The First Annual Whitey Awards

Government waste has always been a favorite topic on this site.

It's time for the readers of The Whited Sepulchre blog to vote on who in the last year has done the most to eliminate government waste.
There are several ways to end government waste. The best method, of course, is the one least discussed: don't give the government any of your money.

I'm going to nominate three candidates below. Nominate others as write-ins if you wish. The candidate with the highest total will receive the highly coveted Whitey Award.

And the nominees are:

1) [the President-elect's] nominee for Secretary Of The Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who at the time of his nomination for the post of chief tax collector, owed $42,000.00 in unpaid taxes, and, according to The Washington Post, is also being investigated for including using his child's time at overnight camps to calculate deductions for dependent-care, taking deductions for ineligible donations to charity and failing to pay an early-withdrawal penalty from a retirement plan.

A brilliant man, Mr. Geithner. Had he paid that 42K in taxes, it would've been wasted. Had he not deducted sending his kids to camp as a childcare expense, that money would've been blown on something useless. Timothy Geithner will be hard to beat.

2) James P. O’Hare, and David J. Dalaia. This is the duo that wheeled their deceased friend's rotting corpse into a check-cashing store in a failed attempt to cash their dead friend's $355 Social Security check.

Yes, they failed. Yes, they might have spent the $355 on alcohol. But if that money had stayed in The Treasury, it would've been given to some millionaire as an agricultural subsidy. A noble failure, and worthy of consideration for The Whitey.

3) Hillary Clinton, our next Secretary of State. Ms. Clinton's act of heroism didn't occur in the last 12 months, but since this is the first year The Whitey has ever been awarded, I'm allowing it for consideration. It is, after all, my damn award.

Former Senator Clinton, lover of Big Government, Policy Wonk, and disparager of Free Markets and Nafta, once claimed a two dollar tax deduction for donating some of Bill's used underwear to charity.

Remember, it's not the quantity saved, it's the quality. Who else would go to such extreme lengths to save such a paltry sum from The Gaping Maw Of The Beast? Every penny counts.

Those are my nominees. You may wish to nominate others.

7 Things You Didn't Know About Me

Pete Wann at Cowtown Chronicles has tagged me with an online meme called "7 Things You Didn't Know About Me". He's written a list of 7 things we didn't know about him, he's linked to 7 other bloggers who are supposed to do the same. Then I'm supposed to link to 7 other bloggers, and next thing you know, we've got this Amway pyramid of links and traffic going back and forth to each other.

Here are my 7 things.

1. On the top of my left ear, I have a feature called "Darwin's Point". According to The List Universe, "Darwin’s point is found in the majority of mammals, and humans are no exception. It is most likely used to help focus sounds in animals, but it no longer has a function in humans. Only 10.4% of the human population still has this visible left-over mark of our past.

My grandmother called it "The Howard Mark", after the branch of the family that all had wolf bumps on their ears.

2. I played acoustic guitar for an earlier incarnation of this group while I was in college, and we were able to do a European tour every couple of years. One night in an Austrian restaurant, I stood up and loudly sang "Dixie" for a group of bewildered locals. There was a very well-dressed couple being honored in one of the back rooms, and they and their friends were not amused by my performance of a Minstrel Show Battle Hymn from The War Of Northern Oppression. The next morning, I discovered that the Guests Of Honor in the next room were the Prince and Princess of Liechtenstein. All I can say is that alcohol was involved. (But I've sung "Dixie" for royalty !)

3. In Pete's list of 7 things, he mentions that he once made an ass of himself in front of noted Fort Worth actor Bill Paxton. I've never done that. But I once accidentally set someone else up to do so. Yes, with noted Fort Worth actor Bill Paxton. What are the odds? It's a long, long story.

4. I was born with an undescended testicle.

5. I don't smoke, except for the occasional cigar with the Libertarians at Pop's. But I once had a group of nicotine-addicted employees who claimed they needed more than two minutes for a "quick smoke break". To prove them wrong, I once smoked a Marlboro Light down to the filter in less than 15 seconds. Not recommended.

6. I've made five work-related trips to China. Thanks to multiple sets of flash cards, at one point I could recognize more than 500 characters in Mandarin Chinese. Now that we have another manager over there full time, I've forgotten almost all of them.

7. Thanks to the mind-expanding trips to Asia, I can eat or drink almost anything and enjoy it. The only two things I don't like and refuse to consume are pickles and iced tea.

And now I'm supposed to tag 7 more people with this thing. (The goal is to send traffic back to Pete's site, via my link, and then I'm supposed to go whoring for 7 more links back to my site.) Since I tagged all my Usual Suspects via an earlier meme called "The Anti-Library", I'm going to try something different.
I'm going to tag the bloggers who, according to Google, have made the most popular use of the word "antidisestablishmentarianism". Just to see what happens.

1. I'm tagging the good people at "Flippin' Kites", who marvelled at seeing antidisestablishmentarianism used in a real live sentence....

2. And I'm tagging the Atheist Bible Reading And Forum. They have an actual video about antidisestablishmentarianism, and once you've watched it, you'll never, ever forget it. It's incredibly effective. (heh, heh, heh...go there. You'll be glad you did. Seriously. Go there. Watch the video. Let me know if you watched the video. You'll walk away knowing EXACTLY what antidisestablishmentarianism means.)

3. For something completely different, Reconciliationtalk.com asks the question "Antidisestablishmentarianism, or not?"

4. A Staunch Calvinist at Reformation 21 has a post simply titled "Antidisestablishmentarianism". It seems that Rowan Williams, an archbishop in the C of E, is actually contemplating disestablishmentarianism.

5. David Keen at The Wardman Wire has the most in-depth analysis of Antidisestablishmentarianism you'll ever surf through. No stone is left unturned.

6. Andrew King, of Downed Robin fame, has yet another post entitled "Antidisestablishmentarianism". This guy's pretty entertaining, stating that "That old tease, Archbishop Rowan Williams, has titillated New Statesman readers with the enticing prospect of thew Church of England finally getting its lardy butt off the gravy train and being disestablished, not before time."

7. Finally, Boondoggle has a short piece entitled "Antidisestablishmentarianism Out Of A Beard". Polly Toynbee, states Boondoggle, knows what the longest word in the English language is.

So there are 7 bloggers tagged, and all 7 bloggers have written pieces about whether England should or shouldn't have an established church. If any of them link back to me with their 7 things about themselves, much less blogroll me, I'll be amazed.

Oh, one other thing I should've put on my list.....

8. When I was very, very young, my mother taught me how to spell and define "antidisestablishmentarianism".

We knew him waaaaay back when....

Cheers and high praise are in order for my friend, agent provocateur, and co-hymnologist Dr. Ralph.

Just one year ago, he was content to sound off on a few technical and political opinions every month.

But his comments on these pages in praise of truly gawdawful government-funded art are now so well known, British bloggers are now name-dropping him in posts about Czech "Art" on Australian websites.

Dr. Ralph is now a worldwide phenomenon.

And we knew Dr. Ralph when he was just an intern.

The Browncoat Libertarian has been struck down ! ! !

I got this email today from John Spivey, The Big Daddy of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party....

I just wanted to let you know that John S. Jones....one of the Organizers of this Meetup group, a District Rep for the Texas State Libertarian Executive Committee (SLEC) and the Secretary for the Tarrant County Libertarian Party is in the Intensive Care Unit of Harris Methodist Southwest Hospital with a life threatening case of pneumonia.

