Hegemonic Stability

2011-06-19T04:46:00.003-04:00

The Economy and "Global Warming"

The Global warming movement, whether or not it is a cover for a power grab by the carbon trading elite, is blocking any chance of an economic recovery. Just putting money in the hands of consumers has been tried in the USA and QE 1 & 2 have failed to restart consumption and production.

Clearly a recovery has to be associated with production. Cheap money brought us the dot com and housing bubble recoveries but neither recovery lasted. Unlike houses and dot coms there is considerably less danger in producing too much energy. An energy production boom in the USA will take pressure off food prices inflated by the ethanol lobby around the world, reverse the US balance of payments crisis, create jobs, save the auto industry, bail out the banks, reverse the growing income inequality, save the middle class, generate the government revenues to save social security and Medicare and pay off the debt: in short it is a panacea.

We don't even need cheap money, just a policy change. Drill baby drill, in the Gulf, Anwar, off the Florida coast, everywhere. Corporations have the money to invest, the workers are there. All we need to do is to remove the roadblocks stopping the recovery.

FDR got out of the last depression with WWII. An energy boom will have a significantly lower environmental impact and loss of life. All that is missing is the Pearl Harbor Event that will turn public opinion.

Pollution of the environment is a legitimate concern. Global Warming is a giant lie that left unchallenged is spreading a tide of human misery, starvation, and civil unrest. Europe and the Middle East today, America next year.

Peak oil may well be a legitimate concern, but we need prosperity, time and a free market to sort out the alternative sources, not a government mandated imposition of winners and losers.

2011-02-27T22:56:00.000-05:00

Public Unions & the Socialist Utopia

2011-02-26T16:53:00.002-05:00

TRAINS

I like Trains of all kinds. I particularly enjoy the TGV in France. To create jobs the French built an extensive public transport infrastructure. The US Federal government is offering the states $50 billion for high speed rail projects. Beware, public mass transit is a Trojan Horse. While it would be great to have better trains there are two problems. Any body that has spent time in France is aware of the power of the unions wield outside of the ballot box by virtue of their ability to paralyze the transportation infrastructure. The other problem is that public transport loses money. Imagine how much more tax payer money Amtrak can lose with $50 Billion more stuff to operate.

2011-02-26T16:39:00.002-05:00

Remember the Stimulus
The point of the stimulus was to postpone the financial crisis currently faced by the states. The argument was made that if teachers and firemen and other public employees kept their jobs and kept spending the economy would recover. It did not happen. Instead we are a trillion or so more in debt and one by one the states are going to have to cut their payrolls anyway. The teachers union in NYC is buying TV ads demanding that Bloomberg get the rich on Wall Street to pay their fare share. It is going to take more than taxes on the very rich to keep all those jobs and benefits.

2011-02-23T21:11:00.005-05:00

It's nothing personal. It's just business.

It's nothing personal. It's just business. Be careful what you wish for.

Chris Christie, NJ Gov., was on Today and Morning Joe this morning. Anne and Mika accused him of union busting. He denied it, contending that with less money to spend, he was trying to save public sector union jobs by lowering payroll benefit costs rather than through layoffs. A tad disingenuous perhaps, but few are noticing.

Well, the real problem for state budgets is not that public sector workers are paid better wages and dramatically better benefits than private sector workers. The real problem for the local economy is that there are too many non revenue generating public sector jobs. In the last period, according to Christie, NJ lost 20,000 public sector jobs and gained 15,000 private sector jobs. That is the trend around the country. I am sorry for those that lost their jobs, but now there are more productive taxpayers . With lower expenses states can lower taxes to attract new businesses and taxpayers. In the end there will be more jobs, just different ones, and the economy will recover. You can blame the rich, the Chinese, the greedy corporations exporting jobs, Wall Street, Congress, the Banks, the military industrial complex or whoever you want for the bad economy. It does not matter. When times are tough there is no choice but to tighten your belt, cut your expenses, and work a little harder until things get better.

The unions are mobilizing to stop Republican and Democrat gubernatorial efforts to roll back public sector wages and benefits by limiting unions power and fund raising abilities. The unions may well in the short run stop the union busting. This is a stroke of luck for the country. We do not want to lose our all our private sector unions. Remember Lech Walesa and the Solidarity union in Poland. On the other hand states and municipalities will be hard pressed to borrow or tax their way out of their deficits and will have no choice but to curtail government jobs and services.

The public sector is too big. Cutting public sector wages and benefits may eventually lessen the attraction of public sector jobs and reduce their numbers. On the other hand, massive layoffs of public sector workers is a much faster solution. The sad part is that one consequence will be lower quality in education as seniority rules will prevent any attempts to prune the deadwood via layoffs. For better or worse, privatization of the educational system may well accelerate as the value of public education declines.

