In Oregon, the Attorney General proposes to alleviate environmental issues by criminal prosecutions of offenders, especially small businesses. To wit:
"That said, who should be worried about being criminally prosecuted for environmental noncompliance? The answer might surprise you: Mr. Kroger has made it clear that not just so-called big-time polluters are being targeted. Rather, the ECEU will also target small noncompliant businesses—businesses that Mr. Kroger believes have a competitive advantage because they are not paying the costs associated with compliance. All individuals falling into one (or more) of the following three categories are therefore subject to prosecution, regardless of their business’s size:
Those who are responsible for releases that cause potential public health risks;
Repeat violators, no matter the severity of the violations; and
Those who commit intentional or egregious violations of environmental."
Of course, this sounds admirable until you recall that property rights, grounded in natural law and entrenched in western civilizatio for millennia, once protected, as a side effect, the environment. It is only the last 150 or so years of jurisprudence that got us to where one property owner can harm another's with impunity. using prosecution to go after violators is simply putting a bandaid over a gaping wound lawyers themselves inflicted, and then politicizing the process, allowing an attorney general to dcide whose business is destroyed or allowed.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Separation of Business and State
Saturday, December 5, 2009
Grant On Money
James Grant weighs in on the dollar, and hits a trope I think is not mentioned enoough, and that is “moral hazard.” When you pass risk from the moneychangers to the taxpayers, you will get more risk. Another theme we do not develop, is if we have pretend markets, we have pretend business people. We educate a generation to pretend as well. When it comes times to produce, we have no real business people to do so. A downward spiral.
Grant:
In 1970, Wall Street partnerships began to convert to limited liability corporations—Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette was the first to make the leap, Goldman Sachs, among the last, in 1999. In a partnership, the owners are on the line for everything they have in case of the firm's bankruptcy. No such sword of Damocles hangs over the top executives of a corporation. The bankers and brokers incorporated because they felt they needed more capital, more scale, more technology—and, of course, more leverage.
In no phase of American monetary history was every banker so courageous and farsighted as Isaias W. Hellman, a progenitor of an institution called Farmers & Merchants Bank and of another called Wells Fargo. Operating in southern California in the late 1880s, Hellman arrived at the conclusion that the Los Angeles real-estate market was a bubble. So deciding—the prices of L.A. business lots had climbed to $5,000 from $500 in one short year—he stopped lending. The bubble burst, and his bank prospered. Safety and soundness was Hellman's motto. He and his depositors risked their money side-by-side. The taxpayers didn't subsidize that transaction, not being a party to it.
In this crisis, of course, with latter-day Hellmans all too scarce in the banking population, the taxpayers have born an unconscionable part of the risk. Wells Fargo itself passed the hat for $25 billion. Hellmans are scarce because the federal government has taken away their franchise. There's no business value in financial safety when the government bails out the unsafe. And by bailing out a scandalously large number of unsafe institutions, the government necessarily puts the dollar at risk.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
The Bush/Obama Presidency
Bailouts of Big Biz, Torture, Gitmo, Spying on Citizens, suspension of Habeas Corpus, and now expanding the war... everything Obama said he was against he has embraced and extended. A Chicago hustler is given the job of taking the blame for Bush's policies and he gladly accepts it... his failure will gratify racists everywhere. The powers that be in Media will place him below Jimmy Carter in regard. The right wing will come roaring back in the next elections.
Read more!Saturday, November 28, 2009
The Other Shoe
Now that the Global Warming Hoax of the left has been exposed, will the Global War on Terror hoax of the right be exposed as well?
Read more!Global Warming and IPR
The "scientists" who falsified the data to support the global warming hoax may face criminal prosecution since it is a felony to use falsified data in support of gaining grants, especially from taxpayers. One quote particularly interested me, how one of the conspirators expected to hide his ttracks, and that is to invoke "Intellectual Property Rights." To wit:
"We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it – thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who’ll say we must adhere to it !"
Friday, November 27, 2009
Dr. North's Manifesto
I could not agree more:
"Years ago, my friend Robert Thoburn, the entrepreneur who developed Fairfax Christian School, was standing in line at the Post Office at Christmas time. The line was very long. He turned somebody next to him and said it would sure be better if the system were run by the government. He got an incredulous look; then that person smiled. Thirty years ago, that seemed like a fruitless observation. Yet, as it has turned out, we could lose the Post Office tomorrow and barely feel it. We don't use first-class mail to communicate any longer. We use the Internet. We use Federal Express and UPS and other delivery systems to deliver anything really important that we have to send. The Post Office in effect has gone senile.
We don't sense that it's gone. Yet the reality is this: we have replaced something with things that are better. Therefore, at some point, we will see the Post Office either go out of business or become simply a forgotten memory. Yet the Post Office is part of the Constitutional system. The Post Office has always been a way for the government to control the flow of information. As Robert Nisbet said in an autobiographical essay, in the year he was born, 1913, the only contact that the average American had with the Federal government was the Post Office. How much contact do you have with the Postal Service today? It delivers mostly junk mail to you. We ought to think of the U.S. Postal Service not as snail mail but as junk mail. It is the junk mail service for the junk mail industry. Even this is subsidized. It gets cheaper rates.
We have seen the demise of the Post Office operationally over the last ten years, yet we have paid almost no attention to this. There has not been a revolution in our thinking about the Post Office. There has simply been a kind of forgetfulness. We haven't paid much attention to the fact that we don't need it anymore. This has not taken any kind of an organized political movement.
