“(1) All sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya and shall be
exercised only in accordance with this Constitution.
(2) The people may exercise their sovereign power either directly or
through their democratically elected representatives.
(3) Sovereign power under this Constitution is delegated to the
following State organs, which shall perform their functions in
accordance with this Constitution”

Thus sovereignty is placed in a collective context. I do like the idea that power is delegated to the state and not surrendered.

As an example of a contradiction, chapter two article 4 sections 1 and 2 state

“4. (1) Kenya is a sovereign Republic.
(2) The Republic of Kenya shall be a multi-party democratic State
founded on the national values and principles of governance
referred to in Article 10.”

It’s either or: a democracy or a republic. Had they said elections would be held democratically, that would be different which they do in chapter one. And the national values and principles of governance are a mixed bag. Some of these are:

“(a) patriotism, national unity, sharing and devolution of
power, the rule of law, democracy and participation of
the people;
(b) human dignity, equity, social justice, inclusiveness,
equality, human rights, non-discrimination and
protection of the marginalised;
(c) good governance, integrity, transparency and
accountability; and
(d) sustainable development.”

Of course ‘social justice’ is collectivism all the way and ‘sustainable development’ is free reign to interfere in the market place.

Their Constitution does have a bill of rights but which is also a seriously mixed bag. But I was happy to see this:

“(3) The rights and fundamental freedoms in the Bill of Rights—
(a) belong to each individual and are not granted by the
State;”

A major league improvement in thinking suggesting–but only suggesting–the proper source of rights. While the concept individual rights is not mentioned in any thing I’ve read so far, notice the words ‘each individual’ above. Also the words ‘every person’ and ‘a person’ are used often in the document.

After explaining how rights are to be limited only by just cause, article 25 then lists rights that are not to be limited. These are:

“(a) freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment;
(b) freedom from slavery or servitude;
(c) the right to a fair trial; and
(d) the right to an order of habeas corpus.”

Good ideas all.

Under Article 26 which lists rights it declares “Every person has the right to life” it also says that life begins at conception!! While there are more contradictions and bad ideas, I want to touch on one more before closing pointing out that although there is much likable language about the protection of rights, it is all thrown out the window under Economic and Social Rights:

“43. (1) Every person has the right—
(a) to the highest attainable standard of health, which
includes the right to health care services, including
reproductive health care;
(b) to accessible and adequate housing, and to reasonable
standards of sanitation;
(c) to be free from hunger, and to have adequate food of
acceptable quality;
(d) to clean and safe water in adequate quantities;
(e) to social security; and
(f) to education.
(2) A person shall not be denied emergency medical treatment.
(3) The State shall provide appropriate social security to persons
who are unable to support themselves and their dependants.”

It’s almost like they’re trying to take abstract ideals from capitalism, like ‘rights’-because they seem to work-and combine them with concrete ideals from socialism.

Our constitution has survived this long because the contradictions written into it were few. But this document has many and will not provide Kenyans with either prosperity or justice. But I wish them luck.

“Although Sen. Levin has never been a friend of the free market system in the past, he has suddenly developed a concern for law abiding business owners who lose out when more sizable corporate operations exploit tax shelters, a July report informs readers.”

In other words, because Smith has a way to protect some of his wealth and Jones doesn’t, fairness-not justice-requires that we take more of Smith’s wealth away from him-instead of providing Jones with similar protection.

A tyrant’s greed for power has no end. Like the savage who wants to seize the goods produced by others, Levin sees the profits of offshore corporations and wants to seize them too. Unfortunately, Senator Levin still has 4 years left on his current term. Woe is Michigan, and the Nation for that matter.

“If you go to business conferences, you know that at lunch it is definitely better to be seated next to a prince than a grind. Princes, who can be male or female, are senior executives at major corporations.
They are almost always charming, smart and impressive. They’ve read interesting books. They’ve got well-rehearsed takes on the global situation. They can drop impressive names as they tell you about their visits to the White House, Moscow or Beijing. If you’re having lunch or dinner with a prince, you’re going to have a good time.
Grinds, on the other hand, tend to have started their own company or their own hedge fund. They’re often too awkward to work in a large organization and too intense to work for anybody but themselves.
Over lunch, they can be socially inert. You try to draw them out by probing for one or two subjects of interest to them. But as often as not, you find yourself playing conversational pingpong with a master of the monosyllabic response.”