John also blogs as The Browncoat Libertarian. He and I represent State Senate District 10 on the SLEC. He's a great guy. If you haven't made it to one of his Libertarian Meetups at Pop's Safari bar, you've missed a treat. Now, back to Spivey's email....

Currently, his condition is classified as 'critical' and he's on a ventilator. This situation came on very quickly and I was surprised to hear this since we rode together to the SLEC meeting just last weekend and he couldn't have been better. However, a few days ago, I received an email from him saying he'd be out of commission as he was in the ICU with Pneumonia. It appeared he was getting better, but for unknown reasons, things took a bad turn yesterday.

He'll be on mechanical ventilation for probably at least a few more days and therefore won't be able to receive any visitors. However, I'm sure John and his wife Jackie will appreciate your moral support, kind thoughts, prayers and anything else good that you've got in your heart! I've thrown it out there to do whatever may need to be done (errands, whatever - anything) during this time. So if anybody else is willing to help out where needed, let me know. Again, I'm sure that would mean a lot to them to know that we've got their back.

We're pulling for our good friend and chief voice of liberty in Tarrant County, John S. Jones! Keep fighting, brother - - We need you fighting for freedom and helping to guide our organization!!

At this point in the email, John Spivey gave out his personal cell phone number, which I'm sure Mr. Spivey doesn't want broadcast to the seven continents.

Thanks,
John Spivey

John, we all hope you get better soon. I'm giving you one more day to rest, and then I'm going to Harris Southwest and sneaking a cigar underneath your ventilator.

Everyone, please leave your best wishes to The Browncoat Libertarian in the comment field below, or even better, hit the link above to his site and leave them there.

A Theoretical Question, Part 2

Here are my thoughts on The Theoretical Question in the previous post.... and if you want to see more comments, I cross-posted it on Reddit, where it has kept my hit counter whirring nicely.

Let me begin with a story from a George Mason University economics professor named Russell Roberts:

"After Hurricane Isabel hit Washington D.C. in September 2003, one of my students whose husband was a contractor told me how disgusted her husband had been with the high prices people were charging for generators. Surely a contractor would want a backup energy supply, I said. Surely he had paid the high price. No, she explained, he already had a backup and had been considering buying a second backup. But at double the regular price, he passed. Someone else got that generator and I got a richer understanding of higher prices."

That encounter with a student was the genesis of Roberts' latest book, "The Price of Everything". The book begins with a hurricane. One store leaves prices alone and sells out. The other store doubles prices, which automatically acts as a rationing mechanism, but there's a near riot at the checkout line. Some university students stage a protest a few weeks later, but then....well, I hope you'll read the book.

It's not the best-written book I've ever read, but when I finished it I immediately turned back to page one and plowed through it again.

Do you every wonder why the shelves in our supermarkets are full? Ever wonder why countries afflicted with the blessings of communism had supermarket shelves that were mostly empty? Ever wonder why we don't have to wait in long lines for gasoline, or endure rationing like we did in the early 1970's? Ever wonder why the minimum wage in Cuba is somewhere near $14.00 (PER MONTH !!) ??

Do you want to know how to ensure that more people will die during a famine? Legislate artificially low prices. Want to keep people from delivering water to drought stricken areas? Put anti-gouging laws into place.

Do you ever wonder why we can simply go out and buy our basic necessities?

It's because our (somewhat) Free Market Economy allows prices to go up when there's a shortage, and decline when there's a glut. We don't have an idiotic Flashlight Czar (yet), setting flashlight prices all over the country based on hours of darkness, hurricanes, or electrical problems. People can charge whatever they want to for flashlights. Therefore, when you really, really need see in the dark, somebody out there is probably willing to sell you a flashlight.

So, according to Professor Roberts, not only was the Big Store doing the right thing economically when it doubled its prices after the hurricane, it was doing the right thing logically, socially, and morally.

Once again, the book is called The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity, by Russell Roberts.

Professor Roberts also blogs at Cafe Hayek, which I wish was read daily by everyone eligible to vote.

A Theoretical Question

A hurricane hits the Gulf Coast. Supply chains are disrupted, and will likely remain that way for days.
The Home Depot store in the hardest-hit area doesn't raise its prices immediately before or after the hurricane. Their shelves are quickly emptied.
Let's say that another retailer called "Big Box", located next door to Home Depot, doubles The Price Of Everything in their store. They still have many of the items (like flashlights, batteries, diesel generators, etc.) that are in high demand after a hurricane. Big Box keeps the high prices in place until the replenishment system returns to normal.

People are outraged. Shortly after the storm, customers arrange a protest.

With which store should the customers be angry?

After you've had time to think about it, click here for more info on the origin of the question....

Government Regulation: Do we need more pounds or more pages?

Here's Samizdata on "The Myth of Unregulated Global Capitalism". Check it out and get back to me.....

They don't even bother mentioning the Community Reinvestment Act, The Federal Reserve, that Fannie and Freddie are quasi-government entities, or that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd's fingerprints are all over the warnings that were tossed in the trash. (Well, Samizdata is a British site. But I thought I should mention those things too.)

Here's Reason magazine, on the same subject:

Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations' cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are "economically significant," meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That's a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.

Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.

So.... the people who are wanting more regulation of our supposedly unbridled Free Market Economy.... Are you wanting more pounds of regulations? More pages? Or something more specific that says if you put your money down at the blackjack table, you can only win? Something that will punish your enemies and reward your friends?

Ron Paul Is Pissed !

Hat Tip to Liberty Maven.

The New Workers' Paradise

Here's the scariest thing you'll read all day: Cuba is no longer The Workers' Paradise. Washington D.C. has taken its place. Here's The New Republic on Pete Rouse, Obama's current Senate chief-of-staff, and soon to be White House senior advisor.

A legendary workaholic in a town where the competition for that distinction is fierce, the (unmarried, childless) Rouse is said to have little time for outside-the-office distractions. There's his occasional Friday night out for an Ivy League hockey game and the one week of summer vacation in August. But, beyond that, Rouse is all about the job. "Pete Rouse is always working," e-mails one fan/colleague. "The first one in the office and the last one to leave."

Here's commentary on Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, who will soon be in charge of Homeland Security:

Hearing of Napolitano's appointment, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell declared his fellow chief executive perfect for the post because she has "no family" and "no life" and thus can "devote literally nineteen, twenty hours a day" to the job. Rendell's remarks were derided in some quarters as sexist.....In fact, Napolitano's intense job focus and unmarried status have, in the past, spurred whisper campaigns about her sexuality, prompting the governor to quip that she's not a lesbian, "just a straight, single workaholic."

Here's a charming anecdote about Obama's soon-to-be senior advisor Valerie Jarrett:

Back in the summer, Jarrett recalled to me how, at one point during her tenure as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's deputy chief of staff, she was lectured by Daley's wife, Maggie, for working too hard. "She told me, 'You have got to take one day a week off to be with your daughter.' I said, 'I can't do that.' And she said, 'The mayor doesn't work on Sunday, why should you?'" Jarrett's compromise was to start taking Laura along to weekend work functions.

We know these people. We've read about them. We know their stated goals. And unfortunately, they're all going to be working very, very hard.

May God have mercy on us all.

pic from here.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken?

First, there was the Community Reinvestment Act. Uncle Sam required banks to make loans to people who ordinarily wouldn't qualify for them.

