Who Benefits?

Warming up to McCain again...

2006-12-22T09:23:00.000-08:00

Larry Kudlow sings McCain's praises in a blog entry today. I was surprised to find that I agree completely with Larry's Sentiment. Despite voting for McCain against Bush in the Republican Primary a few years ago, McCain has disappointed me on 2 key issues since then: First I hate his McCain-Fiengold Campaign "reform" bill, and secondly he voted against the Bush Tax cuts. Despite the fact that I like McCain, those 2 issues were deal-breakers for me. Times have changed though. With all of the defeatist sentiment going around, I've realized that the war against Sharia Islam (I believe the more politically-correct term is the "war on terror"...) is becoming a far more important issue to me, and I want a Republican Candidate who can win the general election and who will fight that war vigorously.

Francine Bugsby courts the illegal immigrant vote.

2006-06-04T10:20:00.000-07:00

But what's that you say? Illegal immigrant can't vote? Well here it is from the horses mouth. Powerline has audio of Francine Busby (Democratic running for the House of Represenatives in San Diego) telling an illegal allien that he doesn't need "papers for voting".

You gotta be kidding me....

2006-05-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

So the FBI catches Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) red-handed on videotape accepting a $100,000 bribe. They search his capital office and what does Speaker of the House Hastert (R-Illinois) do? Condemn the FBI and demand that they return the evidence they collected in the raid?!?! Unbelievable...I am so angry about this. The first thing that pops into my mind (other than a stream of profanity that would make the houseplants wither) is that obviously Hastert has something to hide. This makes no sense otherwise. He has nothing to gain politically from defending a Democrat who's guilt is undeniable at this point. This can only hurt him. I mean if Jefferson was a Republican, then we could at least attribute this to partisanship, and I would still be equally angry about this, but I wouldn't be as suspicious of Hastert himself. The only logical explanation is that Hastert is also guilty of a crime, or he knows Republicans who are.

Hopefully this doesn't hurt the Republican Party to much. As disgusted as I am with the Republican party, the security of this Nation just cannot be trusted to the Democrats right now, while they are pandering to their wacko base. Their is a revolt going on in the Republican Party. I predict that a lot of these scumbags will get kicked out of office in the primaries in the next few years (those who don't go to jail), but the Republican's have got to hang onto power while this process happens, because the Democrats simply cannot be trusted with National Security right now, not even for a little bit of time.

The UAE will make our ports MORE secure.

2006-03-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

I just think the idea that entrusting our ports to the UAE will make them less secure is ridiculous. If anything a UAE owned company can do far more to keep a port secure than any American company running the same port.

Let me use an example to illustrate how the UAE can make our ports more secure. Say an American company thinks an Arab employee is suspicious and would like to ask him some questions or perhaps run a background check on the guy. Say the background check or their questioning indicates that the guy may have been a member of the Taliban and been the best friend of a hijacker or something, and so although they have no proof that this guy himself may have terrorist sympathies, they decide to be on the safe side and fire the guy. Well of course the fired employee will get a lawyer and sue the company for violating his civil rights. He'll win millions of dollars against the company, and furthermore ensure that the company will never question or investigate any Arab man working for them again. An American company really can't do anything proactive to prevent suspicious people who otherwise haven't done anything wrong from working at the port. If the guy shows up for work with a green headscarf and a bomb belt strapped to his chest then maybe the American company will be able to file a grievence with the guy's union to begin termination hearings. That's about it.

Now say the UAE gets suspicious towards one of their citizens working at the port. They can begin their investigation by tapping all of the employee's families and friends' phone conversations, back in the UAE where there are no civil rights. Then they can recall him to the UAE, throw him in jail torture him for months, torture his family members, torture all of his aquiantances until they either find out he's not a terrorist or that he is. If they find any shred of evidence that the guy is even slightly sympathetic to terrorists they'll probbaly execute the guy and no one will ever know what happened to him. Furthermore, they'll probably bring the guy's foreman back to the UAE, and maybe his Foreman's boss as well. Then they'll probably execute the foreman as punishment for not identifying the terrorist working for him, and flog the foreman's boss to encourage greater vigilance in the future. Do you see now how there are can be security advantages to having cruel money-grubbing monarchs running American ports?

The sultans who run the UAE are interested in exactly one thing: Making themselves as rich as possible. They don't care about Jihaad. They care about money. The port deal will be a major investment for them. This is an investment that could potentially cost them a lot of money if there is another major terrorist attack in the United States. You can bet they will do everything they can to prevent terrorists from gaining access to any port that they manage. Furthermore, as Arabs themselves they will be more likely to recognize suspicious behavior among Arab and/or Muslum people be they UAE citizens or not around any port they manage.

NSA Wire Taps? yawn

2006-01-18T13:59:00.000-08:00

This editorial from the LA Times, which Instapundit recently linked to, really puts the NSA Wiretap "uproar" in perspective. I put the word "uproar" in quotes because the uproar is only amongst Democrats. Polling shows that Americans in general don't care about the issue one way or another. The problem with the Democrats is that they use so much hyperbole that I think people become numb to any issue they raise. No one believes their exagerations anymore. In this particular case, if you listen to say Al Gore's recent speeches on the matter, you'd think this was the worse violation of civil liberties in the history of our nation. (This coming from the former administration that brought you Echelon, the expansion of warrentless searches, and the Clipper chip.) That LA Times article shows us what real violations of civil liberties look like.

