harmonicminer

The previous post in this series is here.

Thomas Sowell has been writing a multipart series based on his book titled “Dismantling America.” I consider it to be required reading for anyone wanting to understand what’s been happening in and with our government, not just lately, but for several decades. To make it easy for you to read and follow, I’m spreading the links over several posts, including an article and a video in each.

Here is the fourth article.

And the accompanying video:

The previous post in this series is here.

Thomas Sowell has been writing a multipart series based on his book titled “Dismantling America.” I consider it to be required reading for anyone wanting to understand what’s been happening in and with our government, not just lately, but for several decades. To make it easy for you to read and follow, I’m spreading the links over several posts, including an article and a video in each.

Here is the third article.

And the accompanying video:

The previous post in this series is here.

Thomas Sowell has been writing a multipart series based on his book titled “Dismantling America.” I consider it to be required reading for anyone wanting to understand what’s been happening in and with our government, not just lately, but for several decades. To make it easy for you to read and follow, I’m spreading the links over several posts, including an article and a video in each.

Here is the second article.

And the accompanying video:

Thomas Sowell has been writing a multipart series based on his book titled “Dismantling America.” I consider it to be required reading for anyone wanting to understand what’s been happening in and with our government, not just lately, but for several decades. To make it easy for you to read and follow, I’m spreading the links over several posts, including an article and a video in each.

Here is the first article

And the accompanying video:

You may have read earlier on this blog about my adventures in getting my lot subdivided in San Bernardino County, California.  Unbelievably, that process is still not done…  more than three years after we started it.

In the meantime, property values have dropped enormously where I live, and so last year, we finally got the county to reduce the assessment on which we pay property taxes.  Since then, values appear to have dropped even more, but the county raised our assessed value, being greedy and rapacious as most governments are.  So we appealed, using the correct form, supplying supporting evidence of the further drop in property values in our area.  Here is the county’s reply:

Dear Property Owner:

Your application for changed assessment (assessment appeal) has been received. However, we have not reviewed the application for completeness or timeliness. After we review your application, you will receive another letter which will either:

* State the your application is complete and your appeal is eligible to be scheduled for hearing; or
* Inform you that your application is incomplete and further information is needed; or
* Notify you that your application has been denied.

Please note that due to the large volume of appeals, it can take 12-18 months before an appeal is scheduled for hearing. Filing an appeal does not relieve the taxpayer from the obligation to pay the taxes when due. If a reduction in your assessment is granted, you may receive a refund.

Isn’t that special?  It seems that, once again, we are making the county an interest free loan for a year or more.

California is in big trouble.  It has pushed businesses out of the state with high taxes and ridiculous regulations, and it seems determined to do everything it can do to stifle the growth of business or economic activity in the state.  In the meantime, it tries to pay its bills by further squeezing the remaining people…  a game of diminishing returns if ever there was one.

I especially like that last part: “If a reduction in your assessment is granted, you may receive a refund.”

Well gee, now I feel better.  I may receive a refund in a year or two, for the lousy decisions made by the assessor’s office this year.

Of course, unlike private citizens, government never has to pay a penalty when it makes a mistake.

Here is the introduction to Andy McCarthy’s comments on today’s Arizona Immigration Decision

On a quick read, the federal court’s issuance of a temporary injunction against enforcement of the major provisions of the Arizona immigration law appears specious.

In essence, Judge Susan Bolton bought the Justice Department’s preemption argument — i.e., the claim that the federal government has broad and exclusive authority to regulate immigration, and therefore that any state measure that is inconsistent with federal law is invalid. The Arizona law is completely consistent with federal law. The judge, however, twisted <the>  concept of federal law into federal enforcement practices (or, as it happens, lack thereof). In effect, the court is saying that if the feds refuse to enforce the law the states can’t do it either because doing so would transgress the federal policy of non-enforcement … which is nuts.

There is much more at the link above, including references to other federal court precedents that the judge seems to have decided to ignore… presumably because they would not have led to the decision she appears to want. (She is a Clinton appointee, and presumably leans left, as essentially all of his appointees did.)

There are other federal laws, laws the enforcement of which requires local law enforcement to be directly involved, and even take initiative, on matters ranging from kidnapping to terrorism to the Mann Act to drugs, literally thousands of laws.

