I saw this bumpersticker in Fort Worth today, and started thinking....
....would bailing out Studebaker be any sillier than bailing out Chrysler? What could be sillier than the current rounds of bailout mania?
Well, I found out when I went to Bally's fitness to put in some mandatory treadmill time.
The Bally's TV's were tuned to CNN, which featured Larry King interviewing T. Boone Pickens, mostly about the BP oil spill, but partly about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL and the Pickens plan to replace oil with gentle gusts of wind from unseen fairy flatulence which would be enough to power Pickens Inc. windmills paid for by your taxes.
T. Boone Pickens wants your money, just like Chrysler wants your money. They both go through government to force the wealth transfer. In the case of T. Boone, he just wants his bailout up front. Just like Chrysler, he can't make it without you. Nobody in his right mind would voluntarily a dime of their own funds for the windmill scheme unless he knew up front that Boone was going to get some pork.
One thing about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL....think of an individual that you do business with, preferably a little guy. Think of somebody with an oil change franchise, or a seamstress, or a Mom'n'Pop restaurant. Do you depend on them, or do they depend on you?
It's mutual, isn't it? You're trading stuff with each other. If you didn't buy the oil changes, the clothing, or the meals from them, they would have to find someone else to sell the stuff to. Finding new customers is a hassle.
Political hacks like to talk about AMERICA'S DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL. Well, that street runs both ways, but you never hear them talk about FOREIGN OIL'S DEPENDENCE ON AMERICAN DOLLARS. If the dreaded foreigners couldn't sell their oil to us, they would have to sell it to someone else. Their overhead is high, just like ours is. They have to keep the money rolling in.. If they want to cut us off, they still have to sell it to somebody who is not yet purchasing very much oil. Somebody like....well, I can't think of anybody else. But whoever bought it would wind up selling most of it to us.
The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
Giving T. Boone Pickens his bailout money ahead of time would be like reviving Studebaker to end our dependence on Toyotas.
Speaking of LeBron James moving from a state with a 7% state income tax (Ohio) to a state with a 0% state income tax (Florida) and apparently not even considering a state with a 12% income tax (New York).....
Miami, FL to Cleveland, OH: $1,000 Cleveland, OH to Miami, FL: $1,457 Premium to leave Ohio: 45.7%
Orlando, FL to Cleveland, OH: $834 Cleveland, OH to Orlando, FL: $1,301
Premium to leave Ohio: 56%
Tampa, FL to Cleveland, OH: $917 Cleveland, OH to Tampa, FL: $,1379 Premium to leave Ohio: 50.4%
Assuming that one-way U-Haul rates are based on relative demand, there are lot more people and trucks leaving Ohio for Florida than vice-versa, resulting in large premiums to rent trucks going to Florida and large discounts for trucks going to Ohio.
Any idea why? Here's something from an earlier post about Ohio:
While LeBron's departure got extraordinary media attention, it is hardly unique. In the early 1990s, Ohio was the home of 43 Fortune 500 companies. Twenty years later the number is 24. Census Bureau data show that from 2004-2008 Ohio saw a net outmigration of $6 billion of income and some 97,000 taxpayers. Even Ohio's famously liberal Senator, the late Howard Metzenbaum, moved to Florida late in his life to reduce his estate taxes.
Just for grins, here's the U-Haul relative demand between Detroit (relatively statist) and Dallas (relatively libertarian).
Diamond Offshore announced Friday that its Ocean Endeavor drilling rig will leave the Gulf of Mexico and move to Egyptian waters immediately — making it the first to abandon the United States in the wake of the BP oil spill and a ban on deep-water drilling....
Larry Dickerson, CEO of Houston-based Diamond, signaled that other of his company's rigs could be relocated, too.
"As a result of the uncertainties surrounding the offshore drilling moratorium, we are actively seeking international opportunities to keep our rigs fully employed," Dickerson said. "We greatly regret the loss of U.S. jobs that will result from this rig relocation."
It was unclear how many U.S. jobs could leave with the Ocean Endeavor, but typically more than 100 workers are on the rig at any given time, doing everything from drilling to cooking meals. Onshore, a network of businesses supplies the rigs with groceries, equipment, uniforms and drilling materials.
"It's not unusual for an energy service company to have 1,000 vendors that they buy from or purchase services from," noted Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands. As a result, Brady said, the economic damage from the moratorium stretches far and wide.
A new report from Morgan Stanley analyst Emma Lawson confirms what many had suspected: the dollar is firmly on its way to losing its status as the reserve currency of the world.
We already knew that central banks have preferred gold to dollars, and that they're even selling their gold for cash; now, according to Lawson's data, it seems that those central banks prefer almost anything to dollars.
So what do LeBron James, the Ocean Endeavor drilling rig, and Central Banks have in common? They all respond to negative incentives. All three of them are abandoning places and commodities run by crazy people. Just like you do, every time you get a chance.
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A fresh coat of Whitening to Newsalert for all the links.
Someone programmed the teleprompter of The President Of The United States with the following statement, intending for it to be read with great sincerity during a live broadcast about the oil spill:
Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is the capacity to shape our destiny -– our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don't yet know precisely how we're going to get there. We know we'll get there.