2010-11-29T14:37:00.002-05:00

Inflation or Deflation?
Are we heading for inflation or deflation and how can we prepare ourselves? Deflation is when prices go down because economic activity grinds to a halt. People stop buying and hiring and just save their money. Inflation is when there is too much money chasing too few goods and the prices go up.
These two states are supposed to be mutually exclusive, but they are not. We are going into simultaneous inflation and deflation. Because of the debt deleveraging people are slowing down their spending. At the same time the Fed which is afraid of deflation is printing money which is inflationary.

2006-04-01T00:14:00.000-05:00

Eurabia
A common fallacy is the extrapolation of a current trend beyond reason ignoring the self regulating dynamics of nature, for example: the population bomb, global cooling, global warming. If current demographic trends continue, Judaeo Christian Europeans will be overwhelmed by immigrant Muslims and their descendants. Europeans will become Dhimmis, slaves of their fundamentalist Muslim masters who will destroy all their cultural artifacts, paintings, churches, monuments as the Taliban destroyed the statutes in Afghanistan.

Recently, I picked up a novel in LA "Atomik Aztek" by Sesshu Foster which fantasizes a world run by Aztecs and threatened by a consumerist takeover. Perhaps a good occupation what the Europeans need to shake themselves out of their atavistic worldweary socialist nightmare. Change is inevitable, but I find it hard to imagine a new Dark Age of any significant duration.

2005-04-03T16:45:00.000-04:00

Pope John Paul;
I never really thought much about him one way or the other. Since 9/11 I have come to admire the Catholic Church for sticking to their traditions and their belief in the sactity of life. I am not sure The Federal government should criminalize abortion, but I have no problem with a religion making it a sin. The Old line Protestant Churches have surrendered to moral relativism. Situational ethics, I think they called it when I was in an Episcopalian school. The result is there are more people going to Mosques than to Protestant Churches in Europe. Nietzsche overstated things only somewhat when he said that the Catholic Church went into decline when it lost the self confidence to burn heretics.

2005-04-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

The Trouble with CSPAN

Charles V. Pena of the CATO Institute was on CSPAN this morning discussing his critical commentary of the Defense Budget. His position sounded similar to what I believe was Rumsfeld's. Pull out of Europe, down size , modernize, skip a generation on new weapon systems like fighters , ships etc. Go fast and light etc. I love CSPAN because of the speakers and events they present. When the presentation is a speaker before a live audience the Q&A period brings out new facts and ideas. However, the shows with just the host and the guest and callers are agonizing. I cannot stand the callers. By and large they are partisan hacks . CSPAN puts on an interesting person and instead of probing to find out more the callers use the guest as a springboard to present their own frequently paranoid delusions. It is a clear instance of the "Tragedy of the Commons". People who believe the Neocons planned 9/11 so they could invade Iraq, for example, are entitled to that opinion and are free to speak it, but it only a question the way the answers in Jeopardy are questions. The CSPAN hosts would serve the people better if they cut off callers more aggressively and not allow them to waste everybody's time. The callers have an audience, not because their opinions are interesting, but because the guests are interesting. Partisan Hack Venters belong on talk radio shows like Limbaugh and Air America where point of the show is the interaction of host and caller or on blogs where they only waste their own time and that of those who enjoy that sort of thing.

2005-02-26T07:47:00.000-05:00

Colin Powell interview in the UK Telegraph
Colin Powell has made a mistake in going negative about the war. There is a good chance that the Iraq war will actually be a major historical turing point. Peace and freedom in the Middle East seems possible for the first time. Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine are all making progress towards democracy. Rather than take credit for his role , Powell prefers to dodge the blame. It is a surprisingly maladroit move for a man who has always been an adept politician.

2004-09-13T22:41:00.000-04:00

So I have been thinking about how Michael Moore is the ultimate B movie producer. He has an audience that is so hungry for his content that he can get away with near zero productioin values and does not have to advertize either since he gets all the free political coverage. For low budget movies the PR is usually much more than the actual cost of the film itself. I mentioned this too a succesfull movie producer who pointed out to me that the joke will be on Moore when he discovers that the way movie business accounting works even after grossing millions the Weinsteins are unlikely to have any profits for Moore.

2004-04-24T09:43:00.000-04:00

The Kerry Solution

John Kerry thinks that if he is elected he can solve the Iraq pacification problem by enlarging the coalition to include Old Europe. He probably can. But wait, there is more. Here is how he does it: the utter humiliation of George Bush and the America he stands for, an America that believes it is stronger, smarter, richer, tougher, freer, and morally superior. America needs to get down on its knees and beg forgiveness and admit that our wealth is exploitation, freedom is illusory, our morality is hypocracy, our toughness is the uncivilized brutality of the capital executioner, and our intelligence is naive self delusion. To proove we mean it we will of course have to submit to Kyoto, the world court, the UN etc.