So CEOs, COOs and CFOs are fun people to be around even though they don’t accomplish much worth talking about and the grinds who go from rags to riches by their own effort are dull, boring and culturally brain dead. But:

“Since the princes are nicer and more impressive,[speak for yourself brother-MN] it is easy to be seduced into the belief that they also are more trustworthy.
This is false.
During the past few years, for example, the princes at Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers behaved with incredible stupidity while the hedge fund loners often behaved with impressive restraint.
As Sebastian Mallaby shows in his superb book, “More Money Than God,” the smooth operators at the big banks were playing with other people’s money, so they borrowed up to 30 times their investors’ capital. The hedge fund guys usually had their own money in their fund, so they typically borrowed only one or two times their capital.
The social butterflies at the banks got swept up in the popular enthusiasms.[Created by whom?-MN) The contrarians at the hedge funds made money betting against them. The well-connected [to what?-MN] bankers knew they’d get bailed out if anything went wrong. The solitary hedge fund guys knew they were on their own and regarded their trades with paranoid anxiety.”

There are lots of equivocations and evasions in the above not the least of which is the notion that successful hedge fund ‘guys’ are driven not by knowledge, expertise, or experience but by “paranoid anxiety.” This article reveals an enormous lack of understanding of capitalism and economics.

Mr. Brooks treats most things as the given as if they were causeless. What are grinds? What causes them to come into existence? What are their requirements for survival? What conditions create princes?

Mr. Brooks’ choice of the image of ‘prince’ for CEOs is premised on the notion that CEOs don’t earn their fortunes just like princes don’t. Princes are born into their station in life and serve at the pleasure of the king. It is true that some CEOs of today would not survive in a laissez-faire economy. These are of course the James Taggerts and Orrin Boyles of business and it is their image that Mr. Brooks is attaching to all CEOs. In fact, he has all the facts he needs to infer that mixed economies don’t work and should be abolished but he won’t infer it:

“The princes can thrive while the government intervenes in the private sector. They’ve got the lobbyists and the connections. The grinds, needless to say, don’t.
Over the past decade, professionals — lawyers, regulators and legislators — have inserted themselves into more and more economic realms. The princes are perfectly at home amid these tax breaks, low-interest loans and public-private partnerships. The grinds try to stay far away and regard the interlocking network of corporate-government schmoozing with undisguised contempt.”

So why don’t you regard it with contempt and call for the end of such networks Mr. Brooks?

Alas, no matter how much evidence he sees and provides to us, it won’t penetrate this mindset:

“Princes can thrive in a period of slow, steady growth, but grinds need a certain sort of psychological atmosphere. They need a wide-open economy with plenty of creative destruction.[!!) They need an atmosphere of general confidence, so bankers will feel(?) secure enough to lend them money, so big companies will feel(?) brave enough to acquire their startups, so they themselves will feel(?) the time is ripe to take on their world and show their brilliance to all of humanity."

This is plain contempt for the human mind. A 'certain sort of psychological atmosphere' is the knowledge that one is free to think and act on one's thoughts. 'Creative destruction' is a snarky way to refer to invention. That all these grinds and their bankers engage in feelings instead of thought, reason and logic, is a direct slap at intelligence as such. Lastly, that producers produce in order to 'show their brilliance to all of humanity' is a smear of producers as such. It projects an image of an egomaniac gloating over his invention which will show the world how great he is.

In closing, Mr. Brooks offers no suggestions on how to 'nurture' grinds, just pessimism:

"It's just that very few grinds are bringing new ideas to scale and hiring workers to enact their us-against-the-world schemes.[notice the adversarial context and productive effort as 'schemes'-MN]
For jobs to recover, the grinds have to recover(!), but it’s hard to see how that will happen so long as households are still so leveraged, government debt is still so unnerving and the business climate is still so terrible for entrepreneurs.”

Translation: “Atlases, you’ll just have to heal your selves.”

“DISCLOSE would prohibit contractors who do more than $50,000 a year in business with the government or receive federal bailout money from contributing to political campaigns. A fine argument could be made that such spending presents a conflict of interest.
But it’s the same conflict presented by public employee unions contributing to the politicians who will decide their pay, benefits and staffing levels.”

So this means that if unions can be conflicted business should too? Or, since business can’t, neither should unions? The question ‘Are conflicts of interest a natural part of free markets or of government interference?’ is not addressed. It continues later with:

“A bonus provision of the bill would allow political parties to buy advertising at the most favorable rates, forcing media outlets to subsidize campaigns.”

Would these be chickens coming home to roost Mr. editor?

“Republicans will get beat up in blocking this bill as water carriers for Big Business. But they have little choice. If it passes, there will be no evenness on the political playing field.”

Notice the influence of egalitarianism. No violation of rights by this bill is mentioned anywhere in the editorial, just its unevenness. So if every one’s rights were violated equally then presumably that would be fair.

If shining a light is really their goal, the congressional sponsors of this bill should make sure every dollar contributed to influence an election is posted on the Internet, with a name attached.
Do that, and make the disclosure requirements apply equally to all donors, and Congress won’t need to keep trying to find a way to keep money out of politics that doesn’t step on the First Amendment.

