February Car Sales Numbers Out
And they are dismal. Not just the Big Three, but the Japanese car companies in America aren't much better. I was a little frustrated at the amount of criticism of the Big Three over the last few months, because it wasn't their cars that were the major problem. Yes, UAW's labor rates are part of the problem, but the biggest problem is that the economy is collapsing, and people just aren't buying cars--not even Japanese cars.
Cars and houses are among the major drivers of our economy. What causes people to buy cars and houses? Low interest rates (we've got that now), confidence that their job isn't going to go away, and money in their pocket. The best action that our government could have taken in response to this crisis would have been:
1. Allow the larger financial institutions to go under.
2. Reduce tax rates, especially in the lower brackets.
3. Reduce spending. That may seem difficult. No, it isn't. There are necessities; luxuries; and useless programs that no amount of budget surplus should fund. No farmer making more than $100,000 a year deserves any government support through the farm price support program. The National Endowment for the Arts? A luxury. The National Endowment for the Humanities? A luxury. The space program? A luxury. These are programs that, if the economy were in good shape, and we were running a budget surplus, we could discuss their merits. In some cases, there are existing programs operating that can't be shut off (some of the space probes currently out there). But in times of crisis, you cut off the luxuries, so that the economy can focus on necessities.
If the billionaires that funded Obama's campaign really wanted to do something to save the economy right now, and avoid the inevitable Republican takeover of Congress in 2010, they would take the money they are spending on fuel for their private jets, and start doing some income redistribution of their own. Every billionaire has at least $50 million a year in interest income (much of it exempt from income tax, unless they are very, very stupid). If they cut back their spending, they should be able to live on $5 million a year. (Yeah, I know, it'll be tough for them to do that.) With the remaining $45 million, each billionaire could buy 1500 $30,000 cars a year, and give them away to the masses, solving the car maker's short-term problems, and giving a lot of ordinary people a new car, with a warranty. A lot of those ordinary people could sell or give away their old heap--helping someone us down the food chain. (I'll take a new Corvette, please!)
If all the billionaires who backed Obama did this, they could easily move 150,000 cars off the lots, and get the economy moving again. There's only one little problem: that would require billionaires who funded Obama to get income redistributed upward to be willing to short-term redistribute income downward. Somehow, I don't think that's going to happen.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
CNN Actually Treated Gun Rights Like They Were Real!
CNN Actually Treated Gun Rights Like They Were Real!
See this video from CNN. They actually interview an expert pointing out that guns being used in Mexico aren't assault weapons. The reporter clearly discussed the difference between automatic weapons and the semiautomatics that Holder wants to ban. Lou Dobbs says that the Mexican government won't provide the serial numbers of guns supposedly smuggled in from the U.S.--which suggests that they were actually obtained from the Mexican Army.
See this video from CNN. They actually interview an expert pointing out that guns being used in Mexico aren't assault weapons. The reporter clearly discussed the difference between automatic weapons and the semiautomatics that Holder wants to ban. Lou Dobbs says that the Mexican government won't provide the serial numbers of guns supposedly smuggled in from the U.S.--which suggests that they were actually obtained from the Mexican Army.
Surprising Economic News
Surprising Economic News
From March 2, 2009 Reuters:
From the standpoint of stimulus, this is not so good. It means that whatever money Uncle Obama manages to drip into people's paychecks through reduce withholding is likely to end up squirreled away in savings. Good for individuals to have a rainy day fund; bad for the rest of the economy, which needs some spending.
On that same note, here's something quite disturbing. I found this link at a piece by Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy, and it should concern you a lot. It's the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's Adjusted Monetary Base graph. Take a look at what has been happening to the money supply in the last couple of years. You can't blame this on Obama; some of this started during the end of George "We had to destroy capitalism to save it" Bush, and the Federal Reserve Banks are supposed to be independent of whatever fool is running the government at the moment.
Zywicki points out the reason that this isn't showing up price inflation yet:
I don't know what's going on in the other districts, but I rather suspect something similar. I smell big inflation coming. That will (for a while) revive the economy, solve some of the housing crisis, and make some people think that they are better off, because there are more dollars in their pocket. But inflation of the money supply--especially this vigorous--has a bad habit of causing gross distortions in interest rates, in the economy, and eventually, you get the legacy of the Vietnam War during the Carter years: stagflation.