These loans became known as Subprime Mortgages. You may have heard of them, especially if you've stopped living under a rock or if you finally decided to leave the monastery. There was plenty o' money to be made on Subprime Mortgages, since the banks could charge slightly higher interest on these loans and there were the written and unwritten guarantees that Uncle Sam would intervene if too many people defaulted on them (an assumption that was later proven to be correct).

This created the towering house of cards (or game of Jenga) that eventually collapsed, leaving a lot of investors holding houses that are now worth....not a lot. They were built on the assumption that there were plenty of people who could afford them. It's gonna take a while for the market to clear.

But that's ok. The Government has stepped in with your money, and is propping up the system.

Now, in an effort to guarantee full employment for Government system-proppers, here's this gem from the January 12, 2009 issue of Time magazine.

In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.

Did you get it? Huh? Did you see it? Want to read it again?

In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.


But there's a reason that GMAC hasn't been making those loans in the past, right? Aren't these loans the GM equivalents to Subprime Mortgages? Let's look at those two sentences again.


In an effort to enable Americans to buy cars again, the U.S. Treasury bought a $5 billion stake in beleaguered auto-financing company GMAC and offered to loan up to $1 billion to shareholder General Motors. GMAC, which has drastically tightened loan criteria in recent months, said it would immediately begin lending to consumers with lower credit scores.


How can the good people at Time magazine type that drivel without further commentary? The U.S. Treasury is as broke as the 10 Commandments, and it's making 6 billion dollar loans to GMAC, which is about to go broke, so GMAC can make loans to people with lower credit scores?

If everyone with a low credit score would now offer to loan money to the U.S. Treasury, then the The Circle Would Be Unbroken. You could all get rich by guaranteeing loans and defaulting on each other. The Treasury, to GMAC, to You, to The Treasury, to GMAC, to You.

Not one penny of your own money will be at risk.

Dilbert on education

Here's Scott Adams (Dilbert's creator) with predictions on changes in education:

In California we're facing a severe budget deficit, and this will demand cuts in education among other things. I can imagine a future economy where everyone is home schooled over the Internet, and the average result is an improvement. With the Internet you could leverage the best teaching methods to the entire country. No one gets the bad teacher or the disruptive class. There are no bullies and no cliques.
Obviously you can see lots of problems with this approach. We assume that kids gain a lot from the social interaction of being in school. And of course personal attention from a teacher is important. But we have enough home schooled kids in the world to test that theory. My guess is that as long as home schooled kids have friends in the neighborhood, and siblings, they socialize just fine. The social skills can be learned on sports teams and at Girl Scouts. And I suspect a parent can give better personal attention than a teacher with 20 students.
Poor kids don't have computers and Internet connections. But subsidizing them would be far cheaper in taxes than sending them to school. And suddenly everyone would get the same quality of education.

A couple of weeks ago I asked the Aggie how much of her college education could have been done on line. She ruled out her Physical Education elective and her Labs for Chemistry and Animal Science. Everything else could've been done via the Internet.

You'd still have to have traditional teaching formats for writing. Maybe art and music. Overall, it would be a massive win for the kids.

But think of the massive loss of government power and control that we'd have. Think of how bored you were in some classes, waiting on everyone else to finish reading one page while you had to sit. And sit. And sit.

Think of the subjects where you were slower than the majority, and needed extra help. Is anyone willing to say that Algebra II couldn't be explained somehow, somewhere online, in a way that even the slowest student could catch it?

Look at what the government spends per student. Look at what the private schools spend per student. Surely we can find a way to enter the 20th century (not a typo) and do better than this.

A Failed Fisking Of Pat Buchanan

Journalist, Presidential Speechwriter, Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan has written a column entitled "Obama's Choice: FDR or Reagan".

Hmmmmm.....I'll be needing my Fisking tools....
Scalpel - thanks.
Laptop - got it.
Righteous Indignation - I've got plenty.
Various History Websites - check.
My copy of "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes - Here it is. First edition.
Chainsaw - yep.
Let the Fisking begin ! Here's Pat Buchanan:

Barack Obama, it is said, will inherit the worst times since the Great Depression. Not to minimize the crisis we are in, but we need a little perspective here.
The Great Depression began with the Great Crash of 1929. By 1931, unemployment had reached 16 percent.
By 1933, 89 percent of stock value had been wiped out, the economy had shrunk by one-third, thousands of banks had closed, a third of the money supply had vanished, and unemployment had reached 25 percent -- among heads of households. And in those days, there was no unemployment insurance, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Social Security, no welfare.

Nothing I can argue with there, although I can't find a reference for 89% of stock value being wiped out.

FDR's answer: vast federal spending, tough new regulations on business and higher taxes -- like Herbert Hoover before him, only more so.

Not much to attack there, either. But curiously absent from this analysis? The Smoot-Hawley tariffs. As soon as economic times got tough, Little Herbie Hoover signed something called the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which raised taxes on any goods imported into the U.S. That prompted all of our neighbors and trading partners to do the same, in a misguided effort to "protect" their own manufacturers. The result? No one traded with anyone. The only way to wealth is through the market, and the market died.

Next time you hear or read someone like Pat Buchanan or Tom Tancredo wanting to put up more trade barriers, remember that disaster. (To read an old post of mine that I'm rather fond of, click here. I was trying to explain the exact location of Tom Tancredo's head.)

The Depression lasted until war orders from the Allies brought U.S. industry back to life. Before 1940, not once did unemployment fall below 14 percent. In May 1939, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau testified:
"We are spending more money than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. ... I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. ... I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... and an enormous debt, to boot."

I'm seeing that Morgenthau quote all over the 'Net, but haven't found a source for it. But if he didn't say it (Morgenthau was an FDR appointee) he could have done so and remained truthful. It just doesn't seem like something an FDR loyalist would say.

Politically, the New Deal was a smashing success, with FDR's landslides in 1932, 1934 and 1936 virtually wiping out the GOP.

As the cliche goes, "Anyone robbing Peter to pay Paul can always rely on the support of Paul." Especially when Peter is still wearing diapers and can't vote.

Yet, economically, the New Deal was a bust, failing utterly to restore prosperity. Despite the indoctrination of generations of schoolchildren in New Deal propaganda, that is the hard truth.
Consider, now, how Ronald Reagan responded to the economic crisis of 1980, the worst since the Depression. In the "stagflation" of that Jimmy Carter era, interest rates had reached 21 percent and inflation 13 percent.

I bet somebody out there can help me out with this question.... Has EVERY economic crisis (recession) since 1929 been called the worst since The Great Depression? Do politicians like to hype the situation so that we can Loot The Children® to line our own pockets?

Reagan's answer was the tight money policy of Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and across-the-board tax cuts of 25 percent, while slashing the highest rates from 70 percent to 28 percent.
While unemployment hit 10 percent in 1982 and Reagan lost 26 House seats, in 1983 the tax cuts kicked in.
From there on out, it was boom times until Reagan rode off into the sunset, having created 20 million new jobs. "The Seven Fat Years," author Robert Bartley called them.

That's pretty much how it happened. Too bad that Reagan spent money like a Hollywood Cowboy with Alzheimer's. Which, come to think of it, he was.

Reagan had followed the lead of Warren Harding and Cal Coolidge, who had cut Woodrow Wilson's wartime tax rates of near 70 percent to 25 percent, resulting in "The Roaring '20s," a time of unrivaled prosperity.

Ahh yes. Harding and Coolidge. The laziest presidents, with the best economies. Mommy Party Messiahs don't get the same results. Could there possibly be a correlation?