Completely evaded is the fact that ‘keeping money out of politics that doesn’t step on the First Amendment’ is not possible in a mixed economy where people are forced to lobby politicians either in self defense or for special favors which are denied to their competitors. In a laissez-faire market where government is not allowed to interfere with peoples’ choices there would be no need for finance reform to curb the corruption caused by influence peddling.

Warming the earth will also reduce the frequency and intensity of violent storms by shrinking the difference between the coldest temperatures at the poles and the warmest at the equator. What this does is narrow the extremes between which weather patterns oscillate.

I will say a thank you to all the explorers and pioneers who discovered the earth’s richness, and to the scientists who discovered the laws of nature which, once understood, allowed man to rearrange nature to serve his survival, and to the inventors who discovered ways to harness the forces of nature vastly raising man’s standard of living. One more salute will go to the businessmen and entrepreneurs who marketed their discoveries thus making them available to the rest of mankind.

Finally, a toast to the political system that made it all possible–capitalism, the social system where people are completely free to to make a buck by serving their own self-interest through voluntary trade to mutual benefit with everyone else. In fact,it’s the only system where one’s interests cannot be served by the forced privations of others. It is a just system. Just wish we were not losing it.

I’ll make a vow also: that any advertisements by merchants boasting how their products are green or eco-friendly will go straight into the trash.

(for more on Exploit the Earth Day see this essay at The Objective Standard)

“Some experts have even suggested Iran should move its capital to a less seismically active location. Tehran straddles scores of fault lines, including one more than 50 miles long, though it has not suffered a major quake since 1830.”

Nevertheless:

“Minister of Welfare and Social Security Sadeq Mahsooli said prayers and pleas for forgiveness were the best “formulas to repel earthquakes.”"

“I thought you might be interested to know that, on Tuesday morning, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, held the first in a series of four hearings aimed at unraveling the causes and consequences of the recent financial crisis.

The crisis was not an act of nature; it was a man-made economic assault that cost millions of jobs, evaporated billions of dollars in retirement savings and put our nation in the worst economic tailspin since the Great Depression.

Extreme greed was the driving force of the crisis. And, it will happen again unless we change the rules.”

He goes on to give a case in point:

“Our hearings are based on a year-long bipartisan investigation conducted by the Subcommittee. The first hearing focused on the role of high risk loans, using Washington Mutual Bank as a case history. It showed how the bank originated and sold hundreds of billions of dollars in high risk loans to Wall Street in return for big fees, dumping toxic mortgages into the U.S. financial system like polluters dumping poison in a river.”

So there it is. The selfishness and greed of men (read self interest) is the cause of all the financial maladies in the world. The question of why the bank, after decades of good sound management, would suddenly risk its existence on high risk securities is a question Mr. Levin won’t ask or answer because the answer is: the government made it profitable to do so with its market encouragement of low interest financing for house buying.

But it isn’t just the greed of man, it’s the greed of a particular class of men, the moneylenders and merchants, the men of the marketplace. Demonization of these men has been going on for thousands of years. In a book titled “Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls, How not to fight inflation” by Robert Schuettinger and Eamonn Butler, Caroline House, the authors write at length about this hatred for businessmen. Reporting on ancient Greece they write about a politician named Lysias:

“But Lysias was not the first and he was hardly the last politician to court popularity by promising the people lower prices in times of scarcity if only they would put an occasional merchant to the sword. The Athenian government, in fact, went so far as to execute its own inspectors when their price-enforcing zeal flagged.” (page 16)

Will Sen Levin look at his regulators with an eye towards punishment?

“The next three hearings will look at the role of regulators, credit
rating agencies, and investment banks in contributing to the financial
crisis. The Subcommittee will present additional case histories to examine
each stage of the assault.

The goals of the hearings are threefold: to construct a public
record of the facts to deepen public understanding of what happened and to
hold some of the perpetrators accountable; to inform the current
legislative debate about the need for financial reform; and to provide a
foundation for building better defenses to protect Main Street from the
excesses of Wall Street.”

The regulators will no doubt complain that they need more dictatorial power over the market and Levin will hasten to give it to them. The main purpose is to further indoctrinate the masses on the evil of businessmen.

The problem as I see it is that the masses have been falling for this money-men-are-evil nonsense for thousands of years and are still falling for it today. Sen. Carl Levin is one of today’s Lysiases. Fortunately there are people today who are questioning the Levins and who are beginning to question government interference into the economy. Many of the people I talk to at Tea Parties seem to agree that the financial meltdown was a failure of a regulated market and not a free one. I don’t know if America can last long enough for their numbers to grow into an influential force. Though the fight may yet get rough and take too long, I am optimistic. As long as we can hang onto free speech there is hope.

Mr. Levin links to his opening statement hereThe obfuscations and evasions are many.