The Post Office is sacrosanct. It is untouchable. But now it is simply ignored. This is the best way to have a revolution. Create a free-market alternative to a particular government institution, and then refuse to use the boondoggle anymore. At some point, we can simply vote to de-fund it. We can privatize it. Nobody will care, because hardly anybody is using the system any longer.
Here is my slogan for political reform: Replacement, not capture; then de-funding."
Dr. North's Prognosis
"Anyone who thinks we have not entered a new era is naïve. The central economic phenomenon today is price competition. Whenever any technological development undercuts the existing cost basis of any established sector of the economy, it poses a threat to that sector. Peter Drucker's rule is this: when a new technology sells for 10% of the old technology, the old technology is doomed. Think "handmade Swiss watches." There is nothing that the defenders of that technology can do to stop the destruction of their industry."
Correct as usual Dr. North. Since innovation and competing on design is not central, what is left is price competition. Narrrowing profits and grinding down the price more of what we do not need is no way to gain material progress. if we had a freer market in USA, innovators would be producing newer and better alternatives and we'd have gainful employment of people effecting these changes.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Hoaxes
Global war on terror, swine flu, AIDS, global warming, Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Gardisil, Tuskegee 'experiments... of dear, we'll be at this all day...
Read more!Globaloney
Now that it is revealed what we already knew, and that is Global warming is bunk, will we next learn the Global War on Terror is nonsense too?
Here is a post form my llistserv a few years ago...
Folks,
Globalism is s term the entire political spectrum recognizes, and one’s view of
globalism is a
litmus test for what category one falls in. The right sees globalism as a
threat to Pax
Americana. The left sees it as a threat to peace and justice. And I see it as
a natural, if
messy, outgrowth to the end of the evil tyranny so prevalent last century.
In the context of globalism, we have the Global War on Terror, which for the
Right there is
even a military medal. Soldiers can be awarded a medal for participating in the
global war on
terror.
http://tinyurl.com/2jq324
For Global Warming the Left has no such medal, but there are prizes, such as
Richard
Branson’s $25 million he has earrmarked, and certainly there is an entire
industry of research
grants for those who can say “global warming” just as there is on the Right for
anyone who can say "Global War on Terror."
What I have noticed from both sides of the political spectrum is not only may
you not be
silent on the issue, you must vocally agree with their views.
Try this: the next time the topic of global warming or the global war on terror
comes up, and
your views are solicited by way of conversation, try saying “I really don’t have
an opinion.”
That will not do. Try saying, both sides are bunk. That will not do either.
Strangely, it is even
worse. Here is where it gets tricky. You may disagree with either side, but only
if you agree
with the opposite side. For example, if you believe global warming is bunk, you
must believe
that global war on terror is job #1 in USA. And vice versa.
If you will not serve as a follower of one side, you must serve as an enemy to
the side you will
not follow. It’s ok to not believe in global warming, as long as you believe we
must fight
global war on terror, because then you can serve as the enemy. And vice versa.
What is utterly unacceptable is to believe both sides are delusional. You may
not say “both
sides are wrong.”
I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I am trying to work out a way to deal
with this. Is there
a means to weigh the both sides, so I might join one, and get some relief?
After making a long list of pros and cons of both sides, I find they are equally
tendentious
and equally destructive to mankind. Perfect symmetry, except for one tiny
difference.
Please compare and contrast the very titles each side subscribes to in the topic
of Globalism:
global war on terror vs. global warming. Compare how each side uses the exact
same
characters for the first ten postions... global war (on terror) vs global war
(ming). In each we have "Global War...".
Whereas with the right, they go on another ten positions (on terror), matching
their lust for
bigger everything, whereas the left goes on only four more positions (ming),
matching
President Clinton’s gift of smaller government during his reign.
So it seems to me, that if I am to seek relative peace by taking sides, and I
believe both sides
tedious, then the left is less tedious by six places. Not only does it take
less time to say
global warming, ratehr than global war on terror, it takes less paper and ink to
write it, and there is some advantage there, to
be sure. And it takes less time to listen to "global warming" vs listening to
'global war on terror."
All of my life I have been willing to sell out to one side or the other, but
sadly no one has ever
made me an offer to join their intrigue. So I’ll consider this, but I am not
sure the left will
ever accept my offer to join.
John
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Last Emperor
When the Ming Dynasty was falling, the last defenders of the Ming were literally at the gates of the Great Wall of China, and invited in the Manchus to put down the unrest in China. This they did. The Ming who ruined Chin awere recruited by the foreign Manchus to run China. so these very Ming officials took leading roles in the Ching Dynasty, under Manchu hegemony.
The lawyers, cops, judges, merchants politicians etc before the nazi's in Germany, were by and large the same ones during and after the nazis. Same with the Soviet Union today, and it will be if and when some foreign power intervenes in USA to restore order.
Since all power in USA is concentrated in Washington DC, the USA will be easy to conquer. Switzerland was decentralized, so hitler could not take over that German speakng country. Hitler could take over all the others, since he needed to merely take the capital, and all the rest of the country fell in place.
A decentralized nation is safe.
A centralized nation is asking for several hundred years of native faces stealing for foreigners, and keeping a cut of the action. Domestically the people will resist by nonperforming.
Radiating out from the last Emperor was a network of people who benefitted from his person being the organizing principle, and the farther away form the center, the less it took to corrupt people, so the system was effective nationwide.
The difference between render unto Caesar and render unto God is rendering unto God is optional Failing to render unto Caesar can and will bring punishment up to including forfeiting your life. Religious participation is optional. State participation is not.