My understanding of the "controversial" NSA wire taps in question is that whenever the troops captured or killed a terrorist in Iraq or Afghanistan, and got ahold of his rolodex, the NSA was automatically wire-tapping every phone number in America that had called or been called by one of those numbers in the terrorist's rollodex. So we are supposed to be outraged that the NSA taps the phone lines of those people in communication with known foriegn terrorist colaborators? I mean wouldn't you kind of assume that this was done as a matter of course? The fact that special legal wranglings might be required to do this is what disturbs me most.

The problem with the left's hollering over such "civil liberties violations" is that it does make us numb. There are plenty of gross abuses of power by government out there, but I don't think they are occuring in the war on terror. If anything the government is to cautious in that arena because it knows it's being watched carefully there. The real abuses of power are being perpetuated in the war on drugs, the war on intellectual property piracy, and soon to be the war on blogs (in the form of bloggers who violate Mcain/Fiengold by making "in kind" political contributions whenever they write their opinion of a candidate.) , not to mention liberal city and states' war on gun ownership, and the public schools' war against Christianity. In these arenas the violations of civil liberties are often obvious and blatent, but maybe the noise drowns them out.

The Experiment Worked!

2005-10-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

My Dad told me a humourous story the other day. When my Dad was in grade school, Science education in America wasn't considered a priority. Apparently Science education was given about the same importance as Music and Art is now-a-days. It was tought as a subsection of English class apparently. They did a Science unit once a month or so. Then one day, Americans woke up with Sputnick beaming down radio signals over their heads and Science education became a priority almost over night as mass fear of losing the space race with Russia took hold in the U.S. The next year they had new science textbooks (separate from the English textbook) and science class regularily if not every day.

One day the lesson was that dark colors absorb more light than light colors. To test this hypothesis, the class did an experiment from their textbook. The textbook called for wrapping 2 jars with construction paper. The first jar was wrapped with white construction paper and the second with black construction paper. The jars were filled with water and left in the sun during recess. After recess, the temperatures were measured but the jar wrapped with black construction paper was actually colder. (The dark construction paper was probably actually shading the water more than the white construction paper, and since the paper was glued to the outside of the jars the paper did not have enough thermal contact with the water so it did not transfer much heat to the system.) So the teacher decided to repeat the experiment by leaving it out in the sun all afternoon, but when she measured the temperature the dark jar was still colder. So the next day she left the jars out all day long. This time the dark jar was slightly warmer than the light jar. The teacher said "See the experiment worked!".

So lets review this "experiment". 3 determinations were conducted, and 2 out of 3 times the results didn't confirm the hypothesis, but the "experiment worked" because one time it did. So this teacher was teaching her students, to ignore data and accept what the science book told them, instead. An example of the triumph of rationalism? hardly.

It gets even worse. After 30+ years later, and no doubt countless billions spent by our government to improve science education, I have to report that science education had not improved by the time of the 1980's. What I didn't get a chance to mention to my dad the other day (because he won't let a word in edge-wise when he is talking) is that I did the same EXACT experiment 30+ years later in second grade as part of my science education.

My entire class was told to bring 2 jars to school. (We had science class every day in the 1980's!) When I told my dad why we needed to bring jars to school. He told me then that the experiment wouldn't work because the paper wasn't able to transfer heat to the water through the glass. (I didn't realize at the time that he had done the same experiment in elementary school himself.) The next day in class while we were glueing our construction paper to the jars I was telling the kid sitting next to me why the experiment wouldn't work. The teacher was angry that I was talking, and asked me if I "had something that needed to be shared with the rest of the class". So I confidently told her that "Yeah the experiment isn't going to work." She said "Oh and why is that?" I replied "The paper needs to be inside the glass in order to transfer heat to the water." My answers seemed to irritate her, but at least I didn't get into trouble for talking.

Sure enough 30 years hadn't changed the laws if of physics or the outcome of the experiment. After recess we all retrieved our jars from the Texas sun, and dipped our fingers into the 2 jars to measure the temperature. All of the students dutifuly reported that the water in the black jar felt warmer since this was obviously the answer that was expected, and which most pleased the teacher. Funny thing, the temperature of the water in my 2 jars felt the same to me. Even funnier, the teacher dipped the single thermometer our class had into a few jar pairs, and even though the temperature on the thermometer didn't change from jar to jar, she agreed with most of her students that the "water in the black jar felt warmer.", exactly as the text book said it should!

I remember that day so well because it had a profound impact on my 7 year-old world view. For the first time I realized that adults were not necessarily smarter, which was a great thing to know for a 7-year-old. Although I extend my sympathy to any teacher after that date who ever had to try to teach me anything, I have to lay the blame on my 2nd grade science teacher for letting the secret out..the secret being that teachers usually don't know much about what they are teaching. I can only assume the experiment was intended to teach us some rudimentary ideas about Thermodynamics and energy, but I learned a more valuable lesson that day. I learned never to believe anything without emprical evidence, and since empiricism is basically the essense of Science, I guess the experiment did work in the sense that I learned something valuable about Science despite my science teacher's best efforts to teach faith instead.

