The Gunner's Blog

Mossberg MVP bolt action rifle

2012-01-28T20:19:00.000-05:00

Here's a review from Peterson's Rifle Shooter magazine. The MVP is a 7 1/2 pound bolt action rifle that fires 5.56 NATO / .223 and--get this--feeds from AR-15 magazines. The design magicians at Mossberg did something rather clever to make the rifle feed reliably. In the past it has been a troublesome thing to make a bolt rifle feed from autoloader magazines, so they rethought the problem. Details are in the review linked above.

The usefulness of a rifle of this sort is obvious: It's just the thing for the fellow who prefers a bolt action, but likes the convenience and extra firepower of box magazines. Because it fires the ubiquitous service cartridge and uses commonplace magazines, it will be fairly cheap to feed.

At present the only stock offered is a benchrest-styled and robustly proportioned one made of laminated wood. For some uses a synthetic stock of lighter weight and trimmer lines would be preferable. Perhaps that will be an option by and by. It looks like at least a pound could be taken off the rifle's weight by use of a lightweight stock. Not everyone would like that, but it would be an improvement for some uses.

Is the Pope Catholic?

2012-01-24T17:00:00.000-05:00

The Pope's remarkable offer to Anglicans, to join the Roman Catholic church on a fast track, while keeping some distinctive aspects of our worship and ministry, has something wrong with it. I am sure the Pope was and is unaware of the defect. After all, he is not an Anglican, and you would have to be one to see it.

The people joining up under the Pope's offer are from the high church, and mainly the corner of it called Anglo-Catholic. The low church is not much interested.

The problem is, without those low church people, it isn't really Anglicanism. We need them, for they are a part of us, as surely as a thumb is necessary to a hand. The glory of the Anglican communion is our integration of all shades of orthodox* belief in one church. It looks to me as if Anglicanism's Roman branch will lack the very thing that makes Anglicanism great.

Links:

A news story about the American ordinariate
The Apostolic Constitution that frames the enterprise

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* Our habit of broad tolerance of people's views has been used against us, of late, to assert some things as acceptable that have no place in church tradition, except as things opposed by and to that tradition. Various strange ideas and enthusiasms have arisen in the church before, and we have gotten over them.

Nice, politically correct warfighting

2012-01-24T16:09:00.002-05:00

This poor jarhead, Lt. Joshua Waddell, has gotten jacked up over nice, politically correct rules of engagement in Afghanistan. There are several things wrong with an elaborate rule book about fighting nice, not least of which is the other fellows don't have one.

At least there's no inflation

2012-01-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

The good news, per the gummint in Washington, is there is little inflation, practically none--ain't that nice? The only significant increases are in food and fuel. Now, as it happens, those are the only things I'm buying these days. So the news that price increases are largely confined to those things is not real swell news. Obama should stop patting himself on the back about it before he tires out his arm.

Personal defense: Further thoughts on the shotgun

2012-01-18T11:04:00.000-05:00

Why a shotgun?

The fighting shotgun is the best match to the usual scenarios that fall under the heading of justifiable self defense. You need heavy firepower at close range and the best hit probability you can get.

Almost all self defense shooting is at short range, and the shotgun, loaded with multi-projectile shells, is simply the best short range weapon. Its hit probability is twice that of a military rifle and nearly half again better than you get from a submachine gun. That is what was reported out of our military's JSSAP efforts and I see no reason to doubt it. My informal range experiments show the shotgun is fast to address close targets because of the confidence factor. The shotgun's margin for error allows you to shoot quickly.

Slugs

As an expedient for longer range firing, the rifled slug, from a smoothbore shotgun, is effective at 75 yards, if the shotgun is equipped with rifle sights. When zeroed at 75 yards the typical slug's rise above the sight line is less than two inches, which is certainly manageable. The trajectory is 20 inches low at 175 or thereabouts, depending on the brand and style of the slug. Accuracy at such a long distances is, in any case, hit-or-miss, literally. At much beyond 100 yards, slugs are decidedly an iffy proposition. But they add versatility to the shotgun by turning it into a smoothbore musket that throws a large caliber projectile.