The JFK tax cuts of the 1960s, also a Reagan model, were equally successful.
Harding, Coolidge, JFK and Reagan all bet on the private sector as the engine of prosperity. All succeeded. Franklin Roosevelt bet on government. And the New Deal failed. It was World War II that pulled the United States out of the Depression ditch of the 1930s.

NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT WE STARTED TRADING WITH GREAT BRITAIN IN A BIG, BIG WAY, TARIFFS BE DAMNED, SUPPLYING THEM WITH EVERYTHING THEY NEEDED TO CONTINUE FIGHTING THE DAMN NAZIS. That may have helped a little, Pat, you protectionist clodhopper....

Comes now the financial collapse and economic crisis of 2008, inherited by Obama, with 40 percent of all stock values wiped out in a year, foreclosures pandemic, and unemployment near 7 percent and surging.
In crafting his solutions, Obama seems to be brushing aside the Reagan, JFK and Harding-Coolidge models, and channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats.
Already staring at a $1.2 trillion dollar deficit for the year ending Sept. 30, about 8 percent of the entire U.S. economy, Obama intends to add a stimulus package of $700 billion to $1 trillion, yet another 5 percent to 7 percent of gross domestic product. The resulting deficit would be twice as large as Reagan's largest, 6 percent of GDP, which was the largest since World War II.

Wait a minute....wait a minute....didn't we already spend something like 700 Billion channeling FDR and the New Deal Democrats when we bailed out Wall Street? Wasn't that supposed to solve the problem? Or could it be that the Obama candidacy was paid for by Wall Street, and that first 700 billion was merely in exchange for services rendered? And now we've gotta go back to the well for the real bailout? I have a warped admiration for Loot The Children® policies as much as the next person, but even the four-year-olds are starting to figure this thing out, and are starting to protest.

And how is this Niagara of money to be spent?
Hundreds of billions will go out in checks of $500 to $1,000 to wage-earners and individuals who do not even pay taxes. This is much like the George McGovern "demogrant" program of 1972, where every man, woman and child, if memory serves, was to get a $1,000 check from the U.S. government.
Other hundreds of billions will go to shore up state and municipal spending. Other hundreds of billions will go for "infrastructure" projects, another name for earmarks, which is a synonym for pork.

Yeah, the "infrastructure" projects are a synonym for pork and earmarks. But I kinda like Obama's idea of unemployed stockbrokers and investment bankers working on the roads, building bridges, leaning on their shovels, and taking a lunchbox to work.

Now, as Obama does not intend to raise taxes, at least now, he is going to have to borrow this near $2 trillion from foreigners or U.S. taxpayers, or the Fed will have to create the money.

Foreigners will give Bernie Madoff money before they give us any more money. Foreigners will loan money to Somali pirates, in hopes of a quick turnaround on their investment, before they loan us any more money. They might seriously consider the plight of that nice Christian lady in Nigeria who wants to get her money out of the country, but they're not going to loan us any more money. Foreigners will give money to the winos lounging outside of Convenience Stores who "just need a little money for gasoline so they can get home" before they give us any more money.

So The Fed is going to print the money. Count on it.

Undeniably, this will have an impact upon the economy. But what will that impact be?
Where in history, other than World War II, is there evidence that such a mass infusion of spending restored prosperity?

Well, when my daughter was playing blackjack on our recent cruise ship vacation, she lost more than half of her allotted gambling funds on the very first night. By putting more money at risk, she was able to restore prosperity. Eventually. It could've gone either way. She's a big girl now, and it was her choice. What if I'd bailed her out after the first night? I could belabor the analogy by guessing that she might've kept the money instead of putting it at risk again, much like the banks are doing now with the first 700 billion that The Children® loaned them.

Obama and the Democrats are taking a historic gamble, not only with their careers but with the country. If this monstrous stimulus package, plus the trillions in hot money, do not work; if the two ignite rampant inflation, rather than real growth, we are all out of options. The toolbox is empty.

I prefer to see the toolbox as half-full. There's still a chance that Somali pirates will attack Pearl Harbor.

And what will follow may truly resemble the 1930s.

Or a very well-funded Jack Sparrow movie.

I apologize for the total failure of this Fisking. Things are in a sad state when I find myself in general agreement with Rabid Isolationist, Lover of All Labor Unions, and Anti-Free Marketeer Pat Buchanan.

The Ron Paul Page-A-Day #2

Here's the 2nd installment of the Ron Paul Page-A-Day, in which I supply a section of Ron Paul's "The Revolution: A Manifesto" for your enlightenment and commentary. I hope to continue this until I've posted the entire book, or until Congressman Paul's publishers say "cease and desist".
In the previous installment, The Good Doctor lamented the fact that Republicans posture as small-government types but do little or nothing to shrink the size of government. (In fact, it's grown more under presidents named Reagan and Bush than any others.) The Democrats campaign as the anti-war candidates, but generally vote to authorize foreign adventures.

With no further ado, here's Ron Paul:

A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers. There are still some good and decent conservative leaders to be found, and a portion of the grass roots has remained uncorrupted by the transformation of conservatism into just another Big Government movement. But Big Government at home and abroad seems to suit many conservative spokesmen just fine. Once in a while they will latch on to phony but conservative-sounding causes like "tax reform" - almost always a shell game in which taxes are shuffled around rather than actually reduced overall - in order to pacify the conservative base, but that's about it.

When Republicans won a massive off-year election victory in 1994, neoconservative Bill Kristol immediately urged them not to do anything drastic but to wait until the Republicans took the White House in 1996. Well, the Republicans didn't take the White House in 1996, so nothing ever got done. Instead the Republican leadership urged these freshman congressmen to focus on a toothless soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

Needless to say, I am also unimpressed by the liberal Left. Although they posture as critical thinkers, their confidence in government is inexcusably naive, based as it is on civics-textbook platitudes that bear absolutely zero resemblance to reality. Not even their position on unnecessary wars is consistent, as I noted above. Even Howard Dean was all in favor of Bill Clinton's intervention in Bosnia, going so far as to urge the president to take unilateral military action beyond the multilateral activity already taking place. Liberals at the grass roots, on the other hand, have been deeply alienated by the various betrayals by which a movement they once supported has made its peace with the establishment.

No wonder frustrated Americans have begun referring to our two parties as the Republicrats. And no wonder the news networks would rather focus on $400 haircuts than matters of substance. There are no matters of substance.

Caption Contest - Presidential Edition

I need a caption for this historic photo.






Hit the "Captions" label below to see Procrustes' winning entry to the previous "Hawgs Gone Wild" edition of the contest.

I've been out of town

I was unexpectedly sent out of town on Monday; hence the lack of posts.

Fortunately, the general "tone" of this site was elevated in my absence. On the previous post, NickM and Dr. Ralph and Tarrant Liberty Guy engaged in a spirited (yet polite and scholarly) debate on the merits of government-funded artwork. (Dr. Liz and the Lazy Slacker chimed in on other issues.)



In appreciation to everyone who read the whole thing, I'd like to offer up this desecration of a Thomas Kinkade painting. Compliments of Democratic Underground. For more of the same, click here. (If you're a Kinkade anti-fan, it's worth it !)

My design proposal for The Department Of Culture

Here's Bill Wilson, writing at Get Liberty:

But now comes yet another cause du’jour that is both ludicrous and deathly dangerous all at the same time. From the editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times has come the clarion call for an entire new Department of Government: a Department of Culture.
Now, seeing what has happened to education since the creation of the Department of Education, or the state of Housing under the guidance of that august agency, I can understand those who are a bit nervous about a Department of Culture. And well they should be nervous, if not in a downright state of panic.