This is why I don't worry much when I read of the "poor state of science education in our nation". I also don't worry when I read that some school in mississippi or Utah or wherever wants to teach creationism or intelligent design as part of their science curriculum. Science education has always been poor in this country, and guess what? It always will be. Teaching creationism can't be any worse than teaching children to ignore experimental evidence in favor of what a science book says the results of the experiment should be. I fully expect one day that I will be helping my children (once I have some) clean out peanut butter jars so that they can do the same experiment at school. Hopefully just as my dad and I did, they too will learn skepticisim from the experiment.

The good news is that the poor state of science education in our country obviously hasn't hurt us. Even with the dismal state of science education prior to sputnik, the USA was still home to most of the great inventions and innovations of the 20th and 19th centuries. Despite the poor state of Science education since sputnick Americans and people who immigrated to America, still somehow managed to put men on the moon, invent transisters, microprocessors, and the internet, etc...The reason for this, is that primary education is not what makes great scientists, engineers and inventors. Thank God for this.

If you don't want to play by the rules in my sandbox then go build your own!

2005-10-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is disturbing news: Apparently the UN and EU are trying to take over administration of the internet. This drive is being led by China and other oppressive governments in the UN, for whom free speech is incredibly inconvenient. I believe the effort is being assisted by Europeans who's collective nationalist feelings are hurt by the very existance of US wealth and power.

It's unclear from the article how the EU/UN would actually wrestle control fo the internet from the US. I think basically what the EU/UN wants is to control the administration of the top-level domain servers. For example, say you get internet service from Comcast, and you want to communicate with www.cnn.com. Well you type www.cnn.com into your browser and it communicates with servers in comcasts' privately owned network which check if there is any computer in the comcast network that it has assigned the name "www.cnn.com". Of course Comcast doesn't have www.cnn.com on it's network, but Comcast has a relationship with a higher level network that connects it to other parts of the internet, like say AOL, or earthlink, etc... so it forwards the request over to the domain servers of that parent network. If that parent network has the "www.cnn.com" server on it, or knows which networks below it have "www.cnn.com", it will forward the information request to the relevent network, otherwise it forwards the request further up to another network. Eventually this process keeps going up the network hierchy until it reaches the top-level servers. These servers know how to get to every address on the internet, because every subnetwork on the internet has voluntarily made the choice to connect to these servers or networks that are eventually connected to these servers.

The key thing to understand though is that comcast doesn't have to connect to the other networks it connects to. These connections are all voluntary. Furthermore, the networks that comcast is connected to don't have to connect to the higher level networks they are connected to. They also connect to the higher level networks on a voluntary basis. No government forces internet service providers to "hook into" the internet. It's a voluntary structure that emerged organiclly from individual network oporators working in their own best interests. Generally, if you have a network it is in your own best interest to allow your users access to as many other networks as possible.

Comcast doesn't have to connect to the rest of the internet (or all of it), and they don't have to give ultimate authority to those top-level domain servers. They could connect to any servers and networks they want to. However, if they didn't connect to "the internet" I wouldn't pay them 30 bucks a month or whatever for their services, and I doubt anyone else would either.

Again, the key point is that the internet is all voluntary. It's just a bunch of private and public networks who's owners have agreed to connect to each other and agreed to use the same standards for communicating with each other. So really what can the UN do? The only thing I can think of is that they could create their own domain servers. But who would connect to those domain servers. Well China, the EU, or any nation with a planned economy, could mandate that all of the networks within their soverign borders communicate with only the UN domain servers instead of the US domain servers I guess. This would be basically creating their own "internet".

What they cannot do is force American internet service providers, universities, and companies to connect to UN domain servers, or networks connected to the UN domain servers., if those private entities don't want to. Even the US Government can't really force the PRIVATELY owned networks in the US (and almost all of the networks in the US on the internet are privately owned) to communicate with any particular network or any particular domain server. So, I just don't see what the UN could really do. About the only thing the UN could do is make their own internet, and refuse to connect to the US networks that won't agree to use their domain servers. That's about it.

I welcome them to try this. See, when I was a little kid, I had the biggest sandbox and the best swingset in that sandbox of all of my friends. If any of my friends wanted to play in my sandbox they had to play what games I wanted to play, and play by my rules. If they didn't like this, they could go home and play in their own sandboxes, or go swing in another friend's swingset, and sometimes they got pissed off playing by my rules and they did just that. But if they did, they weren't playing in the best sandbox in the neighborhood, because the best sandbox was mine. So to the rest of the world...If you don't want to play by my rules in my sandbox, then go build your own fucking sandbox and play by yourselves.

They would never do this. Why? Almost everything of any value on the internet is in the US. I mean seriously, when was the last time you absolutely needed to use a Chinese website? When did you last order a book from the Nigerian Amazon.com? Do you ever try to sell your beeny -babies on the Tunisian Ebay? The entire value of the internet to these other countries is it gives them access to the markets and infrastructure of the most inmportant and largest economy of the world. Without access to the US markets, the internet is largely worthless. Let the Chinese, Tunesians, Cubans Europeans, etc...go play on their own internet. No one using this internet would miss them. They get far more benefits from connecting to us, than we do from connecting to them.

This is why the UN wants control of the internet. Almost every country in the UN has a despotic form of government. Remember this is the same UN that has the following members in its commision on world human rights: China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Cuba. These despots like getting access to our economy, infrastruture, information, and our markets, but they don't want the entire package. The problem with allowing access to our markets, information, and infrastructure is that they necessarily have to allow their citizens access to some of our political ideas and freedoms. The despots spend vast amounts of effort and resources to keep their citizens from being exposed to US ideas about freedom. Their goal of bringing control of the top-level servers under UN administration is for only one purpose. That purpose is to make it easier for them to keep free speech out of their countries.

