Saturday, June 27, 2009

WHO GIVES A FLYING FOXTROT?

So Michael Jackson is dead. I am sorry to hear it. But he was basically a schmuck whose entertainer style was to make himself progressively more ridiculous by displaying his mental health problems. Marian Anderson, he wasn't, nor B. B. King.


Was this poor, haunted wraith really worth 807 front-page articles in 71 countries?

These people certainly would have!

Friday, June 26, 2009

THE SCIENCE IS IN!

The science is in. The man in this picture - the gauleiter Heinrich Wachsmann von und zu Kalifornien - is an idiot. Not a useful one, but a dangerous one, since his idiocy is combined with boundless malice, equally boundless love of arbitrary power and (to paraphrase the second worst president in U.S. history) an inordinate fear of democracy.



This man however, despite his tender years, is pretty smart. The science is in on that, too.



He definitely knows right from wrong, and he can recognize a dangerous situation before it develops into a disaster. He would never vote for a bill that is sure to demolish his people's homes, lifestyle and freedom.

Now, that's smart!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

HOW DARE THEY???

Here I am, I, Obamus Maximus Hisself, channeling my friend Mahmoud's progressive feminine for months now with my all-conquering cosmic mind, and he dares tell me anyways that I'm interfering in Iran's internal affairs?

Time for drastic measures. I think I will weep publicly (we'll use onions to create the illusion of tears) and experience stigmata on my palms (ketchup will do: the media will lap it up). Then I'll reestablish relations with my fellow progressives like Hugo Chav. Then I'll give some of the undeserving American rednecks' money to that outstanding humanist, Bobbie Mug. (Val says I should first learn a few phrases in Zimbabwean, to impress the natives. No sweat, I've got more doctorates around here than Bush could ever imagine!)

Mahmoud, you'll be real sorry when I'm done with you!

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH CARE, THE NIGHTMARE APPROACHETH

On May 16, I mentioned the uncanny similarity between the Soviet "health care" system and Obamacare. Namely:

"...because a single-payer system is basically a single HMO for the whole country, heavily centralized and run by faceless bureaucrats, we the people will have about as much recourse as Soviet citizens did."
Not a bad statement, even if I do say so myself. Now come the dirty details, thanks to the White House report, "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform" (.pdf), produced by the Obamite Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). I thank this not-so-august body of highly-degreed thinkers for confirming my darkest fears. On reading through their product, I felt like I was back in Communist Czechoslovakia, forever trapped in the Office of Central Planning. It's that bad.

I am also glad that I am not alone in being afraid. Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation just published an extensive analysis of that document in The American Spectator. It is aptly named Murder by Bureaucracy.

Need I say more? Write to your elected representatives to b**ch and moan before it's too late, folks!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

SOTOMAYOR AND "EMPATHY"

Appointing judges on the basis of their "empathy" in place of thorough understanding of and respect for the law, sound self-knowledge, humility and just plain humanitarianism is apparently not a new concept. Paul Moreno, at the History News Network, has written a frightening article titled When "Empathy" Goes Awry, in which he details the ironic - and sometimes tragic - ways in which empathy-based appointments had turned out. From Oliver Wendell Holmes who respected little except eugenics to William O. Douglas who was "rude, ice-cold, hot-tempered, ungrateful, foul-mouthed, self-absorbed, and devoured by ambition," the article is a cautionary tale for these postmodern times.

And just to show that there is nothing new under the sun, borking by so-called progressives was alive and well long before Ted Kennedy. In particular, Moreno recounts the 1930 manhandling of Judge Parker:

Self-righteous progressives also abused many good judges whom they incorrectly believed did not meet their “empathy” standard. In 1930 Judge John J. Parker was effectively “borked” by New York Senator Robert F. Wagner.
Moreno's concluding paragraph says it all:

We can hope that President Obama has better luck choosing justices by the standard of “empathy.” But it would be better still if he found some other standard.
Like, maybe, thorough understanding of and respect for the law, sound self-knowledge, humility and just plain humanitarianism...