Bill, I think you need to relax.

I'll admit that governmental goofiness in the public schools is creating a plethora of private academies and an exodus to the suburbs.
Government housing boondoggles have long been a corrupt landlord honeypot.
V.A. Hospitals are the warm-up act for the medical care we'll get if [the President-elect] is true to his word on socialized medicine.

People seldom use the U.S. Mail for anything vital. The Department of Agriculture never met a millionaire farmer that it didn't abolutely adore.

But a cabinet level Department of Culture could be wonderful, IF they would allow me to design the facility in which it is housed.

I want to design the place, inside and out, as a living, breathing symbol of government involvement in our national culture.

I want to model the facility along the lines of Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project. I can't build an exact replica because the Cabrini-Green building won't sit still long enough to be properly imitated. That place has been morphing into various screwed-up shapes and sizes ever since the government realized they'd screwed up by building it in the first place. If you're not familiar with Cabrini-Green, here's Wikipedia:

Cabrini-Green is a Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) public housing development on Chicago's North Side.... At its height, Cabrini-Green was home to 15,000 people, living in mid- and high-rise apartment buildings. Over the years, gang violence and neglect created terrible conditions for the residents, and the name "Cabrini-Green" became synonymous with the problems associated with public housing in the United States.

Eventually, the Federal Government had to take control of the place from the Chicago Housing Authority. The Feds, leaving no crisis unexploited, are taking advantage of the situation by slowly tearing down Cabrini-Green. And rebuilding it. (Never do it once if you can do it twice for double the money.)

My architectural homage to the Cabrini-Green facility will never be finished either, symbolizing the constant re-birthing of Art and Culture. A statue of a giant wrecking ball near the entrance would also symbolize constant employment for all my contractor donors and buddies, which is all that matters.

At the top of the steps leading to the Department of Culture (D.O.C.), I intend to place a duplicate of this truly godawful statue from the FDR memorial.

You might remember some controversy about this sculpture. FDR went to great lengths to conceal his partial paralysis from the public (only two photos of him in his wheelchair are known to exist). But various special interest groups lobbied for the wheelchair to be included in any and all sculptures of FDR. Like it or dislike it, the result would horrify FDR.

Two years ago, as the controversy over the monument was fomenting, David Roosevelt said the memorial should not be ''a vehicle for making a social statement.''
But as Mr. Clinton noted today, 16 of Roosevelt's grandchildren have now called for a more vivid depiction of his disability, as have former Presidents George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford.

Hence the cape around the (assumed) wheelchair on this particular statue at the memorial. Art by compromise. You gotta love it.

So if my Department is going to advocate "vivid depictions of disabilities", I want to have another statue in the rotunda of the D.O.C. to vividly depict the disabilities endured by Clinton, Bush, Carter and Ford.

After leaving the rotunda, visitors and employees will encounter the "Piss Christ" fountain, based on the government-rewarded artwork by American photographer Andres Serrano, which depicts a small plastic Christ On The Cross submerged in a glass of Serrano's urine. Serrano got $15,000.00 from the National Endowment for the Arts as a reward for producing this photo. The Piss Christ Fountain will be immediately behind the D.O.C. rotunda, eliminating the need for restrooms in that area, but slightly increasing the space required for the mop closet.

(Like many of you, I think $15,000.00 was too high of a price for a mere photograph. If Andres Serrano is going to have any more works funded by my D.O.C., he's going to have to fill the fountain first. The hard way. We'll provide him with plenty of water for, ummm, processing.)

As visitors leave the P.C. fountain, they will be drawn into the corridor of Lighght. Yes, Lighght.

"Lighght" is both the title and the complete text of a one-word poem by Aram Saroyan, for which Saroyan received $750 from the NEA, way back in 1970 when that was real money. But think about it. Lighght. Lighght.

So perfect.

That poem'll make you throw rocks at Shakespeare, The Psalms, or almost any limerick you can think of. Lighght. I'll have it on the walls. It'll be written on the floor. Lighght. Lighght.

In the midst of all the Lighght, I'll construct a small podium which will give two paragraphs of additional information about the Lighght poem. I don't have room to reproduce the text here, but hit on this link to be enlighghtened, and ghghet back to me after readinghgh. It's O So Serious, and very much worth the trip.

Look below. Very closely. Lighght is there. This is a signed and numbered silkscreened print of the lighght poem that you can purchase through The Paris Review. They don't list the price - they only give an email address to which you can send enquiries. It's available in a limited edition of 150.

Damn, I wish I had typed that.

Visitors ghghoing throughgh throughgh the ghghlass hall of lighght will be ghghiven a chance to ghghive ghghenerous donations toward fundinghgh more of Saroyan's work.

After leaving the hall of lighght, visitors will enter a vast network of administrative offices. There will be thousands and thousands of offices, so I will need thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats to staff these offices. Otherwise, I will be perceived as wasting office space (government waste is a BIG no-no at my D.O.C.) Plus, as the currently fashionable logic goes, this will create jobs.

Every office will have a flatscreen TV playing Ken Burns' series on The Civil War, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is an homage to the importance of Ken Burns' documentaries in obtaining funding for the National Endowment For The Humanities every year at renewal time. Without Ken Burns, the NEH would have very little except a motley band of performance artists who sing the ingredients of cereal boxes while shaving a gong with an electric razor. (I don't know if the performance artist shown below gets any NEA or NEH funding for his art, but when I open the Department Of Culture to the general public, this guy's going to play a role in the opening ceremony. I hope he uses a gong.)

Of course, no government ripoff can ever be fully funded without saccharine pleas that the boondoggle/bailout/subsidy/giveaway under discussion is "for the children". I'll have a large Children's Art Center near the exit of the Department Of Culture, fully equipped with modeling clay, fingerpaint, brushes, canvas, poster board, easels, drum sets, fighter pilot helmets, and toilets. After a long day spent touring the D.O.C., the little kiddos can create their own piece of American Culture !

The kids will have to pay a small fee to participate. They'll have to pay another fee to have their art considered in the Best Of The D.O.C. competition. And to have a shot at winning, they'll voluntarily make an additional contribution to each judge's re-appointment campaign. Therefore, I'm going to name the children's area The Rod Blagojevich "Pay To Play" Pavillion.

All guests and employees will leave The Department Of Culture through the base of a giant mural called "The Robert Mapplethorpe Exit".

So please write your representatives, and let them know that you're in favor of creating The Department Of Culture.

It's for the children.

pics from here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

Great Moments in Anti-Semitism

A tip o' the hat to Denny at The Grouchy Old Cripple.

What Makes America Great

This is from the inaugural shoot-out of the American Zootsuiters Association.
You won't be missing much by scooting up to the one minute mark.
They guy at the 2:00 mark is waaaay to big to be doing anything on an obstacle course.
Anyone with a 1920's Flapper Shooting Heavy Artillery fetish can fast forward to 3:00.
Whoever filmed the 3:30 to 4:30 stretch deserves the Congressional Medal Of Honor for bravery, even if the camera was mounted on a tripod.


Who are they hurting?
No one.
Whose lives are they endangering?
Their own.
Whose choice should that be?
Their own.

HT to Keyboard and a .45

The Ron Paul Page-A-Day

Amazon.com recently announced that Dr. Ron Paul's "The Revolution: A Manifesto" was the most positively reviewed book (by Amazon customers) of 2008.
I've read it twice, and am currently plowing through it a third time.

