Backlog Bob's strong right straight

Be a capitalist

2008-05-22T19:47:00.003-04:00

Read my new blog. It's free (but if it is successful, that may change). It is an investing blog for young people who want to take a different path toward retirement from those who are content with their money being used to pay the fees of overpriced, mediocre money managers. There is a companion blog on CAPS, but that is geared mainly for CAPS members, whereas The Fleabagger Portfolio is for everybody.

Another blog of mine

2008-03-08T23:35:00.003-05:00

For those of you who want to read what I'm writing even if it has no relevance to what I used to write about in this space, click here.

SRS

P.S. Let me know if that doesn't work, but I will probably be quite a while in reading my messages here.

So this has all been leading

2007-09-24T00:31:00.000-04:00

...here? Someone called this ball in this pocket long ago:

Proverbs 5:3-5
Proverbs 7:22-23
2 Peter 2:22

SRS

The real problem hidden by America's obesity

2007-09-04T02:31:00.000-04:00

Have you noticed that among all the jibba-jabba about obesity and America being too fat, there are still people who are trying to sound the alarm about how the horrible standard of beauty in our society is causing women to be anorexic? This is an excellent example of how stupid collectivism is.

First, we are to believe that it's "society's" fault that some women starve themselves in an effort to be thin. For one thing, these poor women would probably be doing this even if morbidly obese women were held up as the ideal of beauty. One friend of mine who struggled with anorexia confided that it was about control. She was depressed, and the one thing she could control was what she ate, so control it she did - with dangerous consequences.

Second, now that there are clearly more women (and men too) who are in danger of dying of obesity than of anorexia, that is "society's" fault too. And somehow, something in the culture made people become fat - this same culture that made some women dangerously thin! Now it takes a village (and universal health insurance, and bans on trans fats) to save America from this new threat. Mandated exercise and U.S. Attorney General-filed lawsuits against Mickey D's would not be amiss, would they?

Meanwhile, Dove® is a modern-day hero for the "Campaign for real beauty" ads (at the moment they seemed to be focused on hair), which celebrate overweight women as beautiful. It's true that more Americans than ever consider overweight people attractive, and we shouldn't be judgmental (except about Manuel Uribe: it's okay to be judgmental about him), but some of the preachy people are telling us we need to get with the weight loss program. So who's right? The "society needs to get healthier and lose weight" scientists, or the "society needs to appreciate fat people (particularly women) for who they are and say that they're beautiful" feminists?

Surprise answer: they're both wrong! ...for butting into other people's business and framing a lot of individual problems as a societal problem. Yes, obese people would be better off if they lost weight. But that is their problem. If they ask me for my help, I'll help, but I'll also fight for their right to sit on their backsides and stuff their faces all day. Scientists arguing for government intervention in the obesity "epidemic" make the point that the obese will cause huge medical costs if things continue as they are. Good point, but my problem is not with their obesity, then, but with the Medicaid/Medicare/Social Security Disability they get... and their food stamps.

I should start a campaign: a Campaign for Real Freedom. We need to free people from these unrealistic ideals of "freedom" that are pushed by the media. "Freedom from want?" A "right to health care?" These misguided concepts of freedom are endangering true freedoms of the next generation of girls (and, incidentally, boys). They may grow up not knowing that they have a right bear arms that shall not be infringed. Not even infringed. They may grow up ignorant that their government is authorized only to make appropriations for those purposes enumerated in the constitution, not all things supposed to promote the general welfare.

The one thing that threatens more girls in America than anything else our politicians should be worried about: collectivist politics.

SRS

Liberty or security?

2007-08-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

I heard part of a radio show discussing whether we are leaning too far to security, too far to liberty, or striking a good balance. That's obscenely ignorant. That we are told we have to choose between liberty and national security means we have already lost far too much of the former (and the education to know about it), and could lose the latter at any moment.

Our national security cannot depend upon the wisdom and benevolence of the government. It is a matter of free, armed people defending themselves. Unfortunately, "liberals" want to take away our right to arm ourselves, and "conservatives" want to keep us from getting in the way of law enforcement (by doing something rash like, say, protecting ourselves).

Perhaps the most shocking instance of our government making us less secure by making us less free is federal control of our airports. This is inherently a violation of our property rights - that if we invest our money to build an airport and want to host some airlines and serve the people of our county or city in that way, the government takes that airport from us and installs TSA airport security to protect the passengers. But at least we are safer in the government's hands than in the hands of profiteering capitalists, right? Hardly.