God bless all price gougers everywhere!

2005-09-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

As a businessman, I was surprised to see that a big factor hampering the evacuation of the Texas coast is that there isn't any gas for sale around any of the areas where people are evacuating or near the routes those people are taking to escape from the hurricane. This would seem like a great opportunity for enterprising businesses to do whatever it takes to supply gas to those reasons considering the immense demand. Immense unsatisfied deamand is always an opportunity to make great profits. It would be hard, though. Anyone working at the service staions would risk losing the opportunity to evacuate themselves and their family. What would you have to pay someone to wait behind in a gas staion and sell gas to those fleeing for their lives? I don't know maybe you'd have to temporarily raise the wages of the minimum wage gas-station attendents to 50 bucks an hour or even 100 bucks an hour? I have no idea what you would have to pay someone to forgo evacuating themselves/stuff in order to keep the gas stations open until the last possible minute? I do know there is some price at which people would be willing to take that risk. It would also be very difficult to get the gas in with all of the congestion, maybe an interprising businessman would rent helicopters to fly gas in, or perhaps buy some Humvees and haul gas in by the barral off-road? Doing stuff like that would be incredibly expensive but hey if you could charge 50 bucks a gallon for gas maybe it would be worth it?

My point is that anyone who sells gas to the evacuees might have to take large finanical and physical risks to do so, but for the opportunity to make outsized profits someone would be willing to take those risks. Who knows what the price for gas would have to be for someone willing to go through the extra effort and risk to supply gas in the middle of a crisis? $10.00/gallon...$20.00/gallon...maybe even $100.00/gallon? I don't know what the price would be but at some point the price would make it worth it to supply gas amongst the danger and chaos of the evacuation.

So considering that at some price it's gotta be worth it for someone to supply gas, why is there no gas in the evacuation zones available at ANY price? The reason is obvious. Texas has an assinine law that allows the governor to declare an "emergency" (which has been done), and during that period of time, anyone cought making "outsize" profits selling gas can be fined $20,000 per customer and even put in jail. So considering that, it's obvious why there is no gas available for sale at any price. Anyone who owns a service station or who has the ability to bring gas in, isn't. Why take on the increased expense and increased risk to provide gas during a crisis if you won't be compensated for the excess expense and risk? The compensation for taking an increased risk has to be comensurate with that risk. 4% profit may be a fine margin of profit during normal times for selling gas, but when a hurricane is bearing down, and you need to evacuate your own family and board up your own house, you might need to make 100% or maybe even 300% profit to have it be worth taking the risk to stay open during the crisis.

Texa's law makes it impossible to charge enough extra for gas to make it worth providing gas during a crisis and this is why there is no gas available during this crisis. Funny, I learned in 10th grade economics what happens when you impose a price-cieling. You ALWAYS have shortages. It was pretty clear then. Too bad politicians aren't smart enough to understand 10th grade economics.

M.A.D.D. = Threat to Civil-Liberties

2005-08-09T11:12:00.000-07:00

A few decades ago, laws punishing drunk-drivers were too lenient. M.A.D.D. did a good job of changing public-opinion and lobbying government to make the laws more strict for drinking and driving. It's probably a safer place now-a-days because of what they did I guess. I think the changes in the laws that M.A.D.D. made happen were just. A drunk driver would kill someone and get slapped on the wrist before the laws changed. Now the punishment tends to be more commensurate with the magnitude of the crime I think.

Increasingly though, I'm reading disturbing stuff about M.A.D.D and what they do. They seem to be going beyond the mission of stopping drunk driving and moving more towards a mission of stopping drinking entirely. They seem to have become an anti-alcohol movement, remeniscent of the women-led temperance movement around the turn of the 20th century that led to the foolish 18th amendment. Any time I've ever seen this brought up to a M.A.D.D. spokesperson in an interview they will strongly deny that their intent is to stop drinking, but I think their actions speak for themselves. Ever notice that any movement to increase the taxes on alcohol or to restrict its sale always seem to have them as a backer? Also, I see articles like this one, that was linked on Instapundant today.

Just to summarize the article, M.A.D.D. praised a judge who handed out an 8-year sentance (later reduced to around 2 years) to parents who served alcohol to their kids and kids' friends in their own home, in an effort to prevent them from drinking un-supervised, and to prevent them from driving and drinking. Also, in the article M.A.D.D. supports allowing police officers to search private residences without a warrent when they suspect illegal alcohol comsumption is present. Now I definately don't support what those parents were doing, and they committed a crime for which maybe some punishment should be metted...but 8 years or even 2 years in prison for serving alcohol at a party where no one was hurt? Does the punishment really fit the crime in this example? This is insanity.

M.A.D.D. is a good example of how most well-intentioned ideas usually go beyond their original intention once implemented and have unintended consequences. The original public goals of the organization were good, but now the goals are largely accomplished and the group serves little purpose today. So now the purpose has morphed into a mission to take away our right to drink alcohol and they seem to support any civil-liberties violation in pursuit of that goal.

