Benghazi - What a Non Issue !

Leave it to the G.O.P. to make hay of an issue that means nothing.  The Facts About Benghazi are murky at best and is an example of the Obama administration's misguided attempt to make something out of chaos.  If Republicans, on the other hand, think that an ambassador requires five black Chevy Suburbans with a Blackwater team in support of their every move, then I suggest they fund their ad budgets to the maximum with that startlingly great vote getting issue.

I hate those names for legislation that are the exact reverse of what they state

The Patriot Act's name is one of the most egregious distortions of a law's true purpose.  "Laws deserve More" by Adam Liptak is a refreshing find in the New York Times.

Bully Politician

David Firestone's editorial perfectly captures my antipathy for Chris Christie.  He is an authoritarian. It's a form of the Benito Mussolini syndrome.

How to overhaul the Gas Tax

Michael Webber's editorial doesn't consider waste generated by the complexity of a tax.  The gasoline tax is efficient in it's collection. In other words, not much bureaucratic effort is required to collect it.  A tax that is complicated to figure out and requires an agency to managed it can double the cost and and halved the benefit sought by it's implementation.

I am the Master of my Fate

Posted for my benefit

John Boehner's Betrayal

That title has to be the New York Time's contribution to Jenny Beth Martin's, cofounder of Tea Party Patriots, editorial, but it is accurate. I love to see the G.O.P. so divided. Bonehead on one side decrying divisive self aggrandizing and interested groups that keep the Republican tent impossibly small while Jenny complain's of mainstream politicians lack of purity of essence. You go girl, keep on making the Stupid Old Party even stupider! Make sure those authoritarian single interest groups get all the money they can so as to offend the maximum number of voters on any Republican ticket.  

Dear President of China

Having just read Thomas Friedman's letter to the President of China, I can't help thinking of Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest, The Bully Pulpit and The Golden Age of Journalism, where the story of McLures magazine and their muckraking team of reporters was told.  I read other books on Teddy Roosevelt, but never one that so clearly delineated the outside force that well documented and reasoned journalism can provide to a country ossifying into its camps of privileged and not so privileged. It appears that we as a country have a way of regenerating.  China has had a huge growth spurt to the front ranks by picking the low hanging fruit of commerce.  It is now in a new leg where intelligent allocation of resources is required.  It requires a free press, certainly one that documents and reasons well enough to expose crony capitalism.  By shutting out this outside force, China's economic bloom will be short lived.

  

An Imperfect Union

Ari Shavit makes clear in My Promised Land that Israel was born with a flaw that it chose to ignore much as our forefathers did while forming our union. The contradiction of Israel is that a people that suffered discrimination, pogroms and the ultimately the holocaust finds itself doing the very same to another, those who inhabited Palestine. It's a contradiction that poisons they very soul of those who can't help but see Gestapo tactics keeping down persons considered inconvenient. If only they would go away and not remind Israelis of their crime against humanity. But no they won't so that a country imperfectly formed of democratic ideals has to fight with it's demons of Hitler Germany. This conflict with principals and actions is not sustainable, just as slavery was not in the United States. But does Israel require a civil war too horrible to think of to resolve this existential flaw?

From Shavit’s book it appears the original Zionist desired a land where Jews were welcome, a homeland for a people who had none. The original Kibbutzes were messianic yet surprising secular in their determination to make a land hospitable and ultimately prosperous. Palestinian neighbors watched in awe at the transformation that these foreigners wrought and a harmony between people developed through commerce. This harmony was tested by those who let jealousy and fear overtake them so that people were murdered and maimed unjustly. These injustices then hardened both sides so that more injustices were committed culminating in the United Nations declaring that Palestine be separate. This decree gave the Jews the opportunity to practice the Pogrom of driving Palestinians out of their homeland to create a Jewish State.

Shavit's describes a summer as a reservist guarding a Palestinian prisoner of war camp. A camp where fellow soldiers would make midnight raids into the ghetto and gather up suspects given up by acquaintances tortured by their comrades the day before. This trauma inflicted on the conscience of good people brutalizes their sacrifice. Who is the enemy? The enemy is us! Yet as sensitive as Shavit is to this debilitating truth he seems as unable as his brethren to see the way out.

An eye for eye is the rough justice of biblical times which is an unfortunate heritage of the middle east. Possibly the Gospel lesson of turning the other cheek would be more helpful. For a people fleeing one horror to create another is a mortal sin because they understand the sin best. The solution is Jesus like as taken from the Lord's (Christian) prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Israel requires a Mandela to convert it to a secular multicultural state. A leader who would compensate every encroaching settlement in Gaza with a re-settlement of Palestinians in the their ancestral villages. The ruins of Hulda, a Palestinian village mentioned in Shavit's book, would be a good start. Along with property a nascent commerce would begin a process of justice based on harmony and not racism but transforming attitudes on both side formed by years of injustice will take time and forgiveness. We in the United States know it better than any other country as we still try to resolve the racism that slavery engendered.

Israel's current two state solution does not alter the antipathy of both sides and the onward march toward Armageddon. Only the formation of successful and prosperous Palestinian re-settlements heals the soul sufficiently for Israel to ask for forgiveness. And it's only with the respect to ask for forgiveness that can throttle back the antipathy of both sides to a point where enemies become friendly, if not friends. A Middle Eastern truism is the friend of my friend is my friend, and the enemy of my friend is my enemy. It's the truism required to diffuse the bomb that is Palestine.