I would literally bet my life that a capitalist would provide better airport security than the TSA, unless that capitalist were forced to follow outrageous government regulations. Which he probably would be - the government can't seem to let go of anything anymore.

If we had airports where our fellow citizens, trying to make a dollar, were buying terrorism insurance, you can bet your life the insurers would find all kinds of brilliant ways of keeping us (and their money) safe. If we were allowed to carry guns on college campuses, maybe shootings at college campuses would be as rare as they are at gun shows. If we armed public school teachers (and trained them to use their guns) as Israel does, maybe school shootings wouldn't happen here either.

If we were a well-armed people, free to defend ourselves (and each other) from enemies foreign and domestic, we would have national security. As Benjamin Franklin said, "those who yield essential liberty for a little temporary safety will have neither." We have neither liberty nor safety to the extent that we should, and and we could increase both with the same actions.

SRS

Note: the Franklin quotation was originally misattributed and not word for word. (I was in a hurry at the original writing, and I apologize.) It has been corrected.

The important housing sector

2007-08-08T22:09:00.000-04:00

The idea that there is some inherent "importance of the housing industry to the overall economy" is so commonplace, it is glossed over in an article on a conservative periodical's website. This idea seems self-evident, and perfectly in keeping with conservative ideals of private property, family, and individual prosperity.

Upon closer examination, however, the idea of "importance" in one segment of the economy implies that the economy can be segmented and those segments, in turn, can be assigned different levels of importance. These ideas, particularly the latter, are mistaken and dangerously close to the flawed reasoning that puts government in the role of protector of the stock market, banks, farm policy, energy policy, air travel, airwaves, and (sadly) more. For if something has primacy in the economy, it cannot be allowed to suffer a downturn or collapse, as some industries do from time to time. Housing is key to the economy, the thinking goes, so if people are defaulting on their loans, losing their homes, and/or unable to take out a mortgage to get a new home, something must be done! Particularly, government must act!

It was government action to try to help out stock investors in 1929 that caused a recession, and government tariffs, wealth redistribution, minimum wage laws, forced employment and such that turned that recession into the Great Depression. One bad policy followed another as new ideas turned a fast-growing, opportunity-rich economy into a shambles in which people were starving as the government bought crops and destroyed them, and the poor couldn't get jobs in a private sector that was terrified of the caprice of the Roosevelt administration (which was even worse than the lamentable Hoover administration).

Some of you are perhaps arguing that the causes of the Great Depression are more complicated than that. The causes of the Great Depression are indeed numerous, as numerous as the interventions Hoover and Roosevelt tried. It is a sad coincidence that the stock market correction of 1929 took place under an interventionist presidential administration. Had Coolidge been president during such a correction, it is doubtful any government action would have been taken, except perhaps to lower taxes. In that case, the correction would have been corrected, recession (let alone the Great Depression) would have been averted, lives would have been saved.

Why did Coolidge take such a passive stance with the economy? Because he viewed it as a whole, capable of adapting and changing to fit its environment. Imagine that Woodrow Wilson said that blacksmiths were an important sector of our economy, and that they had to be saved from wage suppression caused by a move away from horses (and horseshoes) to the auto car. What if he had limited car production to achieve this, or had the government buy horseshoes to destroy them? He would have been considered crazy, wouldn't he? (That seems to testify to the immense propaganda power held by Keynesians and other FDR types, doesn't it?) Government "solutions" have likewise always bound adaptivity and stifled innovation in the economy, and the Great Depression was no different. Doesn't any FDR fan wonder why it was so long?

More to the point, here we are in the 21st century, looking at the housing sector and worrying about the damage that might be done to the economy if this "important sector" is allowed to suffer. Well what damage might be done to the economy if we get the government to fix these problems? Getting government help with a sector of the economy seems to me to be like getting Jason Voorhees to cut your hair, because "it's a disaster." To paraphrase Groucho Marx, if you think the economy's bad off now, just wait till they get through with it.