2004-04-24T09:31:00.000-04:00

WORLD STAKES POKER
I was listening to IMus on Thursday morningdriving back from JFK airport. He had on one of the Time or Newsweek correspondents and they were discussing the conventional wisdom that Rumsfeld blew it going into Iraq with two few soldiers. The Rumsfeld small army doctrine replaced the Powell Doctrine of overwhelmong force from Gulf War I This led into a discussion of Rumsfeld as a weird unfathomable character reminiscent of Jack Nicholson. It dawned me that Rumsfeld is a great poker player and that is what you need in a Secretary of War. He is deliberately scary, unpredictable and unpenetrable and we are lucky he is on our side.

Look at it this way. After 911 we discovered we were playing in a high stakes game and we needed to weed out some of nthe other players. During the Clinton era, the US had taken a break from international activism and cut the size of the military. Bush thought he was playing a strong hand because the whole UN agreed that Saddam was threat because of his support of terrorism and his weapons of mass destruction programs. Clearly allowing states like Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and North Korea to shelter and feed terrorists for years was a mistake withy grave consequences. Bush thought that he had the UN with him and he knew he was going to have take more down than just the Taliban in Irak to let the world know that the US was no longer a paper tiger but a credible threat to those who would harbor our enemies.

America was skating on very thin ice. Economically we were on the ropes, facing the possibility of not just a recession but a great depression. To many the idea of the axis of evil sounded ludicrous, but think back to the 1930s. Germany, Italy Japan and the Soviet Union did not have all that much in common culturally , ethnically or idelogically. Together they though they could upset the worlld balance of power to their advantage. Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea together could start some real trouble and who is to say what side China and Russia would come in on if the outcome was in doubt. The whole Samuel Huntington was on the table.

The Free World had to make a stand, not just talk tough but back it up. Europe supported us in the tough talk, but when Sadam called our bluff, Old Europe folded and we were left with just the Brits primarily. All of a sudden our cards did not look so good any more, but we still had a winning hand and we had a big pot to protect so Rumsfeld had to play it out. The only play was the small army, because we do not have a big army. If we pulled the troops out of Saudia Arabia, S Korea, Germany, Kosovo etc we would invite an attack from the other axis of evil countries. Of course it would have been great to attack with the Powell Doctrine Big Army. We don't have one. We have a very good little army.We had a geat battle plan. Enough to win the hand.

We had to disband the Iraqi army. They were a big army that outnumbered us. Well fed and well equipped they could cause us some real problems, more problems than the guerilla remnant we are facing today.

2004-04-11T11:40:00.000-04:00

Lessons from the 911 Commission.

It is Vietnam Deja Vu all over gain as Yogi would say. We are back to the Nixon days. The Democrats trot out their heroes from their greatest triumph: Watergate Richard Benveniste harasses Condaleeza Rice. It was a long time ago, but wasn't the Church committee castrating the CIA inreaction to the Nixon administration using the intelligence agency to investigate Vietnam protestors like John Kerry and Jane Fonda. The bureacratic over reaction to prior overzealousness was the erection of a Chinese Wall which blinded us and allowed Al Queda to sneak past our defenses.

2004-04-11T11:31:00.000-04:00

The Furor is not over until the Black Lady sings:
Condaleeza Rice testifies.

2004-03-07T18:31:00.000-05:00

Martha Stewart Before the verdict came in I was rooting for acquittal. She is a scapegoat caught up in a political witchhunt fueled by class warfare. Since she was convicted I have had a change of heart. It is a good thing, although I think her son in law lawyer should have been prosecuted too. The verdict and hopefully the prison sentence will reverse a trend that started with OJ and then exploded with Whitewater, travelgate, Filegate, and all the other Clinton investigations up to and including the impeachment. Why bother to cop a plea when your top lawyer could orchestrate a consistent web of lies that would stymie any prosecutor, special or otherwise. No more.

2004-02-21T15:33:00.000-05:00

STOP TCPA
Some random browsing starting at TechTV led me to the STOP TCPA movement The program was news to me, but I worry that it could be one of these stealth attacks against individual liberty that take advantage of people's fears to implement what turns out to be irreversible tyranny.

2004-02-08T09:49:00.000-05:00

Sullum in Reason brings up more spending excesses.

2004-02-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

What happened to John Kasich? In Congress, along with Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman he was one of my heroes, one of the spending wranglers who along with their Democrat colleagues like John Penny and Fritz Hollings figured out how to control spending. Now Kasich is a nice, but unexciting cable host.

2004-02-08T08:58:00.000-05:00

Compassionate conservatism is a crock. The worst part, I suspect it is not just some Rove campaign slogan. I think Bush really means it. As Nietzsche says, the kindest butcher uses the sharpest knife. Bush's failures to veto spending and campaign finance reform manifest the "good intentions" that pave the road to hell.

2004-02-08T08:51:00.000-05:00

As a libertarian I vote for Republicans as the lessor of two evils when I think the outcome is in the balance between the Republicans and the Democrats,and it makes a difference. Time has shown Gore to have been the most learned fool in Washington . We have been well off without him.

2004-02-08T08:37:00.000-05:00

No veto no vote!