The Republican Divide

Recent articles in The New York Times describe a divide between establishment versus Tea Party party elements in the Republican party. The pro-business group have money and the populist have heart. Apparently the more exclusionary, through gerrymandering and restrictive voter registration, the local elections the greater the influence of the morally indignant so that the conflict encountered by business interests can be greater among it's own evangelical members than with Democrats! This conflict is an existential threat to the G.O.P

Can it really be that bad for the Republican Party? Yes, because the seed taking root has a prejudice insulting away recent immigrants, no matter how conservative and traditional they tend to be. This demographic loss is already apparent in California and it leads to Texas becoming a Democrat stronghold again by 2020. With Texas gone the rest of the west will follow. Congress will have a Democrat majority within this decade. Okay, but once thoroughly in the tank a party has a tendency to reform itself and comeback. True, but Republican's can not square this Authoritarian - Libertarian divide.

The problem of misunderstood values and message is one suffered by both parties because of the current left right political shorthand. The left is a government is the solution ideology combined with a forgiving moral attitude versus the right's distrust of government combined with a strict moral message. If the construct were an Authoritarian versus Libertarian, then one would conclude that both Democrats and Republicans are authoritarian, with Republicans more so and conflicted. Conflicted because a free market less government ideology is libertarian and enforcing strict moral values is stridently authoritarian. It's a difficult pill to swallow. One not easily ignored by pro business types who play along with the evangelical populists thinking what is the harm until it hurts business so that they have to spend huge money to fight for a reasonable candidate, such as in a recent Republican primary in Alabama.

The Democrat advantage in this Authoritarian – Libertarian political spectrum is that they are consistent. The radical right's depiction of Obama as a socialist traitor deliberately trashing the country is just name calling to a progressive liberal well to the right of his party's standard bearer, FDR. Republican's, on the other hand, are forever declared Rhinos, Republican in name only, because there isn't a way to square a small government with a large military industrial complex. Nor a giant intruding, jailing and life wrecking machine that is our drug enforcement regime. Finally it is difficult to square the free flow of labor and capital with restrictive immigration laws. The conflict must be acute among those who understand that making a good illegal creates scarcity which then incentivizes criminal behavior versus the simple minded instinct to prohibit by law, better yet by constitutional amendment.

 The threat to the Republican party comes from the contraction of red states to the lower center right, excepting Florida, region best described as poor and stagnant. In the vacuum of the blue states a Libertarian party may take hold where it would be embarrassing for those not caring for Democrat hand holding to join those that insist that creation theory is scientific. Congressman Ron Paul's quixotic run for the Republican nomination showed that an old man could garner energetic youthful support. Possibly big university towns would be the seedling grounds of Libertarians. An alternative party such as Green is authoritarian and therefore susceptible to be co-opted by Democrats in such environment. Libertarians on the other hand have an open field. Also they could be cooperative rather than belligerent with progressive legislators in state and federal capitals with the following Pac Man proposition. Support for a new legislative proposal is given if the proponent would just write in the elimination of ten older useless laws and regulations. 

Can a Photographer Reject Gay Couple's Request?

Weighing Free Speech in Refusal to Photograph Lesbian Couple’s Ceremony is an issue I can't understand how the ACLU came to file in support of the couple.  Why would anyone hire an artist that was not sympathetic with their union and ceremony?

For a nonviolent offense, grotesque punishment

Mandatory sentencing is such a sledge hammer against justice and humanity as Nicholas Kristof editorial  "Serving Life for This?" in The New York Times describes it.  A pox on Authoritarians and their simple minded solutions that don't allow a judge to be a judge.

The Straits of Hormuz Premium

As Tensions Fall in Iran, so Do Costs of Gasoline in today's New York Times underscores the costs of belligerence and countering with hawkishness. There is no end to the benefits that this past Summer's hesitancy by the administration in entering the Syrian conflict has brought about.  Consider what the situation would be like if we had gone in as Senator McCain suggested?  More killing and conflict.  Chemical weapons out of control and Iran fully defending a client state and not negotiating a nuclear treaty.

Kill the USDA

Billionaires Received U. S. Farm Subsidies reported in today's New York Times.  Enough said until I remembered my Cato Handbook for policymakers and six reasons to repeal Farm Subsidies.

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

Todays No Morsel Too Minuscule for All Consuming N.S.A.  in the New York Times shows a build it because we can attitude gone wild.  If we are to believe the powers of six degrees of separation then this collection of  meta data ensnares every friend of a friend in any crime. I propose that since this information gathering is for our protection and not our prosecution that it be considered as Fruit of the Poisonous Tree in a legal defense. Every judge before issuing a warrant must ask and be assured in writing that the origin of the suspicion is not from this data.  In court an investigation tainted with this information can be summarily dismissed. Make the FBI and other law enforcement find anything originating from the NSA so poisonous that it destroys otherwise solid cases.

In Alabama Race, a Test of Business Efforts to Derail Tea Party

Republicans got the children all worked up and now it's time to reign them in. Good luck with that.

Obama may Ban Spying on Heads of Allied States

That has to be the most ludicrous headline I have ever seen in the New York Times as if any foreign state does not already protect it's communications as capably as a sophisticated terrorist group.  My particular laugh is over the NSA's hue and cry that Snowden let out state secrets on spy-craft that isn't already assumed as in effect by the opposition. Apparently Senator Diane Feinstein is the only person on Earth who did not know or assume it was and is going on.