SRS

[Working title]

2007-07-23T23:20:00.000-04:00

Does anyone see what's wrong with this paragraphlet:

Others say the effect on the economy will be negligible. A PNC Economic Outlook survey done in April reported that three out of four small- and middle-market business owners said raising the minimum wage would have little or no impact on their businesses. "In a tighter labor market, they already raised wages to be competitive," said Stuart Hoffman, the chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

If you said that an author shouldn't gloss over a drop in employment at one out of four small- and middle-market businesses, you might have what it takes to be a capitalist. If you follow the link that I preserved in the quotation, you'll see that the report goes on to paint the numbers a different way than the pro-minimum wage author who quoted it.

35 percent of retail and wholesale business owners say the federal minimum wage hike would "greatly or somewhat adversely impact" their business within its first six months. Among the concerned owners in these two industry sectors, the impact would be felt by customers and employees alike: 34 percent of these owners would raise selling prices and 29 percent would reduce hiring.

As always, businesses cut employment costs or pass them on to their customers as necessary and as much as possible. Is that wrong? I don't think it would be even if they were fabulously wealthy, but some of them are middle-class folk struggling to provide for their families. There's nothing immoral about them starting a business instead of working for someone else's existing business. But back to my original point: politicians (and the irresponsible writers who laud their worst acts) never look at all of the consequences of minimum wage laws (or any other law), they just look at the people it will help or the people they imagine it will help, and pat themselves and each other on the back. Meanwhile, 29% of retail and wholesale business owners reduce hiring. (Hiring whom? The poor.)

I don't mean to imply that the government should look only at the consequences when it chooses its course of action. I'm just saying that what it should do (protect private property rights and allow the citzenry their freedom) happens to have better consequences.

SRS

P.S. Even the author of the sleight of hand piece admits that the only reason three out of four employers will be unaffected by the minimum wage hike is because they already pay their employees more. That is, to the extent that a minimum wage doesn't cause unemployment, it was unnecessary and redundant anyway.

P.P.S. All wages in America would be a lot higher if it weren't for the high cost of OSHA compliance, EEOC liability protection, and accounting-intensive, labyrinthine tax law. That is, except OSHA and EEOC bureaucrat wages, and tax accountant/lawyer wages. Those would be lower because of lower demand.

Close Gitmo!

2007-07-07T02:16:00.000-04:00

I think there are only two reasons my fellow conservatives defend Guantanamo Bay's detention facility.

1) They instinctively defend anything American that is attacked by dozens of Democratic congressmen and senators.

2) They are afraid to say what they really believe: that Gitmo should be shut down and its detainees moved somewhere that Amnesty International and other left-wing wackos can't find them--and where they aren't coddled so much.

At the very least we should put price caps on the food and health care we provide them. (Is gruel halal?) And interrogators should be given leeway to the extent of anything not reasonably expected to cause permanent injury, serious illness, or death. After all, these enemy combatants were not in uniform, are not under Geneva protections, and are associated with an enemy that will not stop torturing and beheading our guys, regardless of what we do or do not.

If detainees get hurt during interrogation, taxpayer-funded doctors can rush to their rescue, assuming the procedure is covered by the detainees' HMO.

SRS

Normal people...

2007-06-26T23:07:00.000-04:00

...putting up with "progressivism."

SRS

Pirates bad, British colonial rulers good

2007-06-09T02:00:00.000-04:00

The new Pirates movie is a bad movie, as I noted in my movie/humor/football/medical tourism blog. But it also teaches us falsehoods. Here in my political blog, I would like to point them out.

My mother taught me that if I don't have anything nice to say, I shouldn't say anything at all. Well I do have something nice to say about the Pirates movie. It has a very accurate portrayal of pirate teeth, at least in the minority characters' parts. As pirates had a very difficult time getting dental coverage into their health plans until the late 1800's, most pirates had very bad teeth. Also, pirates had swords and sailed around in ships, as portrayed in the movie.

Okay, that about does it for the historically accurate parts of the movie.

I would like to point out that most pirates were not feminists who took orders from women. Most pirates, in fact, raped and murdered women, as well as children. Pirates robbed from the rich to keep for themselves, and recruited or killed the poor. Pirates may have spoken about freedom, but not as eloquently or ingenuously as in the movie, because in real life pirate ships were despotisms of the sea, where the captain had absolute power and his men were beaten or put to death at his whim. That segues nicely into my next point, which is that pirates were not democratic (or republican), did not have an unbreakable code or law, and did not have a U.N.-like body politic where Keith Richards presided and played guitar. (Actually, I think the real pirates come out a little ahead in that one sense.) Real pirates were largely racist.