SECOND-GENERATION KEYNESIANISM

The Czech President Václav Klaus, a well-known economist, had published a fascinating article about today's economic crisis in April 2009. He referred, specifically, to the implementation of policies based an aggressive second-generation Keynesianism that seem hell-bent on making things worse and ultimately turning our democracy into full-fledged socialism (see also Klaus's trenchant commentary on Europe's democratic deficit that is spreading to the United States).

The article, titled The Dangers of an Aggressive Second-Generation Keynesianism, was published in Lidové noviny on April 25, 2009. Translated extracts are below.

  • I contend that, at this moment, we live in an era whose major characteristics are a consequence, or even a product, of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s. More specifically, our situation is a result of the way in which the Great Depression had been interpreted.
  • The Great Depression was taken as proof-positive of the unsuitability of the existing form of capitalism. This conclusion resulted in far-reaching interventions in the functioning and institutions of this unique, fundamentally fragile and easily damaged social system.
  • In the Thirties...[a] scientific-sounding doctrine had come into being...from John Maynard Keynes, one of the best-known personages in the contemporary economic science establishment (Cambridge University), cultural world (the London Bloomsbury group) and economic policy (major roles in key economic conferences following both world wars). Keynes’ doctrine, attractively formulated, easy to understand and easy to integrate into political thinking, was taken as gospel truth. It remained so at least through the early 1970s, when the accumulation of economic problems of the time led to the rise of stagflation, a phenomenon incomprehensible to Keynesians.
  • Keynes...grasped what society hungered for. He tore down capitalism sufficiently to discredit it [as well as]...all of contemporary economic science. He also managed to convince economists, politicians and the media that the only possible future for capitalism entailed massive state involvement in the economy by means of extensive government expenditures that were to supplement the inherently insufficient “effective demand” of the non-state sector of the economy – i.e. all of us as consumers and investors.
  • Keynes...was convinced that the state (represented by enlightened people like himself) would spend taxpayers’ money better than they themselves could. He dramatically replayed the issue of market failure over and over again, but he never asked himself about the failure of the state. He was a prototypical philosopher-king type,... a type that keenly feels the calling to direct the rest of us
  • Keynes’ starting premise was that the market had failed and the state must therefore step in. Hence the need for massive state expenditures of any kind...[but] Keynes was primarily interested in the so-called multiplier effect that would create various types of income: in other words, gross national product. What Keynes did not mean was the creation of new production capacity. This explains his emphasis on revenue-generating, not capacity-generating, effects of additional expenditures...The multiplier works whether or not an activity is unproductive, hence deficit financing of the national budget, regulation of the economy, nationalization and intervention now, regardless of future consequences.
  • Keynesianism, or more accurately, policies based on Keynesianism, triumphed in developed Western nations. If we compare the share of government expenditures in the 1930 GNP to that of 2000, we find enormous growth. A comparison of the tax burden once more reveals a large increase (here, 1930 should really be compared to 1980, i.e. to the world before Reagan and Thatcher). National debt, likewise. Social revenue as a percentage of overall revenue, the same. The number of government officials, ditto. The number of pages of legislation, again ditto.
  • Moreover, there is a ratchet effect, allowing movement in only one direction. This movement is referred to as forward movement or progress, but this kind of “progress” is fiction. It is best called no progress at all. It turns out that movement in the other direction is only possible in a kind of revolutionary moment like, for instance, the fall of Communism....[But] our policy of deregulation, privatization, denationalization and desubsidization of the economy ended in the second half of the 1990s. The first decade of the 21st century already saw a complete triumph of social democracy in its various guises...To put it simply, Keynesianism triumphed. This is the very thing to which the Great Depression had given birth.
  • Today’s crisis is greater than the crises of past decades. (This is so despite the fact that the fall of Communism, which had nothing to do with Keynesianism, resulted in much greater economic losses than today’s crisis.)
  • Some months ago,...I [expressed]...my skepticism that the crisis can be “cured” by cash infusions from the government... I...submit that the crisis must run its course. It is a curative process, an indispensable and irreplaceable liquidation of mistaken and therefore untenable economic endeavors. It makes no sense to try to bypass it by maintaining these endeavors artificially, with taxpayers’ money.
  • [T]oday’s crisis...was...certainly not caused by a Keynesian “insufficient effective demand,“ or insufficient consumption or investment on the part of private entities. That is why it cannot be resolved by a government augmentation of this allegedly insufficient effective demand in accordance with Keynes’ prescriptions.
  • The crisis arose due to ambitious but irrational government interventions in interest rates and the change in the U.S. Treasury’s monetary policy that increased monetary growth, all accompanied by ill-advised government regulation of the financial sector. Unrealistically low interest rates in the housing sector led to an imbalance that must be corrected, not artificially maintained by means of a flood of new money. The bubble must be allowed to shrink: it must not be pumped up even more....
  • The economic crisis will pass, sooner or later. There will be long-term damage, but it will accrue elsewhere. The opponents of the market have once again managed to create a widespread distrust of the system. Now, however, it is not merely distrust of free-market capitalism; of the laissez-faire system; of the capitalism of Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, as was the case during the Great Depression. Today, the distrust is aimed at the contemporary, highly regulated state capitalism....Our contemporary socialist visionaries make it clear – despite their rhetoric that often says something very different – that even this state capitalism is too much for them. A Keynesian revolution is not enough for them. They want yet another revolution – one that limits the market still further.
  • We are approaching real socialism. The market is no longer seen as an autonomous system but a mere tool in the hands of the self-appointed elect to create economic latifundias. This is ultimately the meaning of expressions like “economics must serve the people,” “financial system in the service of humanity,” etc....I am not sure that capitalism will survive this qualitative shift.
  • The market either exists, or it does not. In the past, central planners thought that the market is a tool, but they understood that it was not possible to get rid of it altogether. They therefore wanted to exploit it in their own way, for their own purposes. Unfortunately, the market cannot be so used. The market is an outcome of voluntary human activity that people...offer to others...Such offering is the consequence of the market’s functioning; without it, there is – nor can there be – any production of goods or services. Such production is not something outside the market – it is the market. Thus, today’s crisis is not caused by the market but by government intervention in it.
  • Avoiding future crises by additional interventions is impossible. It is, however, possible to destroy the market. Here, in Europe, we are not very far from that.
  • The most urgent task of our times is to ensure that this second-generation Keynesianism is not implemented. We must not replay the events of the 1930s and of the years that followed. We must limit state intervention in the functioning of the market, not expand it.
  • ...[T]oday’s European post-democracy cannot proceed in that direction. In it, the voice of the citizen is very weak indeed, and it becomes weaker by the day. On the other hand, the number of unelected bureaucrats who bear no love for the free market is growing without restraint.
  • In the 1930s, democrats and liberals (in the European sense) had failed intellectually and politically, and were unable to fight off the wave of distrust of the market. Today, the one and only important thing is that we do not end up the way they did, or even worse.