(The Above mentioned book seems to be out of print. I visited a few rare book sites but no luck. It was printed in 1979)

Progressive education has taught them that truth is determined by whatever a majority says is true. Things like lying and contradicting oneself are bad only because society has arbitrarily deemed it so. But in reality words are just linguistic tools that one uses to get what one wants. If lying works then use it. For example, if one wants to take over an industry say banks, (or autos or health care) and one gets resistance, one only needs to utter the words “It’s not a takeover” and the socially accepted meaning of those words will work its magic and one will get what one wants. If those words don’t work, try some others.

But proof? That’s just another arbitrary social construct. It only means that if a majority agrees with you then that is proof that you are right at that moment in time. Since today’s leaders were elected by a majority then their subjective reality must be the one the majority wants.

As for all those dissenters? Well their subjective reality lost. Such is the meaning of “That’s what elections are for.” Yes, to see whose subjective reality (read whims) are to be imposed by force on citizens. And since the dominant political ideology of our leaders is collectivism and the moral code on which it is based is the morality of sacrifice, it is nothing less than the sacrifice of all to all that is their goal. With the Obamacare bill just passed some 268 million individuals will be sacrificed for the unearned benefit of a 32 million count minority.

But it isn’t just citizens being sacrificed. It’s the most productive members of society, the businessmen. These are the men and women who look for new products and services, risk their money and time to bring them to market which in turn satisfies the real wants and needs of consumers, not trumped up needs like ‘the uninsured.’
It is what Ayn Rand called hatred of the good for being the good.

Case in point: today my Senator Carl Levin sent me a page and a half email extolling the virtues of the Obamacare bill. The second to last paragraph says: “The health insurance industry has dominated health care decisions in this country for too long. I voted in favor of this historic legislation to finish the task of bringing landmark change to health care in America.”

There it is. The government knows insurance better that insurance companies do. Mr Levin was a member of the old left but has since embraced the thuggish agenda of the new left: to provide Americans with freedom from private business and require dependence on a caring, selfless government.

We’ve got a hard fight ahead but I think that a good start is voting out all these political lifers like the Levins, Dingells, Conyers, Reids etc. Voting for someone new can’t be much worse than the little statists we have in there now.

She gave her usual common sense arguments against the follies of the Obama administration and championed limited government and so on. Unfortunately she grounded many of her arguments in religion. I don’t want to discuss those arguments here. Suffice it to say they were standard religious right positions.

As I watched I began to suspect that this was an event intended to align the Republican Party with the Tea Party movement. My suspicions were confirmed by later events. After the speech Geraldo interviewed a panel of commentators one of which was Juan Williams who flatley declared Mrs. Palin as the new leader of the Tea Party movement. “No she’s not” I nearly shouted at the screen.

A few days later I received an email from the Tea Party Express announcing that they had nothing to do with the organization of that convention but added that they were having Ms. Palin speak at one of their parties in March and at another in April.

Then on Sunday the 7th I got an email from the other national group Tea Party Patriots. They had this to say in part:

“Dear Fellow Tea Party Patriots,

Tea Party Patriots, an organization with a reach of millions of members and over 1,000 voluntarily affiliated tea party and 912 local groups asks: WHY WOULD 600 PEOPLE AT A RALLY CREATE A MEDIA FREENZY?”

Good question since the media have routinely ignored much larger events. And

“Why did the media choose to show up at a tea party rally in Nashville that marketed itself as a “national convention” with only 600 participants who claimed to speak on behalf of the movement?

Why would the media show up just because a national figure was asked to speak? National figures spoke all over the country in local tea party rallies all year and in DC on September 12th.

We believe the answer to “Why?” is this:

There are heavy efforts underway to align us to a political party.
There is great concern that the Tea Party Movement will become a third party.
The media did not do their homework on this “national convention” and is now creating misinformation on the movement.”

I’m convinced that this event was covered to designate the Tea Party movement as a right wing Republican movement. I doubt it will work because the parties I attended last year were mostly independent voters with some Repubs and Dems as well. But they may get some mileage out of it. Stay tuned.

Demonic practices include short selling, making a profit, acting on inside information, making ‘too much’ profit and defending one’s right to do so. I’m sure there are some I’ve missed.

The gods we’ve been urged to worship by the press are government politicians and regulators who know what’s best for us. Noble and virtuous practices are complying with our regulatory masters and having a willingness to find our happiness by sacrificing all those things that make us happy, like our money and freedom and rights, for a non-existent public good.

Obama will give his first SOTU address tonight. It will be interesting to see what demons we will be urged to destroy and what gods to worship. Some have speculated that because of recent setbacks to the Democratic Party’s agenda, Obama will move to the center of the political spectrum. If he uses those kinds of words tonight it will be only appearance. In substance I see Obama following FDR’s lead. He will continue to meddle in the market, causing a prolonged depression, yet blaming all of it on the greed and selfishness of evil businessmen. The people, like they did for FDR, will believe it hook line and sinker and will call for more of the same poison that’s making them sick now.