British imperialism, the East India Trading Co., and the British in general did not come off so hot in Pirates 3. In real life, British imperialism has been the greatest single cause of political and economic freedom in this world, with the possible exception of New Testament Christianity. But the latter cause is kind of hard to nail down when it comes to its economic and otherwise tangible effects. On the other hand, the explosive prosperity of Hong Kong, Singapore, and even the U.S. is directly traceable to those countries' experience as British colonies, and their close adherence (except recently in the U.S.) to the principles of law and entrepeneurialism laid out under British colonial rule. India is just now recovering from the economic devastation that they wrought upon themselves when they did away with those principles as they rid themselves of the imperial power that imparted them. South Africa's relatively happy economy is alone on its continent, despite apartheid, because they have done less to eradicate the vestiges of British colonialism than have other African countries (or because many African countries were colonized by the French, whose colonial legacy cotrasts with Britain's the way a serial rapist contrasts with a king who has concubines whom he keeps in luxury).

Anyway, British people, and the East India Trading Co. in particular, did not wreak mischief and violence and woe wherever they went. They engendered prosperity and good hygiene, and a great many Indians, Singaporeans, and uh, Hong Kongians are much better off for their countries' experience with British imperialism. Just so you know.

SRS

A grammar lesson

2007-05-30T01:31:00.000-04:00

Maybe I should just stop reading leftish webzines late at night, but I came across this little gem:

Richardson also misplayed the candor card. Seven times in the broadcast, he used phrases like "I made a mistake" or "I shouldn't have said that." After six years of an error-ridden Bush administration in which it has taken eons for the president to offer even limited mumbles about any errors, we should applaud candidates who admit mistakes. We should also encourage them to tell us what they've learned from their wrong turns. But there is surely a limit to the number of mistakes you can admit to before it starts to hurt your authority, and Richardson seemed to zip by it.

And I feel I have to parse it, using parsing skills I learned at the EIB Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies. First, in the context given, "we should applaud candidates who admit mistakes" means "we should demand that candidates constantly apologize and grovel for forgiveness." Notice the subtle turn of phrase. "We should also encourage them to tell us what they've learned from their wrong turns" means "they must dance like marionettes on our strings for our amusement as we treat them like first-graders." And finally, "there is surely a limit to the number of mistakes you can admit to before it starts to hurt your authority, and Richardson seemed to zip by it" means "that stuff we said about apologizing, grovelling, and being treated like first-graders - that was meant for Republicans only. Look to Bill Clinton, Richardson, and he will show you the way. Don't ever admit that you were wrong!"

SRS

The stupidity incentive

2007-05-30T00:47:00.000-04:00

Economists and conservatives in general often write about incentives, that is, people do what they have an incentive (internal or external) to do, and they do not do what have a disincentive to do. There are usually some of each being weighed, but actually every choice we make and every action we take is based on some perceived good coming of it, or some perceived harm being avoided. "Who cares?" I imagine you're asking. Good question! (Not really, but flattery keeps people reading.)

I was reading an article in a leftish webzine which I believe has much wider readership than this blog, and they wrote that they had started (or made known) a backlash against the new agey power-of-positive-thinking crowd with a good, old-fashioned Be Realistic and Prepare For The Worst article and a mention of a book of the same idea. The article posited that "only people in an affluent, technologically advanced society, packed with fail-safes and conveniences, could be so susceptible to [the positive thinking crowd]'s brand of hubris." The article even mentioned Hurricane Katrina, and how some people assumed that the government had fixed the levees.

My friends, our leftish friends are dangerously close to stumbling upon: the truth that conservatives have been telling them all along! When you have a big, mommy government taking care of everything for everyone, the incentive to be careful and look into things for yourself is reduced precipitously. Why live in a place where hurricanes don't ravage the shoreline? The government will come and save us! Why learn which cars are safer than others? Ralph Nader will protect us from unsafe cars! Why pay attention to what we eat? If it were unhealthy, the government wouldn't let them sell it to us anyway! Why educate our children? The government does that for us with the free public schools!

Nanny government isn't just bad for the economy, it makes millions of Americans fatter, dumber, and lazier.