Some people, of the sort who like to devise training programs, have come up with the 'select slug' drill, which works like this: You look at the distance to the target and if it is farther than is ideal for shooting with buckshot, meaning the shot will spread enough that some pellets may miss the assailant, you insert and chamber a slug and aim carefully. My thought on the matter is this is a solution in search of a problem. In any likely scenario, you will not have time to select a slug and there will be no need to do so, because the distance will be short. Carry some slugs if you wish, but the likelihood of needing them is slight.

We know that most self defense shootings are at less than 15 yards, often much less. If you have a justified self defense shooting situation the distance will nearly always be such that the rigmarole of estimating the range and deciding which shell to use (and taking up precious fractions of seconds to do so) is pointless in the first place. As I have indicated elsewhere, the usual problem isn't shot that spreads out too much, but that most guns and shells pattern too tightly at the very close ranges that are usual in self defense.

The Body Armor Problem

Nothing you can load into a shotgun will penetrate body armor reliably. But since the armor doesn't cover everything, you are not helpless. The targets ordinarily available on an armored assailant are hands and arms, neck and face, legs and pelvis. Smallish shot with good pattern density, such as #4 Buck, or even BB, will help you hit what the armor does not cover. That will work at short range; I don't know of a long range solution, except to suggest you figure out how to hide from the bad guys.

Most criminals do not wear armor, but enough do that you need a plan. Criminals who have been in the ground force military are well briefed on the stuff, and might even have brought some home with them.

It is perhaps counter-intuitive that smaller shot is better than the mighty double-aught, if the opponent is armored, but it is true when you think it through. The ability to hit a certain structure of the body, that is, to assure a hit within a certain smallish area, depends on pattern density, and that means small shot. Ideally you use the smallest shot that will give adequate penetration, a rule of thumb well proven in sporting uses of the shotgun.

Summary:

Will you need your self defense weapon at 15 yards' range? Perhaps, and very likely not that far, if you need it at all. 30 yards? Not likely, but possible. At such distances the shotgun is the best small arm of all. 60 yards? Unlikely. 120? Very, very unlikely. Yet the shotgun, properly loaded and managed, can deal with all those distances. The problem with it is it is not very satisfactory for dealing with someone who is wearing a ballistic vest, beyond 20 or 30 yards. That is not a big problem because most hostile encounters, outside the battlefield setting, are at shorter ranges than that, and most criminals are unarmored.

It seems, to me at least, that it is sensible to think in terms of likely scenarios, instead of an unlikely worst case. If your armed encounter follows any likely scenario, the shotgun is the best thing you can have going for you.

Big government: What is wrong with it

2012-01-16T18:24:00.000-05:00

Our problem is simple. Government, at all levels, has grown too big. It commands too large a share of the economy. It enforces far too many laws, policies, rules and regulations.

Big government, the kind set up to solve everyone's problems, is at odds with two things I like very much, individual liberty and a robust economy.

Fortunately, mega-governments always implode. They micro-manage what the people are doing, and spend themselves to death. The two are related: Freedom and prosperity are related. If you, as a businessman, have to carefully tiptoe your way through thousands of pages of rules to make sure it is really okay to start that new business or project you have in mind, you may conclude that the regulatory overhead is too costly. You don't try the new idea.

Or you may decide to go ahead. If you make a go of it, a big chunk of your profit is vampired away to support government. Your hiring and business expansion plans are not dependent on profit, but upon profit minus taxes, fees and regulatory overhead. Government is a cost of doing business. I suppose that is always true everywhere, but when the burden becomes too great, business stagnates.

There are also risks of direct government interference. Let us say that what you developed and brought to the market is a new and wonderful way of preparing French fries. Your fries are the best on earth, customers are wolfing them down, restaurant chains are bidding to licence your special process, and then--it hardly stretches the imagination to suppose this, especially given the current administration--the government launches a campaign against French fry eating. You did not see that coming, or the special tax placed upon french fries or the excise tax on potatoes, all to save the people from themselves.