But there are these differences: Objectivism wasn’t around back then and the middle class today has a lot more to lose by buying into the government-knows-best nonsense being peddled today. We’ll see.

It starts out letting us know that the inquisition commission is ‘bipartisan.’

“The bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Congress appointed last spring opens public hearings today with a charge to explore what its chairman, Phil Angelides, describes with considerable understatement as the central irony of the 2008 Wall Street meltdown.”

And what he’s going to explore is how to make the bankers explain not their innocence but why did they do it. The Freep even suggests the attitude and framework the commission should adopt.

“The commission’s mandate has been likened to the similarly ambitious inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. This time, though, investigators have been able to subpoena many of the principals whose actions and decisions precipitated the crisis. Among those scheduled to testify this week are the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. None of these bank executives, presumably, set out to destroy the international financial system. Even so, the opportunity to question them is the investigative equivalent of being able to interrogate the perished hijackers of 9/11.”

Notice the snarky word ‘presumably’ used in regard to a possible desire not to destroy the economy.

The financial center is the heart of any economy. It finances all the transactions that take place in a free economy making a growing prosperity possible. When government interferes it creates economic dislocations and hardship. These are then held up as failures of a free unregulated market and the haters of capitalism then call for more controls as the Freep has done and is now doing again. But to place 911 terrorists in the same context as bankers and lenders is an insult to all Americans especially the bankers.

There is also no mention in this editorial of the government’s role in the meltdown. It’s as if there was no role at all. The editorial decries the bonuses of bankers but there is no mention of the bonuses paid to the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–government enforced creations.

The editorial then lets us know which way the government should go.

“It would be unforgivable if the inadequate legal and regulatory system that allowed credit markets to spin out of control more than a year ago were left in place until a bigger and even more catastrophic crisis unfolds. So the grillings on tap for today and tomorrow should be only the opening salvos in a determined effort to hold banks and other lenders accountable.”

In other words we are being told that bankers and financial people will run around willy nilly in an orgy of irrationality if not controlled by all knowing bureaucrats. My own Senator Carl Levin, D-MI once said that the crisis was caused by Wall Street “running wild.” The demon we are told to fear again is economic freedom and the god to worship is government force.

I can only hope that some of these bankers will defend themselves and their right to use their own judgement. Perhaps they will be able to show how the government regulations encouraged risky behavior. But I doubt they will get a chance to defend themselves at all. They will undoubtedly be questioned only on why they knowingly lent money to people who could not pay it back and will be charged with the trumped up crime of ‘predatory lending.’

(If the hearings are not on TV they can be viewed on c-span.org.)

“Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal’s a deal.”

And:

“As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don’t hire enough workers, that lay them off or that close shop. At the same time, governments are sharpening new deals, leaving no doubt what is expected.”

That’s right. It’s like taking money from a Mafia Don, you better know what’s expected. Leaving aside the wisdom of government controlled roads and schools I want to point out that in any “deal” between a man with a gun (communities) and a man with money but without a gun (corporations), it is the man with the gun who will set and control the terms of all such “deals.” Once a corporation understands this it can then know its proper course of action: find a less hostile state and move there. Mr Babwin gives an example of one such deal:

“”We will roll out the red carpet as much as we can,” but “they are going to honor the contract,” said Brendon Gallagher, an alderman in DeKalb, Ill., where Target Corp. got abatements from the city, county, school district and other taxing bodies after promising at least 500 jobs at a local distribution center.
“

Please notice that when these gangs of gangs (taxing bodies) give back some of the loot or promise not to rob them for a few years, they are rolling “out the red carpet.” So what did Target do with its red carpet treatment?

“So when the company came up 66 workers short in 2009, Target found its next tax bill would jump almost $600,000 — more than half of which goes to the local school district.”

So we see that Target came through with 434 jobs but because they fell short by 66 jobs the spoiled brats in this gang stamped their feet and slammed target with a $600,000 club. Obviously these thugs couldn’t care less about the rights of businessmen. But the truth is they really don’t care about jobs either. In the mind of a pragmatist there is no connection between a $600,000 loss and Target’s ability to hire a few more workers. Notice the statement at the end of that quote; the fact that half the loot will go to schools I suppose is justification for the looting. In their mind Target will always be able to create jobs. How? Blank out. And when they don’t they must be punished. After all, they won’t get any sympathy from the public either.

“”The public is a lot more aware of tax abatements and there’s a climate of skepticism about what can be perceived as corporate handouts,” said Geoff McKimm, a member of the Monroe County Council in Indiana.”

So we see that the government, aided by a cheer leading media, has the public believing that tax breaks and abatements are “red carpet” treatments as well as “corporate handouts”. This means that the joint has been cased, lookouts are all in place (the press) and now it’s time for the thieving gangs to move in for more control.