I'm going to skip a groove here, but hang with me for a second. VampE recently sent me a link to a Tom Robbins website on which a blogger posts a few paragraphs from a Robbins novel every week, and the readers have a chance to discuss it. Devotees of that site are going through the current book (Jitterbug Perfume) at the same pace, discussing and commenting as they go.

This blogger only posts a few random paragraphs from each chapter, just as a frame of reference to get a conversation going or to draw new readers into the Tom Robbins universe.

I hope to do the same thing with "The Revolution: A Manifesto", but in an all-inclusive manner. I'd like to post a couple of pages per week until the entire book is on this site, or until the Grand Central Publishing group tells me to cease and desist (for copyright reasons).

Warning: Do not read any of this if you want to remain comfortable while voting for The Mommy Party and Daddy Party candidates.

So with no further ado, here's Chapter One, Page One and Two of the Ron Paul Page-A-Day service.

"Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive wars against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this social policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken away by an income tax or a national sales tax? The shared assumptions behind these questions, on the other hand, are never cast in doubt, or even raised. And anyone who wants to ask different questions or who suggests that the questions as framed exclude attractive, humane alternatives, is ipso facto excluded from mainstream discussion.

And so every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.

The supposedly conservative candidate tells us us about "waste" in government, and ticks off $10 million in frivolous pork-barrel projects that outrage him - the inevitable bridge-to-nowhere project, or a study of the effects of celery consumption on arresting memory loss - in order to elicit laughter and applause from partisan audiences. All right, so that's 0.00045 percent of the federal budget dealt with; what does he propose to do with the other 99.99955 percent, in order to return our country to living within its means? Not a word. Those same three or four silly programs will be brought up all campaign long, and that's all we'll hear about where the candidate stands on spending. But conservatives are told that they must support these candidates, and so they do, hoping for the best. And nothing changes.

Even war doesn't really distinguish the two parties from each other. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted for the Iraq war. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, even the Democrats who postured as antiwar candidates for the 2008 primary elections are not especially opposed to needless wars. They typically have a laundry list of other military interventions they would support, none of which make any sense, would make our country any safer, or would do a thing to return our country to fiscal sanity. But liberals are told that they must support these candidates, and so they do, hoping for the best. And nothing changes.

Social Security, and other Ponzi schemes

Here's Tim Slagle, writing in the December issue of Liberty magazine:



Here’s the reason why a private insurance program will always be a better option than Social Security: there was a slump in the market this week, but it will recover. Almost all the value it had will come back in time. On the other hand, everything you have ever paid into Social Security has been spent. It’s gone. Social Security is completely bankrupt, and trillions of dollars in debt. If it were a private corporation, its administrators would all be in jail.
So if you had your choice, whether to put 15% of your income into Social Security, or the stock market, where would you put it? And in a free country, shouldn’t you be entitled to make that choice?

First off, the total bankruptcy of Social Security has been brought to you by the same people who think they can regulate the stock market. But, I digress.

Let's take Mr. Slagle's statement a few steps further..... Given the total lack of accountability in the Social Security system, I think that all of us - Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, members of the Green Party, and the Flat Earth Society - all of us would've prefered to put all of our money into the stock market from Day One, and do without Social Security altogether, right? There is no money at all in the S.S. fund. It's now a troubled Ponzi scheme. Surely we can agree on that much.

But what if you were only given the choice of withdrawing all of your contributions to Social Security and putting it into the market on the day before the recent financial meltdown? Would you still do it?

Of course you would. Unless we immediately open the border to a jillion Mexican teen-agers, there simply aren't enough people coming into the workforce to keep the current Bernie Madoff-style Social Security scheme afloat. It's doomed.

One last question.... Is there ANY scenario in which you wouldn't prefer to have all of your Social Security payments put into stocks/mutual funds/etc. ?

So why aren't we allowed to do it?

Happy New Year !

Happy New Year !

Photo from here.

Photo Opportunity

Does anyone in Fort Worth know the location of one of these billboards?

A mortuary transport service owner named Donald Short was ordered by the courts to pay for them as part of a corpse abuse plea bargain deal.
I have a deep, genuine need to climb onto one of these billboards and have my picture taken while holding a bucket of white paint and a brush. If anyone has an old hearse that I could rent for the day, I'd like to park it underneath. It would draw a crowd, don't you think?

On The Inconvenience Of Prosperity

Here's John Stossel on [the President-elect's] plans to remake the economy because of the recession.
He begins with a couple of quotes:
"Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," - Barack Obama
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" - Rahm Emmanuel

So they will "transform our economy." [the President-elect's] nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.
[the President-elect] and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession. Yet we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation.
In fact, reform would impede recovery.
This is not the first time a president chose reform over recovery. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his New Deal, and the result was long years of depression and deprivation.

Later on, he digs up the scariest quote of all. This is from FDR's 2nd Inaugural address:

"To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose."

We're already seeing grousing that the current stretch of cold weather is going to interfere with funding for initiatives to fight Global Warming. Is there anything that would be more disheartening to the current batch of "Progressives", whose economic and governmental ideals shouldn't have survived the age of feudalism, than a nice, quick economic turnaround?

The Dallas Cowboys and the instruments of God's wrath - The Philadelphia Eagles

As predicted, there was a problem with #9 on Sunday. Hit this link and come back to me.

I feel like the Prophet Isaiah. Or at least a Vegas odds-maker. Tony Romo, #9 for The Dallas Cowboys, had the worst game I can remember from a Dallas quarterback since the Ryan Leaf experiment. The Cowboys, at one point early in the season, were favored to go to the freakin' Super Bowl. Now they won't even be in the playoffs. They got spanked by the Philadelphia Eagles, 44-6.

Every year, I have a wager with a co-worker that the Cowboys won't win a playoff game. They never, ever do. I always eat well in January, because of all that extra money.

Why won't they win a playoff game? (Do you know what the difference is between God and Jerry Jones? God doesn't think that he's Jerry Jones.)

God doesn't like Cowboys owner/General Manager Jerry Jones.

There's no other way to explain it. How else do you explain the Romo Butterfingers on the field goal two years ago, the total meltdowns every December, or the masterpiece that Philly's Donovan McNabb put together last Sunday?

Jerry Jones and the City of Arlington have seized/stolen/taken houses and business via Eminent Domain. They've used the bulldozed space to start construction of a temple in honor of a team that is now 0-12 in the last dozen years' worth of playoff games.

As long as Jones is owner and General Manager, they're not going to win a playoff game. More than anything else, Jones wants to be known as a football X's and O's guy.

But he's not.

Jerry Jones is a brilliant businessman but a crappy evaluator of football talent and team chemistry. He needs to turn the G.M. responsibilities over to someone who doesn't labor under an Old Testament curse. (I work in the shipping, logistics, and freight industry, and that qualifies me to comment on these things.)

Those early Super Bowl wins were because of a team put together by coach Jimmy Johnson. Deal with it.

(Full disclosure: I loved the Johnson era Cowboys, and thought that Jimmy's "Turning The Thing Around" was the best sports-as-metaphor-for-life book I'd ever read.)

Jones fired Johnson because of nothing but ego.

Is there any other franchise in baseball, football, basketball or hockey whose G.M. has gone 12 years without a playoff victory? (Maybe Al Davis, the owner/G.M. of the Oakland Raiders?) Somebody help us out on this....

