Ripe for Good Ideas?

I'm always on the lookout for examples of the type of audience I'd like to reach, and in reading this WSJ story about Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, it struck me that she may be a perfect candidate for activists to target. She obviously has mixed premises, but arguments for a consistent implementation of capitalism (both moral and economic) might well appeal to her. Moreover, she seems to be a "doer" -- so steering her in a better direction could have a real impact on the culture. Here are a few excerpts illustrating some of her better premises and suggesting that she's a relatively principled person:

Ms. Chao seems to be concerned that the country could cease to be the land of opportunity that drew her parents decades ago. Congress appears eager to impose restrictive regulations that could hurt the economy in the name of helping those who don't have the skills to compete. If these regulations are enacted, Ms. Chao fears the "Europeanization" of the American economy.

"I have a whole list here," she says, of what Congress could do to hobble economic growth, and it includes legislation that is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. Every measure would make it more expensive to employ people in America, or would make it easier for unions to capture a larger slice of the workforce.

...

Ms. Chao says that when she attends meetings with other labor ministers from around the world, "they may not agree totally with our point of view, but they all want to learn about how America creates opportunities and jobs and how the dynamism of our economy, the flexibility of our economy creates opportunities."

What does she tell them?

"That freedom works. It is universally accepted that there needs to be open markets, transparency, low tax rates, less regulation and the rule of law . . . in a world-wide economy if there is not transparency, if there is greater taxation, if there is greater regulation, capital and labor will move."

Ms. Chao is in charge of one of the most powerful regulatory agencies in the federal government. She's also amassed a record conservatives applaud -- for example in year seven of her tenure, her department's budget is slightly smaller than it was on year one, even as workplace injuries have fallen to all time lows.

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Fannie Mae Retrospective

In response to all those screaming about what a surprise (and disaster) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are, and then using this as evidence of "market" failure, I offer this WSJ retrospective showing that the GSE's are essentially public not private entities and that the problems aren't a surprise to anyone. (Though undoubtedly politicians feign surprise both to absolve themselves of responsibility and in order to ramrod new regulations through Congress.)

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Aliceara Pacific Nova 'Butter Buds'

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MathiMagic

This video presents some pretty impressive feats of mental calculation. I'm guessing this guy isn't too welcome at the blackjack tables in Vegas!

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The Deterioration of Science

Gus has a good post on it.

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Police Corruption and the War on Drugs

I've been away for a few weeks and am just catching up on happenings in the blogosphere. Until I do, here's a good post by Paul Hsieh on Police Corruption in Chicago. I personally think that if one prefers to engage in activism on specific topics, privatizing education and legalizing drugs are among those which could have the most beneficial impact on society. Paul's post illustrates one reason why I include the second.

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Lessons From Chile's Pension Reform

I thought this was interesting, and I love the “egg timer” technique:

We had dinner with a fellow who made a real change - Jose Pinera. As Chile's Labor Minister in the '80s, he completely changed the system of public pension financing and provided a model for the rest of the world.

We'll let Jose tell his story as he told it to us last night:

"I was one of the 'Chicago Boys.' That is, I studied under the great economists at the University of Chicago…and then I got my Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, which added a little bit of humanism to the hard-edged teaching in Chicago. So, they called me a 'Chicago Boy' and a 'Harvard Man,' which is the way I like to think of myself.

"Things fell apart in Chile during the Allende years. We had to rebuild the country afterwards. So, I went on TV and I said what I thought…about how to reform the pension system…or what you call Social Security.

"A little background. You see, almost all the world's pension systems came from the same source - Otto von Bismarck. He set up the first one in Prussia and it was later taken up in almost all the developed countries. We set it up in Chile in 1925. It wasn't set up in America until ten years later.

"Bismarck was very clever. He offered people a pension on what is called here in France a 'repartition basis.' That is, all the money goes into a pot…and you get from the pot whatever the politicians decide you can have. Bismarck offered people who retired at 65 a nice pension, for the time. Bismarck knew that the average life expectancy in Prussia at the time - this was the middle of the 19th century - was only 45 years old. So he knew he couldn't have to pay out many pension claims. But the average person didn't know how long he would live, so he could imagine himself living to a ripe old age and taking advantage of the public pension system.