There is no precedent for the federal government to sue to stop a state from enforcing federal law in a constitutional way.  Imagine if local peace officers were not allowed to notice if someone was selling illegal drugs (mostly federal laws), or to stop a kidnapping, or arrest someone carrying a grenade launcher (not illegal according to some state laws, but banned federally for most civilians).  Imagine if local peace officers were not allowed to notice someone carrying a sign advocating the assassination of Obama, or the bombing of a federal facility?

That is the ridiculous position we’d find ourselves in, if the notion that local peace officers can’t enforce federal law ever became consistently applied, and that’s why the judge’s decision is ridiculous.

This was a PURELY political lawsuit, brought by a president who wants to buy off the Hispanic vote in 2012, even at the cost of the congress in the 2010 midterms, a president who cynically believes that Hispanic voters are in favor of illegal aliens in large numbers.

I hope he is wrong in ascribing such motives to legal Hispanic voters.  If he is right, it will be interesting to see exactly how much other American citizens care about this.  How many who usually don’t vote can be energized to get to the polls to avoid amnesty (official or unofficial) for illegals?

Not enough, I fear.

Parsing the Second Amendment

It’s been about a month since the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in McDonald vs. Chicago, a successful challenge to the city’s handgun ban. It was decided on the basis that the 14th Amendment extends the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights to state governments, and thus the Second Amendment applies.

So let’s look at the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

One gun-hater argument is that this does not guarantee an individual right “to keep and bear Arms,” but is some sort of group right that applies only to members of state militias.

But “people” clearly means individuals in the Fourth Amendment, which stars with “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .”

Further, it’s pretty clear that the Founders supported private ownership of weapons, not just of muskets, but of entire ships laden with cannons.

That’s because the Constitution gives Congress exclusive power to “grant Letters of Marque” — that is, authorization for a private party to engage in piracy on the high seas against the nation’s enemies.

(Beginning in 1856, many civilized nations signed a treaty renouncing letters of marque, but the United States has not, although it’s been a long time since Congress issued one.)

Next, what did they mean by “militia”? From what I can gather, the general belief at the time was that the state militias would be America’s primary military force, mobilizing against invasions, uprisings or Indian attacks. Thomas Jefferson, for one, was opposed to a standing army. His fear was that if you had all these soldiers drawing pay, you’d be tempted to use them, and his agrarian republic would turn into a rapacious empire.

Even so, Jefferson did not abolish the standing army when he became president; indeed, he founded West Point in 1802 to train officers for the standing army.

We do know what the Founding Fathers meant by “militia,” for there is the federal Militia Act of 1792, which defines the militia as “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years . . . .”

It was not some small group of volunteers, but just about every capable citizen of the day. Gun ownership was a federal mandate, not an option.

“Every citizen . . . shall . . . provide himself with a good musket or firelock . . . or with a good rifle,” along with powder, shot, knapsack and the like. Further, the guns and related gear could not be seized to satisfy unpaid debt or taxes.

But what did “well-regulated” mean? That the militia was supposed to have a lot of rules, as we might understand it today? That inspired me to delve into the English major’s bible — the Oxford English Dictionary — which attempts to track every word in every sense from its first written appearance to the present.

(I’ve long hoped to be rich enough to buy the full 20-volume second edition issued in 1989, but I’ve had to settle for the tiny-print version of the first edition of 1933, issued as a Book-of-the-Month Club premium.)

It provides a relevant definition for “regulated” — “Of troops: properly disciplined” with a 1690 citation and a note that is a rare usage, long obsolete by 1933. But that appears to be what it meant when the Second Amendment was proposed in 1789, that militiamen were supposed to be proficient with firearms, since that was a big part of their discipline.

So you can argue that the Second Amendment is an archaic relic that ought to be repealed, or that it means we should restore regular drills on the village green so that we’ll have a “well-regulated militia.” But there’s no reasonable argument that the Founders wanted the government to have the power to outlaw private gun ownership — especially not when one of the nation’s first laws made it a requirement.

I would add one other point, a fairly important one.

It is the SECOND Amendment, just following free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and the like.

It seems to have been fairly important to the founders, to get such pride of place.

And the Supreme Court has long ago decided that the Bill of Rights applies to state and local governments as well, though it seems to need to reaffirm that principle from time to time.