“With that in mind, county officials drew up an agreement with Printpack, a packaging company, which includes a provision requiring the company to refund either $197,000 or that year’s abatement, whichever is more, if the number of employees at a new factory falls below 140.

Another provision requires Printpack to refund the entire abatement if it employs fewer than 75 people — a guarantee meant to prevent companies from leaving a skeleton crew at a location to avoid paying up”

Yep, we can’t let the producers have any way to protect themselves from our government enforced good intentions. Our good intentions are so noble that we are willing to fight each other over who has dibs on any given producer at any given time.

“In Detroit, while the state was approving expanded tax credits in exchange for General Motors Co.’s promise not to move, the Detroit City Council was talking about cracking down on tax breaks for GM and other major employers.”

But some of these gangs (taxing bodies) seem to be getting a bit uneasy in that maybe they ought to tread more lightly.

Some communities crack down on companies quietly, out of concern that they could scare off other potential employers, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First.
He said that fear persists even though there is no evidence that having or enforcing clawbacks poisons the business climate.

The fact that they see a need to act quietly means that they know they are acting against the producers interests and that they see no other way to achieve their idea of the good except by the forced suffering of others. And if the people are unwilling to sacrifice voluntarily, then the government must step in and forcefully collect those sacrifices.

Now I don’t know anything about Good Jobs First but judging by their name they don’t know that good jobs come third. After a scientist or inventor comes up with a new product first then a businessman decides to market it second, then hires workers to make it third. But I digress.

To stop the sacrifice of the greatest nation on earth, the government must be reduced to its proper function of protecting every individual’s unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Just calling for limited government won’t do it. Only a full commitment to individual rights can turn this country around. A good place to start is the rights of businessmen.

But today I want to take a lighter approach and look forward to headlines I would like to see in 2010. There is no particular order to these. Of course readers are free to add their own preferences in the comments. First, in the 2010 election I would like to see these headlines:

1>”Democrats lose 60 seat majority in Senate.”

2>”Senator Harry Reid out.”

3>”Democrat congressman Sander Levin (my congressman) ousted by fellow Democrat and fiscal conservative Mickey Switalski. Party still hopping mad at Mickey.”

4>”Liberal Dems take beating in election along with a few liberal Republicans.”

5>”Democrats promising to abandon needs based legislation in favor of rights protecting legislation win by landslides.”

6>”Conservative Rupublicans promising mega-compassion lose in record landslides.”

And in non-election news:

7>”In test case Supreme Court rules Obamacare unconstitutional.”

8>”Cap and trade bill dies in congress. Obama threatens to give EPA executive powers. New congress vows to cut off EPA funding. Obama livid.”

9>”Congress opens hearings on Climategate. Mann, Bradley, Hughes et al on hot seat regarding connections to Hadley email scandal. Value of IPCC Assessment Reports questioned.”

10>”Copies of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead flying off shelves faster than in 2009.”

11>”More CEOs defending themselves and capitalism.”

12>”NYT and WAPO circulation and stock price hit new lows, more layoffs loom.”

13>”Another Al Gore lecture on GW cancelled due to extreme cold.”

14>”George Soros and/or Michael Moore file for bankruptcy.” ( this is a perennial for me.)

15>”New student rebellion protesting campus censorship and lack of diverse ideas is gaining momentum.”

Well that’s it for the wishful thinking for now but if just 4 of these 15 actually happen, it will bode well for the future.

Before I started posting here at TNC I posted several articles on my personal blog penned by Mr. Borenstein that were obvious cases of cheer leading for the AGW crowd.

In April of 06 he did an article about the picture of the locomotive bearing down on the little girl supposedly showing we still have a little time to stop GW. He did point out that the ad was by Environmental Defense. But he didn’t tell his readers that ED is an extreme left wing advocacy group with a profound bias against free markets and for governmental initiatory force.

Or this post where he champions IPCC leaders who tell Americans “Get used to heat waves” caused by GW, experts say.

Then there is this excellent article in the March 2007 American Thinker by Marc Sheppard in which he reports that after the doomsday scenarios offered by Borenstein, Sheppard says:

“Then, specifically addressing the bogus claims made in the February 1st AP article, the scientist rebuked:

“We concluded that the question of whether there was a greenhouse-cyclone link was pretty much a toss of a coin at the present state of the science, with just a slight leaning towards the likelihood of such a link. But the premature reports suggested that we were asserting the existence of much stronger evidence.”"