"Bismarck also knew why he was doing it. He said he aimed to make the population 'docile' so they would 'serve the state,' more easily.

"Well, now, everyone is living much longer…and the politicians aren't as smart as Bismarck. They've promised greater and greater benefits, and even lowered the age when you can get them…so the pension systems are going broke. They're all going broke - you can count on it.

"Now, I'm going all over the world explaining this to governments and urging them to put my system in place…to make a radical change in the way public pensions are financed. Recently, I was in China, for example. You want to see a pension problem…look there. That policy of one family, one child is a catastrophe from a pension financing point of view. They're going to have hundreds of millions of old people, and very few young people to support them.

"Anyway, back in the '80s, I went on TV in Chile, with ideas about how to reform the pension system. I was just a young economist…only 29 years old. But the president of the country saw me on television and he said he wanted to talk to me. He called me in. I said I would be happy to explain to his people how to reform the pension system. But he said that if you were really going to reform it, you had to start at the top. So, he appointed me Minister of Labor.

"Then, I had to explain to the people what was wrong…and had to explain to them how to fix it. So, the first thing I needed to do was to win their confidence.

"I went on TV again. This time I took my mother's egg timer and I held it up and I said, 'I'm only going to talk for three minutes. Give me three minutes and I'll explain what's wrong with the pension system and what we're going to do with it.' And I told the cameraman to just cut me off after three minutes.

"This worked beautifully, because it made me look humble…I wasn't going to waste the people's time with a long, windy speech like Castro…I was just going to tell them something simple, fast.

"Of course, I couldn't explain everything in 3 minutes. But I told them that I had good news and bad news. The bad news was that the public pension system was broke. We had no money. But the good news was that I had an even better system.

"They called me the Minister of the Egg Timer…but they began to trust me. And then, I went back on TV…over and over…each time for only 3 minutes…and each time with my egg timer to keep me honest…and I laid out everything…why the system went broke…and what I was proposing to put in its place - a different system in which, instead of dumping all the money into a big pot that the government could do with as it pleased, each worker had his own personal pension account. It took some explaining. But I kept going…each time explaining more and more. I had to explain, for example, that the idea of the 'employer contribution' is a myth. The employer just looks at it as part of his labor cost. But once you call it an 'employer contribution,' the employee gets the idea that it's not really his money that finances the system and he feels he has no control over what he gets out of it anyway.

"My system is very simple. The worker makes exactly the same contribution as he did before. But it's his own money and he knows it. And he has some control over how it's invested. And if he dies, it goes to his family. He's an owner of it, not just a recipient of government handouts.

"So, when I had finished laying all of this out, over a 9-month period, I then admitted that I could be wrong. 'Maybe this won't work as well as I think it will,' I said. And I said I didn't want to force anyone to go with my system. So, we decided that anyone who wanted to stick with the old system - which is the system you still have in France…and America - could do so. Or, they had the option of getting into the new system with individual retirement accounts than they could manage themselves. Now, guess how many people went with the new system? We thought 51% would be a victory. Instead, 95% signed up for private retirement accounts.

"And here's something interesting. About a third of the population of Chile are leftists…socialists, communists, or Hillary Clinton liberals. Even these people - when it came to their own money - preferred to have it in their own retirement accounts, invested in stocks and bonds, rather than in some black hole in the government accounts.

"And the best thing about this is that it turns the whole country into capitalists. Even the leftists think twice before they vote for higher business taxes or more regulations. They worry how their retirement account will be affected. And that's why Chile is now the richest country in Latin America."

Source the Daily Reckoning (which I should add I generally find to be much too skeptical and libertarian, but now and then has items of interest).

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Texas Tort Reform

Texas has enacted laws to reduce frivolous lawsuits, and the effects seem to be quite beneficial. The WSJ reports:

Over the past three years, some 7,000 M.D.s have flooded into Texas, many from Tennessee.

Why? Two words: Tort reform.