November 15 comment

Last night we watched the third Bourne movie and my jaw dropped as a reporter from the Guardian in London of all newspapers is tracked down and assassinated by a CIA goon squad.  Snowden's revelations are proving Hollywood worst scenarios to be absolutely correct.  You want the scarier version?  Maybe what Hollywood dreams give the NSA the idea.  Like hey! Why can't we do that?

Citizen Activists

Historian Peter Dreir's interview with Bill Moyers "Saving Democracy is up to Citizen Activists" illustrates how important it is to ignore federalism and act locally.  I think the town of Richmond, California is brilliant in taking a local action by declaring eminent domain on the financially underwater properties in its jurisdiction to then resell back to the previous owner's at a fair current market value. On the other hand a citizen's action against global warming is just a waste of time that can be ignored by the big interests, Richmond's action can't be.  I am rooting for them big time.  

Steve Jobs

Saw the movie and was intrigued enough to pick up Walter Isaacson's biography, which I just finished while reading headlines about the horrible roll out of the Obama-care national health exchange. What I took from Job's is that to build really good product you need a directed mercurial personality that would be difficult to tolerate in government. Statements by President Obama and Secretary of Health Sibelius' staff that “failure is not acceptable” does not make a good piece of software appear out of committee. It's tough for the Commander and Chief who is used to answer a command question with “make it so” to understand that a complicated solution may not be one at all.

The Political Landscape

After the Republican fiasco of the government shutdown and treasury limit to borrow, it is wonderful to see the more strident Tea Party supporters acting even more strident.  The right wing Authoritarians will  concentrate in smaller and smaller areas losing the young, the female and the Latino.  Inexorably the last Republican stronghold will center around a converted missile silo turned into underground bunker somewhere in Kansas.

In the meantime it is a good time to dig in and prepare Libertarian roots right here in New England, where established Democrats should encourage us since all we do is split the vote of independents and marginalized Republicans.  I hope Bill Russell well in his Norwich Connecticut Mayoral race and lets see if we can do more next year and the next so that we blow some embers into a fire that burns Stupid Old Party out of existence.

Bill Russell for Mayor of Norwich CT

I get a direct mail fund raising request from the libertarian candidate for the Mayor of Norwich Connectticut.  I send in a $100 contribution because I support the Libertarian Party taking over the New England states from the irrelevant G.O.P.  You would of thought I was one of the Koch brothers when getting certified mail asking for me to authenticate my contribution had nothing to do with lobbying for town business.  Poor Bill Russell apparently has to deal with a 25% administration fee on every dollar collected for his mayoral race.  As a libertarian for small government and less regulation I have a problem with that.

The Republican party is so toxic in Connecticut that I doubt they can survive. Consider, for example, if  a moderate Connecticut Republican, Andrew Roraback, who I was rooting for in last year's election; had won against his Democrat opponent, Elizabeth Esty.  Imagine his position in this month's histrionics trying to defend the indefensible, the out of control Ted Cruz Tea Party. I have to believe Roraback is greatly relieved for not having been elected. He strikes me as an excellent person, but his party was hijacked by wackos.

Ted, keep up the Good Work.

Ted is hoisting the Tea Party and ergo the S.O.P. by it's own petard. According to Republicans Using Shutdown to Stake Positions for Potential 2016 Bids article in today's New York Times any slightly moderate inclination from Senator Marco Rubio or Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana ( He isn't allowed to call the Republican Party the "Stupid Party." Apparently I am not the originator of this designation ) suffers big push back from conservatives.

Complacency on Wall Street

Jesse Eisinger's ProPublica article in today's New York Times concurs with my observation as I explained today to my mother's stock broker that we would like to increase her cash holdings and thereby decrease her securities portfolio of  stocks and bonds.  The broker's response was that I am  reading too much New York Times and not what I should be reading, The Wall Street Journal.  Is it possible that Wall Street is plugged into the same Murdoch / Fox news closed end loop that so ably served the S.O.P. in the 2012 elections?
Tracing the Calendar Down to the Last Cent is the article in today's New York Times that shows The U. S. Treasury ran out of authority last spring and has been working with smoke and mirrors ever since! I think we have crossed the line where a delay or any other sort of solution is possible. Treasury Secretary Lew makes a good case that the 14th Amendment option, whereby the The President unilaterally raises the limit, will not work. And I don't see how there is enough time for  Obama to capitulate  and have that lengthy discussion that Boehner is asking for when Bonehead doesn't have and end game which he can get his caucus to agree to.

Many in G.O.P. Offer Theory: Default Wouldn’t Be That Bad

The S.O.P. has got it real bad when considering what I read in the front page of today's New York Times.  Don't get me wrong.  I am in favor of less government, balanced budgets and low efficient taxing, but Stephen Colbert's popping the balloon economy with Sarah Palin's pin prick is an apt analogy.  The economy is a house of cards built on credit and trust where reckless behavior can cause us to literally lose our economic house.  Or we can choose to settle down and remodel while we still retain shelter.
 

As an Investor I am voting with my feet

Watching the Sunday talk shows it is apparent that there is a risk of a default.  As an investor I have to take some chips off the table.

October 8 -  Yesterday sold off 1/3rd my position at near year high.  Other investors seem very complacent, as if there is nothing to worry about. Apparently the financial class believes the gibberish that Bonehead Boehner is spouting.