Terrorism, Agriculture, and Capitalism

2005-08-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

I just read this interesting article linking polygamy and terrorism. This reminds me of a conversation I had at a cofee shop awhile ago with one of my friends where I argued in all earnestness that terrorism was largely caused because young arab men living in the middle east can't get laid. My friend thought I was joking, but I was being somewhat serious. I was using the same points that are mentioned in this article. However, I can't take credit for them. I basically came to it through reading Jared Diamond's books. He dicusses the exact same mechanisms of polygamy leading to violence in his books (I don't remember exactly which one or ones.) He didn't discuss terrorism specifically, but did talk about how societies with polygamy are ALWAYS warlike and violent. He gives plenty of specific examples to demonstrate his point. He also discussed the idea that monogamy is the natural state of man, and how agriculture allowed for the first time in history for a few individuals to have the resources to have more than one wife.

One theme I have found especially interesting in Diamond's books is how evolutionarily suited and natural it is for man to live as a hunter-gatherer, and how agriculture by certain measures has actually reduced the standards of living (as quantified by quality of diet, etc...) for the vast majority of human beings. Why has it been the most successful form of subsistance then?

First of all, agriculture allows each individual's labor to produce enough calories (even if they are lower quality calories) to feed vastly more people than just the individual himself. The hunter-gatherer has to labor almost constantly to feed himself and his kids. (I use the male pronoun but actually it is the women in a hunter-gatherer society that generally produce the most calories for the family group.) Since an individual family in an agricultural society can produce more calories than are required for the families' own subsistance, this allows for the the development of classes of people who occupy their time doing things other than creating food. Among other professions that agricultural makes possible two are: the professional soldier, and the full-time governing class. The ability to support a professional standing army and a professional government are the primary reason for the why agriculture has been the most wide-spread form of subsistance.

The ability to have a governments and army are also the reasons for why the standard of living for the average individual in an agricultural society (as measured largly by quality of diet) is typically less than that of a hunger-gatherer. When a large amount of people are living close together, producing more than they consume, a government naturally arises to take the excess.
So generally even though agriculture allowed man to produce more than he himself can use, this has not increased his level of subsistance, because thoughout history this excess has been mostly taken by the government (generally consisting of kings, priest classes, and nobility). This results in a small portion of society which is the ruling class subsisting at a higher level than the hunter-gatherer while the majority actually living at a lower standard of living. The governing class naturally has to raise an army to maintain its power. This is necessary both to prevent other governments from conquring the society and take its resources, and to keep the people in the government's own society from rebelling.

The majority of the excess production of society is not even used to increase the standard of living of the governing class even. Most of what the government takes has to be used for the maintainance of its power, through the paying of adminstrators, police, and armies. Furthermore much of the excess doesn't even get used for maintainance of power. Much of it has also been typically wasted waging wars of conquest (to aquire more agricultural producers and therefore increase the government's power), producing useless monuments (pyramids, temples, statues, etc...), and through miscellaneous government waste.

So anyway back to the original question I posed...why has agriculture been the most successful form of subsistance even though it lowers the average quality of subsistance? The answer should be obvious. It allows for the concentration of power. The governments of agricultural societies, by syphoning off the excess production of hundreds, thousands, and even millions of producers, could afford to raise armies and conquer any society that didn't do the same. This concentration of resources (resources= power) will always overpower a hunter-gatherer society. (Example: look at what happened when hunter-gatherers encountered european society during the 1600's to 1800's)

Agriculture reduces the average standard of living for man. This has been the situation world-wide for most of human history, and continues today in most societies. (All modern societies produce subsistance primarily through agriculture except for a few fishing societies.)

There are a few societies in modern times where it is no longer the case that the average individual member has a lower subsistanc than that of a hunter-gatherer. These socieities are basically the western capitalist democracies and their progeny (Japan etc.) Starting some-time in the 1800s, especially after the industrial revolution got going, agricultural societies in the west were finally able to provide a higher level of subsistance to the majority of the poeple in their societies than hunter-gatherers enjoyed 50,000 years prior. This of course is due to the exponential rate of productivity increases that capitalist democratic societies have enjoyed. It is only in capitalist democracies the people are actually able to produce new wealth faster than their governments are able to steal it from them.

Illegal Immigration and Name-Calling

2005-07-29T12:41:00.000-07:00

When pressed most of us who lean to the so-called "conservative" side of the political spectrum will admit that we are pretty happy with George Bush's presidency. With the successful execution of the Iraq War, this amazing (although under-reported) economic expansion, and the soon to be signed CAFTA (makes up for the stupid steel tarrif's of the last term), there is much to be happy about, but one issue which no conservative will ever praise Bush for is illegal immigration. It's funny that even though a plurality of conservatives support strong border control and deporting all illegal aliens, no prominent elected conservative will take this cause up. It's even more astonishing considering that it's not just a conservative issue. Whenver I see this polled, an overwhelming majority of Americans are in favor of strong measures to restrict illegal immigration, especially in states like California, Oregon, Arizona, Texas, etc. It's obvious that any politician from either party, running in a general election could garner mega-votes just by supporting strong measures against illegal immigration.

So why won't any politician take up this cause? The reason is name-calling. Immigration involves race. Politicians feel they have to tread lightly any time race comes into the equation. If a politician comes out strongly in favor of taking serious measures to curb illegal immigration, then risk getting called a "racist". In the past if a politician who ever spoke about such issues and deviated even a little from the strictest standards of what constitutes political correctness, the press skewers him and a political career could be ruined. A politician puts himself in the cross-hairs by opposing illegal immigration.