In 2003 and in 2005, Texas enacted a series of reforms to the state's civil justice system. They are stunning in their success. Texas Medical Liability Trust, one of the largest malpractice insurance companies in the state, has slashed its premiums by 35%, saving doctors some $217 million over four years. There is also a competitive malpractice insurance industry in Texas, with over 30 companies competing for business. This is driving rates down.

The result is an influx of doctors so great that recently the State Board of Medical Examiners couldn't process all the new medical-license applications quickly enough. The board faced a backlog of 3,000 applications. To handle the extra workload, the legislature rushed through an emergency appropriation last year.

Now many of the newly arriving doctors are heading to rural or underserved parts of the state. Four new anesthesiologists have headed to Beaumont, for example. Meanwhile, San Antonio has experienced a 52% growth in the number of new doctors.

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Free Market Health Care FAQ

In response to questions generated from his NYT's letter to the editor, Paul Hsieh has prepared a valuable FAQ on Health Care in a Free Market.

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Quick Hits

Stella posts a story indicating that less risk capital is being allocated to medical research due to regulatory risk. On a personal level, I too have decided to shy away from such investments for the same reason. Additionally I've recently cut back my medical insurance to a bare-bones disaster policy and am putting away the difference in premium in what I call my "medical tourism account". I'm pretty convinced that by the time I need real medical care (say 20 - 30 years down the road), I'll be seeking it in Singapore or Bangkok not in North America.

Paul has an encouraging post showing the effect FIRM is having in Colorado. Intellectual activism can produce results!

C. August posts on Yaron Brook's talk at the Ford Hall Forum (a video of a similar talk given here in Irvine is available on the ARI site). I found this portion of the Q&A interesting (if you had asked me the same question, my initial thought would have been that the public is less and less interested in ideas, but I like Yaron's take much better):

One other really interesting bit happened near the very end of the Q&A. An older gentleman stood up and said, basically "I've been coming to these talks for 30 years, and I'm saddened to see how few people there are in the hall tonight. What has happened?" It was a valid question, because I remember when the Forum was hosted at Northeastern in the mid-90's and there were many hundreds of people in attendance.

Dr. Brook laughed and said "Well, for one thing, I'm not Ayn Rand." The audience laughed, but then he went on. Again, to paraphrase, he said "Think about when she gave her lecture in 1969. She could fill a 1,500 person hall. People would travel across the country for the Ford Hall Forum, because if you wanted to hear an Objectivist speak, that was it. In contrast, look at where we are now. This is my third talk in the Boston area this week, and I'll give two more in the coming days. Universities across the country regularly host Objectivist speakers, and in California we have at least one lecture a month. We're planning a new center in Washington D.C." and he went on and on, describing the many opportunities people now have to hear these ideas. Dr. Brook is on TV many times a month, and is published in Forbes magazine regularly. The key, he said, is that we are laying the foundations for a philosophy of reason and individual rights to be considered as a viable and expected alternative to the widely held ideas of the day. "You won't be able to turn on a news program without those ideas being put forth."

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Natural Disasters - Not Evidence of "Market Failure"

Thomas Bowden has been on a roll lately, here's his latest piece: How Governments Make Disasters More Disastrous. Some key excerpts:

The Katrina tragedy should have called into question the so-called safety net composed of government policies that actually encourage people to embrace risks they would otherwise shun--to build in defiance of historically obvious dangers, secure in the knowledge that innocent others will be forced to share the costs when the worst happens.

Without blaming the victims for having followed their own government's lead, it is time to question whether those policies should continue.

[...]

By gradual steps, this disaster safety net became part of the legal landscape, taken for granted by private investors and owners deciding to undertake new projects or rebuild storm-damaged areas. Relief programs--by minimizing, disguising, and shifting the real risks of defying natural hazards--became an active force distorting private decision-making and inviting even worse future tragedies.

Thus if a pre-Katrina Mississippian asked himself, "Should I build my house 10 feet above sea level, a quarter-mile from the Gulf Coast?" the answer came back: "Sure, why not? The government will look after me if disaster strikes."

