "zero tolerance policies" enacted in school districts, leftists can't seem to tell the difference, nor do they even want to. If you gave me the choice, I'd pick being shot with the water gun. But to hear many leftists today, you can almost picture them saying "It might as well be the shotgun. Shooting me with a water gun will crush my will to respond anyway, so what's the difference?" Well, at least I picture them saying that. Then I laugh.

You want to say that the U.S. is like Germany just before the Nazis took hold? Be my guest. Just be sure to back it up with... something. Personally, I think that's a little like fishing not just without bait, but without a rod, reel and boat, too. Good luck with that!

Men, Higher Education and the Marketplace

noreply@blogger.com (Roland) — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 13:16:00 +0000

This article at the Weekly Standard online, which I found through Instapundit, argues that the declining application, acceptance and graduation of males at four your colleges shows the malefic effects of Title IX, as well as an increasing war in the primary and secondary public school systems against what are considered standard males traits, and that a great and scandalous disservice is being perpetrated upon young American males.

Allow me to suggest an alternative point of view.

As economic actors, males are more directly linked to the current state of the market than females, and will therefore react more immediately to any changes in that market. Could it be that declining college enrollment and graduation figures are a recognition by the most interested individuals that the value of a college education is declining? In that case, it is not men who should be worried, but the colleges themselves, as this could be a harbinger of their increasing irrelevance to what most people would consider Real Life.

A 2002 breakdown by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that while 74 percent of males over age 16 were in the labor force, only 60 percent of females were in the same group. In addition to that, a significantly larger proportion of the employed women worked in traditionally female jobs such as clerical and administrative positions. Although the current number and married men and women are basically equal (duh!), the number of men who have never been married is almost thirty percent higher than the number of women who have never been married.

What's the point of these statistics (which are, granted, worse than damned lies)? Well, you could read them to mean that young men (and men in general) expect that they will more likely to have to support themselves than the average woman, and that they will be competing in a job market that requires skills above the menial level. On the other hand, women will be looking at the job market knowing that they are more likely to get married (an economic buffer) or to work in a job that basically requires you to answer phones, click a keyboard and file papers, which, let's face it, doesn't require a gigantic skill set.

So, if the value of college education is declining, it would be men who would begin to jump ship first. People who expect an economic buffer, or who will be competing in a market in which an advanced skill set is not required, can afford to be more frivolous in the educational decisions. College to them would be an affordable luxury. To men, though, the cold grip of economic reality is felt sooner, and more surely.

But how would young men know ahead of time that the value of a college diploma is falling? By talking to their older brothers, their neighbors and friends, who are ten years ahead of them on the employment curve. Ask those people "Did college prepare you for the working world?" and they will most likely laugh first, then reply "Not at all. I learned more in my first month on the job than I did in four years at college. I probably should have saved the $100,000 it cost and started a shoe store." With the exception of certain professions that require licensing and/or accreditation of some kind (MD's, lawyers, teachers), a four year degree is essentially useless to what you will actually do for the rest of your life. And men are beginning to realize it. Everyone will, eventually, but women will do so more slowly, as their reward structure is not as directly tied to their use of the next four years as their male contemporaries'.

Am I arguing against Vickers recommendation in the linked article that the President should take on Title IX? Not at all. Nuke Title IX. It was messing with the market in the first place, adding just one more barrier between higher education and reality, and further decreasing its relevance. However, the problem isn't that because of this higher education has done a disservice to men. We'll be just fine, thank you. Although women play an increasing role, our economy and business structure was founded and evolved based on mostly male structures, and men are still the economic drivers of our society. The problem is that higher education has done a disservice to itself that will only continue and deepen if they fail to recognize the diminished value they are providing.