October 10 - My positions that I sold on Monday are all higher today than at what I sold at.  What Complacency on the part of the investor class!

Obamacare

As a Libertarian I should be against Obamacare and I would be if it were not for the Stupid Old Party making it their cause celebre. So in that frame of mind I am supporting it's enactment and hope to shape it's direction in the future.  I recognize that medicine as presently organized is not an economic good that works under Adam Smith's free market construct.  Some things are truly wrong in the system and stupidity is not the answer.  

Chile's President Sebastián Piñera

Just saw him on Charlie Rose last night.  What a magnificent leader of a country! And what a country Chile must be to consistently elect pragmatic intelligent leaders on both sides of the aisle that are above personality and all about intelligent economic growth.  As I have blogged before the Pinochet dictatorship was a horror except for its full embrace of the Chicago boys economic re-modeling.   Now I am envious.

Farm Bill

The farm bill mixes right wing Republican's representing farming constituencies and left wing Democrats with urban food stamp recipients. Now understand I would like the Department of Agriculture plowed under and both farm aid and food stamps eliminated, but I am not stupid nor heartless enough to suggest the that rich farmers keep getting their aid and the poor be cut off their food stamps like many delirious S.O.P wackos are currently suggesting.  The Democrats ought to play hard ball with this and work on seriously defunding the farm states of their Republican bias.  First step is to eliminate the ethanol subsidy.  When was the last time a corn growing  agriculture state voted Democrat?

Charlie Dent Rep PA's 15th District

Just saw him interviewed on PBS Nightly News.  What a nice reasonable Republican. Democrats need to target him and his constituency for 2014 with a Charlie is a good man but how can you vote for his lunatic party? The DNC has an opportunity in the 2014 Congressional elections by methodically targeting decent Republicans who can't vote their conscience.

BBC World News in our dirty Laundry

Tuesday morning with right and left wing pundits debating the government shut down on BBC World News,  the moderator had to ask, "Do you two know what you sound like to the rest of the world?" From my perspective the government shutdown is insignificant, but the looming default is big. The shouting is getting worse and the World is in our dirty laundry smelling the idiocy. The irony is that the party of the financial and managerial class is the one to be hijacked by the crazies wreaking havoc on the dollar and the stock market.

G. O. P. ? No S. O. P. - Stupid Old Party

I am a registered Libertarian.  Pollsters would label me an independent.  According to Tom Friedman's editorial today we are going to hell in a hand basket because the stupid people are in charge.  I agree about the stupid but I am optimistic because no matter how much gerrymandering, advertising to stupid people and fat blubbering punditry goes on the S. O. P. is going to lose independents in droves.  So it's darkest before the dawn and Republicans are going the way of the Whig party.

Democrats ought to target moderate Republicans with the message to their constituency that they can't be trusted because the party has been hijacked by the crazies.  For example Eric Cantor, Republican Majority Leader from Virginia's 7th congressional district bordering the Washington beltway, must have enough independents in that gerrymandered district that are tired enough to take out a bright articulate spokesman speaking with forced stupidity. On the other hand looking at a map of Speaker Boehner's 8th district in Ohio I get the impression that it not a good target of opportunity for independents to kick him out.

Neoconservative Bombast

After reading the “Shadow Commander” by Dexter Filkins in this week's New Yorker I felt compelled to write a letter to “The Economist” accusing them of Neoconservative Bombast with their call for American intervention the Middle East. The possible quagmire of the U.S. in Syria becomes all the more startling when Filkins exposes what an implacable foe Iran is and what an existential threat the fall of Damascus in considered to be for Tehran's influence in the region. Also I am pleased to see our frozen relations with Iran are thawing.

Correcting the Crackpot Next Door

ChuckKlosterman's little essay in the New York Times Magazine “The Ethicist” section naturally got me thinking about conservative crackpots be they Tea Party, Evangelical or just plain greedy, intolerant and angry old men who have a visceral belief that government spending is out of control and therefore it is right to hold Obama-care as hostage to the debt ceiling. Today's “Off theCharts” report of State Government spending by Floyd Norris puts that belief in question, but good luck getting that message out to those who choose to be willfully ignorant.

I have been much more optimistic about the so called anemic job creation of this current recovery because government, state government especially, has been reducing the head count considerably. The growth in employment is against this headwind which I consider very healthy as it means a reduction in the percent of government in the economy. I have been blogging about this less government good news for about a year now. “The proportion of civilian employees in each state in comparison to government jobs was 16 percent, the lowest figure since 2001” according to Norris's article so that the profligate “W” era has be erased. I don't agree with Obama-care, but it was enacted fair and square and so was the President. On the other hand this current Tea Party tantrum about the debt ceilng appears to be sour grapes.

Another interesting point in the report comes up about my fair State of Connecticut where we will be re-electing a Democrat Governor soon because the irrelevant Republican party will lead the charge against out of control State Government spending. Irrelevant because Norris's article shows that Connecticut has a 14.3 percent government to civilian employee rate, 8^th lowest in the nation! The irony is that eight out of the top ten bigger state governments are GOP wacko dominated.

Tough Law regarding something Law doesn't understand

Cyrus Vance, Manhattan District Attorney, released yesterday a 112 page report on white collar cyber crime.  I am not convinced that the report knows of what it talks about when it mentions the District Attorney's office is prosecuting Sergey Aleynikov, a former programmer at Goldman Sachs and the subject of a Michael Lewis article in Vanity Fair which convinces me, a big supporter of collaborative programming, that Vance doesn't understand open source.  The Federal court threw out the Aleynikov conviction for pretty much being stupid and it appears the same the 112 page report is tainted with  intellectual property grabbed from open source and then arbitrarily named as proprietary by Goldman Sachs accusatory legalese stupidity as well.