[...]

But the solution is not more of the market distortions and perverse incentives that have lured so many people into harm's way. The solution is to replace the prevailing entitlement mentality with a free market in disaster prevention, insurance, and recovery.

In a free market--without tax-paid levees, government disaster relief, or subsidized insurance--anyone who contemplates building or buying property in a high-hazard area will need to face hard facts about the local history of natural disasters, the efficacy and cost of preventive measures, and the availability of insurance.

For example, the high price--or total unavailability--of private insurance will resound like a clanging alarm bell, signaling the market's objective view that a particular building plan is abnormally risky compared to less dangerous locales.

With their own lives and wealth at stake, people will have every incentive to evaluate risks objectively. And if hardy souls still choose to occupy and fortify New Orleans, or build on an earthquake fault, or live in a tornado alley, the risk and reward will be theirs alone. No longer will government make disasters more disastrous by pretending that citizens have a right to defy the forces of nature at others' expense.

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Yaron Brook on Capitalism

ARI has posted a video of Dr. Brook's talk at UCI in which he defended capitalism. I attended the lecture and thought it was one of his best talks -- highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic. (Navigate through ARI's Media tab, or try this page.)

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Cymbidium

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Principled Education

I've been enjoying Doug Reich's musings over at the Rational Capitalist, including this recent post on the unprincipled, concrete-bound nature of today's politics. But in keeping with his conclusions, over the past few years I've realized how much work I personally need to do on both approaching knowledge inductively and then integrating the results. Recent articles in the Objective Standard (e.g. on Newton and Darwin) highlight the proper approach, and my coursework at the OAC emphasizes it (particularly in the third year). So I now have a better sense of what I'm aiming at, but I still have a long ways to go in making it my basic approach. [Feel free to insert a rant against public education here.]

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Lisa Van Damme in EdNews

An interesting interview with Lisa Van Damme: About Education and Objectivism.

HT: Principles in Practice

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Greens Make "Progress"

Looks like the environmentalists' agenda is making headway, more and more people no longer can afford basic energy costs:

The most immediate challenge is to help the high number of consumers who are far behind in electric and gas payments, said Mark Wolfe, director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, which represents state aid officials in Washington.

“Based on discussions with major utility companies around the country, we will see record numbers of families facing shut-offs,” Mr. Wolfe said.

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Firefly

Well I finally watched the Firefly series and now understand what all the fuss was about. It's by far the best TV show I've ever seen, and I was surprised at how sad I was to watch the last episode, knowing they're won't be anymore. I only wish I'd have known about it when it was on air so that I could have added my voice to those who were trying to keep it alive.

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Madison on Principles

I ran across this quote from James Madison the other day, and was impressed not just by his strong defense of liberty, but by his attitude towards acting on principle as such. Indeed, it seems that much of what the Founding Fathers were able to accomplish stems from their ability to hold moral principles as absolutes. I'm still working on my ability to hold ideas as clearly and resolutely (though I'm finding the OAC to be of significant help in this regard)...

It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The freeman of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.

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Exploit the Earth Day

Craig Biddle has a good editorial up at Principles in Practice. (As he lays out the environmentalist argument, see how similar, though even less plausible, it is to the religious one by simply substituting "God" for "Earth". That's why I always laugh when environmentalists self-righteously condemn religionists as irrational, as if they weren't also, if not more so.)

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Eplc. Don Herman "H&R"

Not the absolute best specimen, but enough to brighten my day a bit...

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Taxation as Social Engineering

Yaron Brook has another good column up at Forbes.com. An excerpt:

Here's the point: Government's job is not to dictate your values but to protect them. In a free country, you choose values and then use your own money as a tool to achieve them. But a value-rigged tax policy reverses this cause and effect--it uses your money against you, bribing you with tax breaks that let you keep some of your earnings in exchange for abandoning your preferred values.

P.S. Comments on any of these articles are always appreciated.

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Intrinsicism Grounds American Airlines

Today's NYT's features a story on the FAA's grounding of American's airplanes last week. The story provides a glimpse into the capricious nature of regulation and non-objective law, and is worth reading from that standpoint alone.