Powerline makes the obvious point that

Romneycare affords us a glimpse into the not very distant future if Obamacare is not repealed. Employers are dumping their health care plans. The governor is essentially attempting to impose price controls on insurers. If the governor is successful, insurers would just throw in the towel. When that happens under Obamacare, we will take our nationalized medicine straight. Just about every talking point Obama used to peddle Obamacare is a falsehood. Obamacare designates the fee imposed on individuals for failure to comply with its insurance mandate a penalty. The legislation justifies the penalty under the government’s power to regulate commerce. Obama himself flatly denied that the penalty was a tax.
However, for legal reasons, the Obama administration is beating a retreat on this key point. Randy Barnett points out that administration officials are now changing their tune. They are telling the New York Times

that the individual insurance “requirement” and “penalty” are really an exercise of the congressional tax power.

Unfortunately, we have many more such “surprises” to look forward to if Obamacare survives.

New York State Wants to Borrow From Pension Fund, to Pay the Fund

Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders have tentatively agreed to allow the state and municipalities to borrow nearly $6 billion to help them make their required annual payments to the state pension fund.

And, in classic budgetary sleight-of-hand, they will borrow the money to make the payments to the pension fund — from the same pension fund.

As word of the plan spread, some denounced it as a shell game and a blatant effort by state leaders to avoid making difficult decisions, like cutting government spending or reducing pension benefits.

“It’s a classic Albany example of kicking the can down the road,” said Harry Wilson, the Republican candidate for comptroller, who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard.

Pension costs for the state and municipalities are soaring, a result of enhanced retirement benefits for public employees and the decline in the stock market over the past two years. And, given declines in tax revenue and larger budget shortfalls, the governments are struggling to come up with the money to make the contributions.

Under the plan, the state and municipalities would borrow the money to reduce their pension contributions for the next three years, in exchange for higher payments over the following decade. They would begin repaying what they borrowed, with interest, in 2013.

But Mr. Paterson and other state officials hope the stock market will have rebounded to such a degree by that time that the state’s overall pension contribution burden will have been reduced.

It looks like New York isn’t in much better shape than California, where the legislature has been doing a combination routine for years, lemmings being led by ostriches with heads in the sand.

Talk about robbing Peter to pay Peter.

Excuse Me, Madam Secretary

Responding to a question at the Brookings Institute, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remarked,

Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — it’s growing like crazy. And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty. There is a certain formula there that used to work for us until we abandoned it, to our regret in my opinion.

Socialists are always telling us such things. At some place, at some time, water is observed flowing upstream, at least it seems that way, and — voilà! — the laws of economics are all thrown out the window.

First of all, one observation does not prove anything. Economics isn’t that way. Mrs. Clinton is just revealing how ignorant she is of economic science. What is your theory, Madam Secretary, of the relationship between tax policy and economic growth, and what do all the data say? Economics isn’t climatology. We don’t get to hide the inconvenient data.

Read it all at the link. Very interesting, and very clear. And it ends with a great punch line.  Guess what nation in the western hemisphere REALLY has the highest tax-to-GDP rate?

The next time you get a chance to take a shot at a future conqueror, take it. No, lefty nitwits, I’m not talking about taking a shot at the next Republican president-elect. I’m talking about people whose overweening ambition makes them think they have the right to conquer the world.  By definition, no US president qualifies, because all have left office, willingly or not, without coercion, and gone home to write their memoirs, if they lived long enough. 

No, I’m talking about a Hitler, or a Stalin, or a Mao, or….  well, you get the idea.  Kaiser Wilhelm, without whom World War I would probably not have occurred as it did, is one such, though that seems not to have been immediately obvious to Annie Oakley…  a dead shot if there ever was one.  Although after WWI started, she seems to have caught on quickly enough about the Kaiser’s character.

THERMOPYLAEHILLBILLY: Annie Oakley and Kaiser Wilhelm II

Where would we be today if Annie Oakley had just a little more to drink in 1889? Kaiser Wilhelm II was the Reich’s new leader and had a box seat to watch Oakley at the Berlin Charlottenburg Race Course. She was appearing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and had cleaned her Colt 45 the night before. Annie announced that she would shot the ashes off any man or woman’s Havana cigar. Normally her husband Frank Butler come out of the audience and her speech was just for show.

She never expected anyone, including Kaiser Wilhelm II to take her up on her offer and here came the Kaiser out of his box seat. Oakley had made her dare, there stood the Kaiser and she couldn’t back down. So as she measured her distance the Kaiser took out a cigar and started puffing. The German police thought it was a joke until the Kaiser took up his position. The Kaiser told the police to get out of the way.

Annie Oakley, American sharp shooter, raised her pistol, aimed and blew the ashes off Kaiser Wilhelm II cigar. Had she missed the woman from Cincinnati may have prevented the First World War 25 years later. When World War I started Annie wrote the Kaiser asking for a second chance. Silence followed……………

What If Diaries » What if Annie Oakley had shot Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1889?