Next year, the citizens of Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington Texas will be able to watch an even crappier team, but with the luxury of nicer toilets.

Hardly an even trade-off.

Jerry Jones, you have taken what was not yours. You will atone. God is not mocked.

Thanks To All Of The Designated Hitters

I can't thank everyone enough for filling in for me during my vacation.

Here are a few comments about the posts and the comments that they generated.

Stephen Smith's Prediction of Stormy Weather for Free Markets was the first post to go up, and it was dead on accurate. Not only does Stephen stand up for his principles, he stands up for them while running for office. Easier said than done. And yes, Stephen had rather be right than popular.
Let me try a medical analogy..... There was a time when the popular medical decision was to "bleed" patients, or apply leeches to infections. The "right" decision was to refrain from doing so. Sometimes the best action is no action, even if that means being accused of having no solutions.

"First, do no harm". I think Hippocrates said it.
Especially when the leeches cost $700 billion dollars.

On Tuesday, The Browncoat Libertarian's post on cigar smoking generated a ton o' controversy, thanks to the Doctor Formerly Known As Trotsky, Now Recognizable As Ralph Barr.

My response to The Good Doctor's Nanny State ideal would run as follows:
1) Libertarianism is based on the idea that you are the owner of your "self".
2) No one else should have responsibility for you, and vice-versa except in voluntary situations (such as charity, family, friendship, or other non-coercive relationships).
3) Red Adair made a small fortune risking his life to put out oil well fires. Tony Romo is making a large fortune by entrusting his physical well-being to the Dallas Cowboys' offensive line (heh heh). Carpenters make less money by risking their fingers, but that's the skill they swap for cash. Millions of data entry clerks risk Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in the course of their daily duties. Michaelangelo went near-blind from painting the inside of the Pope's roof. Entrepreneurs risk heart attacks, ulcers, bankruptcy, and nervous breakdowns.
4) Do we really need government arbitrarily deciding that this occupation or environment is too risky, when Jeff Gordon is allowed to drive more than 100-MPH for our entertainment?
5) I propose that all restaurant and bar owners be given a choice of providing a smoking and non-smoking areas or not doing so. Customers could take it or leave it. Ditto for employees.
6) Cigarette and Cigar smoke can't possibly be harmful, especially in their 2nd-hand manifestations. Why? Because our government supports tobacco farmers with huge price supports, subsidies, and outright payments of your dollars. And our government wouldn't do anything like that if tobacco was really harmful.
7) For further discussion of this topic, see "Scared To Death" by Christopher Booker and Richard North. Chapter 12, Smoke and Mirrors - How They Turned "Passive Smoking" Into A Killer, 1950-2007.
8) BTW, I think The Aggie bought me some Cubans as a belated Christmas gift. If that's the case, I plan to put them aside to smoke when Castro dies.

VampE's likening of this dispute to Freud's explanation of the true nature of cigars summed up everything nicely.

On Wednesday, my friend Gar wrote a great post about the idea of a Higher Power conflicting with the idea of Liberty. What it boils down to is that if you believe that God is in his heaven making the decisions for you, you have no responsibility for your own freedom. The implication is that any belief in a God who intervenes is incompatible with Liberty. This was also the post where my arch-nemesis (and doppelganger) Fembuttx decided to regale us with his/her tales of bedroom hardware. (Thank you, B, for deleting these when necessary.)

So on Christmas Eve, I was blessed with an anti-religion post with an additional discussion of sexual perversions. (Stay with me, I'm going somewhere with this.....)
Then, out of the blue, a huge right-wing conservative outfit called The Conservative Grapevine decided to make me their Site Of The Day. Check out December 24th on the link above. You might have to hit "Archives" to get there.

At last count, at least 588 God fearing, Limbaugh listening, Republican voting, Salt Of The Earth conservatives were innocently sent to this site to experience Gar slamming religion and Fembuttx describing penile prosthetics. Unbelieveable. Nowhere but here.
In the words of Barack Obama, "In no other country on earth is my story even possible".

Tim Lebsack's post the Friday after Christmas didn't generate a lot of commentary (I guess everyone was busy with post-holiday stuff), but it got a lot of hits.
I was disturbed when Dr. Ralph Barr couldn't find anything disagreeable in Tim's content.

Therefore, Tim, there must be something wrong with you. Turn in your Libertarian Party Badge and Secret Decoder Ring on your way out the door.

On Saturday, I applied The Fairness Doctrine, and ran a post of Dr. Ralph's that I had already responded to on his site.
The only thing I can add at this point is that I spend a substantial part of my online blog-browsing asking people what the recent Community Re-investment Act disaster has to do with 1) Free Markets, and 2) De-regulation.

Tarrant County Liberty Guy's post on Sunday about the recent improvement in the TCLP didn't generate a lot of commentary, but then it was more about statistics than doctrine. While I was on vacation I happened to read the issue of Liberty magazine that he recommends, and it was excellent. (Yes, I'm a geek.)

Andrew Ian Dodge sent me a post about mandatory payments going to the BBC, which apparently everyone on that side of the English-speaking pond has to pay IF they own a television. That didn't generate much controversy or commentary since 1) we have no idea what Channel 4 is, and 2) if anyone in the U.S. were automatically charged for anything regarding television viewing, we would rise up from our Barcaloungers and revolt. I can't get people worked up over farm subsidies, import quotas, or The Fed printing monopoly money, but charging money to watch TV? That would cause a revolt.

One more interesting thing about Andrew's post..... someone named Yunshui logged on to comment. Yunshui runs a freethought/skepticism site called Right To Think. DO NOT READ THIS POST OF YUNSHUI'S IF YOU EVER WANT TO ENJOY THE MOVIE "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE" AGAIN. DO NOT READ IT. IF YOU LIKE JIMMY STEWART AND "IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE", DON'T GO THERE. (but he says some really funny things about angels.)

NickM of Counting Cats provided Today's post, the one immediately below this one. He begs everyone in the U.S. not to screw up the good thing that we've got going on. I bet we find a way.

Thanks again to everyone who sent in this great stuff.

The Free Market and Service

Unless my boat was torpedoed by Castro (the agenda calls for us to go to Cozumel, The Caymans, Jamaica, and then circle around the north of Cuba) I should be back from vacation by now.
(Sorry. I can't help myself. I just thought of this. Wouldn't it be great if Castro were to die, and we could bring the cruise ship close enough to see the island celebrations brought on by the passing of that murderous bastard? Wouldn't that just be freakin' great? But I digress....)

I can't thank everyone enough for Guest Blogging in my absence. One of the joys of doing this has been corresponding with people all over the U.S., England, Australia, Israel, New Zealand, and elsewhere about the shared goals we have for our planet.

The last guest blogger is my Brother from Another Mother, NickM of the Counting Cats blog. I asked my overseas guests to write on the difference between libertarianism over there and over here, as they understand it.
Nick's got some things to say about the U.S. as compared to England on the subject of "service", and the idea that all honest work is honorable.

Liberty in the UK and the USA? Compare and contrast! I know the USA quite well. Of course I know the UK very well being a Brit and all.

Well... I think the USA is much freerer. But fundamentally I think it is becoming much more like Europe which is of course the desiderata of the US Left (yes, Mr Obama that means you).

When I first pitched-up in the USA in 1996 I fell in love with the country. The last time I was there (2006) the TSA X-rayed my shoes and shouted at me - what a start to a honeymoon!