From March 2, 2009 Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. consumer spending rebounded in January, snapping six months of declines, and incomes rose unexpectedly, boosted by salary increases for government employees, a government report showed on Monday.Any increase in incomes at all is somewhat surprising and good news, even if much of that was because of government pay raises. But the more encouraging news (from a responsibility standpoint, if not from a stimulus point of view):But the gains in January are likely to be temporary as wages and salaries continue to fall amid a deepening recession.
The Commerce Department said spending rose 0.6 percent, the largest increase since May, after falling an unrevised 1 percent in December, and beating economists' expectations for a 0.4 percent advance.
...
The department attributed to rise in incomes to pay raises for federal civilian and military employees, as well as cost-of-living adjustments to several government transfer payments programs. It said excluding these factors, incomes increased by 0.2 percent in January.
From a responsibility standpoint, that is excellent news. It is the equivalent of the guy who wakes up hungover at 11:00 AM Saturday morning, in a strange apartment, trying to figure out why all he is wearing is a leopard skin loincloth (and he doesn't even own one), and swears off drinking. It may not last, but it's an improvement over previous misbehavior."There was a big increase in the savings rate to 5 percent. It is good that people save but it is not good that everybody saves at the same time. That makes the current downturn more severe and long lasting."
Savings jumped to an annual rate of $545.5 billion, the highest level since monthly records began in 1959. The saving rate surged to 5 percent in January, the biggest advance since March 1995, as households uncertain about the economy prefer to conserve their cash.
From the standpoint of stimulus, this is not so good. It means that whatever money Uncle Obama manages to drip into people's paychecks through reduce withholding is likely to end up squirreled away in savings. Good for individuals to have a rainy day fund; bad for the rest of the economy, which needs some spending.
On that same note, here's something quite disturbing. I found this link at a piece by Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy, and it should concern you a lot. It's the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's Adjusted Monetary Base graph. Take a look at what has been happening to the money supply in the last couple of years. You can't blame this on Obama; some of this started during the end of George "We had to destroy capitalism to save it" Bush, and the Federal Reserve Banks are supposed to be independent of whatever fool is running the government at the moment.
Zywicki points out the reason that this isn't showing up price inflation yet:
Presumably because the "velocity" of money has remained low--people and banks are hoarding money, rather than spending, borrowing, and lending it. Assuming velocity rises again, however, we may be looking at an inflationary spiral like we've never seen before in this country.Which fits with the record savings rate, slowing down the velocity of money.
I don't know what's going on in the other districts, but I rather suspect something similar. I smell big inflation coming. That will (for a while) revive the economy, solve some of the housing crisis, and make some people think that they are better off, because there are more dollars in their pocket. But inflation of the money supply--especially this vigorous--has a bad habit of causing gross distortions in interest rates, in the economy, and eventually, you get the legacy of the Vietnam War during the Carter years: stagflation.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
V is for Vendetta
V is for Vendetta
This is one of those movies that I briefly considered going to see when it came out, since I am a big fan of dystopian fiction, and it's nice to see totalitarian thugs lose. Part of what put me off was that some of the reviews tried very hard to make it sound as though it was about the evil that George Bush (the man with horns on his head) causes.
My guess is that the original "graphic novel" (as comic books with literary pretensions are now styled) was probably indeed ferociously hostile to American values--and that these were toned down substantially for the movie. If so, it could be one of those examples of a movie being better than the novel.
The essential problem of totalitarianism is about the very human desire for power and control. It doesn't matter if the justification is socialism (as in 1984), or religious and moral conformity (as in this film), or capitalism (which doesn't seem to yet have a dystopian novel of any note--for good reason).
Power attracts evil people, and it doesn't matter what the underlying justification is--the power to control and to hurt others is the real reason. Some ideologies are better suited to the will to power than others. Anyone with the desire to control others who hitched his star to libertarianism would qualify as too stupid to be dangerous! Socialism represents the obvious danger, as 1984 points out.