Of course, your more sensible customers knew all along that your French fries were greasy, and delicious, so ate them once a week instead of every day, which did them no harm. The real beneficiary here is government. They get more rules to administer (and they hire more administrators) and they get two new tax streams.

Better luck next time. Got any recipes for arugula?

What happens in the end is the government, in trying to have a finger in every pie and rule books for all occasions, strangles the economy that supports it. The idea is to meet every voting bloc's needs and desires out of the profits of the actually productive, which is self defeating, if you think about it. At some point it becomes tempting to drop out of the rat race and become a taker, not a maker.

Do you think I'm making this up, painting my own fears atop the current scene? To the contrary; it is an old story.

Ruger American Rifle

2012-01-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

Ruger is on a roll, introducing new guns faster than I can keep up. The Ruger American is a bolt action rifle with closed top receiver, interchangeable magazines, synthetic stock and a short bolt-lift of seventy degrees. The trigger has a safety blade on its face; the trigger's pull weight is said to be adjustable from three to five pounds. Weight of the rifle is listed as 6.12 to 6.25 pounds.

I haven't seen an example of this rifle yet. I remark at this time because the rifle reflects an industry trend toward the closed top, and because it is quite a departure for Ruger. Their high powered bolt actions have heretofore been based on the Mauser 98, a conservative approach.

The Model 77 series (son of Mauser) continues in production, including the nifty Gunsite Scout Rifle.

Some previous designs that followed the closed top, interchangeable magazine approach are the Steyr SBS and the Tikka T3. These are successful and well liked rifles. Perhaps Ruger called their new model the American to fend off the observation that it owes a certain amount of its design thinking to Europe.

No word yet on the price of spare magazines for the new Ruger American.

Friday the 13th: The Euro Zone

2012-01-13T22:11:00.003-05:00

S&P downgraded the credit of nine countries; story here. In my estimate this is only the beginning. The dynamic is in place, and has been for a long time, for governments to grow and spend, but no one thought the matter through, and thought they might one day need to shrink and save.

The humanist dream of government solving everyone's problems has proven to be a golden calf. Moses is coming down the mountain. Stay tuned for details.

The handbasket we are in, and where it is going

2012-01-06T12:29:00.001-05:00

Allow me to vent. Thank you. Sometimes I need to.

The government continues to grow in expense and intrusiveness. The economy continues to splutter along, like an engine missing on several cylinders. It now appears the gummint is cooking the books on the unemployment rate. I suppose there are nicer ways to say it; what is reported out of a formula depends on the inputs and assumptions, but this is looking like a case of garbage in, garbage out. As it happens, the reporting bias just happens to make the administration look better than it would if the numbers were reported more on the square.

The public is being habituated to more and more government intrusions into daily life. The founding principle of America, that of limited government, seems to have been thrown away in efforts to. . .run things. If you begin with the assumption that government ought to run things, to assure everything works out right--well, you are in for a disappointment.

For starters, we have to remember that government is by nature parasitic. It produces no increase in wealth. It can only take and spend. When it attempts to get into the venture funding business it makes mistakes, because government decisions make political sense, not business sense. Tax money is apportioned by fiat--to failed auto makers, to 'green energy' companies offering dreams not reality, to Wall Street firms that should have sunk into well deserved bankruptcy--skewing markets and subtracting needed cash from the real economy that works and grows wealth by responding to market demand, not political whims.

Government 'stimulus' efforts are a bad joke. Keynes was a very bright man and right about a lot of things, but not about this. The Keynesian theory about government spending stimulating an economy simply does not match the way things work out in practice. The rationale has been retained, though, in public rhetoric. It amounts now to self-serving fraud, a convenient pretext, on the parts of those who feel government should always grow, grow, grow. Stimulus didn't work in the 1930's and it does not work now. It drains vitality from the real economy into the shadow economy of government spending.

In short, the government in Washington operates on beliefs and assumptions, or maybe just pretexts, that are divorced from reality. This is quite a problem: The people calling the shots do not know, or cannot admit, what is really going on. They act instead upon a fantasy they have built for themselves, one that says all that is separating us from nirvana is the need for one more law, one more program, or a new government department.