So we see Mr. Borenstein likes to champion scary doomsday scenarios put out by AGW alarmists, but who precisely gave him his marching orders? Well in 1990 warming alarmist Stephen Schneider said:

“”[We] have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” -Quoted by Dixy Lee Ray in Trashing the Planet (1990)” (source http://www.nationalcenter.org/dos7123.htm)

I would like to see Mr. Borenstein out of the AP for sure but the whole news media is infested with biased reporters that need cleansing. Yes there are some good reporters out there and they need recognition. So I salute people like Anthony Watts and Marc Sheppard for identifying the biased ones.

Its first edition came out Monday 11/22 so I bought a copy out of curiosity (and because it’s only 50 cents). I wanted to see what the editorial page would be like and I found a hint in their first editorial titled “A voice of clarity” written by managing editor Bruce McLaughlan. That title looks promising.

About the editorial page Mr. McLaughlan writes “It won’t push a liberal agenda. Nor will it don a conservative cloak.” He goes on to add that “Instead, like the Metro Detroiters it serves, this page will consider issues on their merits. That means examining the facts, of course, as well as critiquing the way they are framed by various political viewpoints.” Now I had mixed feelings. This could be a call for moderation, exactly what I don’t want, and yet “critiquing the way they are framed” is a depth of thinking glaringly absent from the two major daily’s editorial pages.

Because I had doubts, I didn’t buy a paper until Friday 11/27. Mr. McLaughlan again penned an editorial that really surprised me. It was titled “It’s not your fault” and its theme was ‘don’t accept an unearned guilt.’ The paper was not online yet so I can’t link to anything but here are a few excerpts.

First paragraph: “You’re going to read a lot about guilt in the coming months. It won’t be labeled as such, but that’s the subliminal message.” How true! He points out how consumers are often blamed for not spending enough and other times for foolishly spending too much. The last three paragraphs say:

“You can’t do much about being blamed for everything, but you are in charge of whether you accept the feeling of guilt on behalf of the economy.

“Here in cash-strapped Metro Detroit, it’s time to reject the guilt and do what’s right for you and your family. If savings is the most prudent approach, save. The kids will be just as happy with smaller gifts that are wrapped with the same amount of love – or perhaps even more love, undiluted by worry.

“Just don’t bring home a big box of guilt this holiday season. You can’t afford it.”

Wow! I look forward to more of these. I’ll be sending an LTE lauding that editorial. Unfortunately, I just heard that the paper is suspending operations until after Jan 1st due to a lack of advertising. A good article by Bill Shea at Crain’s Detroit Business about the new paper is here. I wish the paper well and for all the reasons Mr. Shea mentions. But even if it fails, and with the current administration in Washington and its bought and paid for press selling guilt on a massive scale, it was still a little breath of fresh air.

The article focuses on a WSJ article about an old truck that was pushed off the fourth floor of the long abandoned Packard building by people referred to as “urban explorers.” It even has a video of the event and a link the the WSJ article.

Reading this story is like watching insects crawling through the skeletal remains of what was once a living, thriving organism, the City of Detroit. According to the WSJ article:

“Detroit has 80,000 abandoned lots and buildings, according to the city’s planning department. Old housing projects, homes, strip malls and even high-rise buildings sit empty across much of the city. Motown has more vacant office, retail and industrial space than nearly every other big city in the country.”

But the Packard plant is just the latest example of Detroit’s political leaders not understanding the nature and purpose of property rights.

The purpose of property rights is to transform the ideal of individual rights, the ‘right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ into practical reality. To survive, a man must have the right to use and dispose of the fruits of his labor as he judges best while respecting the same rights of others. The fruits of his labor are his property. Without property rights there can be no other rights.

Where there are no humans there is no property, only nature. Where there are humans, property rights identify, define and protect the fruits of each man’s labor. The basic, fundamental purpose of property rights then is to serve human survival in some objective way. That is why there should be a time limit on how long an owner can let a property sit completely idle not serving any purpose whatsoever.

The details of what kind of limits should be placed on what kind of property are not important here and can be worked out by those schooled in property rights law. What’s important here, and needs to be recognized by our laws, is the principle that property must serve some human purpose and cannot be held idle in perpetuity.

The future of Detroit can be either the nation’s biggest ghost town or a thriving metropolis again. But Detroit’s rebirth will not happen until Detroit and Lansing discover the real nature of property rights and enact policy accordingly. Right now all governments view property as a source of income instead of a source of human survival. That is what really has to change.

“The bill requires employers, except for small businesses, to offer health coverage to their workers and pay a substantial share of the premiums or face a big penalty. That would be a useful prod to make insurance more available and affordable to employees.” (bold mine)

No Senator, Congressman, judge or member of the executive branch is going to insure anyone. All they can do is point a gun at the insurance companies, doctors and other health care professionals and decree ‘sacrifice or else.’ Then point another gun at the heads of citizens and decree ‘accept these sacrificial offerings or else.’