In the past these name-calling campaigns have been effective, that is why politicians are afraid, even though the issue has clear majority support. I think things are different now however. First of all, people have become skeptical of the left's name-calling campaigns. Have you ever noticed how the left always has some sort of name to call every conservative politician ending with the suffix "ist" or "ic"? 20 or 30 years of calling every conservative racist, mysogenistic, homophobic, etc...has caused the words to lose their sting. No one takes these labels seriously anymore when the left throws them around. It's so knee-jerk. If you oppose afirmative action "your a racist"....Your against welfare your a racist...I've even heard a leftists commentator say on TV that lower taxes is "racist". The only thing more rediculous then how flippantly the left has thrown these words around, is how effective it has been. The second reason why I don't think the name-calling is effective anymore is because the main-stream media who has always been the left's mouthpiece for these attacks has been so discredited in the past few years.

Eventually the dam will burst. Some politician will overcome the fear of being called a racist, and will take up illegal immigration a central plank. Given how broad the support is for reigning in illegal immigration that politiican will get elected, and soon all politicians will be taking up this issue. I think that politician might end up being Governor Schwartzenager . I noticed he was one of the few politicians who was brave enough to publicly praise the minutemen in Arizona. I've also noticed that he isn't afraid to be called a racist. I remember awhile back when speaking about the Indian casinos in California, he said what almost every Californian allready knows and accepts "The Indians are ripping us off!". But to the LA times and most of the media here, that was a controversial statement and they leveled the usual charges of racism, to which the Governor responded "Read My Lips! The Indians are ripping us off!". Scwartzeneger seems to know that these false charges of racism no longer stick. Almost everyone in California knows the "Indian's are ripping us off", and the left can't get away with calling the statement of such an obvious fact "racism". It'll be the same way for immigration. It's obvious to most, that illegal immigration is a problem. The left won't get away with their name-calling campaign against the next person who states this widely recognized problem.

This is why we need conservative judges!

2005-06-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

This Supreme Court ruling really dissappointed me. I considered this the most important case before the Supreme Court this year.

A divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development...

This is why we need Bush's judicial appointments. For the most part, his judicial appointments have been the types who would support limiting government power, private property rights, and a strict interpretation of the constitution. Democratic propaganidsts shrewdly argued that "most of Bush's judicial appointments had been aproved", while knowing full well that nearly all of the important appointments to the highest federal courts which constitute the pool from which future Supreme Court justices would be picked were blocked.

The Democrats also argued that what they were doing was no different then what the Republicans did to Clinton, but there is a key difference. The Republicans under Clinton had the right to block Clinton appointments since they were the majority party in Congress and could do it with a Constitutionally sanctioned up-or-down vote. The democrats ended 200 years of tradition in Congress by fillibustering judicial appointments. Prior to Bush's first tirm, no judicial appointment who had the necessary majority vote had ever been prevented from recieving their appointments via fillibuster.

Now I realize I'm a little late to this discussion. A few weeks ago, there was a compromise in the Senate that will supposedly allow most of these judges to get aproved...I remain skeptical...and even if they do...look for the battle to continue when the first Supreme Court vacency opens.

The Democrats have done a good job of scaring people by mischaracterizing Bush's appointments as religious fanatics who would turn this country into a theocracy. It's a shame how Democrats have been successfully able to use this fear of religion. In recent years, under the guise of protecting our relgious freedom, the Democrats have successfully blocked candidates and legislation that would protect our other freedoms.

The framers of the constitution believed that government should be allowed to sieze an individual's private property for the good of the public interest. (I happen to disagree with the framer's of the constituion on this one.) The government is required to give the property owner just-compensation...but ask anyone who's ever been a victim of eminent domain if they thought their compensation was fair. It's almost unheard of. If the compensation was fair, then governments wouldn't need eminent domain. Everything has a price. If government offered someone a price that was truly fair from the property owner's perspective there would be no need to forcibally sieze the property...the owners would give it up willingly for a "fair price"...this is the definition of a fair price...a price both parties agree to.

Here's an example. A friend of my Father's bought some land to build a house on back in the 80's. The city wanted to expand a road or something, and so used eminent domain to take a strip of land right down the middle of his property. The city computed his compensation by multiplying the area of land they took from him, by some cost per acre that they considered fair for the region the land was in. Even supposing the price-per-acre was good (I don't know if it was or not.), all of the land was worthless to this guy now, because there wasn't enough area left to build the freakin' house, and he couldn't sell the remaining land. Who would want 2 narrow strips of land separated by a road? Even though all of the land was worthless, the city only compensated him for the strip they actually took to build the road!

As unfair as the situation was for my Dad's friend...I acknowledge that the city was entirely within their constitional rights to screw him like that. For better or worse, the constituion gives government the right to take private land for public uses like building roads and parks. No one disputes this. The problem is that now-a-days cities are abusing eminent domain left and right. Instead of using the land for public uses like building roads, they are siezing individual's homes and businesses and simply handing the property to another private individual or corporation to use for their own private purposes.

