Here's one of my typing heroes, Stephen King, on the tax code, compliments of a link from Don Surber:
Some of the highlights:
Now you might say, what are you doing up there? Aren’t you rich? The answer is: thank God, yes. Because I grew up poor. I lived in a family where my mother asked donated commodities from a Republican administration and got turned down. That’s where I came from. And you know what, as a rich person I pay 28% tax.
What I want to ask you is why am I not paying fifty?
The answer, Mr. King, is that you have chosen to pay less. Just like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Michael Moore, Harry Reid all pay less than they could. Why do they pay less than they could?
Because none of them are idiots, and because all of them pay accountants to ensure that they pay less.
Stephen King, unless he's a total idiot, has a tax advisor. This person works very hard to see to it that Stephen King's money isn't wasted.
If Stephen King wants to pay more, he can write a check to:
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 622D
Hyattsville, MD 20782
Because of this site, I've got Facebook friends all over the world that I've never met. Since the libertarian cause seeks to be a very big umbrella, I've corresponded with Rastafarian marijuana enthusiasts, Bible-quoting homeschoolers, transgendered gay rights activists, gun fetishists, anti-war activists, free market economists, property rights devotees and more than a few people who don't like going outside because of all those black helicopters that follow them around.
Because of the horrible destruction in Japan this morning, a lot of my Facebook buddies are asking everyone to pray for the people of Japan.
Why?
Should I ask God to prevent any more destruction? Or should I ask God to not cause any more destruction?
How much involvement on God's part are we assuming here? Does God only intervene when enough of us ask him sincerely enough? Can God be trusted to do the right thing without us having to nag him about it, kinda like I sometimes have to be reminded to set the recycling out on Thursday mornings?
I have a standing joke with two of my employees about work and bumperstickers. There are some people who go through life figuratively wearing this bumpersticker:
Things are beyond their control. Life happens to them. They are victims. People wake up in the morning just to take advantage of them. Most of their lives are predestined.
And then there are those joyous souls who obviously have a different philosophy.
These people exercise some serious "scene control". They either control their own destiny, or believe that they do. They believe that they have a free will, that they are responsible for their actions and the consequences.
Which bumpersticker do you think God would put on his Cadillac? Does he just set things in motion and let them play out? Or does God make things happen?
Of all the anti-protectionist slapdowns Don Boudreaux has ever issued, this is my favorite:
9 March 2011
Mr. Ian Fletcher
Dear Ian:
In your latest essay at the Huffington Post you state that sensible protectionists, like you, want to use tariffs to protect, not “dying” industries, but, rather, only industries of “the future” (“Protectionism of the Past vs. Protectionism of the Future,” March 9).
Who but a backwoods bumpkin doesn’t cheer for the industries of “the future”? But I’ve some questions.
- How do we identify such industries? Who’ll be charged with determining which industries are of “the future” and which industries are sufficiently passé as to be left unshielded from being slain by foreign competition – slayings that you suppose are the inevitable fate of all U.S. industries not protected by high U.S. tariffs?
- What criteria will be used to distinguished industries of “the future” from what I suppose we ought to call “industries of the past”? Rates of return on capital? Total volume of employment? Productivity per worker? Rates of annual productivity growth? Rates of export growth? Total amount of corporate taxes paid? The technological ‘wow-ness’ of the industries’ outputs – as determined, perhaps, by the amount of positive attention such outputs receive from nightly network news reporters? The age of the industry?
Oh! I know the answer: total dollar amount of contributions to the political campaigns of incumbent members of Congress and the U.S. presidency.
Ok, here comes the Don Boudreaux Karate Kid Crane Kick, the takedown, the crushing blow:
- In those inescapable instances when dispassionate minds, such as yours, discover that protection was mistakenly given to industries of the past that were for a time wrongly thought to be industries of the future, will the shareholders and workers in those industries, whose prosperity has for a long time been made possible only by the tariff protections that their industries received, gracefully accept the revised determination that they have all along been investing in, and working for, industries of the past and, therefore, must now lose their assets and jobs for the greater good? What will you tell these poor workers, shareholders, and bondholders?
- Finally, if an industry really does have such a promising future that even government bureaucrats recognize this promise, why wouldn’t this same promise be recognized by private investors? Seems as though it would. And private investors, then, will pour sufficient amounts of private financing into this industry. Isn’t it one of the central functions of private capital markets to identify – and to shower with liquidity – upstart firms that are likely to be parts of industries of “the future”?
I’m eager to receive your replies.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Hit the link at the top to read his readers' comments, involving Godzilla, Bambi, priests, and some discussion about failed "Industries Of The Future".
Ok, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard something about this video.
James O'Keefe posed as a potential NPR donor, and extracted the following from Ron Schiller (then president of the NPR Foundation and senior vice president of development):
The current Republican Party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian. I wouldn't even call it Christian; it's this weird evangelical kind of move.
The current Republican Party is not really the Republican Party, it’s been hijacked by this group; that is, not just Islamaphobic but really xenophobic. I mean, basically, they are, they believe in sort of white, middle American, gun toting — I mean, it's scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.
Besides bashing the Tea Party movement, Schiller also advanced the bigoted stereotype that the media is Jewish-owned and/or has a pro-Israel bias. He and Betsy Liley, another NPR executive at the lunch, both reveled over the joke that NPR stands for “National Palestinian Radio.”