SRS

A suggestion for the EPA

2007-04-03T02:00:00.000-04:00

Now that the Persons in Black have poured more carbon-cutting power into the laps of our good friends, the bureaucrats at the EPA, I have a friendly suggestion for the EPA, offered in a spirit of goodwill. In order to cut CO2 emissions in the U.S., there is no better strategy that I can think of than that laid out in Rachel Carson's CO2 reduction masterpiece, Silent Spring. If you can eliminate the smallest CO2-emitting creatures from the food chain, you can cause a dietary chain-reaction, exterminating dozens, hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of CO2-emitting species from the face of the beloved (but overheating) planet.

Let's all help the EPA fulfill its mandate by chipping in and shutting down the biggest carbon-polluter of them all: the animal kingdom. Kill a deer, save the world.

SRS

Private roads

2007-03-12T02:21:00.000-04:00

I was just reading a George Will article about traffic (not the band), and I was reminded of an idea I had a while back. Why don't we privatize all roads except interstates? And not the wimpy, half-privatization that they did with airports and the USPS. What if private businesses and individual citizens had to find a way to pave and maintain the roads leading to their offices and homes? Of course, that would only work in a world where taxes were lower and government was wasting our money on mammoth bureaucracies. But in such a world I think it would work.

SRS

Don't embarrass your local leftist police state

2007-02-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

...because they will jail you for inadvertently exposing them as frightened bugs. Some ad company for the Cartoon Network paid a man to place harmless little light-up mooninite magnets all over Boston (in exactly the same way that men had been paid to put harmless little light-up mooninite magnets all over certain cities in New York, Texas, California, Washington, etcetera). Well, Boston police panicked. The bomb squad was called in, the mayor and the governor told everyone to be alert. Basically everyone in the Mecca of "Progressivism" was humiliated. Well, leftists hate being humiliated, just like anyone else does. Unlike others, however, they abuse their power to try to destroy those responsible, even though those responsible in this case were probably some of their biggest fans. This is hilarious, but it serves as a cautionary tale: when visiting leftist cities, especially old-headed ones like Boston, don't do anything that might be perceived as a threat. Or anything that might be perceived as funny, or light-hearted. Basically, just avoid cities like Boston for the rest of your life.

SRS

P.S. Some of you probably know I'm from the Seattle area, and I love it out there, though Seattle is pretty much the leftmost point in America. But you have to admit: no one's going to be arrested for anything like placing mooninites around Seattle. For one thing, Seattle officials have probably seen Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

What happens in this country is no better

2006-12-17T01:58:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't read enough appalling and utterly dreadful news, there's this (warning: only for those with iron stomachs and not prone to nightmares), which I found via my brother's blog. I'm too tired to make a political point. Draw your own conclusion.

Backlog Bob

Truth and honesty, if it's convenient

2006-10-09T23:56:00.000-04:00

"Students believe in honesty, they believe in truth, we see that overwhelmingly," said [the] executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at [a prestigious university]. "But at the moment of panic, those values seem to take a back seat."

This was in a plagiarism-focused, online news article I was reading this evening. Notice the job of the man who said this. Notice his attitude. (They're good kids, they just lie and cheat because we're demanding too much of them.) Academic standards may or may not be too rigorous, but when executive directors of Centers for Academic Integrity at prestigious universities are going to bat to defend plagiarists and liars, moral standards are none too rigorous - if they even exist anymore.

SRS

Investing

2006-10-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

I have other things I ought to be doing, but I miss blogging, and I finally have something I want to blog about. Here's a summary of things everyone should know about investing.

1. Everyone would be better off if they started learning about, and practicing, investing.
There's a lot of money languishing in savings and checking accounts that would serve its owners (and the economy at large) a lot better if it were invested. Investing is like telling your money to get off its lazy backside and get a job. That way, you have two incomes - yours and your money's.

2. Investing is not risky for everyone.
People read and hear all the time about how risky it is to invest in stocks, or in commodities, or what have you. As with anything else, there is some risk, because no one can know the future, but there is no more risk in stocks than there is in a checking account, unless you are ignorant of what you are investing in, or trying to get rich in a couple of weeks or less. Now okay, you might have heard about that guy that lost $5,000,000,000 of other people's money in less than a week because of investing mistakes. But what he was doing wasn't actually investing: it was gambling with things usually used for investing. Behavior such as his makes investing look risky to people who don't know the difference between investing and trading (which is point #5 or #6).