The justification of control by obscene wealth--plutocracy--is a bit less direct, but there's no question that if you are rich enough, you can control and destroy people. Hollywood is perhaps the best example of how obscene wealth does this. There's a reason that the casting couch and rape has long been a problem of the entertainment industry (for example, this charming example in Doe v. Capital Cities, 50 Cal.App.4th 1038, 58 Cal.Rptr.2d 122 (1996):
Anyway, in spite of the fact that the bad guy (played by John Hurt, who played the good guy in 1984's 1984) is ostensibly doing horrible things because he is some sort of devout Anglican (which seems almost oxymoronic), and that the victims seem to be disproportionately well-scrubbed and emotionally stable homosexuals, I still found it a powerful film. (In the next ten years, I can guarantee you that more homosexuals will be executed, tortured, and degraded by Islamic governments than governments in Christian nations will do in the next ten years--or have done in the last one hundred years.)
What I find rather bizarre is that the reviews of the movie that I read when it came out claimed that the graphic novel upon which it was based is apparently motivated by the Thatcher government, and in the movie, the bad guy is described as leading the Conservative Party--even though one brief clip shows that the winners of the election are actually a fascist party called Norsefire.
I confess to being confused why reviews implied that this was an attack on the Thatcher government. If I had to pick words to describe Thatcher's government, "religious" is not one of those words. And while Conservatives generally were not supportive of repealing the law against homosexuality, "Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality and voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion...." In reading the Wikipedia description of the novel, it appears that it was not primarily an attack on Thatcher at all, but is set in a post-nuclear Britain in which Conservatives lose the 1982 elections, and the Michael Foot-led Labour Party gives up nuclear weapons--with predictable results, leading to a post-war fascist government.
Anyway, it's a bit bloody (the hero uses edged weapons, throughout--this is Britain), but quite interesting.
UPDATE: A reader tells me:
This is one of those movies that I briefly considered going to see when it came out, since I am a big fan of dystopian fiction, and it's nice to see totalitarian thugs lose. Part of what put me off was that some of the reviews tried very hard to make it sound as though it was about the evil that George Bush (the man with horns on his head) causes.
My guess is that the original "graphic novel" (as comic books with literary pretensions are now styled) was probably indeed ferociously hostile to American values--and that these were toned down substantially for the movie. If so, it could be one of those examples of a movie being better than the novel.
The essential problem of totalitarianism is about the very human desire for power and control. It doesn't matter if the justification is socialism (as in 1984), or religious and moral conformity (as in this film), or capitalism (which doesn't seem to yet have a dystopian novel of any note--for good reason).
Power attracts evil people, and it doesn't matter what the underlying justification is--the power to control and to hurt others is the real reason. Some ideologies are better suited to the will to power than others. Anyone with the desire to control others who hitched his star to libertarianism would qualify as too stupid to be dangerous! Socialism represents the obvious danger, as 1984 points out.
The justification of control by obscene wealth--plutocracy--is a bit less direct, but there's no question that if you are rich enough, you can control and destroy people. Hollywood is perhaps the best example of how obscene wealth does this. There's a reason that the casting couch and rape has long been a problem of the entertainment industry (for example, this charming example in Doe v. Capital Cities, 50 Cal.App.4th 1038, 58 Cal.Rptr.2d 122 (1996):
An aspiring actor is first drugged and then gang-raped by a casting director and four other men one Sunday at the casting director's home. Can the actor successfully allege causes of action for sexual harassment and negligent hiring against the casting director's employers? The trial court ruled against the actor, sustaining a demurrer without leave to amend. On this appeal, we analyze the allegations in the actor's second amended complaint in light of pertinent statutory and decisional law and conclude that he has adequately pled a cause of action for sexual harassment but that the allegations for negligent hiring are insufficient as a matter of law.Or this suit:
Could the men in the Capital Cities suit not have found a young man willing to have sex with them? Of course. Can casting directors find pretty young women for sex, without having to mix it up with business? Of course. But in both cases, the objective is power--to use wealth and influence to control actors and actresses, and degrade them. It's more subtle than monsters like Nicu Ceausescu and Saddam Hussein's boys, but it is still fundamentally about the desire to hurt people.Dede Harris, one of the most famous producers in New York, has been landed with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit after half the cast of her latest play walked out.