Oh, I forgot to mention....O'Keefe was posing as a donor from the Muslim Brotherhood.
Ok, all of this skullduggery merely confirms what anyone with one eye and half-sense already knows. NPR is a seriously biased news organization. Big deal. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, and the Sunflower County News are all seriously biased news organizations. Bias is what happens when you sit down and start typing. That's why governments should never be allowed to fund journalism.
The point of all this is to get the Republicans to defund NPR. NPR recently fired their only remotely "conservative" commentator, Juan Williams. One of the money shots from the O'Keefe video is when Schiller affirms that NPR would be better off without government funding.
NPR has totally crapped in the punch bowl. They are the leading Statist propaganda tool.
And the Republican Party will NOT defund them. Republicans don't cut programs. They just talk about it.
I repeat....The Republican Party is going to continue funding NPR. I'm betting $20.00 to the first commenter that NPR will still be getting government funds until the 2012 elections.
"Joe Konrath has an interesting interview with independent writer John Locke who currently holds the coveted #1 spot in the Amazon Top 100 and has sold just over 350,000 downloads on Kindle of his 99 cent books since January 1st of this year, which, with a royalty rate of 35%, is an annual income well over $500k. Locke says that 99 cents is the magic number and adds that when he lowered the price of his book The List from $2.99 to 99 cents, he started selling 20 times as many copies — about 800 a day, turning his loss lead into his biggest earner. 'These days the buying public looks at a $9.95 eBook and pauses. It's not an automatic sale,' says Locke. 'And the reason it's not is because the buyer knows when an eBook is priced ten times higher than it has to be. And so the buyer pauses. And it is in this pause—this golden, sweet-scented pause—that we independent authors gain the advantage, because we offer incredible value.' Kevin Kelly predicts that within 5 years all digital books will cost 99 cents. 'I don't think publishers are ready for how low book prices will go,' writes Kelly. 'It seems insane, dangerous, life threatening, but inevitable.'"
1) Should government intervene, and put in a price floor on books?
2) Should President Numb Nuts initiate another "Cash For Clunkers" program to take old copies of, say, James Michener and Earl Stanley Gardner novels out of circulation to create demand for new books?
3) Should we be prepared to bailout Random House, Putnam, Simon and Schuster, and all the rest?
4) And what about this incredibly selfish and destructive writer, John Locke, who now has a $500,000.00 income? He took a huge risk, and has been rewarded handsomely for it. How thoroughly should he be punished?
5) What would happen if we allowed one nurse in every city to set up shop on his/her own, with no regulations, no oversight, and hell, no training requirements. Just like this John Locke character is doing with publishing. Let the good ones prosper and the bad ones go under. And what if we gave these nurses an exemption from lawsuits and insurance programs? Ditto for their suppliers? And what if we allowed more and more nurses into the program based on market demand??? And then a few doctors? Kind of like writers are going to do with John Locke's monstrosity.
Do you think medical costs would drop like a stone?
This John Locke must be found and stopped before his ideas catch on.
Here's noted manufactuer and constitutional law expert Jesse Jackson Jr., proposing a constitutional amendment to give every ghetto kid a "right" to an Ipod and a laptop. Imagine if someone had proposed similar sentiments 30 years ago.
"Every ghetto kid should have a constitutional right to... an 8-track tape player ! And then a Sony Walkman ! And then a Betamax ! And every child in these United States should have a constitutional right to a TRS-80 !!! No, wait, a Commodore 360 !!
And if you take the time to watch the video, he really does frame all of this lunacy in terms of creating jobs.
Here's a partial list of the aircraft that Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Khadafi is using to train pilots, transport soldiers, and move equipment in his campaign against the Libyan people. I found it on Wikipedia, not the most reliable of sources, but it seems to check out.
Make and model is on the left, country of origin is in the center, followed by purpose, and then quantity on hand.
Gulfstream II
USA
Light transport
1
Lockheed C-130H Hercules
USA
Heavy transport
10
Bell 206 JetRanger
USA
Training helicopter
4
Bell 202 Twin Huey
USA
Light transport helicopter
2
Boeing CH-47 Chinook
USA
Heavy transport helicopter
8
I know that we're trying to Save And Create Jobs in the military/industrial complex, but....
Did the Libyan dictator have to pass a background check before he purchased these?
Do we sell these planes and helicopters to Middle Eastern nutcases knowing full well that we would eventually be sending our own soldiers and pilots to fight against them?
Some of these helicopters went to Italy first. Then they wound up in Libya. Should Italy take responsibility for enforcing the much-discussed no-fly zone over Libya? Especially since we're kinda busy elsewhere?
Manufacturing aircraft to sell to our enemies so we can boost our economy by blowing them up later....Is that a sustainable economic model?
Are the manufacturers of these aircraft not happier than old hogs in new slop, knowing that they might be supplying equipment to both sides in yet another conflict?
Should we not put some restrictions on this type of sale before we worry too much about forcing me to have a permit for a handgun?
The map of the Military/Industrial complex came from here.
Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.
McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.
Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.
Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.
McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.
Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.
With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.
"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.
Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.
Hit the link up top to read the whole thing. The pictures of the Room Cleaner (a space heater with a feather duster taped to it) and the gasoline powered alarm clock, both of which were approved as "Energy Stars" by regulators, came from here.