Rubin's baggage weighing the Administration down

William Cohan's opinion piece “Was this Whistle Blower Muzzled?” in today's New York Times brings a narrative that I have been pondering for some time regarding the Obama Administration and the formation of the Tea Party. Unlike FDR who was quick to lynch Wall Street, Barack Obama didn't, but should have. By protecting former Clinton Administration Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin's Citigroup an awful lot of misdeeds got swept under the rug which could have been used for show trials putting the blame where it belonged rather than as baggage weighing the administration down.

The Mayor of Crazy Town

With a debt crisis looming and an Energy Department that is a superfluous embarrassment  with no real constituency backing so that it would be easy to put up as a sacrificial lamb to save Obama care, so then why then double down with U. S. Revives Aid Program for Clean Energy ?  Now is not the time to be adding to the worst in government,  but eliminating it to further isolate the GOP crazies.

Iran has a Black and a White Hat

Iran Moves to Mend Ties with West article in the New York Times today shows two hats, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with the black hat and President Hassan Rouhani with a white one.  Why are we not listening and responding cordially to white hat? Isn't white hat's election an indication that the Iranian people are sick and tired of the tension generated by black hat?

George Will's Libertarian conversion

Well maybe not quite.  I do know that we started at the same place with Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative and then I got distracted. It' good to see him and the metamorphous he has undergone.   This hour long interview on Reason TV flew by. I wished there had been more.

Climate Alarm, too muted for some

The U. N. is about to publish a big climate change study and survey which some view as being not being alarming enough.

I am re-posting Matt Ridley's presentation that I found a year back at Reason TV that turn the assumptions of the poor result of global warming on the heads of the global warming alarmists.

Putin the Mediator

In a very well written editorial in today's New York Times, Russian Premier Vladimir Putin makes an extremely good point, which is to use the U. N.  From my perspective while I would be troubled if I believed that my neighbor was beating his wife and children,  I would never intervene unilaterally. I would call the police. And I would keep calling if necessary.

War is easy to get into but hard to get out of

I have to commend President Obama for considering that war is easy to get into but hard to get out of.  His going to Congress and now considering Russia advising it's client state to remove tactically useless weapons from the scene all come from a wariness of pulling the trigger.

Consider how Lyndon Johnson's legacy was destroyed by huffing and puffing a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress for a limited response to an unclear attack that morphs into a protracted war with fifty thousand American and untold Vietnamese dead for what we now consider a mistake.

Syria's Assad deconstructs Charlie Rose

al-Assad may not be likable, but he appears to be rational and realistic. I can't say the same for our side, Secretary of State Kerry in particular.

Media Research Center - What a FOX hole!

I just spotted an "I am Against Liberal Media Bias" bumper sticker that on a google search shows itself to be from Media Research Center. You go MRC. Keep on scamming the ignorant people.

As for bumper stickers, nothing beats "Give Peas a Chance"

On Syria Vote, Trust but Verify

Florida Democrat Representative Alan Grayson's editorial in today's New York Times hit's hard on classified information.  When I accuse the NSA of calling Diane Feinstein a dumb bitch it is because they are using her.  She relays everything the intelligence community wants us to believe and thereby gives it her blessing.  If I were in Representative Grayson's shoes I would resign from the House Foreign Affairs Committee and be free to declare what BS the CIA is delivering.

Syria - Barack! Please, stay cool man.

I am in complete agreement with President Obama's restraint on Syria.  I wish he hadn't set up the chemical warfare trip wire.  Secretary of State John Kerry's assertion that the odious Assad regime is responsible for this past weekend's hideous attack on civilians could be a chess move that only the gullible fall for.  I am prepared to put a high probability factor toward defecting army officers setting up the regime.  Think about who wins when the United States takes an action that is tantamount to a declaration of war.  I believe it is those wishing for chaos.  Barack!  Please, stay cool man.

September 1 Postscript

Obama Seeks Approval by Congress is the headline I wanted.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I wish these decisions for war were more often referred to the Congress as the Constitution declares it should be, none the less Barack you are a good man.  This rush to war has the feel of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August, and a time out to to consider an irreversible course toward death and despair is healthy and necessary.

Teach your Children Well

"I've given up on politics," Mr. Bottum said, as we sat on his wide porch after lunch.  "I'll vote Republican because I am a Republican.  But I don't believe a change in culture can come from politics. It can only come with re-enchantment with the world."

Bingo! This blog's point exactly.  Using politics to change culture is authoritarian and not persuasive. In order for the Republican Party to get off it's intolerant exclusionary suicide trip, it needs to back off legislating morals and concentrate on persuasion. Isn't that what Evangelicals do well?

Diane Feinstein is a NSA Mouthpiece

Reading today's "N.S.A. Said to Have Paid E-Mail Providers Millions" is just one in many instances where Senator Diane Feinstein is putting her reputation on the line for a rogue intelligence agency. How can she say that there has been roughly one instance per year where an agent has willfully broken surveillance rules? Really? It's not hard to imagine the NSA folks laughing at the credulity of the dumb bitch.