It is really sad to see an establishment of professional intellectuals like the Times advocating the government initiate force against citizens. It’s even sadder that professional organizations like the AMA and the ANA (American Nurses Assoc.) are willing to go along with the sacrifice of its members. But as long as people think sacrifice itself, for any reason, is virtuous, the destruction of medicine and our society will continue. It is trade not sacrifice that is virtuous. Trade represents voluntary relationships. Sacrifice requires force because it is contrary to human nature. Sacrifice is not the giving up of a value for some desired result. The loss of the value is the desired result.

(Could be to the tune of Rick Nelson’s Garden Party)

>I went to another tea party,
>to protest the health care bill,
>to mix with people of like mind and to,
>share in a little good will.

>There were signs saying no to coercion,
>and leave my doctor alone,
>There’s no reason for government to be,
>barging into my home.

>Well it’s, all wrong now.
>But it’s, going to be OK,
>people are beginning to realize that,
>freedom is the way.

>There’s Waxman, Reid and Pelosi,
>Obama and Emanuel too,
>they tell us they’re going to save the world but they,
>haven’t got a clue.

>There are people in academia,
>in the House and Senate of course,
>for us they say they know what’s best and will
>get it with physical force.

>Well it’s, all wrong now,
>but it’s, going to be OK,
>people are beginning to realize that,
>freedom needs to stay.

>We’ve gone to the polls in November,
>to vote for a different man,
>he promised to bring us changes and he’s,
>got a four year plan.

>It’s taking money from Peter,
>handing it over to Paul,
>redistribution of our wealth buys,
>health care for all.

>Well it’s, all wrong now,
>but it’s, going to be OK,
>people are beginning to realize that,
>freedom is the way.

As the Obama administration evolves, I may add more lyrics to this.

“I’m working my way through college, could you help me by purchasing…” is one I’ve heard a couple of times. I wanted to tell him that he can make more money at Burger King than soliciting D2D but I was so sure it was a scam that I just said “NO thanks” and closed the door. Others like “My class is trying to raise money for such and such so would you buy some of this (candy or whatever)? are getting more common. I want to step outside and say “Listen, if you want to make money then sell your product not your needs. You have to present your product as a value to the customer that will improve his life in some way. Never ever try to sell your product on the grounds that it will make the customer feel noble and virtuous.” Then again, I don’t think some of these kids would understand my words.

Who is telling these youngsters to sell like this? Their parents? School teachers? Does the promotional material for the product advocate this? Or are they just given a product and told ‘Here, go sell this’ without any guidance? Have they been so badly indoctrinated with altruism that they cannot comprehend the idea of appealing to some one’s self interest but must appeal to their guilt feelings? I’m not talking about elementary school kids on charitable fund raisers who really don’t understand the concepts of selling. I’m referring to teenagers who should know something about offering a value.

Anyway I recommend reading both posts at both sites.

“Null findings enable true scientists to know they’re looking in the wrong direction and that it’s time to go back to the drawing board and develop a different hypothesis. They also enable us to stop needlessly worrying about something that doesn’t matter.”

Also, many if not most studies that purport to show a health problem actually turn out to be false and these revelations are often not published as well. Just as knowing that something is a threat to health and life is important, so is knowing when something is not a significant threat, especially when alleged professionals are telling us it is a threat. However, we also know that the media often prefers hype and sensationalism vs boring news about non-threats. So the media has a built in bias that is heavily weighted in favor of fear-hype while a study showing that last month’s health scare is actually false will tend not to get printed. This will mislead thousands if not millions of people. As the saying goes ‘you can’t unring an alarm bell.’

But this situation has other consequences. It creates a fearful citizenry eager to donate their money to NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations, mostly non-profit foundations) who promise to do research (more statistical studies) to find ways to protect them from all the alleged hazards of a modern, technological society.

It sometimes works like this: NGOs fund studies that try to determine what is bad for us. When a study is completed a press release is announced. The media picks up the release and reports the findings which are usually that X (say, fast foods) is bad for us. Politicians then stand on the floor of their chambers, news reports and studies in hand, announcing that congress must address this threat to public health by passing legislation more heavily regulating the use of X. They then stand before us proclaiming how good they are at protecting us from all the harmful Xs out there and therefore we should reelect them. That is what we see.

What we don’t readily see is that the funding NGO has been getting large donations from companies that produce products Y and Z (say, treadmills and diet books). Also mostly out of view is the donations by companies Y and Z to the politicians’ reelection campaigns. And even further out of sight is the fact that no one looked at the study, not the reporter, the editor nor the politician, to see if the study had any statistical significance or was a null finding being passed off as having significance. This last happens often.

We have to educate ourselves to what is valid science and what is pseudo science because the press isn’t doing it. Pseudo science isn’t just coming from NGOs either. Government agencies fund lots of it. I recommend reading the entire article and visiting JunkfoodScience often. Her blogroll is a good source for others who actually read these so called scientific studies and then examines them for our benefit.