Matt Damon, the guy who narrated last year's brilliant Academy Award winning documentary "Inside Job" on the origins of the housing bubble/crisis...
Matt Damon, who brilliantly plays Jason Bourne, the lead character in Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum series. My favorite spy thrillers EVER....
Matt Damon, who plays one of the angels in Dogma, my favorite theological comedy....
I just got a 3 per cent tax cut. Do you think I'm going to start a small business with that money? You're out of your mind if you think so. I'm going to put it in the bank. So is every other guy that makes the kind of money I make.
Yeah. Hit the links and you'll see that Matt Damon thinks he's undertaxed. Banks don't loan out his money to start small businesses, do they? Only the government has the wisdom and knowledge to loan out Matt Damon's money, via stimulus and kickbacks.
I have a bunch of pictures that I've saved on my laptop for future use. Some of them may have been posted before. I don't know. Don't remember.
I have no idea where most of these came from. Will give attribution if someone wants it.
That's all for now. If these get linked and Tweeted a lot, I'll post the rest later on.
This is from the ending of Matt Ridley's "The Rational Optimist", probably last year's best libertarian book. The ending is pure, undiluted greatness. Ridley argues that the world is NOT going to hell in a handbasket, as long as people are free to freely exchange goods and services, and most important - ideas. The item on the left, a primitive handaxe, is one of the oldest human artifacts. One person made it. The item on the right is approximately the same size and was made by hundreds, if not thousands of people, each one working on a small part of the project and reflecting "multiple strands of knowledge". The one on the left is the result of a system with cultural, geographic and trade barriers in place. The product on the right can only be efficiently manufactured when people are left alone to seek their own self-interest. Pick a side, pick a side.
Here's Matt Ridley:
Politicians are increasingly corks tossed on the waves of public opinion. Dictators are learning that their citizens can organise riots by text message. 'Here comes everybody' says the author Clay Shirky.
People will more and more freely find ways to exchange their specialised production for diversified consumption. This world can already be glimpsed on the web, in what John Barlow calls 'dot-com communism': a workforce of free agents bartering their ideas and efforts barely interested in whether the barter yields 'real' money. The explosion of interest in the free sharing of ideas that the internet has spawned has taken everybody by surprise. 'The online masses have an incredible willingness to share' says Kevin Kelly. Instead of money, 'peer producers who create the stuff gain credit, status, reputation, enjoyment, satisfaction, and experience:. People are willing to share their photographs on Flickr, their thoughts on Twitter, their friends on Facebook, their knowledge on Wikipedia, their software patches on Linux, their donations on Globalgiving.com, their community news on Craigslist, their pedigrees on Ancestry.com, their genomes on 23andMe, even their medical records on PatientsLikeMe. Thanks to the internet, each is giving according to his ability to each according to his needs, to a degree that never happened in Marxism.
This catallaxy will not go smoothly, or without resistance. Natural and unnatural disasters will still happen. Governments will bail out big corporations and big bureaucracies, hand them special favours such as subsidies or carbon rations and regulate them in such a way as to create barriers to entry, slowing down creative destruction. Chiefs, priests, thieves, financiers, consultants and others will appear on all sides, feeding off the surplus generated by exchange and specialisation, diverting the life-blood of the catallaxy into their own reactionary lives. It happened in the past. Empires brought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the price of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers. The online world will attract parasites too: from regulators and cyber-criminals to hackers and plagiarists. Some of them may temporarily throttle their generous hosts.
....There is even a new reason for such pessimism: the integrated nature of the world means that it may soon be possible to capture the entire world on behalf of a foolish idea, where before you could only capture a country, or perhaps if you were lucky an empire.
....Imagine if the globalised world of the twenty-first century allows a globalised retreat from reason. It is a worrying thought. The wrong kind of chiefs, priests and thieves could yet snuff out future prosperity on earth. Already lords don boiler suits to destroy genetically modified crops, presidents scheme to prevent stem-cell research, prime ministers trample on habeas corpus using the excuse of terrorism, metastasising bureacracies interfere with innovation on behalf of reactionary pressure groups, superstitious creationists stop the teaching of good science, air-headed celebrities rail against free trade, mullahs inveigh against the empowerment of women, earnest princes lament the loss of old ways and pious bishops regret the coarsening effects of commerce. So far they are all sufficiently localised in their effects to achieve no more than limited pauses in the happy progress of the species, but could one of them go global?
I doubt it....Said Lord Macaulay, 'We see in almost every part of the annals of mankind how the industry of individuals, struggling up against wars, taxes, famines, conflagrations, mischievous prohibitions, and more mischievous protections, creates faster than governments can squander, and repairs whatever invaders can destroy.'
....The twenty-first century will be a magnificent time to be alive.
Dare to be an optimist.
I hope you'll check out this book when it's released in paperback. It's greatness.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Tex, has made a career out of being the contrarian in Congress, and with uprisings sweeping across the Middle East he took the opportunity today to point out one of the inconvenient truths of American foreign policy: its support across successive administrations for key Middle East leaders who ally themselves with the United States in a difficult region, yet do not respect basic human rights and democracy in their own countries.
“A lot of people in this country have come to the conclusion that our policy overhaul has been inconsistent; that sometimes we support the bad guys and the bad guys become our enemies,” Paul told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Rep. Paul pointed to America’s support for Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, its collaboration with Saddam Hussein against Iran in the 1980s, and its propping up the Shah in Iran for decades before that.