But I was struck by how the FAA's whole approach and justification relies on an intrinsic view of knowledge. Specifically, these scientist-kings believe that they have unique insight into the True and the Good which they must righteously impose on airlines and passengers alike. And given that said airlines and passengers are nothing but helpless dolts, on whom the Truth fails to shine, only a political system in which the good can be forced on them is to their, and the FAA's, interest.

If, on the other hand, the FAA subscribed to an objective view of knowledge, they would realize that men can (indeed must) be convinced of the good by reason, and in such a case, the best political system would be one of freedom and free markets. For under such a system, the super-smart FAA bureaucrats could simply go out, start the absolute best airline possible, and then attract every traveler at the expense of the existing, supposedly incompetent, competitors.

That this never occurs to any FAA "expert" nor to their legion of defenders and advocates, says as much about their actual "expertise" as it does about the implicit view of knowledge necessary to champion such a widespread use of government force on innocent men.

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Diana Hsieh on Regulation

Diana has a great, essentialized, post on regulation and "consumer protection". Check it out.

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Mauldin on Immigration

John Mauldin makes an interesting observation in this week's letter:

When I travel around the world, I am used to a certain amount of America and/or Bush bashing. It is just part of the background noise.

So, I was somewhat surprised to see the professor, in the middle of a talk on why some businesses succeed and others fail, put up a rather large flag of the United States and went on to say that the US would be the dominant developed country for his life, the life of his children and the life of their children's children. You could feel the surprise in the room. It is not what they were expecting to hear. I certainly did not.

He started out saying that someone could come to the US and within 3-5 years you could become a citizen. Making a long story short, in his native Finland it took 3-4 generations before you would be considered Finnish. He went on around the world. There are very few cultures where an immigrant can become a naturalized citizen and be accepted into the culture. China? No. Japan? No.

In Germany, the professor recently talked to the top 100 managers of Siemens. This is a company that employs 462,000 people doing business in 192 countries. In that room of the top management there were 99 Germans and one Austrian. Think of similar multi-national companies in the US. Such a room would be full of diversity.

A young lady Ph.D in physics in Lajore, Pakistan does not dream at night of immigrating to China or Germany, where opportunities would be very limited. No, she and millions more like her dream of coming to the US. He said that 85% of the people living in Silicon Valley were immigrants. The best and brightest in the world choose to go there.

Because for him, America is not a country, but an idea. It is the idea that any person can come and make a life for themselves as an equal. And it is that freedom to rise or fall that makes the US what it is.

These observations gibe with my experience, and help illustrate another aspect of the benefits of freedom. Indeed in very a real sense, the anti-immigration forces are anti-American.

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Alt-A vs. Subprime

For those following the credit crisis, this video may be of interest. In particular, I was surprised at the percentage of loans that were simply for the purpose of pulling cash out.

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Baptistonia Echinata

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Go Along to Get Along

I think that in order to effect even a very radical cultural change, it only takes changing the minds of a relatively small minority -- that of the intellectually active. In a recent post, Myraf illustrates how the remainder of the population will likely fall into place.

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Trust, Don't Judge?

Too bad the irony of this story would probably be lost on those who could most learn from it.

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Mass. "Health Care"

This story, which describes the predictable, nay inevitable, failure of the Massachussetts "health care" plan, is interesting not only for the facts it conveys, but perhaps even more so for the attitudes of those debating the issue.

First a few of the facts:

One of the most radical fixtures of the law is the so-called "individual mandate" — the requirement that virtually everyone have health insurance or face tax penalties.

Anyone deemed able to afford health insurance but who refused to buy it during 2007 already faces the loss of a $219 personal tax exemption. New monthly fines that kicked in this year could total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by December.
[...]
Businesses are also on the hook. Those with 11 or more full time employees who refuse to offer insurance face $295 annual penalties per employee. Already, 748 employers have failed to meet that threshold and have paid $6.6 million to the state.

