They're having unseasonably cold weather in England. I think Nick's car is snowed in, and he can't make it to work. The boy has time on his hands.
The Times has published a silly review of "Avatar". The review shrugs off the cold weather, laments the death of superstition about Global Warming, then tries to explain why James Cameron's film will do more for the planet than the failed Copenhagen travel junket.
Captain Oates was an English Antarctic explorer, known for the manner of his death, when he walked from a tent into a blizzard, with the words "I am just going outside and may be some time".
Go here to watch the press torture Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (warning: it's brutal) about why The Teleprompter Jesus just wants to get the Healthcare Abortion to his desk as quickly as possible. After all, the law is going to go into effect in 2013, which is coming soon and there's not much time left to act.
“When you want to foster more responsible behavior in people, you can’t just legislate more rules and regulations,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.” “You have to enlist and inspire people in a set of values....." ".....That is why shame is so important. When we call a banker ‘a fat cat’ for taking too big a bonus, we’re actually being inspirational leaders because we are telling them, ‘You are behaving beneath how a responsible human being should behave.’ We need to inspire the village to shame those who betray our common values.”
This is Thomas Friedman's house.
Three coats of Whitening (and decorative trim) to the Future Of Capitalism blog for the link. You can go here for my theory on why Friedman has gone from being a rational journalist to a P.C. sock puppet.
Don Boudreaux, economics professor at George Mason University, reminds me of an abusive husband. Every morning of his life, he gets out of bed, takes a shower, eats some breakfast, brushes his teeth, and then kicks the living snot out of New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman.
In his New Year’s Day column, Paul Krugman argues that protectionism can create jobs in times of unemployment. (Lots of other problems plague this column, by the way.)
If Krugman is correct, why stop at national borders? Just think how many jobs Congress could create by encouraging states to erect their own tariff walls? High-taxing and heavily regulating states would then be able to protect their workers from states with lower taxes and less-burdensome regulations. California wineries would never again lose market share to rivals in Oregon and Washington state. Michigan autoworkers would never again be displaced from their jobs by workers in Tennessee and South Carolina.
Here comes Boudreaux's Karate Kid Crane Kick:
Given Krugman’s assumption that restricting consumers’ freedom to make cross-border purchases increases the total number of jobs in economies suffering unemployment, why let all those borders between Maine and California go to waste? Turn those borders, too, into barriers to trade and watch American employment skyrocket!
If that's not enough, go here, and read Fabulous Freddy Bastiat's idea for an un-railroad. (First published in 1845, BTW.) This is a railroad that would allow cheap and easy transportation between countries, so they could enjoy the benefits of each other's strengths. But the railroad would be closed in all places where it would hurt local inefficient producers. (This would create and save jobs ! ! ! !) In other words, the railroad would be closed in all the places where it was most needed.
Tariffs serve no purpose but to negate the gains provided to society by technology, labor, ingenuity, determination and progress.
You read something like this, and wonder how Paul Krugman ever won a Nobel Prize. Oh.... Never mind.
Go to your Tivo. Go to FoxBusiness. Go to Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. Set yer machine to record "Stossel". It will be the long-awaited Ayn Rand hour.
I suspect that a good portion of the show will be spent treating "Atlas Shrugged" as if it were one of the prophetic works of Nostradamus. Go here for some preliminaries and a poll on who represents whom.
IMAO, if we're going to cast the novel with contemporary characters, Wesley Mouch is a good stand-in for Comrade Barney Frank. As of January 2010, Orren Boyle represents the United States insurance industry, which is about to get a huge boost to its client base. Dr. Robert Stadler, the man with great promise who became a sellout? Let's go with former Rand disciple Alan Greenspan. For John Galt, let's go with my own Texas-based employer, who recently decided to open another warehouse someplace in the U.S., took a long, long look at the Statist mayhem in California, said Screw That, and opened up a warehouse on the North Carolina/Virginia border. That's not quite "Going Galt", but it does send the message that Elections Have Consequences.
The number of young Americans without a job has exploded to 53.4 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. — meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.
The number represents the flip-side to the Labor Dept.'s report that the employment rate of 16-to-24 year olds has eroded to 46.6 percent -- the lowest ratio of working young Americans in that age group, including all but those in the military, since WWII.
I think these dismal numbers are a direct result of this. The Minimum Wage was increased last year. If you want to hire a totally inexperienced kid, you have to pay him what Congress thinks he's worth, not what you are willing to exchange for his labor. Raise the price of something, relative to everything else, and demand drops.
Here's a chart from Gateway Pundit, showing what the electoral map would've looked like if no one had voted in 2008 except 18 and 19 year olds.
Thank you, Congress and President Obama for teaching our kids a valuable lesson: Elections Have Consequences.
Seriously. Thank you. We couldn't have taught them this without your help. "It Takes A Village. "
A 572nd coat of Whitening to Instapundit for the links.