“But we keep supporting Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, all these dictators, and yet we pretend that as soon as, well, it looks like the dictator might fall, we're all for democracy and we're for freedom and we're against these dictators,” he said.
Here's the money quote from She Whose Name Is Not Spoken:
“Congressman, you make a very passionate argument, and my response is that, you know, the United States, over the course of its entire diplomatic history, has had to make some very difficult decisions,” she said.
“We try to balance what we believe to be in our interests. Sometimes, and I would argue most times, we get it right. Sometimes we don't,” America’s top diplomat conceded.
Precisely. That's why James Monroe came up with something eventually known as The Monroe Doctrine. We're going to stay out of everyone else's business, because we "sometimes don't" get it right. In fact, I'm going through a mental list of dictators, trying to think of one we've supported and got it right by doing so.
Can anyone out there help me out? How many of these guys were instances where we got it right? I've swiped a list of dictators supported by the U.S. from this dude.Lord have mercy, I wish that the Congressman had done a roll call through the list, asking when we "got it right".
{Update from 3-3-2011, to eliminate any confusion....If you follow all of the links back to the originator of this list, his basis for inclusion is"rulers who received aid (economic/military), training of military/intelligence/security forces, and/or political support from the US". It's freakin' terrifying. See the comment field below about Pol Pot.}
Please respond with the names that give you that warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting a great cause.
Africa
MOBUTU SESE SEKO
Dictator of Zaire 1965-1997
MOHAMMED SIAD BARRE
President/Dictator of Somalia 1969-1991
GEN. IBRAHIM BABANGIDA
Military Dictator/President of Nigeria 1985-1993
GEN. SANI ABACHA
Dictator of Nigeria 1993-1998
HASTINGS KAMUZU BANDA
Dictator of Malawi 1966-1994
LAURENT-DÉSIRÉ KABILA
President/Dictator of the Democratic Republic of the Congo 1997-2001
GNASSINGBE ETIENNE EYADEMA
Dictator of Togo 1967-2005
FELIX HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY
Dictator/President of the Ivory Coast 1960-1993
HASSAN II
King of Morocco 1961-1999
TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA MBASOGO
President/Dictator of Equatorial Guinea 1979-present
ZINE EL ABIDINE BEN ALI
President-Prime Minister/Dictator of Tunisia 1987-2011
ANWAR EL-SADAT
President/Dictator of Egypt 1970-1981
HOSNI MUBARAK
President/Dictator of Egypt 1981-present
IAN SMITH
Prime Minister of Rhodesia (white minority regime) 1965-1979
PIETER WILLEM BOTHA
Prime Minister of South Africa (white minority regime) 1978-1984, President 1984-1989
DANIEL ARAP MOI
President/Dictator of Kenya 1978-2002
HAILE SELASSIE (RAS TAFARI)
Emperor of Ethiopia 1928-1974
WILLIAM J. S. TUBMAN
President/Dictator of Liberia 1944-1971
SAMUEL KANYON DOE
Dictator of Liberia 1980-1990
Asia
MOHAMED SUHARTO
Dictator of Indonesia 1966-1998
NGO DINH DIEM
President/Dictator of South Vietnam 1955-1963
GEN. NGUYEN KHANH
Dictator of South Vietnam 1964-1965
NGUYEN CAO KY
Dictator of South Vietnam 1965-1967
GEN. NGUYEN VAN THIEU
President/Dictator of South Vietnam 1967-1975
TRAN THIEM KHIEM
Prime Minister of South Vietnam 1969-75
BAO DAI
Emperor of Vietnam 1926-1945, chief of state 1949-1955
LEE KUAN YEW
Prime Minister/Dictator of Singapore 1959-1990; behind-the scenes ruler since then.
EMOMALI RAHMONOV
President/Dictator of Tajikistan 1992-present
NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV
President of Kazakhstan 1990-present
ISLAM A. KARIMOV
President/Dictator of Uzbekistan 1990-present
SAPARMURAD ATAYEVICH NIYAZOV
President/Dictator of Turkmenistan 1990-2006
MARSHAL LUANG PIBUL SONGGRAM
Dictator of Thailand 1948-1957
FIELD MARSHAL THANOM KITTIKACHORN
Prime Minister/Dictator of Thailand 1957-58, 1963-1973
CHIANG KAI-SHEK
President/Dictator (Nationalist) of China 1928-1949
President/Dictator of Taiwan 1949-1975
CHIANG CHING-KUO
President/Dicator of Taiwan 1978-1988; Prime Minister 1972-1978
DENG XIAOPING
De facto ruler of China from circa 1978 to the early 1990s
FERDINAND MARCOS
President/Dictator of the Philippines 1965-1986
SYNGMAN RHEE
President/Dictator of South Korea 1948-1960
GEN. PARK CHUNG HEE