Harris, the award-winning producer of such previous hits as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Hairspray, has been sued for $5m by the partners of her venture Dog Sees God, a satire on the Charlie Brown comic strip Peanuts. Legal papers filed with a Manhattan court claim her conduct has resulted in cast members leaving the show.
The lawsuit claims Harris is 'sexually obsessive and compulsive and is unable to refrain from sexually harassing cast members of productions with which she is affiliated'. It alleges that Harris asked one female cast member to 'feel her up', groped another's breast in a bar and made sexual advances on several other men and women. It describes a game of 'truth of dare' played with the cast in which Harris asked some of the male actors to touch her.
The scandal over Harris's alleged behaviour certainly marks a new shift in a profession notorious for the the sexual abuse of young actresses - usually it is ageing male directors who are accused of promising parts in return for sexual favours to young starlets.
Anyway, in spite of the fact that the bad guy (played by John Hurt, who played the good guy in 1984's 1984) is ostensibly doing horrible things because he is some sort of devout Anglican (which seems almost oxymoronic), and that the victims seem to be disproportionately well-scrubbed and emotionally stable homosexuals, I still found it a powerful film. (In the next ten years, I can guarantee you that more homosexuals will be executed, tortured, and degraded by Islamic governments than governments in Christian nations will do in the next ten years--or have done in the last one hundred years.)
What I find rather bizarre is that the reviews of the movie that I read when it came out claimed that the graphic novel upon which it was based is apparently motivated by the Thatcher government, and in the movie, the bad guy is described as leading the Conservative Party--even though one brief clip shows that the winners of the election are actually a fascist party called Norsefire.
I confess to being confused why reviews implied that this was an attack on the Thatcher government. If I had to pick words to describe Thatcher's government, "religious" is not one of those words. And while Conservatives generally were not supportive of repealing the law against homosexuality, "Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality and voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion...." In reading the Wikipedia description of the novel, it appears that it was not primarily an attack on Thatcher at all, but is set in a post-nuclear Britain in which Conservatives lose the 1982 elections, and the Michael Foot-led Labour Party gives up nuclear weapons--with predictable results, leading to a post-war fascist government.
Anyway, it's a bit bloody (the hero uses edged weapons, throughout--this is Britain), but quite interesting.
UPDATE: A reader tells me:
I wish I could remember where I read this, but I remember an interview (or maybe just something that mentioned an interview) about the original book in which Moore said he set the story in a totalitarian version of a Thatcher government basically because there was a conservative government in power at the time. He said had there been a Labour government when he wrote it, the book would have reflected that--basically demonstrating the universality (not quite the word I'm looking for) of the totalitarian impulse that you mention in your post.Considering when it came out, I'm not surprised that the film makers might have missed that universality.
Wildlife
Wildlife
My wife and I met with the Idaho coordinator for the Second Amendment Sisters and her husband yesterday. They live a few miles from us--and tell us that they regularly see both wolves and mountain lions around their place--and they actually live closer to town than we do. On one occasion, a mountain lion was trying to get in through the slider because it saw their dogs--and considered the dogs to be an inviting snack.
My wife and I met with the Idaho coordinator for the Second Amendment Sisters and her husband yesterday. They live a few miles from us--and tell us that they regularly see both wolves and mountain lions around their place--and they actually live closer to town than we do. On one occasion, a mountain lion was trying to get in through the slider because it saw their dogs--and considered the dogs to be an inviting snack.
Imagine If Bush Had Picked This Bunch
Imagine If Bush Had Picked This Bunch
From the February 27, 2009 Australian Herald Sun:
From the February 27, 2009 Australian Herald Sun:
But how loudly would the people who cheer Obama have screamed if Bush had, for instance, surrounded himself with this extraordinarily long list of spivs and chiselers?I don't have any illusions that Bush surrounded himself with wonderful people. But the hypocrisy of Obama claiming that he was going to change the way things work in Washington--while surrounding himself with a bunch of sleazy crooks like this--just infuriates it.
There's Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader whom Obama picked as Health secretary, but was forced to quit for having failed to pay more than $150,000 in taxes - and for pulling a mysterious $1.5 million a year as an influence-peddler to a law firm.
Nancy Killefer, Obama's choice as the government's chief performance officer, also had to quit, having failed to pay unemployment taxes for her household help.