Lots of food of thought there, with direct and ominous relevance to the Obama economic policies.

Monday, June 8, 2009

A DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN EUROPE

The Czech President Vaclav Klaus has come up with a very descriptive term for the tremendous - and increasing - power of the unelected Eurocrat elite in Brussels and the ever-diminishing power of the citizens of European countries. In a March 22, 2009 interview with The Sunday Times, he called it the democratic deficit. Naturally enough, he has frequently come under vicious attack by the Eurocrats for his independent, critical and pro-democracy stance, the latest a few days ago by the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, who accused Klaus of "demolishing Europe."

Klaus's response was very simple. First, he pointed out that Kouchner's accusation has nothing to do with what he, Klaus, had said. Then he added pointedly:

If people like Mr. Kouchner view my opinions as a demolition of Europe, then I can only say that they themselves set the stage for that demolition by demolishing a democratic discussion.


Another interesting observation from the same article:

I also stressed that in the...radio talk which, by the way, had received almost no publicity. In contrast, the media had trumpeted Mr. Kouchner’s statement far and wide.


It seems that both Europe and the United States now face the same problem: an administration that is hell-bent on centralizing power in the hands of the unelected few and major media outlets that are in the securely pockets of the centralizers.

Maybe that is why the current European Parliament elections aren't going so well for the Eurocrats: the so-called center-right is gaining strength in the European Parliament at the expense of the so-called left, and leftist parties in many member nations are in crisis.

Maybe that's also why the Obamite administration is losing popularity so precipitously.

There is always trouble when people begin to wake up to the fact that the honeyed words they are being fed are mainly b.s.