President/Dictator of South Korea 1962-1979
GEN. CHUN DOO HWAN
President/Dictator of South Korea 1980-1988
SIR MUDA HASSANAL BOLKIAH
Sultan of Brunei 1967-present
GEN. LON NOL
Prime Minister/Dictator of Cambodia 1970-1975
POL POT
Dictator of Cambodia 1975-1979
MAJ. GEN. SITIVENI RABUKA
Dictator of Fiji 1987-1999
ASKAR AKAYEV
President of Kyrgyzstan 10/27/1990-2005
Europe
FRANCISCO FRANCO
Dictator of Spain 1939-1975
ANTONIO SALAZAR DE OLIVEIRA
Dictator of Portugal 1928-1968
COL. GEORGIOS PAPADOPOULOS
Prime Minister/President/Dictator of Greece 1967-1973
Latin America
ANASTASIO SOMOZA GARCIA
Dictator of Nicaragua 1937-1947, 1950-1956
ANASTASIO "TACHITO" SOMOZA DEBAYLE
Dictator of Nicaragua 1967-1972, 1974-1979
MANUEL ESTRADA CABRERA
Dictator of Guatemala 1898-1920
GEN. JORGE UBICO CASTANEDA
Dictator of Guatemala 1931-1944
COL. CARLOS ENRIQUE CASTILLO ARMAS
Dictator of Guatemala 1954-1957
GEN. JOSE MIGUEL YDIGORAS FUENTES
President/Dictator of Guatemala 1958-1963
COL. ENRIQUE PERALTA AZURDIA
Military Junta, Guatemala 1963-1966
COL.CARLOS ARANA OSORIO
Dictator of Guatemala 1970-1974
GEN. FERNANDO ROMEO LUCAS GARCIA
Dictator of Guatemala 1978-1982
GEN. JOSE EFRAIN RIOS MONTT
Dictator of Guatemala 1982-1983
MARCO VINICIO CEREZO ARÉVALO
President/Dictator of Guatemala 1986-1991
MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ MARTINEZ
Dictator of El Salvador 1931-1944
COL. OSMIN AGUIRRE Y SALINAS
Dictator of El Salvador 1944-1945
CIVILIAN-MILITARY JUNTA, EL SALVADOR
1961-1962
COL. ARTURO ARMANDO MOLINA BARRAZA
Dictator of El Salvador 1972-1977
JUNTA, EL SALVADOR
1979-1982
ALFREDO FÉLIX CRISTIANI BUKARD
President/Dictator of El Salvador 1989-1994
TIBURCIO CARIAS ANDINO
Dictator of Honduras 1932-1948
COL. OSWALDO LOPEZ ARELLANO
Dictator of Honduras 1963-1975
ROBERTO SUAZO CORDOVA
President/Dictator of Honduras 1982-1986
GEN. OMAR HERRERA-TORRIJOS
Dictator of Panama 1969-1981
GEN. MANUEL ANTONIO MORENA NORIEGA
Dictator of Panama 1982-1989
AUGUSTO PINOCHET UGARTE
Dictator of Chile 1973-1990
GEN. JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA
Dictator of Argentina 1976-1981
COL. MARCOS PEREZ JIMENEZ
Dictator of Venezuela 1950-1958
GEN. ALFREDO STROESSNER
Dictator of Paraguay 1954-1989
ALBERTO FUJIMORI
Dictator of Peru 1990-2000
FRANCOIS "PAPA DOC" DUVALIER
Dictator of Haiti 1957-1971
JEAN-CLAUDE "BABY DOC" DUVALIER
Dictator of Haiti 1971-1986
MILITARY JUNTA / LT. GEN. RAOUL CEDRAS, GEN. PHILIPPE BIAMBY and LT. COL. MICHEL-JOSEPH FRANCO
Haiti 1991-1994
GEN. RENE BARRIENTOS ORTUNO
President/Dictator of Bolivia 1964-1969
GEN. HUGO BANZER SUAREZ
Dictator of Bolivia 1971-1978
DR. GETULIO VARGAS
Dictator of Brazil 1930-1945, 1951-1954
GEN. HUMBERTO DE ALENCAR CASTELLO BRANCO
Dictator of Brazil 1964-1967
CARLOS PRIO SOCARRAS
Dictator of Cuba 1948-1952
FULGENCIO BATISTA
Dictator of Cuba 1933-44, 1952-1959
GERARDO MACHADO MORALES
Dictator of Cuba 1925-1933
RAFAEL LEONIDAS TRUJILLO
Dictator of the Dominican Republic 1930-1961
Middle East
MOHAMMED REZA PAHLAVI
Shah of Iran 1941-1979
SADDAM HUSSEIN
Dictator of Iraq 1969 (1979)-2003
GEN. MOHAMMED AYUB KHAN
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1958-1969
GEN. AGHA MUHAMMAD YAHYA KHAN
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1969-1971
GEN. MOHAMMAD ZIA UL-HAQ
President/Dictator of Pakistan 1977-1988
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF
Dictator of Pakistan 1999-2008
ABDUL IBN HUSSEIN I
King of Jordan 1952-1999
TURGUT ÖZAL
Prime Minister of Turkey 1983-1989, President 1989-1993
SHEIK JABIR AL-AHMAD AL SABAH
Emir of Kuwait 1977-2006
Prime Minister of Kuwait 1962-1963, 1965-1978
FAHD IBN ABDUL-AZIZ AL SAUD
King and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia 1982-2005
The Business Insider website recently published this as "The only chart you need".
They were mistaken.
This is only the first of two charts that you need. This one explains that we are screwed.
Here is the second one, from The Department Of Numbers website. It shows tax revenue as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product.
You can tax people at 20% of their income, and you might get lucky and take in around 20% of the GDP.
Or you can tax the rich at a 75% rate, you can punish the greedy corporations, you can end the evil Bush tax cuts, and you'll still take in around 20% of the GDP, which will be much smaller than its potential as a result.