3. It's easy to educate yourself about investing.
There's a lot of free information available on the internet, tv, and radio, for people who are willing to find it, and read, watch, or listen for an hour or two per week. You merely have to want more from your money than immediate gratification (or 2% interest), and take a little time to do something about it. Some of my favorites: MSN.com>Money>Investing, Yahoo.com>Finance>Commentary (particularly Morningstar and Motley Fool, two usually subscription-required services that give free samples to Yahoo), and PBS' Nightly Business Report (but that's mainly because Paul Kangas reminds me of my late grandfather). It's quite possible you could find even better if you scour the web for free investing info.

4. Not everything you read (or hear) is going to be good advice.
Just because it's good to read something doesn't mean you should follow all the advice therein. Take a few weeks (or months) to get used to what you're reading. Some of the advice may even be great advice for someone else and be terrible for your particular situation. The important thing is that you're learning. It may also be important to keep in mind point #5:

5. Investing and trading are not the same thing.
The former is a way for your money to be productive for you and others; the latter is gambling. Investing, at its best, involves everyone prospering more than they would otherwise (you and the company you invested in). Trading needs a loser in order to have a winner. Investing in a stock means part ownership of the company that stock represents. It means entitlement to a share of that company's profits. Similarly, investing in a commodity signifies ownership of certain amount of corn, crude oil, gold, or what have you. Trading is an attempt to get rich from exploiting changes in stock prices caused by changes in the supply and demand of shares of companies. Much like investors, traders buy stocks or commodities; but unlike investors, traders are not interested in owning shares of profitable companies. They want only to sell that stock or commodity later for a tidy profit.

Now, if you buy a stock on the open market (NYSE or NASDAQ, etc.) someone else is selling it, so for you to succeed with that stock, the other person or institution is missing out. For one thing, that's on them (but that's what a successful trader would say about his victims) - more importantly, there is a very valid reason for someone to sell a stock that's going to provide a good return: he needs the money for something else (or an even better investment opportunity). So even if everyone practiced wise investing, there would still be opportunities to make good investments.

With all of that, I am not trying to say that trading is wrong. But it is a lot more like gambling than investing is, it is risky for people who don't know how to do it well (including most of the people who try it), and people have misconceptions about investing because they confuse it with trading.

6. There's more that everyone should know about investing.
But I'm too tired and bored to keep typing right now, so I'll come back to this later (maybe months later, if recent past experience is any guide).

SRS

Green hybrids?

2006-10-03T00:47:00.000-04:00

I was recently exposed to a tv ad for a car that was so fuel-efficient that it made leaves go flying back onto trees, making the trees green again. That was nice, but I started thinking: "How does fuel-efficiency help the trees? By reducing emissions, right? Emissions like carbon dioxide? Didn't I learn back in elementary school that the ol' exhale stuff is good for trees? Did science reverse itself (yet again) and decide that CO2 actually hurts trees? How did I not hear about that? That ranks right up there with Pluto not being a planet, as newsworthy scientific discoveries go. It must be an oil company conspiracy that silenced those brave scientists who made that discovery.

SRS

Is a 50-year conservative icon now losing it?

2006-07-09T02:14:00.000-04:00

By way of explanation why I'm going to pick on an article about 7 weeks old, I only just discovered it as I was catching up on my Malkin. Anyway, I came upon a reference to this priceless WFB Jr gem: "Uprooting [illegal immigrants to deport them ] would prove as wrenching as the uprooting of the blacks from Africa 300 years ago." This is what happens when conservatives grow fond (or covetous) of the respect of left-wing academic elites. As wrenching as the uprooting of blacks from Africa? I doubt it would be even 10% as wrenching. 15% tops. I'm a fanatical labour pool supply-sider and I think that kind of rhetoric is ridiculous.

Even more wrong, more insidious - and ignored by Malkin and perhaps all other post-publication fact-checkers (until me) - was the following, from the same article: "There are two directions to go in class-mobile America. The first is stasis -- what greeted post-Civil War blacks for a hundred years." Apparently Buckley forgets that black Americans were trending strongly upward in all economic measures from the end of the Civil War until the "reforms" of the 1960's (except during the Great Depression) - not because of the legislation of the 60's. In fact, the 60's saw the slowest growth of standard of living in black American households since the GD, and the War on Poverty (which Buckley used to oppose) seemed to halt an impressive advance in the economic status of blacks. I think Buckley should read more of the writings of Drs. Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams for more information on how the free market does more to help the objects of racial discrimination than any government program. I also think that Buckley is drifting left in his old age.