Grover Norquist on Immigration

Grover's recent Open Borders and Racist Immigration Policy interview at Freedom Fest by Reason TV shows him to be thoughtful, intelligent and Libertarian! Not surprisingly, it's a much better opinion of Grover than what I get from my daily read of the New York Times.

Egypt again

Thomas Friedman "Close to the Edge" editorial in the New York Times has got me thinking about dictators, good and bad. As a libertarian blogging about the merits of individual freedom and decrying the authoritarians who would take our liberty away, it is difficult to understand how there could be a distinction between good and bad dictators. True that all dictators are odious, but Pinochet of Chile is an example of the very best and Fidel Castro of Cuba of the very worst on the dictator scale for two reasons. First, one leaves voluntarily after losing a democratically held election which the other never holds and perpetuates his reign with nepotism. Second, one embraced economic freedom that brought prosperity to his country while the other took a path of slave labor to poverty and despair.

In an earlier blog I hoped for the possibility that the Military leaders of Egypt might see the path of economic freedom as a solution to the economic malaise that forever holds back a sustainable democracy. Their actions now, while odious, does not preclude them getting a good dictator result, though the courage and clarity of thought to eliminate subsides and deregulate the economy hasn't shown it self yet.

August 25th comment

Today's "Other Nations Offer a Lesson to Egypt's Military Leaders" in the New York Times uses Turkey and Pakistan as polar opposite results that can be expected. Why bother with using Pakistan as an alternative model when the Nasser through Mubarak version is the same?  I posit that Turkey's better result is from an economy that is relatively free of damaging subsidies and central control.  If the Egyptian Generals get a sense of "it's the economy, stupid," then Egypt's path will divert toward the Turkish model. Otherwise Egypt can look forward to continued poverty and despair.

Politicians do not create jobs

A political claim that x number of jobs were created because of a bill sponsored by the politico making the claim is the worst lie.  It's is such a turn off that anyone making such an argument: be they candidate, proxy, promoter or supporter, falls through the credibility gap and lands on a giant pile of excrement.
Sunday's Economic View by Robert Schiller in the New York Times "Why Innovation is Still Capitalism's Star" appreciates the government grants that got him thinking about his commercial venture, but his experience makes the point that a self financed start up that tests the market is the best bet.  My perspective is if a project can't get private financing, then the taxpayer funded proposition is sure to be a loser.

Kansas and Al Qaeda

Thomas Friedman's editorial in Sunday's New York Times describes Kansas mono agriculture and Muslim fundamentalist monoculture in the middle east as forces weakening the very systems they are promoting.  Much the same could be said about the GOP's  intolerant, anti-puralistic and anti-diversity monoculture direction.

Milton Friedman

I am a Milton Friedman Libertarian and not a von Mises Austrian School one. I am a supporter of Ben Bernanke's leadership of the Federal Reserve because it is a apparent the he read MIlton Friedman and Anna Schwartz's Monetary History of the United States.  He took careful note of the Fed's misguided Austrian School thinking during the Great Depression, which made it substantially worse than it needed to have been, and successfully steered a course toward moderate growth.

FED Chairman Alan Greenspan's tenure, on the other hand, was a disaster in spite of his Ayn Rand libertarian philosophical predilection because he forgot that free markets do not work as described by Adam Smith in a system spiraling toward concentration of economic power. The mix of government intervention and laissez faire economics is particularly noxious, and Alan presided over a witches brew that as a Libertarian I will not forgive.

Larry Summers is in the  same camp with Alan.  He promoted concentration by killing Glass Steagal and sided with rapacious Wall Street by brow beating down Brooksley Born on her attempt to regulate derivatives at the CTFC.  I am on record as of approving of two women in finance, one being the before mentioned Ms. Born as well as former FDIC chairperson Sheila Baird, so much so that I am prepared to support Janet Yellen, the current Vice Chairman of the FED, without really knowing too much about her.

Over Criminalization & over Federalization

According to this Cato video of Molly Gill the temptation to regulate at the federal level is too easy, thereby leaving us with a plethora of useless overlapping laws.  For example car jacking is a federal crime.  Most states never got around to making it a state crime since murder, abduction, assault, auto theft and a myriad of other felonies in every state's criminal code pretty well cover car jacking as a crime without need of another statute. It got enacted after a particularly egregious assault in Detroit drew enough publicity so that Congress enacted a Federal Law in 1992 to solve the problem.

Really?  According to Gill it is currently impossible to catalogue the laws currently on the books and they are impossible to find since they are so thoroughly scattered over a century's worth of Congressional records.  I would like to see a Grover Norquist type pledge developed for legislators, which I call the Pac Man pledge; where for every law enacted ten are eliminated.  I wouldn't mind a politician making a pack with the devil just as long as he eliminates ten laws.  If such a pledge were in force it would take decades before we got to a lean and workable criminal and civil code.

Egypt

It would be too much to hope for a Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore or an Ataturk of Turkey to come forward as the father of a post modern Egypt, but one is required.  Egypt needs to remove state subsidies for food and energy.  This requires the generals in charge to be authoritarian and just do it. Much like the authoritarian Pinochet  of Chile they should call in the Chicago Boys to develop a free market economy. The generals will have to have courage and allow the economy to de-centralise in a cronyism free manner. A five year gestation is required for Egypt to adapt to a subsidy free economy so that results will give strength to freely elected politicians to stay the course and never fall back on poisonous subsidies, a tool of dictators to placate the masses.