People alter their behavior as a result of higher taxes. How much risk would you have taken in the 1950's, back when there was a 70% confiscation rate on earnings?
So why in the hell would people call for a higher tax rate? What could possibly motivate an economic idiot to lobby for a higher and higher tax rate on productive investments?
Taxes on capital gains and dividends should be higher, for "fairness," even if this results in less investment, lower growth, more joblessness, smaller revenues for the government and more federal debt, according to Obama, as revealed during a presidential debate in his exchange with moderator Charlie Gibson regarding his proposal to increase the tax on capital gains from 15 percent to 28 percent.
"In each instance when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased -- the government took in more money," said Gibson. "And in the 1980s when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?"
Replied Obama, "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."
Yeah. He really said that. God help us all.
So there are your two charts. We're spending far more than 20%. We can only collect 20%.
That's all.
All other debate and discussion is just noise.
One of my sisters sent me a link to this open letter, recently published in The Washington Post, from a Texas school district superintendent. It is in the style of the famous William Barrett Travis letter from the Alamo.
Gentlemen,
I am besieged, by a hundred or more of the Legislators under Rick Perry. I have sustained a continual Bombardment of increased high-stakes testing and accountability-related bureaucracy and a cannonade of gross underfunding for 10 years at least and have lost several good men and women. The ruling party has demanded another round of pay cuts and furloughs, while the school house be put to the sword and our children's lunch money be taken in order to keep taxes low for big business. I am answering the demand with a (figurative) cannon shot, and the Texas flag still waves proudly from our flag pole. I shall never surrender the fight for the children of Perrin.
Then, I call on you my legislators in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy of public schools is declaring that spending on a shiny new high-stakes testing system is "non-negotiable"; that, in essence, we must save the test but not the teachers. The enemy of public schools is saying that Texas lawmakers won't raise 1 penny in taxes in order to save our schools.
If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and fight for the kids in these classrooms like an educator who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his community. Make education a priority!
With all due respect and urgency,
John Kuhn
Superintendent
Perrin-Whitt CISD
I went to sleep last night thinking of this letter, and like most weak-willed, highly suggestible people, my dreams were centered around my bedtime reading. So in last night's dream, Superintendent John Kuhn and his ragged band of teachers, curriculum advisors, diversity consultants, defensive line coaches, guidance counselors and administrators were at The Alamo, holding off Santa Anna, 1,500 Mexican troops, a few Tea Party protesters, a horde of Chinese bill collectors, and a piper demanding to be paid. Somewhere in the middle of the mass of attackers was governor Rick Perry, frantically trying to move to the front of the procession.
A lone rider appeared on the horizon, carrying a white flag and a message from taxpayers. Santa Anna graciously ordered his troops to give the messenger safe passage into the Alamo.
After the Alamo's defenders verified that the messenger wasn't trying to use a School Voucher to gain admission, he was allowed into their fortress.
Here's the text of his letter from an unknown taxpayer....
To John Kuhn and the brave defenders of the Public School Alamo,
We appreciate your willingness to sacrifice your lives and careers for a broken system, but we have no troops available for your relief. 6,000 of our fighting men and women are stationed in England, defending Great Britain from the French. We have 70,000 troops in a permanent defense of West Germany, still heroically keeping Munich safe from Nikita Kruschev. A huge number of soldiers are on permanent alert in South Korea, keeping our manufacturing competitors safe from their enemies.
The defense services we provide to the rest of the world at no charge, well, those armies aren't cheap.
All we can afford to offer are some suggestions. Your Federal, State, and Local spending per pupil is now approaching $11,000.00. Assuming a maximum class size of 21 kids, that's a cost of $230,000.00 per classroom. Is there any number that would be enough? Can you name a sum that wouldn't be consumed instantly?
Do you think you could possibly save your system by throwing some administrators and educrats over the walls of your besieged fortress? Wouldn't it be fun to throw some Federal consultants to the Mexican Army? Unless you're already paying your teachers something like $175,000.00 per year, those hangers-on and parasites are the ones eating you out of existence.
The Federal and State mandates are only happening because you have allowed them to happen. They've taken your loyalty (and votes) for granted.
Lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Lie down with the government, you get up with burdensome software contracts, No Child Left Behind programs, and mandatory re-training every summer.
Second, have you considered letting people have a choice? Your stubborn defense of your educational Alamo has created more White Flight suburbs than the most ardent segregationist could've imagined. The Dallas ISD is even experiencing a wave of "Black Flight".
Please, please, please, for the love of God and all things holy, let the people have a voucher system so they can send their kids to non-government schools of their own choosing.
You have probably noticed that there aren't very many families rushing to your aid. In fact, some of the people you think are your supporters, especially those who can't afford a White Flight suburb, are secretly trying on Mexican Army uniforms, just to see how they fit.
As Mark Twain once said, "Almost any man worthy of his salt would fight to defend his home, but no one ever heard of a man going to war for his boarding house."
Your best teachers could then make far more money and experience fewer headaches, including those headaches brought on by politically-connected software contractors.
Third, every military campaign needs an element of propaganda to help win the hearts and minds of the people back home. The taxpayers need to understand that your people are making sacrifices. Have the Alamo defenders considered how their exemption from Social Security plays with the tax-paying public, the people who are having to pour more and more money into the Gaping Maw Of The Beast?