One chilly November afternoon in 1889, a fur-coated crowd assembled in Berlin’s Charlottenburg Race Course to enjoy a performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild Wild West Show, which was touring Europe to great popular acclaim. Among the audience was the Reich’s impetuous young ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had been on the throne for a year. Wilhelm was particularly keen to see the show’s star attraction, Annie Oakley, famed throughout the world for her skills with a Colt. 45.

On that day, as usual, Annie announced to the crowd that she would attempt to shoot the ashes from the cigar of some lady or gentleman in the audience. “Who shall volunteer to hold the cigar?” she asked. In fact, she expected no one from the crowd to volunteer; she simply asked for laughs. Her long-suffering husband, Frank Butler, always stepped forward and offered himself as her human Havana-holder.

This time, however, Annie had no sooner made her announcement then Kaiser Wilhelm himself leaped out of the royal box and strutted into the arena. Annie was stunned and horrified but could not retract her dare without losing face. She paced off her usual distance while Wilhelm extracted a cigar from a gold case and lit it with flourish. Several German policeman, suddenly realizing that this was not one of kaiser’s little jokes, tried to preempt the stunt, but were waved off by His All-Highest Majesty. Sweating profusely under her buckskin, and regretful that she had consumed more than her usual amount of whiskey the night before, Annie raised her Colt, took aim, and blew away Wilhem’s ashes.

Had the sharpshooter from Cincinnati creased the kaiser’s head rather than his cigar, one of Europe,s most ambitious and volatile rulers would have been removed from the scene. Germany might not have pursued its policy of aggressive Weltpolitik that culminated in war twenty-five years later.

Annie herself seemed to realize her mistake later on. After World War I began, she wrote to the kaiser asking for a second shot. He did not respond.

Annie Oakley, the Butterfly Effect, and You

In the late 1800s, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was a dazzling display of horsemanship, gunplay and other cowboy skills. One of its acts involved the sharpshooting of the great Annie Oakley. Dubbed “Little Sure Shot,” Oakley had an amazing routine – she would shoot out lit candles, for example, and the corks of wine bottles.

For her grand finale, she would shoot out the lit end of a cigarette held in a man’s mouth at a certain distance. For this, she would ask for volunteers from the audience. As no one ever volunteered, she had her husband planted among the spectators. He would “volunteer” and they would complete the dangerous trick together.

Well, during one swing through Europe, Oakley was setting up her finale and she asked for volunteers. To her shock – and the surprise of everyone involved with the show – she got a real volunteer.

The proud young Prince (soon to be Kaiser) Wilhelm bravely stepped down from among the spectators, strode into the ring and stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Reportedly out late the night before enjoying the local beer gardens, the unexpected appearance of this famous volunteer unnerved her. But the show must go on.

She took aim and fired… putting out the cigarette, much to Wilhelm’s amusement.

Thus, she also created one of historians’ favorite “what if” moments. What if her bullet went through the future Kaiser’s left ear? Would World War I have happened? Would the lives of 9 million soldiers and 6.6 million civilians have been spared? Would Hitler have risen from the ashes of defeated Germany? All sorts of questions come to mind…

Many historians think that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, leading to the Soviet Union, would not have occurred without World War I to weaken the Czar (who was made by Lenin and Stalin to seem rather a nice fellow, by comparison).  Nazi Germany is difficult to credit as a likely outcome of a Germany that didn’t fight in WWI, because no great German angst would been present about a non-existent Treaty of Versailles, and no not-quite-imperialistic Kaiser would have tolerated Hitler in the feckless way German proto-democracy did.  In any case, without the agony of the post-war years, Hitler would have been only another anti-Semite, with no way to get traction with the German public at large.

World War II is hard to imagine without World War I.  Germany simply wouldn’t have had the drive to do it, absent the peculiar circumstances of the end of WW I.  At most, Japanese imperialism might have been a problem…  but strong British Empire, not weakened by WWI, would have been in a clear position to oppose Japanese aggression in China and elsewhere, and probably given the Emperor so much to consider that attacking the USA would have been a very low priority.

So imagine a 20th century without two world wars, without a cold war, indeed, without communism, which would have meant no Korean War, no Vietnam War, etc.  Imagine a still-strong British Empire still ruling the waves, shipping around the world the incredible output of American industry.