Here's how it usually works. There will be a sleepy neighborhood full of big old houses. Due to the current real-estate bubble that land may have become very valuable. Sometimes it's close to a trendy down-town area, or next to water or something like that, but because it's filled with sleepy old houses the property taxes being taken by the city in the neighborhood won't be as high as the city is getting in similar locations that have luxury condos or shopping centers built on them instead. So cities take this land in the public interest of collecting more property taxes, kicking all of the people out of their homes in order to hand over that land to wealthy and politically powerful real-estate developers or big corporations. The new owners then build expensive condos or big shopping centers on the land, and the city is able to levy higher property taxes in the new "revitalized neighborhood". Thus the public interest is served!

Often the people living in the sleepy old neighborhoods are minorities or poor people who aren't politically powerful enough to fight this as a group, so the net effect is you have governments acting as a reverse Robinhood, taking property from the poor and handing it over to the rich.

I'm not exagerating. People have been kicked out of their homes to build parking garages for casinoes, to build Costco's (full disclosure: I own Costco stock.), stadiums for rich sports franchizes, and luxury condominiums all over this country. Somehow, I don't think this is what the framer's of our constitution had in mind for emminent domain. The supreme court had the opportunity to end this injustice and they blew it, so we take one more step down the Road to Surfdom, instead. Just one more judge who believed in private property rights could have made the difference this time.

The Cost of Litigation.

2005-05-06T12:57:00.000-07:00

This article has been all over the internet lately

The physician who was attending to the injured employee at the hospital requested that the General Manager retrieve the fingertip for possible reattachment. The fingertip could not be located. Approximately 30 minutes later, the customer who purchased the pint, returned to the inside of the store and displayed the fingertip to the General Manager. The General Manager attempted to retrieve it and rush it to the hospital. Unfortunately, the customer refused to give it to her and declared that he would be calling the TV stations and an attorney as he exited the store.

I know this guy now claims that he wanted to keep the finger to test it for diseases, but it's pretty obvious from the above paragraph that his real motivation was all about suing the icecream shop. He wouldn't give back the finger, because he wanted to save the evidence. This is a good example of how sick our society has been made by litigation. A man finds a severed finger tip and he sees a gold nugget instead?

Soaking the rich only soaks the middle class.

2005-02-22T12:37:00.000-08:00

Earning a lot of money does not make you rich. You are only rich if you have a lot of money. There is a big difference between earning money and having money. It is important to remember this difference when politicians say they want to raise taxes on the "rich". In this country we tax income, not capital. You cannot "soak the rich" by raising income taxes, without soaking the middle class even more. There are two primary reasons for this. First of all, people who have a lot of money (rich people) don't depend on their income nearly as much as middle class people, therefore income tax rates really don't effect them as much. It is the middle class who depend on their income, not the rich. Seocndly, I will demonstrate below that many (if not most) of the "rich" people politicians want to raise taxes on, aren't what most of us would consider to be "rich". This is possible because of the common mistake of thinking rich = earning a lot of money, instead of the truth which is rich = having a lot of money. The two are not the same. Liberal politicians use this common misperception to masquerade proposals for huge tax increases on middle class professionals as tax increases on the "rich".

For example say you raise taxes on the housrholds who are in the top 5% income bracket...a typical liberal politician's proposal. In 2001 the top 5% of houshold income earners started at $164,000 according to the U.S. Census numbers So let's take a look at 2 hypothetical American housholds, and how this would affect their financial situations.

Houshold A, a typical "rich" San Diego houshold:
Husband: Computer programmer with a Master's Degree making $89,000/year.
Wife: Systems Analyst with Master's Degree making $95,000/year.
$450,000 loan on a $500,000 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house. (A typical San Diego home.) $50,000 in home equity.
$20,000 in savings.
$150,000 student loans outstanding.

Total Income: $184,000/year
Total Liabilities: -$600,000.
Total Assets: $70,000
Net Worth in 2001: -$346,000

Houshold B, a genuine rich houshold:
Single guy: Full-time playboy. Has 3,700,000 inherited trust fund invested in T-Bills, yielding about $170,000/year. Has a $1,300,000 inherited house, no debt.

Total Income: $170,000/year
Total Liabilities: $0
Total Assets: $5,000,000
Net Worth in 2001: 5,170,000

The hypothetical couple that is Household A, invested heavily in their education. They also live in a region where their technical skills are in high demand and thus make a good living: 89,000+95,000=$184,000/year. Since this is comfortably above $164,000, this household most likely was in the top 5% in 2001, a group whom many liberals would love to raise taxes on. They make a nice income but do they seem rich to you? Like most American families they have a huge home loan in proportion to their income and savings. Like most Americans, the family of Household A, will have to struggle to afford to pay off their house, pay off their student loans, save for retirement, and to raise children.

Household B is more like what we typically have in mind when we use the word "rich", but listen to how liberal politicians typically define "rich"...both of these households count if you listen to the usual class-warfare rhetoric.

If houshold A's capital in 2001 was $184,000 income + the $70,000 houshold A has in home equity and savings, then Houshold A gets taxed on 72% of its capitol. If household B's capital in 2001 was $170,000 + the $5,000,000 in home equity and savings that household B has, then household B gets taxed on only 3% of its capital. So if you raise taxes on the top 1% of households who is really getting soaked here? The middle class household (Household A) or the rich household (Household B)?

