The New Clarion

Jeff Jacoby writes about the ban on the incandescent light bulb, passed by Congress in 2007 and signed into law by the wretched George W. Bush.

The use of efficiency mandates to snuff out the standard light bulb was an exercise of unadulterated crony capitalism. It came about after big bulb manufacturers, frustrated by their customers’ refusal to switch from cheap throwaway incandescents to the far more profitable compact fluorescents touted by greens, decided to play hardball.

“So some years ago,’’ The New York Times Magazine noted last month, “Philips [Electronics] formed a coalition with environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, to push for higher standards. ‘We felt that we needed to . . . show that the best-known lighting technology, the incandescent light bulb, is at the end of its lifetime,’ says Harry Verhaar, the company’s head of strategic sustainability initiatives.’’

Other corporations joined the plot, lobbying Congress to croak a product Americans overwhelmingly like and compel them to buy the more expensive substitute the industry was eager to sell them. The entire scheme, a lobbyist for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association testified candidly in 2007, was “at the industry’s initiative.’’ Unable to convince consumers to voluntarily abandon Edison’s light bulb, Big Business got the government to force the issue.

So the law was driven by America’s suicidal corporations. The combination of environmentalist moral approval and more profits must have been too much for the fools in charge.

I have one disagreement with Jacoby. This is not “crony capitalism” — there is no such thing. Capitalism is the unfettered free market. Corporations working with the government to restrict competition is crony socialism, also known as fascism. Don’t let the Orren Boyles of the world give capitalism a bad name.

Unbelievable:

Embroiled by legal battles for more than 25 years, two U.S. Navy ships are finally headed to the scrap heap without ever having sailed and despite the fact that they’re almost completely finished.

According to Hampton Roads, the USNS Bejamin Isherwood and the USNS Henry Eckford were commissioned in 1985 at the Pennsylvania Shipbuilding Co. to carry fuel to the Navy’s fleet around the globe.

When the company defaulted on its Navy contract in 1989 the 660-foot ships were sent to Florida for completion, but cost disputes terminated that contract in 1993.

Since then, the vessels have sat 95 and 84 percent complete at the mouth of the James River as part of the mothballed ghost fleet.

Do you think any private shipping company would let two ships sit around almost complete for 18 years? This is a good example of the difference between bureaucracy in the public sector and profit-seeking companies in the private sector. And the statists want to turn every aspect of our lives over to bureaucrats — from health care to carbon dioxide emissions to the stock market to the banks to car companies to workplace rules to how much fat we can eat to where we can smoke a cigarette (until cigarettes are banned altogether).

1. How to understand Rush Limbaugh.

2. Republicans give up trying to repeal Obamacare.

3.Environmentalist farmers returning to animal power. I wonder if these people are more interested in farming or impressing their fellow environmentalists.

4. George Monbiot despairs because environmentalism seems to be out of touch with reality.

5. Jay Cost argues that Obama will lose in 2012 because we are in the worst economic recovery in 50 years. Karl Rove says the electoral math does not look good for Obama in 2012.

6. Quin Hillyer makes a good argument that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever.

UPDATE: Added the Willie Mays link.

Today we celebrate the killing of Osama Bin Laden. There has been little to celebrate in our long, muddled effort against totalitarian Islam, so let’s relish this triumph.

I think of this as a tactical victory in the context of our strategic defeat in this war. We have yet to get serious and fight this war the way it should be fought. Altruism and egalitarianism have us so submissive to world opinion that we can’t even name the enemy. The existence of the Department of Homeland Security shows that our government would rather keep its own citizens in a permanent state of terror than destroy the enemy.

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I saw Atlas Shrugged Part 1. There were 21 of us in the theater at an 8:05pm showing on Friday night. 21 is a lot more than were in the house for Kill The Irishman or The Way Back.

I liked it. It’s not the great work of art the novel deserves, but it has enough of the original in it to be entertaining and interesting.

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1. With Q&A Charles Alan Kors’s speech, Socialism’s Legacy: Lest We Forget, lasts one hour and 33 minutes; it is worth every second. Leftists continue to commit intellectual fraud by evading the extent of socialism’s evil. Dr. Kors reminds us of a most important lesson of the 20th century. His speech is an inspiring act of justice.

2. Economic growth in the first months of 2011 was 1.8%. At the same time inflation is surging:

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there’s the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.
March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

Vodkapundit has charts.