SRS

P.S. I recently enjoyed a classic Dick Cavett Show episode (c. 1972) in which Dick reads a letter to the effect of: "I was disappointed that you would let William F. Buckley, Jr on your show: he is a known snake!" I got a belly-laugh from that.

Sigh

2006-06-29T00:39:00.000-04:00

Apparently The New York Times will print true stories only if it's treasonous to do so.

SRS

Mucking out the blog

2006-06-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

I deleted the link to Edoras, because it's essentially not there anymore. At least, the art gallery isn't - it's just a page explaining that all the good stuff is gone. Bummer. If you have a favourite by Lee, Howe, Nasmith, Garland, or the Hildebrandt bros that you didn't download in time - and if the artist doesn't mind - just leave me a comment asking for the pic, and I'll try to get it to you.

I was trying to show someone the story about the Alaskan public school principal, and the link went to a 404-like page. I don't know how to find that story again, and I would like to re-establish the link. I don't feel like messing with it right now, especially since I can't replace it, so just know that link doesn't work anymore.

If you notice anything else that needs updating, please leave me a comment about it.

SRS

Apparently Lt. Pantano was acquitted

2006-05-29T18:35:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you, but this is the first I've heard of Lt. Pantano's acquittal. Good news. Also, this article is a must read if you want an understated critique of Rep(rehensible) Murtha's recent attacks on the Marine Corps.

SRS

Fox guards henhouse against hens

2006-05-08T18:34:00.000-04:00

Suggesting that oil companies need to be willing to profit less from gasoline so that Americans can have cheaper gas seems to me to be a lot like suggesting that a man with both his legs tied together would be able to crawl faster if he just cut his legs off. Why not cut the ropes off of his legs?

Yeah, it's pretty jealousy-provoking to see a company make record-breaking goo-gobs of profit while you're paying 40-50% more than you're used to for something you need. But the oil companies are making about a fourth or a fifth as much as the government each time you fill up. Then the government turns around and spends that money enforcing regulations that make it much more expensive to produce gasoline (and make the environment squeaky-clean, instead of just super-clean). So maybe we should think about cutting gasoline taxes, or eliminating some of the unnecessary environmental regulations. (Think all environmental regs are necessary? Remember Clinton at 11:59 PM the night before Bush's Inauguration Day ordering that instead of 10 parts in a gazillion of arsenic in our drinking water, we were going to spend billions of dollars to bring it down to one part in a gazillion, even though it takes about 10,000 parts/gazillion of arsenic/water to make anyone sick? Well, he did, and when Bush made the most obviously good decision in the history of decision-making by overturning it, everyone in the Marxist-Sympathizing Media pulled out their hair and screamed that he was poisoning our water - our children's water! It's the same thing with the gasoline additives. It's doubtful that a sparrow would ever get a bit phlegm from the "air pollution" that the cheaper-additive gasoline produces, let alone that it would turn every American city's sky to Shanghai beige, but the Robert Redford crowd nonetheless won't let us use the cheap stuff. Same crowd won't let us drill in the Alaskan tundra for oil and natural gas.)

Sorry about the long parenthesis. The point is, we could just start cutting the government interference in the economy, especially unnecessary environmental regulations. That would be like cutting off the ropes that bind the legs of the economy. Or we could just blindly lash out in vengeance against the oil companies, which would be like cutting off the legs of our economy.

SRS

P.S. Before you start putting up hate comments because of my "defense of the oil companies," let me just say that the oilers aren't the legs in my analogy. The legs represent market freedoms.

The little Google boycott that could

2006-04-16T01:20:00.000-04:00

I removed Google's ads from my page. (At least, I think I did - I'm still not very good at this "computer" stuff yet.) There are two reasons for this. First, they were making money from these ads, and I wasn't. Second, and more importantly, I don't want to support a company that brazenly supports the deception of an oppressed people. They hide behind claims of supporting the local laws and customs - but they won't support the local laws and customs banning child porn in the U.S. Free speech for child molestors in the U.S., but not for Chinese freedom fighters persecuted by their own "government."

Please, if you do a Google search, don't click on any "sponsored links" - if you want to visit the site which sponsored the link, open a new browser window, and type in the url given with the sponsored search result - thus diminishing Google's revenue. If you encourage all of your friends to stand by Chinese dissidents by boycotting Google's ads, we might be able put a dent in their bottom line.

SRS