Do those in the private sector get to retire with a pension at age 53?
People are wondering if your benefits package is truly sustainable, a question that NPR's "Sustainability Desk" has never covered.
Mr. Kuhn, please encourage those in Fortress Alamo to drop their Cadillac Health Plans, their Social Security exemptions and their guaranteed retirements.
Or you could just throw yourself to the Mexicans. That might be more pleasant.
Fourth, why are your Fort Worth schools churning out high school graduates who can't read, write, or understand a damn tape measure?
In closing, Mr. Kuhn, we appreciate your willingness to sacrifice yourself for the system. Yes, you are besieged, but only at the front door. You have a clear exit available. Look in other directions, away from the Mexican Army and the software developers and Rick Perry. There's a big world out there, a world of people and companies that trade things, sell things, cook food, provide services, transport things, and manufacture cars, clothing, homes and fruitstands.
The large corporations that you have criticized for wanting to keep more of their own money, despite the fact that you....just want a lot more of it? Those large corporations are already paying one of the highest effective tax rates in the world, but they would probably find a way to hire someone with your talents.
Some of them would probably like to open a school.
The exit door is open. No one is blocking your exit, no one is blocking a voucher program, no one is blocking school choice except....
You.
The picture of Mr. Kuhn defending The Alamo from taxpayers came from here.
Derrick Z. Jackson is a typist for the Boston Globe. He is deeply and profoundly wrong so often that I've "liked" him on Facebook just to keep in touch.
Here's an excerpt from his latest, called "United States Must Break The Addiction To Foreign Oil".
Unrest continues to spread, from the Middle East to the Middle West to . . . the gas pump.
The democracy uprisings against repressive regimes, many of which America propped up, has also fanned fears for the flow of oil. In response, Big Oil has jacked up its prices and gasoline is back up to $3.20 a gallon for unleaded in Massachusetts and is reportedly headed to $3.50 nationally. As the Obama administration tiptoes between popular protests and potentates who turn on our oil spigot, Americans are concerned about prices at the gas pump.
As well they should be. What should we do? OMG, what can we do?
If only we had oil of our own, oil of our very own somewhere off the coasts of California, Oregon, Washington, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and all those other little Yankee states in the middle where my geography is fuzzy?
If only, if only.
Seriously. That part of Jackson's rant is so profoundly screwed up that it doesn't even rise to the level of being wrong. The Middle East is in the middle of a huge upheaval, and that's going to jack with fuel prices for a while. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has huge reserves. Gasoline costs what it does at any given moment because that's what people are willing to pay at that moment, all other factors taken into account.
Competitors, especially small ones, have huge barriers to entry, all put in place by the people who stand in front of each other once a year for the SOTU speech, and rant about our addiction to foreign oil Otherwise people would be out there drilling near the states listed above.
One other thing....trade is a funny thing. Both sides need each other. Whose economy do you think can last longer without the other? U.S. Consumers or Evil Foreign People? That's the question our politicians never ask. Citizens of other countries now rely on American Dollars. They can't eat, build houses, or educate their children without them. Have you ever had a 25% drop in sales? It's tough, isn't it?
And when we give our dollars to those foreigners with funny names who worship funny gods, do you know what they have to do with them? There's only one place where they accept green pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on 'em.
Back to Derrick Z.
....Instead of whining about gas prices, Americans should be demanding that the Democrats and the Republicans make oil independence a top priority. Less than a year after the BP oil spill, energy has disappeared as a top issue of the day in current polling of Americans. This is even though energy affects everything from jobs to the environment to what wars we wage to how many blind eyes we offer to dictators who sit on fossil-fuel resources.
Like almost all other Statists, Derrick Z. can throw down an eloquent rant about how many billions of dollars we idiotically pay dictators, all in the name of "stability". Derrick slams The Teleprompter Jesus for his response to the BP spill. And after griping about our government's ineffectiveness, what does he want?
What does he want?
Derrick Z. wants more government involvement.
Last month, the new Republican House majority, which has declared war on the Environmental Protection Agency, inspired infantile behavior from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. The organization wrote Darrell Issa, the new House oversight chairman, to protest the potential cost of fuel-efficiency standards as high as 62 miles per gallon being considered by the Obama administration.
Yeah, 62 miles per gallon. Declare it, make it so, get pro-active. That's all it takes. Ask King Canute.
Derrick, mandates and Congressional Performance Art won't get us anywhere.
Building a "Fortress America", taking us back to a trading system like Feudal China's, won't get us anywhere. We need the Evil Foreigners and they need us.
We need for our government to leave everyone the hell alone. Build some roads. Referee in some disputes. Defend the borders. That's all.
Reason magazine has put up a link to a Reddit discussion about the evil billionaire Koch brothers. You may have heard of them. They support Radley Balko, Reason magazine, Cato, and a host of other outfits that try to undo the benevolent actions of our compassionate Lords and Masters. It seems that the Kochs have been among the leading contributors to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Since Scott Walker isn't wealthy enough to be cast as a super-villain, the Kochs are getting a lot of publicity. This was written by a freakin' genius calling himself Epistemicfail. As a student of the Passive-Aggressive Arts, I am humbled by his brilliance, and wish to study at his feet. Here goes:
STOP THE KOCH BROTHERS.
They are trying to end the War on Drugs and increase civil liberties.