Just remember this next time you hear a liberal politician say they want to raise taxes on the "rich". Most of the people who they are raising taxes on aren't really rich. Most of the people in the top 5% of households are actually more like Household A then Household B. The so called "rich" are just professional educated middle class wage-earners...computer programmers, accountants, small business owners, etc.. who work hard under mountains of debt just like most everyone else in this country. The proportion of them who are fabulously rich, riding around in limousines, living in mansions full of servents is really very very small.

Why am I bringing this up now? Like most small business owners I was shocked to hear that an increase in the payroll-tax cap is now on the table as part of the President's Social Security Reform plan. Remember the self-employed pay double the social security tax that employees pay, since they don't have an employer to mach their payroll-tax contribution, so this would especially hurt the self-employed professionals. The pay-roll tax cap is currently $90,000/houshold income. The politicians are going to try to pass this off as simply "making the 'rich' pay their fair share" of the costs of social security reform. (For the record I don't currently make enough money to be affected by a lifting of the pay-roll tax cap.)

The most asinine thing I've heard of in a long time.

2005-02-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

Apparently Seattle has instituted mandatory recycling.

Starting in 2006, people in single-family homes won't get their trash picked up if they dump "significant amounts" of recyclables in their trash, defined by the city as more than 10 percent by volume. Owners of apartments, condominiums and businesses will face $50 fines.

Lets look at some of the possible unintended consequences of this law:

1 Measuring volume of something as irregularily shaped as garbage requires a significant amount of subjectivity. For example say you throw away an empty cardboard box. Is the volume of that box the cardboard or the empty space contained in it...what if the garbage man can't see what's inside the box? Maybe it's empty or maybe it's full of newspaper? Many people will set out their garbage believing they are in compliance with the law, only to find that they aren't. This constitutes a break-down in the "rule of law" since people won't necessarily know ahead of time whether they are breaking the law or not.

2 What if there is a dispute? How will disputes be settled? What if you know your garbage was in compliance with the law but your garbage man says it isn't? You have no way to get resolution of your dispute because the evidence gets destroyed after the garbage man dumps your can in his truck and compacts the trash. This law gives garbage men unfair power over property owners. As far as your trash is concerned, in seattle the garbage man is judge, jury, and executioner. Is this the kind of society Seattle residents want to live in...One where city employees down to the lowest levels can impose fines at will on them?

3 This law amounts to a tax on renters. Say you own a 10 unit apartment building. Residents in apartment buildings usually throw their garbage in one communal trash receptical in the alley behind the bulding. This law imposes a fine on the owner of the apartment bulding of 50 dollars per violation. Suppose you have 4 garbage pickups a month (once a week), that is $200.00 a month that the landlord is going to lose if the tennents don't comply with this law. Everyone in the apartment has to cooperate to make sure that the trash is in compliance. Since apartment dwellers aren't the one's paying the fine directly for each instance of noncompliance, they have no incentive (beyond the goodness of their heart) to make sure the garbage complies with the law. In fact just one apartment dweller could ruin it for the whole bulding even if everyone else is making an effort to recycle. Either the landlord is going to have to spend money to make sure the apartment dwellers comply (maybe video survielance of the dumpster, or cash incentives?) or he is just going to have to pay the fines. Either way the cost is going to end up being passed through to the tennents in the form of raised rent. In a 10 unit apartment building that means every one's rent probably will go up somewhere between 0 and 20 dollars a month. Since poorer people tend to rent rather than own this is a regressive tax on the poor.

Criminal JUSTICE

2005-02-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

A discussion on a friend's Blog regarding this recent case of child abuse leads me to think about what should the purpose of the punishment our criminal justice system mets out to these people and other criminals.

I don't think rehabilitation or removal from society should be anything but secondary considerations. The ultimate goal of punishment should be to achieve justice. That is, the overwhelming consideration for what punishment a criminal should recieve should be that it be commensurate to the magnitude of the crime committed.
If you have that, then the other considerations like protection of society and rehabilitation will happen on their own where possible and applicable.

What I mean is, if they recieve just punishment they autamically get removed from society until they are no longer dangerous (which may be forever). They also automatically have the opportunity for rehabilitated through the best method for rehabilitation there is: Years spent in a cell contemplating the magnitude and consequences of what they have done. Those criminals who are capeable of rehablitation rehablitate themselves given enough time, and if they have recieved a just punishment they will have the time to achieve that. Those criminals who commit crimes of a magnitude for which rehabilitation isn't possible never re-enter society because they spend their remainder of their lives in a cell.

The problem with cases like the abe, is that there really isn't a just punishment that our civilized society can met out to such people and still remain civilized. I don't know exactly what punishment would be ideally just for such a crime but in my mind it would involve something brutal like ripping all of their toes and finders off, one by one. However such barbarism degrades a culture and therefore we as a society can't offer justice to such criminals because we can't afford the ultimate cost to our culture. The closest thing to justice we can offer such criminals who victemize children as this couple has done, is a swift trial tesulting in execution.

Call me cynical but I don't think that this couple will recieve a punishment that even aproaches justice. Bill O'Rielly has done a good job on his television show over the past few years, highlighting that we do a poor job in this country of bringing justice to those who victimize children. At least these people committed their crime in Utah rather than New York...somehow I have a little bit more faith in the likelyhood of Utah judges and juries giving these people a punishment closer to what they deserve for what they did.

First Post!

2005-02-07T14:19:00.000-08:00