Last Friday night, a 28-year old Somali man armed with a knife and an axe entered the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. Because of having drawn this particular cartoon.... .....and death threats against the artist, Westergaard's home was equipped with a safe room, or "panic room", for those who've seen the Jodie Foster movie.
From the D.C. Examiner: Westergaard was at home with his visiting 5-year-old granddaughter when he heard the suspect trying to break in. "I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police.”
Unable to smash the front door with his ax, the suspect was shot once in the knee and once in the hand by police. The wounds are not life-threatening.
What's to be done about this situation, where Muslims those adhering to certain belief system want to destroy airliners, cartoonists, themselves, and others?
Ireland has responded by tightening up their Blasphemy laws. These regulations went into effect on January 1st. Here's The Guardian:
The new law, which was passed in July, means that blasphemy in Ireland is now a crime punishable with a fine of up to €25,000 (£22,000).
It defines blasphemy as "publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted".
The justice minister, Dermot Ahern, said that the law was necessary because while immigration had brought a growing diversity of religious faiths, the 1936 constitution extended the protection of belief only to Christians.
In other words, the current version of the Irish Blasphemy statues are no less silly, but a lot more fair. If you want to watch the virus spread, and if you have a strong stomach, you can go here for a USA Today editorial about the U.N. and the Obama Administration supporting an International Law Against Blasphemy.
A group of Irish Freethinkers instantly responded by posting a list of quotations from Jesus, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer (hello Shuey !), Randy Newman, Salman Rushdie, George Carlin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict, and a few Irish politicians. Any of these quotations would be fair game for anyone wanting to earn some money or notoriety through a blasphemy complaint. Organized sensitivity is becoming more and more profitable.
Speaking of Blasphemy, let's change gears and continents for a moment. This is Andres Serrano's masterpiece, "Piss Christ". It's a photograph of a crucifix submerged in Serrano's urine. It was a big deal back in the late 1980's.
I can take it or leave it. If Andres Serrano wants photograph The Last Supper in purple pelican poop, it doesn't harm me in the least. It wouldn't harm you, either, unless you were forced to pay for it. (In the case of Piss Christ, you may have paid for it, but that's another story. Go here for more than you'll ever want to know about the incident.)
Speaking of Transgressive Art.... Here's a work that I might commission, if I ever get the proper Photoshop skills.
I want to do a multimedia installation showing Barack Obama dressed as a lawn jockey, parking cars at a Goldman Sachs Christmas party. It would be controversial, but it would illustrate the power relationship between Goldman Sachs and our government, and depict the level at which Obama truly is their little bitch.
I want to photograph a sterotypical Welfare Queen in her Cadillac, the stereotype so often derided during the Reagan era. I want to paste (juxtapose, in artspeak) the face of the Archer Daniels Midland CEO onto the body of the Welfare Queen, and call the piece "Welfare Brood Sow", and challenge preconceptions of government dependency.
The final work will be something called "U O Me", and I intend to hire a troupe of performance artists to infest the maternity ward of Arlington Memorial Hospital. The artists will give each infant a bill for $375,000.00, representing each child's share of the unfunded government liabilities voted into place by their grandparents. The artists will threaten to withold milk until all debts are paid.
If you're wanting to help fund any of these projects, don't bother. I'm going to apply for an NEA grant.
Let's review the topics covered so far:
1) Danish cartoons portraying Muhammed. 2) Quotes from Jesus, Twain, and Pope Benedict. 3) Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ". 4) Some proposed artwork of my own, designed to illustrate the corrupt nature of our government.
A few questions on each:
1) Have any of these caused you, or anyone else, physical harm? 2) Would you censor, or prosecute the producers of any of these forms of speech? 3) All of them, or just some of them? Why? 4) Do you think any of these are actually beneficial to society and represent a valid point of view? 5) And finally, do you think it's possible for a government to prohibit one category without endangering all the others?
Just wondering.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. (Especially if you're a god.)
This is the house that the City Of Arlington Texas built with other peoples' money and land. Cowboys Stadium. When Jerry Jones and the City Of Arlington were conning the taxpayers into building Jerry a new stadium, one of the arguments they used went something like this:
The stadium will increase business in the area around the stadium. There will be a retail and restaurant boom. It will create jobs in Arlington, so many that we'll be justified in taking people's homes by force and bulldozing them for parking space.
Well, the new Cowboys Stadium has started claiming casualties.
About a dozen years ago, I was the manager of this Barnes & Noble store near the stadium in North Arlington. It was one of the last ones B&N built with a full book, CD, and software selection, plus a Starbucks coffee bar.