3. Disarming while at war:

From 1940 to 2000, average annual American defense expenditure was 8.5% of GDP; in war and mobilization years, 13.3%; under Democratic administrations, 9.4%; under Republican, 7.3%; and, most significantly, in the years of peace, 5.7%. Now we spend 4.6%, but, less purely operational war costs, 3.8% of GDP. That is, 66% of the traditional peacetime outlays. We have been, and we are, steadily disarming even as we are at war.

4. Andrew Bernstein on “Religion vs. Morality”; Harry Binswanger debates a socialist who equates Ayn Rand with Nietzsche. Both are around two hours long.

5. Keynes vs. Hayek. Is it my imagination or are the production values in this video higher than those seen in the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 trailer?

6. The Democrats released an ad claiming Paul Ryan’s budget would “end Medicare,” hoping to scare seniors. I always fall for these negative ads and think better of the Republicans. Going by Democrat attacks, I’d be ready to put Paul Ryan’s face on Mt. Rushmore. Turns out, alas, the ad is a lie. Ryan’s budget increases spending on Medicare. His budget is an attempt to make the welfare state run on time. The Democrats are so locked into their playbook of demonizing Republicans and fear-mongering pressure groups that their claims have no relation to reality.

UPDATE: Revised the description of the socialist in item #4.

Now that Obama has released his long form birth certificate — which shows he was born in a manger in Hawaii, surrounded by sheep and three wise men — can we move on to more important things?

Like why does a guy who has been around intellectuals and effete leftists all his life talk like a hick? Obama says ya instead of you and doin’ instead of doing. Is this something a Democrat must do to show he’s a man of the people?

(And boy, does this author look stupid.)

1. Daniel Henninger looks at Obama’s nasty character.

2. Ed Schultz uses a chart to prove we need higher taxes, but the chart looks like an indictment of spending to me. He is right that Republicans in Congress should have spoken up about Bush’s spending — then he rationalizes Obama’s spending because “every economist on both sides of the aisle said you’ve got to spend money to get out of this problem.” I can think of a few economists who didn’t say that.

3. Today’s young leftists.

4. From Gus Van Horn we read that

Bolivia is set to pass the world’s first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans.

From Wikipedia:

Reductio ad absurdum (Latin: “reduction to the absurd”) is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.

Reductio ad absurdum is a polemical technique used against an opponent. But what do you call it when a side follows its own premise to absurdity?

5. Part 2 of Rational Public Radio’s intervew with Yaron Brook.

6. Evan Sayet is insightful about the left.

Imagine a train rolling down a track. (No, this has nothing to do with the Atlas Shrugged movie opening on April 15th.)

Now imagine a middle aged man who drives his Cadillac Escalade around the railroad crossing arm with its blinking red lights and parks on the train track. The train’s whistle screams at the man to drive off the track. The laws of physics won’t let the train stop in time. There’s no arguing with F=MA.

The man has time to drive off the track, but he does not. If there were something wrong with his SUV, he could jump out and run away, but he does not.

What do you conclude about the man in the Escalade? He wants to die. In a dramatic, violent and irresponsible manner, the man is committing suicide.

What are we to make of a political party that does nothing to stop the coming fiscal crisis in America?

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It is amusing to see someone get excited about an IRS refund. He dances around and shouts, “I got $2,000! Partyyyyyy!!!”

Hey, you really screwed the government, huh?

Shmuck. The IRS loves to “give” you that money. Every refund represents a happy sheep.

It’s the First Law of Parasites: Don’t kill the host. That refund check is emotional fuel that keeps the producer working while the government bleeds him drop after drop, month after month…

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1. The Objective Standard reviews the week every weekend.

2. “The prose, like the author, belongs in hell.” P.J. O’Rourke has fun with the Chinese Tiger Mother’s book.

3. Andrew McCarthy asks two good questions:

First, why should we give a damn about the Afghan people? And second, why are we sacrificing American blood and American treasure to build an Islamist post-nation that hates America?

Peter Wehner says we should give a damn because we are all made in God’s image. Although the word never comes up, this is a dispute between two conservatives about altruism.

4. I love the look on this bird’s face.

5. Check out Rational Public Radio. These guys are good.

6. Islamic infiltration. When will we get serious?

Downsizinggovernment.org stunned this blogger with how much useless government can be cut — while Congress is haggling over less than 1%. Let’s see how much I can find to cut in less than an hour. This is, of course, an exercise in fantasy; somehow politicians don’t think like you and me.