It improved. Off Key West I felt the hydrodynamical fluence of a 2.5m Nurse Shark... Now that's cool. And I was there for "Fantasy Fest" and the streets were full of people wearing nothing but bodypaint and flip-flops. And that was in Florida! In the South! People don't get it over here. They think of The South as being filled with viper-eyed, Bible-banging nutjobs... The idea (on this side of the pond) that not all Americans are religious or especially that even the religous ones aren't raving mad "young earthers" does not compute.

And therein lies the disconnect. I have spent many weeks in Georgia and Florida and a great many folks over here just assume I was made to "squeel like a pig" when in fact I was made extremely welcome and received excellent customer service. People over here just don't believe it because they just know whsat Ameria is like despite never having been there.

That is a problem. And it is one which spreads beyond those two Great States I mention because, at base, it is a disbelief in the idea that a free market can ever create anything beyond facile, "Have a Nice Day" pseudo-service. The freerer the market the more service matters. My wife was once a waitress in a City bar and I've worked similar jobs. It is only the left that regards serving people (doesn't everyone with a job serve people in some sense?) as demeaning? when my wife served cocktails to bankers she took pride in her work (and it paid for her MA) and when I worked telesales (which kept body and soul together) it paid for the first PC I built from scratch...

There is nothing demeaning about service. And therein lies the difference. The USA is much less snobby than we are. I hope to hell you stay that way because in that direction freedom lies because whatever depredations government carries out either having a few quid or being able to make a few quid is the safest way to rise above governmental pillage.

I love the USA (I keep on going) and America don't screw it up as we did in Europe, Please.

Nick, thanks for contributing. We'll try hard not to screw it up, but we've got some serious opposition.

Imagine getting a bill from Big Bird

If you're in the U.S., you might occasional contribute to Public Radio and Public Television pledge drives.

How would you feel if you got a bill in the mail, whether you wanted to contribute or not?

That's currently the largest burr under the saddle of the U.K.'s Andrew Ian Dodge, of Dodgeblogium and Pajamas Media. (To read more about Andrew's diverse media outlets, click here. We've also been corresponding about music and a few other topics, all of which will be published when I get back from vacation.)

Read this about a BBC and Channel 4 merger. Get back to us.....

Here's Andrew:

“John Whittingdale MP, the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, criticized the plan for its knock-on effect on the BBC's funding.
"This is essentially a plan aimed at taking public money surreptitiously, because it takes profits away from the BBC, and forces the license fee to go up.
"Channel 4 is keen on it because it thinks that it would be difficult for it to justify taking public money directly."”

This quote will probably shock many people in the UK who care about their television service and the drreaded TV license fee. If someone were to poll British taxpayers a vast majority would have no idea that Channel 4 was not a private concern.

There is much discussion about the licence fee these days in the UK. There is even a strong movement to avoid paying it to either have it reformed or to end it all together. Their inflation beating rises in the tax on televisions and the Stasi-like behaviour of those tasked with collecting it annoy many Britons in the age of 500 channels most of which are not the BBC.

The most recent iteration of fiddling the taxpayers money for television is to combine Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide, the part of the BBC that actually makes money. BBCW is the one that flogs their programs worldwide whether it means selling aged sit-coms to Public Television in the US, doing joint ventures with A&E or running the successful BBC America.

Needless to say the BBC is rather against this idea and will fight it tooth and nail. To counter this proposal this BBC is proposing a variety of arrangements with other parts of the public service broadcasting arena. They are clearly worried by all of this, no doubt partly stunkg by the variety of scandals of late whether it be the sacking/suspension of Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand for their behaviour or kicking rubbish but lovable John Sargeant off their “entertainment” program “Dancing with the Stars”.

The public mood is quite poor towards the BBC and the hyenas are circling in various guises. Many believe that the BBC will not retain its current form for much longer. The BBC is merely making its best efforts to keep the damage to a minimum.

And you thought the annual “donation drive” from public television was annoying. Imagine if you had no choice but to pony up every year.

Written by Andrew Ian Dodge with the help of Steve Bettison of the Adam Smith Institute.

Wow. The Adam Smith Institute. Thanks for contributing, guys ! Hope you enjoy contributing to government sponsored programming !

And now, a word from Big Daddy

John Spivey is the Big Daddy of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party and the Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup Group. I don't know anyone who has been working harder to advance the Freedom-Lover agenda. He's a frequent commenter on these pages, under the name "Tarrant Liberty Guy".

John doesn't have a website, but when I asked him to Guest Post (while I'm on vacation) about what libertarians need to do differently, he sent in this gem, prefaced with a shot across the bow of the ideologically creaky vessel manned by yesterday's guest blogger, Dr. Ralph:

Being asked to guest type for The Whited Sepulchre is somewhat intimidating as I typically enjoy reading his original witty takes on current events and then making outlandishly long and snarky commentary not unlike the closeted communist, Dr. Ralph. But I digress... I believe I was asked to give my $.02 on the future of the Libertarian Party or libertarianism in general. So here's my take:

As Chair of a County Libertarian Party, I've seen tremendous gains in our local libertarian scene. We've gone from 6 members meeting every two years to affirm a handful of pre-nominated and non-contested candidates to a group whose grassroots ranks are numbering in the triple digits, alliances with philosophically aligned 'major' political party campaigns and supporting candidates who, doggone it, looks like they have a very legitimate chance to win an election to a high office in the county's largest city (population 700,000-ish)! Libertarian straight ticket voters increased by a greater margin than the overall increase in total voters in this Obama-fueled electionapalooza. Straight ticket Democrats increased, but not as much as the overall total. Even with the total turnout increasing by over 60% in our county, straigh ticket GOP voters, DECREASED by about 4%. Seems like the GOP's message of warfare state, daddy-state smack downs of civil liberties and personal freedoms, exclusivity and intolerance is wearing thin. Even in this formerly deeply red county.

However, truth be told, in saying that, it's like saying that our regular savage beatings by two large giants are slightly less savage and by slightly smaller giants. Until we do a few things, we're still going to get smacked, but, as you may have read, David gets his eventually. First, since the LP caters to no special interest group, we're not going to get much in the way of mega-corporate/union 'sponsorship'. No biggie, since Ron Paul showed that you can raise $35 million, one person at a time. The trick is getting those donors over to our side. Tough to do when the LP Presidential candidate, Bob Barr, basically bitch slapped the good Doctor during election time. However, I believe with time, that wound will heal and those Republicans will leave the GOP and find their proper home with us. They bring money, volunteerism and best of all - infectious and rabid enthusiasm!

Also, we're going to have to work to improve our image. Taking the "Apple vs. PC" advertisement as an example, we're definitely the 'PC' guy. We HAVE to get 'cool'. Generally speaking, that means getting celebrities to flog our message. Penn and Teller are OK, John Stossel is better, but what we really need is a Leo DiCaprio or two to bang our drum like they do for Rev. Al Gore. Cultural relevancy.

It will take time. Hopefully not as much time as Cato Insitute studies report that New Deal programs prolonged The Great Depression (eight extra years). But eventually, our message of sound monetary policy, sane fiscal policies, peace and personal freedom will find its place in the mainstream of American politics. It may take some failures of nationalized industries first. Ayn Rand may have not been too far off the mark. I hope we can get going before Atlas goes into full shrug.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that we must take a bottom up approach. We're just going to have to win some local races first folks. That means locally, you'll need to support our candidates with your time and money - and of course, votes! My toast for the new year and for libertarian victory nationally? Bottom(s) up!

John, thanks for contributing, and for all you do. Bottom(s) up, right back atcha.