Speak for yourself, Barry. No wonder you don't know whose ass to kick.
Pic came from here. Vapidity of the quote was pointed out by Marc Thiessen, among many others.
Within 48 hours, Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul has managed to 1) attack the now-venerated 1964 Civil Rights Act, and 2) defend the now-villainous British Petroleum Company.
Well, maybe he'll be more subtle in the future.
Here's one of the transcripts of what Paul did and didn't say, according to The Wall Street Journal:
"What I've always said is, I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would have--if I was alive at the time, I think--had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism," he said in response to a first question about the act.
"You would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater?" asked an interviewer.
"I think it's confusing in a lot of cases in what's actually in the Civil Rights Case (sic)," Paul replied. "A lot of things that were actually in the bill I'm actually in favor of. I'm in favor of--everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the Civil Rights--and indeed the truth is, I haven't read all through it, because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue on the campaign on whether I'm going to vote for the Civil Rights Act."
Here's his take on the public vs. private property portions of the act:
Paul explained that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.
"I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I'm all in favor of that," he said. "I don't like the idea of telling private business owners. . . ."
And then, in another interview:
Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?
Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part--and this is the hard part about believing in freedom--is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example--you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It's the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.
Paul has said elsewhere that his preference for ending segregation would be through boycotts, shaming, and other forms of peer pressure.
What Rand Paul should have said, of course, is that he loves, no, he actually adores the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its entirety, including the punctuation, and that he sleeps with a copy of it under his pillow.
That is the only sensible answer for a politician to give.
The distinction between "government" and "private" property is lost on most voters.
Private property owners are free to say "No shoes, no shirt, no service". Others have signs up that state that they reserve the right to refuse service for any reason.
If it is your castle, you really should be able to refuse entry to anyone you want to refuse: left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palin supporters, or people who think To Kill A Mockingbird is overrated.
And the left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palinites, and Harper Lee fans should be free to boycott your ass and encourage all their friends to do the same.
As far as the effectiveness of the CRA of '64 goes, my public school classes at A.W. James Elementary school in Drew, Mississippi, were de facto segregated until 1969.
My doctor's office in Merigold, Mississippi, had segregated waiting rooms (hello, Westerfields !) until the Doctor retired sometime in the mid-1970's.
What changed everything? Simple economics. Boycotts. Shaming. The same remedies that Paul (foolishly, but truthfully) proposed in his interviews (as if he could go back in time to '64, and vote as a two-year-old senator). People generally don't move to places that discriminate unfairly just for the hell of it. And they eventually stop shopping there.
What would have worked better for Paul would be to ignore the Bill's attacks on property rights and say "I support the goals of the Act, if not some of the wording. I especially support the provisions that ended the Democrat party's vile segregationist practices. When this bill came to Congress, there were Democrat politicians standing in the front doors of public schools and universities. Racist, Yellow-Dog Democrats were setting attack dogs loose on citizens who merely wanted to use public transportation that their taxes paid for."
Then remind the country that when the Act came up for a vote in '64, three-fourths of the "nay" votes in the House Of Representatives came from Democrats.
Remind the country that 80% of the "nay" votes in the Senate came from Democrats, and that those voting "nay" included Al Gore's Daddy, plus a former Ku Klux Klan Community Organizer named Robert Byrd, who, last I checked, is still a Democrat Senator representing the subsidy hawgs of West Virginia.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don’t want to get rid of the EPA?
PAUL: No, the thing is is that drilling right now and the problem we’re having now is in international waters and I think there needs to be regulation of that and always has been regulation. What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, you know, “I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.” I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault. Instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I’ve met a lot of these miners and their families. They’re very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you believe that the regulation of BP was adequate?
PAUL: I don’t know exactly what the regulation of BP is. I think there’s hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified. I think we’ll have to figure out from this accident, is there anything that could have beend one to prevent it? What can we do in the future to make sure that it doesn’t happen again? So, I think we use logic. We use objective facts. And yeah, we try to go forward. Nobody wants this to happen. I love the beautiful beaches down in the panhandle of Florida and nobody wants to see oil washing up on those white sand beaches.
All of that sound plenty vague to me, but if you pull the "shit happens" quotes out of context, and ignore the point he's trying to make about our Nutcase-In-Chief trying to demagogue the issue, you won't hear anything except a defense of BP.
I would still trust Rand Paul to protect the beaches of Kentucky.
As an officer in the Libertarian Party, I can't endorse any non-Libertarians, but I can give some advice.
Someone in Paul's campaign needs to go to the Louisville, Kentucky, Border's or Barnes & Noble, and get Dr. Paul a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals.
Then Dr. Paul needs to go to that Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, the one where Thomas Merton lived, and spend two weeks there, studying Alinsky's book, the playbook that the Statists have used since the day it was published.
When Paul leaves the monastery, he will perfectly understand what has just happened to his campaign. He will understand how to avoid those situations in the future. He will understand that the public cannot understand nuance or ambiguity. He will understand that whoever controls the narratives about the past will control the narratives about the future.
And maybe he'll never play into his opponents' hands again. He'll use every interview, every position statement, and every editorial to attack, attack, attack, even if the attack has nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's how the game is played.