The euphemism "individual mandate" is intended to hide the fact that this is just another tax by which the individual forfeits his rights to the state. The proponents of the plan of course don't even feel the perfunctory need to couch the penalty to businesses in such language because, according to them, it's widely understood that businesses not only don't have rights, but are the root of all evil.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out which type of people this will attract to the state, and which it will repel.

In terms of attitudes, the fact that the obvious and abject failure of the plan doesn't phase any proponent is telling, but even more so is this observation:

"The two sides agree on nothing accept[sic] for one thing: They hate our little ecumenical experiment here in Massachusetts," he said. "It's almost as if they are the health care fundamentalists and we're like the heretics because we are coming together."

This is indicative of how the modern world approaches issues: either you're a dogmatic authoritarian (in this case advocating freedom!) or you're a pragmatic skeptic (in this case "trying out" socialism). I fear that until the idea that issues can be discussed and resolved objectively (i.e. by reasoning based on facts and principles) is revived, no progress will be made on these matters, and the culture will continue to spiral downwards.

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Study of Philosophy on the Rise

Overall this seems like good news. People are recognizing the value of philosophy, which in turn means a potentially greater audience for Ayn Rand, and a concommitant greater demand for professors and teachers trained in her thought.

“If I were to start again as an undergraduate, I would major in philosophy,” said Matthew Goldstein, the CUNY chancellor, who majored in mathematics and statistics. “I think that subject is really at the core of just about everything we do. If you study humanities or political systems or sciences in general, philosophy is really the mother ship from which all of these disciplines grow.”

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Foxes Guarding the Hen House

One of the key assumptions underlying arguments for government regulation is that when people switch over from the private sector to the public sector, they're somehow transformed from devils to angels. I've never understood any part of this -- most people I see in the private sector are more conscientious and harder working than those I see in the public sector; and more importantly, the market provides an incentive to do good, honest work lest a competitor unseat you -- no such mechanism is at work in the public sector.

So it comes as no surprise to me that the government "watchdogs" are generally much less honest than anything you might find in the private sector:

The review of card spending at more than a dozen departments from 2005 to 2006 found that nearly 41 percent of roughly $14 billion in credit-card purchases, whether legitimate or questionable, did not follow procedure — either because they were not properly authorized or they had not been signed for by an independent third party as called for in federal rules to deter fraud.

For purchases over $2,500, nearly half — or 48 percent — were unauthorized or improperly received.

Out of a sample of purchases totaling $2.7 million, the government could not account for hundreds of laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras worth more than $1.8 million. In one case, the U.S. Army could not say what happened to computer items making up 16 server configurations, each of which cost nearly $100,000.

Agencies often could not provide the required paperwork to justify questionable purchases. Investigators also found that federal employees sometimes double-billed or improperly expensed lavish meals and Internet dating for many months without question from supervisors; the charges were often noticed only after auditors or whistle-blowers raised questions.

"Breakdowns in internal controls over the use of purchase cards leave the government highly vulnerable to fraud, waste and abuse," investigators wrote, calling the governmentwide failure rate in enforcing controls "unacceptably high."

Now if we could only get the general public and our politicians to see this, we might actually be able to roll back some of the terrible regulations that have been instituted over the past 100+ years.

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Dendrobium Gracilicaule - Kingianum

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Atheists Not Entitled to Rights in Illinois

Via Mike of the OBloggers list comes this scary story of an Illinois state representative telling a constituent he had no right to his views on the propriety of public funding of a baptist church because he's an atheist. Apparently in Illinois it's not "no taxation without representation", but "no representation without belief in some supernatural contradiction". We're seeing more and more of this attitude in politics, so it's no wonder ARI chose Reason vs. Faith as the topic for their first set of video clips.

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Blogroll

I've updated the blogroll over the past week and will probably continue to do so for the next month or so. There's lots of good stuff out there, so when you have a minute, check them out.

As an example, here's a very interesting post on ER's from FIRM's blog. Seems like a no-brainer to refuse Medicaid and Medicare patients given that doctors take a loss on every one of them. (And it sure would be nice to know that if you're actually willing to enter into a fair exchange with a doctor, his services will be available to you.)