I know that cultural trends are present in history.  But I’m also pretty sure that without specific deeds by specific people, everything would have been different.

All of which occasionally leaves me wondering, in a much more pedestrian way, what deeds or words of everyday folk can sometimes have an effect that is seemingly far disproportionate to their obvious impact?

If anyone is counting, this is the 1200th post on this blog.  Or so says the WordPress editor.

I hate to quote only an excerpt of this piece by Mark Steyn, titled We’re too broke to be this stupid.

Back in 2008, when I was fulminating against multiculturalism on a more or less weekly basis, a reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.”

Two years later, we’re a lot less rich. In fact, many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. Hence last week’s column, on the EU’s decision to toss a trillion dollars into the great sucking maw of Greece’s public-sector kleptocracy. It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.
………
… the easiest “solution” to <social problems of all kinds> is to throw public money at <them>. You know how it is when you’re at the mall and someone rattles a collection box under your nose and you’re not sure where it’s going but it’s probably for Darfur or Rwanda or Hoogivsastan. Whatever. You’re dropping a buck or two in the tin for the privilege of not having to think about it. For the more ideologically committed, there’s always the awareness-raising rock concert: it’s something to do with Bono and debt forgiveness, whatever that means, but let’s face it, going to the park for eight hours of celebrity caterwauling beats having to wrap your head around Afro-Marxist economics. The modern welfare state operates on the same principle: since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. But so what? We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

The reason I hated to quote only the excerpt is because you should really read it all.

Steyn goes on to make the case that a great deal that is publicly funded, with taxes extracted from average working people, is counterproductive, or at least subsidizes bad behavior.  He is at his usual entertaining and trenchant best.  Read it all at the link above.

What it boils down to is this:  trying to repeal the laws of economics is a luxury for societies with lots of extra cash laying about.  That is no longer the case in pretty much any society, and certainly not in western society.   It’s a bit like pretending you’ve undone the laws of thermodynamics by injecting extra energy from outside the system, so that you can try to convince people that entropy isn’t really happening. 

But there are some laws of economics that apply.  Here are a few:

1)  You will get more of anything you subsidize.
2)  If you increase demand, and don’t increase supply, prices go up.
3)  If you increase demand, and don’t increase supply, and don’t let prices go up, shortages and rationing come next.
4)  If you decrease supply, and don’t decrease demand, prices go up.
5)  If you decrease supply, and don’t decrease demand, and don’t let prices go up, shortages and rationing come next.
6)  If you spend money on things that don’t lead to the production of more money than you spent, then you’re losing money.
7)  Ponzi schemes always collapse eventually, usually sooner than the con artists hoped.

It may not be clear to you, but virtually EVERY regulation has the effect of decreasing supply, and so prices go up.  So we had better have a minimum of regulation, sticking to only the absolutely necessary.  Keep in mind that rich people who own businesses don’t pay high prices.  They just pass them on to consumers.  When they reach a point where they can no longer pass higher prices on to consumers (because consumers won’t pay it, or the government won’t let them raise prices themselves, regardless of their costs), they leave the business, since that means it’s no longer making money.

The single biggest Ponzi scheme in American history is Social Security.  The next biggest is Medicare.  If you aren’t already collecting benefits from one of them, you aren’t going to get nearly as much from them as did your predecessors.  Your children will get FAR less than that.  Check the economies of Greece and Spain for details.

The “tea parties” springing up around the country are evidence that the entire electorate has not lost its mind, but part of the electorate is clearly insane.  Or suicidal, which may be the same thing.

The 2008 election was a prime example of hope (and apparently faith in the tooth fairy) triumphing over clear thinking based on facts and history.

As Dallas Willard says in Knowing Christ Today, people only know what they’re willing to know.  So I suppose that putting this together with Mark Steyn’s observation that “we’re too broke to be this stupid,” we can say that we’re too broke to be willfully stupid.

We’re too broke to decide we just don’t want to know how we got that way.

I think some people are beginning to catch on, finally.  Pray it isn’t too late.

I’ve had comments to make before about the background of “nationalized healthcare”, what it’s problems are, and so on. Here’s Ronald Reagon in 1961, before there was Medicare or Medicaid, let alone the recent takeover of healthcare by the federal government. He was amazingly prescient, wasn’t he?  He completely nailed the agenda behind Medicare, and the incrementalist approach he predicted is now historical fact.

I miss him.

In the end, if we cannot reverse this monstrosity, we will all suffer for it, including even the now “uninsured”.