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1. Ron Pisaturo compares two scenes in the Atlas Shrugged movie to the book. He shows how small changes can turn dialogue from romantic to naturalistic. This is a must-read for fiction writers.

2. Onkar Ghate reveals what is wrong with environmentalism. (Like everything.) This is the stuff you only get from Objectivists.

3. Barry Rubin writes that Hamas is moving toward war with Israel.

Hamas can fire an advanced anti-tank rocket because the Egyptian revolution has ended a regime that acted in its own interest to block most arms shipments to Hamas. The Egypt-Gaza border is now open. Terrorists and superior weapons are flooding into Gaza.

4. Marian Wright Edelman gives us the leftist case against budget cuts, and leaves no liberal cliche behind. You see, the Republicans want to rob from poor children in order to give money to corporations. You knew that, right? Her argument is economically ignorant but full of moral indignation — and that’s all she needs to flummox conservatives.

5. Yaron Brook on Capitalism Without Guilt, with a good Q&A session.

6. Vasko Kohlmayer is not impressed with Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Amy Peikoff wants cuts now, not over a 10-year period.

1. The Professional Left.

2. When Newt Gingrich jumps on the religion bandwagon, does it mean that a longtime power seeker senses the way things are going in America?

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There is one line in Obama’s speech on Monday justifying military action in Libya that stands out, amongst a lot of illogic and contradictions, as the real reason:

…I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

The prospect of emotionally wrenching pictures of suffering was too much for the President. Obama is not worried about logical arguments, but the emotionalist thinkers who look at pictures out of context and ask, “Why didn’t we do something?”

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Some have wondered what the Obama Doctrine is. I believe Bryan Preston at Pajamas Tatler has found it. Obama made this statement in El Salvador:

And that’s why building this international coalition has been so important because it means that the United States is not bearing all the cost. It means that we have confidence that we are not going in alone, and it is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally. And we will accomplish that in a relatively short period of time.

(Emphasis Preston’s)

The Obama Doctrine restated in plain spoken clarity (which politicians never come near) is: America will not assert its national self-interest, but if other countries want to volunteer us to sacrifice for the rest of the world, we will be glad to serve.

(HT: Contentions)

I walked into a diner yesterday with $20. After a seafood dinner, coffee, tax and tip, I walked out with $1. 10 years ago I think the same dinner would have cost in the $10 range.

I remember when I was young scraping by for three or four days on $5 until I got paid. Granted, I was eating cheap stuff, but now I would shudder at having to live even one day on just $5. (Remember those books with titles like “Europe On $5 a Day”?)

Peter Ferrara looks at the grim outlook on inflation and more. If he is right, our national survival is at stake.

Here is a tape of leftists discussing their goal to take down the capitalist system and redistribute wealth. At the end a speaker mentions Cloward and Piven’s idea of creating “ungovernability” — so the left does take their ideas seriously, and it’s not just right-wing hysteria to say so.

Elan Journo argues that intervention in Libya is not in U.S. national interest.

David Horowitz is no longer a Neo-Conservative.

Michael Hurd on Obama’s little war.

Actors talk about what it’s like not to be a leftist in show business.

I thought 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand by Scott McConnell might be tedious. How many times can you read that Frank O’Connor didn’t say much? (About 100 times.) The book turned out to be fascinating. I could not put it down.

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Never let a good crisis go to waste, right? With thousands dead and a staggering loss of wealth in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami, the left sees an opportunity to create hysteria over nuclear power. Lots of misery? Oh, boy — let’s use it to score political points! Gus Van Horn posts with plenty of thought-provoking links.

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Barry Rubin argues that Obama is bringing disaster to the Middle East and US interests.

Michael Hurd explains Charlie Sheen.

Evan Sayet looks at how leftists portray themselves in movies and TV. I think the explanation is that the left accepts the mind-body dichotomy, which is as old as Plato. The moral ideal is altruism, they believe, but in the reality of the flawed world we live in, everyone is petty and selfish. Comics like Larry David understand that there is more comedy in cynicism than in the left’s moral ideal.

If you like Classic Rock, Gary Moore gets quite a tone on “Red House.”

Spending cuts in perspective.

This piece in the New York Times about pharmaceutical companies is depressing. Government intervention is destroying the drug industry. And it will only get worse:

The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting. Beginning in 2015, an independent board appointed by the president could lower prices across the board in Medicare unless Congress acted each year to overrule it. Medicare pays more than 20 percent of the nation’s retail drug bills.