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Pat Condell

I started watching some of Pat Condell's videos last week, and came away very impressed with his articulateness, insight and humor -- not to mention the immense courage he demonstrates in putting these out. And while I don't agree with some important premises he seems to hold, e.g. on the nature of rights, I highly recommend the videos. For more background, here is the wikipedia entry describing him.

HT Art De Vany

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Yaron Brook on Campaign Finance

I'm late in posting this, but Yaron has authored another excellent editorial for Forbes, this time on campaign finance restrictions and the right to free speech. Don't miss it.

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Religious Denominations in the US

Thanks to Diana's post on GDP's of US states versus those of other countries, I started scrolling through the Strange Maps site. In so doing I came across this interesting map:

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Hoover <> Laissez Faire

The WSJ observes a common refrain from many of today's politicians is to hold, or imply, that Hoover caused the Great Depression by his hands-off approach. They then go on to argue that to avoid a similar situation, the government must do something (anything!). But in actuality, the facts belie their argument:

To hear Mr. Schumer and his fellow-traveling columnists tell it, Hoover's great policy blunder was to do nothing, all the while insisting that everything was fine. But the problem with Hoover's economic policy isn't that it was passive but that it was actively destructive.

In 1930, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, setting off a wave of protectionist retaliation that undid the globalization of the preceding decades and did far more harm to the world economy than the stock-market crash ever did. Two years later, amid a bad recession, he undid the Calvin Coolidge-Andrew Mellon tax cuts, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 63% from 25%. The recession became a Depression.

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Wafa Sultan Fatwa

I agree completely with Nick Provenzo's take on it. (HT: Noodlefood)

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Blc Alma Kee 'Tip Malee'

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Self Defense and Innocents in War

The passage below struck me as being quite relevant to understanding the difficult, but necessary, approach that one has to adopt with regards to innocents in war – necessary that is, if one is to successfully defend oneself.

In the war against Japan, American naval commanders faced what might be called the prison ship problem. Submarines had little way of knowing which Japanese transport ships were carrying prisoners of war. In any case, “the U.S. Navy adopted a ruthless view,” Max Hastings writes. “Destruction of the enemy must take priority over any attempt to safeguard P.O.W. lives.” As a result, some 10,000 Allied prisoners were doomed (including more than twice as many Americans as have perished in Iraq). And if the Americans didn’t kill the P.O.W.’s, then the Japanese did.

I of course reject the modern idea of including adult civilians in enemy countries who tacitly support, or simply evade the need to evaluate, their governments as part of the "innocent", but even for the legitimately innocent such as children, hostages or POW's, as terrible as it is, one’s self-defense cannot be tempered by considering the harm they may come to. The moral blame for their fate falls squarely on the aggressor who makes the war necessary, and indeed the potential consequences to such innocents is a fundamental reason why any citizen must take the responsibility of opposing and denouncing the evil elements within his society -- before they can rise to power and wreak their havoc. If citizens fail to do this, they can not blame their government’s foreign victims for defending themselves with every possible means, including killing and even targeting civilians.

The rest of the book review presents additional interesting facts, but for a deeper moral analysis of our war with Japan, I once again urge everyone to read Dr. John Lewis' masterful essay. And for more on the issue of innocents in war, see Onkar's editorial.

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Scary Stuff

Diana reports on the fundamentalist encroachment into the US military, and one man's attempt to forestall it. Says he quite insightfully:

"I am at war with those people who would create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the technologically most lethal organization ever created by our species, which is the United States armed forces,"

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Gold Certificates

Rob just sent me a link to this pretty cool "$10 bill", noting that "it's hard to believe it existed less than 100 years ago":


In reading up on the man pictured on the bill, I came across this:

Michael Hillegas was first called Treasurer of the United States on May 14, 1777. Hillegas continued as sole Treasurer of the United States and held that position throughout the remainder of the conflict of the American Revolution, using much of his own fortune to support the cause. (emphasis added)

I never can understand how people think, that if the populace agrees with and understands the nature and requirements of a free society, they won't contribute to it. This is just another example demolishing that notion.

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