Snowden the Coward

The loss of Congressman Justin Amash's amendment to the House Defense appropriation's bill blocking the NSA's phone record program this past week is due to Edward Snowden's cowardice. Yes the intelligence community has pushed well beyond many limits set for it because that is what happens in a closed loop. A secret agency supervised by a secret court is certain to spin off into an extremity which we never intended it to go. Therefore I applaud Snowden for having exposed the intelligence gathering excesses and started a debate about the limits of what we will tolerate in the name of security. The problem is that his seeking asylum outside of the country. Instead he should be here in the U.S. going to trial and willing to endure punishment for pledges he broke and knew for which there would be existential consequences for himself.

Unfortunately his request for asylum from anti American authoritarian states has reduced the worth of his sacrifice to nothing by giving authoritarians the ability to call him a traitor and thereby cut off the debate.

Postscript - Aug 14

Today's Thomas Friedman editorial "Obama, Snowden & Putin" makes the same observation about Snowden really needing to come home and face the music.  The longer he hides under Putin's authoritarian skirts, the better he makes the NSA look.

Krugman

Yesterday's post had me quoting Paul Krugman on the GOP having lost it's moral compass.  My complaint about Krugman  is that he favors increased spending with no real direction with regard to the quality of the spending for enhancing the economy.  Not all spending is equal.  On the flip side not all tax cuts are equal.  To be dogmatic on either side is, well Paul you should be better than that.

Time for Class Warfare

The Republican Party is showing a selfishness reminiscent of Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake."  Paul Krugman's editorial  "Hunger Games, U.S.A." in today's New York Times decries the GOP's loss of it's soul with the recent passage in the House of a stripped down Agriculture bill where the gains are for the rich Ag combines and the shaft for recipients of Food Stamps.  I have always been for the elimination of farm subsidies, The Department of Agriculture and the Food Stamp program because it was contrary to a free market. But the mean spirited gall of favoring generously a few with public money (heads the rich win) while others are cast aside using the flip side of the same argument (tails the poor lose) is the warped machination of cronyism.

Sweden! Send us some of your Politicians, because ours Suck

This is a placard held up by Brazilian demonstrator protesting against Dilam Rousseff's administration. The protestor must be a reader of “The Economist” as well as a good example of the recent dissatisfaction experienced by Brazil's socialist government.

BrazilianPresident’s Attempts to Placate Protesters Backfire in today's New York Times shows a leader without direction, sense of economic limits nor capable of discerning value for expenditure. I may not agree with Scandinavian Socialists, but I do admire their insistence on receiving value for money.

 

Hitch 22

Christopher Hitchens memoir is fascinating reading brilliantly written. He peels away his conversion from English socialist to American neocon and I wonder how such a facile mind could have been so wrong on both counts?  It's enough make me believe in God.

Absolute Power Corrupts, Absolutely

Pardon the stale quote but it seems to me that Edward Snowden has done this country a service by putting the spot light on an agency gone wild. The NSA's hegemony on our 4^th amendment rights comes from a build it because we can attitude that is unconstrained because of secrecy. It's all trust and no verify with the Congress and public so that an awful lot of lines in the sand have been crossed.

I am optimistic when reading “Resume Shows Leaker Honed HackingSkills” in today's New York Times that the NSA has a problem with hacker talent that it may never resolve. That problem being the personality of a good hacker is rebellious and difficult to keep in a box.

Local Officials Lead Revolution to Make America

An essential element to Libertarianism is to bring decision making to as local a level as possible. I have blogged previously that the Amish are as about as an ideal example of a local self reliant community as there can be.

Watched PBS News Hour's interview with the authors of  The Metropolitan Revolution which appears to me to be an anti federalist love letter to local control and initiative.  If this is the result of Washington political deadlock and sequestration,  then I love it.  

The Metropolitan Revolution

Brazil's Salad Revolution

In the New York Times today I see a Brazilian was arrested for carrying vinegar to a demonstration so that now the current social uprising has morphed to the “Salad Revolution.” I recall reading in “The Economist” a special section on Brazil several years ago which made me leery of investing there in spite of it being one of the BRIC's (Brazil, Russia, India and China) which to my eye are all failing to deliver promised economic growth. Brazil's problem is the Italian one where all the heavy regulation starts with firms who have a certain number of employee or more, therefore company owners resist growing into a costly administrative size and keep much activity underground. The rule of law is less than desirable as well with a judiciary that delays and usually resolves nothing. Brazil has a lot of liberalizing to do.

FDA Over reach on Cheese

Evidently some cheese has too many microbes, bugs (mites actually) and general decay for the likes of the Food and Drug administration which won't be satisfied until the only cheese we are allowed to be offered are completely sanitary ersatz cheese food products.

It is my experience that the really tasty stuff is expensive, hard to get and really un-sanitary in a modern hygiene sense, but easily avoidable if you are allergic to it.

Mimolette Cheese on FDA Hold

Reason TV Version of the Mimolette Cheese FDA Imbroglio

"Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know"

Jason Brennan's presentation at Cato makes some very good points, for me principally it is that Scandinavian countries are measurably more libertarian than ours.  A free market capitalist country that has a well developed social welfare system is a not a contradiction in terms, especially if it can't abide crony capitalism. For example Sweden was hard hearted enough to let Saab motor company go bankrupt in spite of an illustrious history.  Their attitude is if it can't pay it's way what  good is it to society.