The activist is Tabitha Hale, whom Helen interviewed at SmartGirlPolitics a couple of years ago. And you’d think someone from the Communications Workers’ union would know better than to strike someone with a camera. But take a look at the video and you’ll see the angry, yet impotent face of today’s labor movement — right before the punch.
And some commentary from Jim Treacher on the incident. The reference to "get a little bloody" is a reference to this Bozo who apparently missed The Teleprompter's speech:
This violent creep is with the Communications Workers of America, one of the groups that protested in front of FreedomWorks today, where Tabitha works.
“Get a little bloody.” “Take ‘em down.” Assault a young woman who’s doing nothing but videotaping you. All part of the New Tone.
I know Tabitha. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’m sick of this crap. We get months of “Teabaggers are violent” — hell, years — when in reality, Tea Partiers have been the recipients of violence. Meanwhile, these union guys are ratcheting up the violent rhetoric and now actually assaulting people in broad daylight. Come on, somebody defend this violent jackass. I dare you.
Here's a pic of Tabitha Hale, the girl that he hit.
I was minding my own business, reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's brilliant book "The Black Swan", when I came across this next bit of libertarian brilliance.
The premise of the book is simple enough. Basically, his thesis is that we think we know more about the world than we really do, and that there are “Black Swans” out there that exist beyond any models of forecasting we can build. The Black Swan notion comes from the belief people had for centuries - that all swans were white because no one ever saw a black swan, until they discovered it in Australia. Because people tend to imagine the world based on their empirical observations, people tend to have a “confirmation bias” that makes them notice things that fit their worldview, and ignore what they can’t fit in.
Taleb applies this comparison to investing, politics, relationships, etc. Parts of this excerpt seem kind of harsh at first, but please hear him out. Great book. This section is based on Bastiat's "Things Seen and Unseen" concept:
What You See and What You Don't See
Katrina, the devastating hurricane that hit New Orleans in 2005, got plenty of politicizing politicians on television. These legislators, moved by the images of devastation and the pictures of angry victims made homeless, made promises of "rebuilding". It was so noble on their part to do something humanitarian, to rise above our abject selfishness.
Did they promise to do so with their own money? No. It was with public money. Consider that such funds will be taken away from somewhere else, as in the saying "You take from Peter to give to Paul." That somewhere else will be less mediatized. It may be privately funded cancer research, or the next efforts to curb diabetes. Few seem to pay attention to the victims of cancer lying lonely in a state of untelevised depression. Not only do these cancer patients not vote (they will be dead by the next ballot), but they do not manifest themselves to our emotional system. More of them die every day than were killed by Hurricane Katrina; they are the ones who need us the most - not just our financial help, but our attention and kindness. And they may be the ones from whom the money will be taken - indirectly, perhaps even directly. Money (public or private) taken away from research might be responsible for killing them - in a crime that may remain silent.
A ramification of the idea concerns our decision making under a cloud of possibilities. We see the obvious and visible consequences, not the invisible and less obvious ones. Yet those unseen consequences can be - nay, generally are - more meaningful.
Frederic Bastiat was a nineteenth-century humanist of a strange variety, one of those rare independent thinkers - independent to the point of being unknown in his own country, France, since his ideas ran counter to French political orthodoxy (he joins another of my favorite thinkers, Pierre Bayle, in being unknown at home and in his own language). But he has a large number of followers in America.
(That's Frederic Bastiat the dachshund, posing by a pic of Frederic Bastiat the economist.)
In his essay "What We See and What We Don't See," Bastiat offered the following idea; we can see what governments do, and therefore sing their praises - but we do not see the alternative. But there is an alternative; it is less obvious and remains unseen.
Recall the confirmation fallacy: governments are great at telling you what they did, but not what they did not do. In fact, they engage in what could be labeled as phony "philanthropy", the activity of helping people in a visible and sensational way without taking into account the unseen cemetery of invisible consequences. Bastiat inspired libertarians by attacking the usual arguments that showed the benefits of governments. But his ideas can be generalized to apply to both the Right and the Left.
Bastiat goes a bit deeper. If both the positive and the negative consequences of an action fell on its author, our learning would be fast. But often an action's positive consequences benefit only its author, since they are visible, while the negative consequences, being invisible, apply to others, with a net cost to society. Consider job-protection measures; you notice those whose jobs are made safe and ascribe social benefits to such protections. You do not notice the effect on those who cannot find a job as a result, since the measure will reduce job openings.
In some cases, as with the cancer patients who may be punished by Katrina, the positive consequences of an action will immediately benefit the politicians and phony humanitarians, while the negative ones take a long time to appear - they may never become noticeable. One can even blame the press for directing charitable contributions toward those who may need them the least.
Let us apply this reasoning to September 11, 2001. Around twenty-five hundred people were directly killed by bin Laden's group in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Their families benefited from the support of all manner of agencies and charities, as they should. But, according to researchers, during the remaining three months of the year, close to one thousand people died as silent victims of the terrorists. How? Those who were afraid of flying and switched to driving ran an increased risk of death. There was evidence of an increase of casualties on the road during that period; the road is considerably more lethal than the skies.
These families got no support - they did not even know that their loved ones were also the victims of bin Laden.
....Have the guts to consider the silent consequences when standing in front of the next snake-oil humanitarian.
Yeah. Let's do that. The pic of Unintended Consequences came from here.
USA