The store closed on New Years Eve. Guess what killed it? On game days and concert days, customers avoided the neighborhood. On all other days, the city was working on the roads to improve access to The Boss Hawg Bowl, and customers avoided the neighborhood. As a life-long Mark Twainiac, I loved, loved, loved this mural in the coffee bar:
Ok, so Amazon, file-sharing, and the internet are cutting into book and retail music sales. The stadium was still supposed to be a godsend for restaurants and bars. This bar/restaurant (in the picture below) was in the front parking lot of the B&N. It was one of those Hooters/Twin Peaks/Bone Daddy's - type places. The stadium killed it. There are lots of places in DFW to watch the Cowboys, but one place you don't want to be anywhere near on game day, unless you have a ticket, is within 10 miles of that stadium. Look at the restaurant/retail wasteland around the old Cowboys Stadium in Irving. Was it ever possible to buy a hamburger within 3 miles of that place?
Here's some empty retail to the west of the Barnes & Noble. I remember it being fully occupied, or close to it. I wish I'd gotten photos a couple of years ago.
I don't think this is what the Arlington City Council had in mind....
Like most libertarians, I have an appreciation for what Joseph Schumpeter called "Creative Destruction". We can't make progress with new ideas if old ideas have to be preserved at all costs. The B&N would've eventually died, but in this case, Dr. Jerry Kevorkian sped things along.
A funny thing happens when government forces a new idea. Jerry Jones didn't have to pay the price that businesses and families were asking for this land in Arlington. The Government determined the price, via an abuse of Eminent Domain. The free market didn't determine if a Debt Star Stadium would ever be profitable in the middle of North Arlington. It was theft by plebiscite. The typical voter probably spent less than two minutes seriously considering the secondary and tertiary effects of buying Jerry Jones a new toy in Arlington.
I'm predicting that the B&N retail site will soon be some variation on a parking lot. Guess which two entities will get the lion's share of the proceeds?
Maybe this store is a poor example. Granted, the retail book business is struggling. Ditto for retail music.
Another business (that operates in the shadow of the new stadium) is one of the few that has done well through the current recession.
In spite of their increased nationwide sales, the Arlington Wal-Mart will be closed by the end of 2011. The stadium is going to kill it.
"Your Cheatin' Heart", "Move It On Over", "Hey Good Looking", and several others are in the Whited guitar/vocal repetoire. They're usually well-received, eliciting polite smatterings of applause and appreciation, and nothing more. But "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" always, always, always makes someone say something like "Can you imagine that much hurt inside a person?"
This is a video of Hank's "Long Gone Lonesome Blues"
A fresh coat of Whitening to Radley Balko for the link. If anyone is wondering, I run an occasional feature called The Weekly Radley as a testament to the immense power of getting linked to by Radley Balko. Long story.
Sometimes Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit pulls together such an excellent collection of links and commentary, all I can do is scrape 'em and encourage you to go to his site every day.
Here's what he accumulated on the D.C. School Voucher Program, one of the very few federal programs that Obama doesn't like:
KILLING THE D.C. SCHOOL VOUCHER PROGRAM: Because protecting bureaucrats’ rice bowls is more important than, you know, actually educating.
I keep thinking -hard- about what an amazing example the DC Voucher program could be… if it was really adopted as a cause celebre on the right. Not just as a punchline, but as a going concern.
There just aren’t that many recipients, and there’s a mighty strong overlap in DC between “underprivileged” and “permanent Democrat voters.” And these identical voters are personally steamed. They can recognize being completely jobbed. If there’s one spot to push to shatter this particular unholy alliance, it is precisely this spot.
Think of it as a reverse-ACORN. Scholarships are strictly need based – not race based. An endowment focused on K-12 instead of higher education.
I’m not quite sure the Glenn Reynolds DC Scholarship Fund has quite enough panache
But just think of the same idea with different marquee players:
The Ronald Reagan Scholarship Fund.
The Rush Limbaugh Scholarship Fund.
The Sarah Palin Scholarship fund.
Note: I would like to add the Milton Friedman School Voucher fund, since Friedman was one of the first in the U.S. to advocate this type of program. Since this is one of the few areas where I could possibly get behind a racial quota system, if anyone wants to establish a minority scholarship in my name, please call it the Whited For Black And Brown Education Fund. And if you think that's racist, just look at some of the eugenics-inspired requirements for other minority set-asides.
Back to Instapundit. Sorry for the digression.
What do you think? Reach out to these folks and raise some money? (More here). Though that bit about lacking panache kinda hurts . . . .
UPDATE: Arnold Kling likes the idea. “The conflict between voluntary charity and progressive tax-funded spending is a very interesting potential battleground. Progressives want to shift away from charitable giving and toward taxes, while libertarians (or civil societarians) ought to be aiming for the reverse.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Heather Benes writes: “I suggest a Thomas Sowell/Walter E. Williams scholarship fund for those D.C. kids.”
MORE: Reader Catherine Elkins writes:
I love this idea and wish it had been an option when doing my last minute year-end contributions last night! If you and/or others who may write you can get anything like this set up, I look forward to seeing links here to contribute. My guess is, the sooner it can be done, the better, so that some of these families can plan for the next school year with an idea of funds/funding available.
I’d offer to help but I don’t know the first thing about setting up scholarship funds. I’ll contribute, though!
Anybody know anything about setting up scholarship funds?