Timothy Geithner, on the other hand, still got appointed Treasury secretary despite having also failed to pay taxes - more than $60,000 in his case. Hilda Solis likewise survived, becoming Labor secretary even though her husband owed $10,000 in taxes.
Hmm. What is it about Big Government Democrats that they so hate paying the taxes they impose on others? And we haven't finished with that list, either.
Obama's first choice as Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, had to quit to fight grand jury charges of selling favors.
His second choice, Republican Judd Gregg, then walked out saying he couldn't accept Obama's $1.2 trillion stimulus package.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was sacked for trying to sell Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bigger.
And now helping Obama run the economy are two powerful Democratic Congressmen he's inherited from his party - Charlie Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing House ways and means Committee, who failed to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from his luxury Caribbean villa, and Chris Dodd, who as chair of the Senate banking committee received $200,000 in donations from the now collapsed Fannie Mae, plus sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, another business he was supposed to be regulating.
Think Differently: The Police Will Contact You
Think Differently: The Police Will Contact You
You doubtless heard of the incident where a student was supposed to give a oral presentation on an important topic--and the professor stopped him part way through because he was arguing for "one man, one woman" marriage laws, called him a "fascist bastard" and otherwise behaved inappropriately. Here's an example of academic support for freedom of thought that makes that pale in comparison. From Central Connecticut State University's student newspaper, The Recorder, February 24, 2009:
There are days that I think that defunding most of the squishy subjects (English, History, Psychology, Art, Ethnic Studies) in state colleges wouldn't be any great loss.
UPDATE: It is conceivable that this student said something that was genuinely scary, or that indicated that he was engaged in a violation of law (perhaps carrying concealed on campus)--but it seems pretty odd that the professor wouldn't defend her call to the police department by mentioning this.
You doubtless heard of the incident where a student was supposed to give a oral presentation on an important topic--and the professor stopped him part way through because he was arguing for "one man, one woman" marriage laws, called him a "fascist bastard" and otherwise behaved inappropriately. Here's an example of academic support for freedom of thought that makes that pale in comparison. From Central Connecticut State University's student newspaper, The Recorder, February 24, 2009:
Nope. Not now that the left is in charge. Imagine if, in 1970, a student had given a presentation in a class in support of homosexual marriage. Would even the most conservative professor have called the police, so that they could interrogate the student about his sexual preferences? What calls itself liberalism today is really fascism.For CCSU student John Wahlberg, a class presentation on campus violence turned into a confrontation with the campus police due to a complaint by the professor.
On October 3, 2008, Wahlberg and two other classmates prepared to give an oral presentation for a Communication 140 class that was required to discuss a “relevant issue in the media”. Wahlberg and his group chose to discuss school violence due to recent events such as the Virginia Tech shootings that occurred in 2007.
Shortly after his professor, Paula Anderson, filed a complaint with the CCSU Police against her student. During the presentation Wahlberg made the point that if students were permitted to conceal carry guns on campus, the violence could have been stopped earlier in many of these cases. He also touched on the controversial idea of free gun zones on college campuses.
That night at work, Wahlberg received a message stating that the campus police “requested his presence”. Upon entering the police station, the officers began to list off firearms that were registered under his name, and questioned him about where he kept them.
They told Wahlberg that they had received a complaint from his professor that his presentation was making students feel “scared and uncomfortable”.
...
Professor Anderson refused to comment directly on the situation and deferred further comment.
“It is also my responsibility as a teacher to protect the well being of our students, and the campus community at all times,” she wrote in a statement submitted to The Recorder. “As such, when deemed necessary because of any perceived risks, I seek guidance and consultation from the Chair of my Department, the Dean and any relevant University officials.”
...
“If you can’t talk about the Second Amendment, what happened to the First Amendment?” asked Sara Adler, president of the Riflery and Marksmanship club on campus. “After all, a university campus is a place for the free and open exchange of ideas.”
There are days that I think that defunding most of the squishy subjects (English, History, Psychology, Art, Ethnic Studies) in state colleges wouldn't be any great loss.
UPDATE: It is conceivable that this student said something that was genuinely scary, or that indicated that he was engaged in a violation of law (perhaps carrying concealed on campus)--but it seems pretty odd that the professor wouldn't defend her call to the police department by mentioning this.
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