Libertarianism: What Everybody Needs to Know

Doing Bad by Doing Good

Christopher Coyne's book got me thinking about the deficiencies in all endeavors, not just humanitarian, that fail to use markets to allocate resources. One example is of Boston's Big Dig, which tripled it's initial cost estimate to over 20 Billion Dollars, as badly spent money because it was a poor allocation of scarce resources.  Massachusetts has the wealth to recover from this self inflicted shot in the foot but in spite of the GDP blip this boondoggle created no one could argue it was a good expenditure that provide more benefit then it cost. Our military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan are even worse examples of poor return for resource invested.

Paul Krugman's battle with the "Austerians" does not consider government's propensity to mis-allocate resources. For the good of all of us we need less government and more private spending.  The economy currently is handily overtaking government job losses with private job growth.  The sequester is a good thing.

How the NSA spies on Americians

Jm Harper's interview at Cato counters that initial feeling of what harm can it do and its for our protection, isn't it?

It makes me want to revisit a Will Smith movie "Enemy of the State" to get a feel a what an unelected bureaucrat could do to save his ass.

How the NSA Spies on Americans (Jim Harper)

Money can't buy an election

Jonathan Atler's the Center Holds is very comforting to my Libertarian sensibilities because it shows how ineffective money driven by authoritarians can be.   During the 2012 presidential election Republican's fed off a closed loop that questioned nothing while the Obama campaign's Chicago operation was a marketing juggernaut testing and classifying so efficiently it would have made Bain Capital envious.

Until the Republican's separate unquestioning faith as an individual, not federal, form of expression, I don't see much hope for the Grand Old Party.  

Marijuana, Hemp and Federalism (U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN))

Representative Cohen is impressive in this interview and is exactly how I like my politicians: Conservative in demeanor and thoughtful over a wide range of aspects on the issue.

Cato Institute You Tube presentation

Walking the Talk

"The Economist"magazine posed the question, "Can China's leaders revive the economy and reform at the same time?"  I believe that China has advanced as an authoritarian regime to near it's maximum by taking advantage of inexpensive and abundant labor.  Now having reached a level with labor more expensive and better educated the authoritarian grip will have to be relaxed or it gets in the way of  further growth.  This means that capital is allocated by markets, not cronies.  The rule of law and property rights need to settle in and take over from arbitrary rule so that investment can be confidently made.  And finally the free exchange of ideas is required to foster creativity.  All of these issues are an anathema to authoritarian regimes so I do not fear China as an economic power since their leaders will hold them back.

Japan The Model

Paul Krugman is beating the drums for his rear view perspective again, but this time using Japan as the exemplary job creating model.  Repeat after me Paul. "Politicians do not create jobs."

The Corporate Tax Dodge

Steven Rattner's plea for fairness when dealing with the likes of Apple's profits means greater collection costs and therefore less benefit to society by imposing them. The purpose of taxes is to fund government operations that benefit society which gets none from bigger tax bureaucracies overseeing arcane transfer pricing schemes that get out gunned by the superior legal and tax counsel utilized by corporations with means and incentives to avoid them. Successful corporations eventually distribute profits either through dividends or stock repurchases, so let them play their games and tax wages,  dividends and capital gains at one low simple level.        

Marijuana dealer moves to New York

Listening to NPR on the way home with a dealer in a disguised voice telling of his need to move to New York because there is no money in selling weed in California, where its semi  legal in the guise of medicinal prescriptions.

It's the authoritarian element of the Republican Party that keeps putting it at odds with the younger electorate. Just as the GOP's opposition to single sex marriage is a loser so is their opposition to the legalization of marijuana.   Young well educated voters understand the basic economics of shortage raising prices to levels where crime pays sufficiently to corrupt the crime stoppers.  Regulating and taxing the marijuana business is not a Libertarian nor Authoritarian ideal, but I would make the exception.  I doubt Republican's would on their side.

Good luck with that

While the IRS's focus on the Tea Party is inexcusable, it's not going to get the GOP any traction with the electorate. Obama has a favorable economic wind back on his back and, while Fox news is all wound up, it will be forgotten shortly.


For Tea Party Groups, Shades of 2010

Republicans are losing the Economic Argument

Today's front page New York Times "Budget Deficit Shrinks Faster Than Expected" is an indicator of a gentle economic wind on the back of the Obama administration that could put them in a position to promote "it's morning again" for the congressional 2014 campaign, as did the Reagan campaign of 1984.

The Clinton versus W. Bush years put a lie to a positive Republican stewardship of the economy where neocon interventionist threw us into a depressed decade similar to the seventies Viet Nam debacle.  The favorable current economic wind on Obama's back comes partly from the Iraq pull out in a manner very similar to the military wind down that Clinton enjoyed after the first Iraq war.  Other good news for the economy is popping up all over so that it's enough to make an Obama hating Republican cry.  The housing bubble is showing signs of of supply realigning with demand with real economic basis to current transactions.  The average age of autos has reached a level where there is real and profitable demand for replacement cars and trucks.  In spite of an Energy Department trying to kill hydrocarbons clean natural gas is gushing out in the U. S. where we will become energy independent shortly putting us and the world less at risk with middle eastern oil tyrants.

This economic trend puts the Republican party at risk of being stripped bare to its authoritarian bones. It's ugly when you decry the nanny state when you are a nanny saying no to immigration, same sex marriage and drugs.  On the other hand, I suspect the GOP truly can't abide free market capitalism in spite of all their protestations that they do. Crony capitalism is more their flavor.