That will be our undoing. The government is incapable of ever saying, we now have enough government in place, enough governing is now going on: It is a monster that does not know how to stop growing.

At this writing, the federal government's indebtedness is 100.3% of the entire output of the economy for a year. This is a horrible number, like those seen in the socialist pseudo-economies of Europe. What is happening there will shortly happen here.

Watch Europe! There we can see our own future, for they are several years farther down the road to ruin than we are. The whole sorry fraud of meeting the people's needs with money the government takes from the people is coming unraveled.

I don't know just what will happen as the situation deteriorates. I will have to wait and see. Since this is a gun column, when I don't get sidetracked into politics, I probably ought to mention something to do with guns. Good news: we may not need them. Unrest in Europe has so far been slight. Its perpetrators are those who don't understand the situation, and feel government spending should continue unabated. Since the troublemakers are drawn from the small subset of citizens who do not understand arithmetic, we can expect a less than apocalyptic reaction there, or here, to the dawning realization the nanny state was a fraud all along, and the people have been had.

Three news stories

2011-12-26T08:01:00.000-05:00

There are three news stories I am following with particular interest because they seem to me the most important of our times:

The debt crisis in the Western democracies
Social change in China
The changing Mideast political situation, as regards mosque and state

These stories are interrelated, in some interesting ways. If the Western economies crumble it will affect the arising Chinese middle class. It will change the demand for oil, impacting the funding source for much of Islamism.

Other scenarios are possible. A Communist crackdown in China would disrupt China's economic development and China's role in world commerce, with results felt everywhere. Contrariwise, the Chinese people might finally get fed up enough with their Communist officials to throw the rascals out. Individual Chinese citizens do not have much political power, but there are a great many of them.

An Islamist hegemony in the Mideast would change many things, possibly including who is a favored customer for petroleum and who isn't. (It is quite possible we Americans would not be favored.) Increased Mideastern hostility toward the West could accelerate our debt problems by creating a further drag on our economies, with impacts on Asia's investments in the West and Asia's trade with the Western countries. Once again the Chinese situation is affected, with consequences worldwide, and of course within China itself...

And so on--make up your own scenarios. While I do not say any of the above will come to pass, none of them is impossible, and there are still more scenarios that cannot be ruled out. The rise in the West of either ultra-conservative or ultra-socialist policies could, in falling domino fashion, affect both Asia and the Mideast. For example, a new American isolationism--close the doors on the rest of the world--would affect matters everywhere.

The cultures and economies of the world are more closely linked than at any time previously. There are at present three areas of great uncertainty about future developments, a Western one, a Chinese one and a Muslim one. Interesting times, indeed.

New .22 pocket revolver from Ruger

2011-12-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

See it here: http://www.ruger.com/products/lcr/specSheets/5410.html

Some people, on a discussion board I visit, are asking what this little gun is good for, and in Internet echo chamber fashion, many people are opining it isn't good for much, because of its small caliber. I disagree. A DA snubnose in .22LR is an excellent thing to have, in some circumstances. I haven't shot the new Ruger yet, but have for many years owned another brand of .22 snub, so I feel I can comment.

If you carry a .38 snub you can get in a lot of good practice with a .22 version. It is possible to learn to shoot a snubnose rather well, but it takes a lot of practice. The .22 makes practice cheaper because the ammo costs so much less, and less fatiguing because of the lesser blast and recoil.

There are some people who cannot stand much recoil. This includes the elderly and arthritic, and also hale and hearty youngsters who have injured hands or wrists. Martial artists, for example, often injure their wrists. Touching off hot loads in a light .38 after someone has hurt you with an over enthusiastic wrist lock...well, it's not a good use of your time. A .22 is ordinarily not a problem unless the disability is severe indeed.

Many shooters keep a reserve of ammunition for a rainy day. The wisdom of this was shown in the ammo shortage of 2009. I would guess that typical shooters have more .22 squirreled away than anything else. I know it's true in my case. It therefore makes good sense to have a carry gun that can shoot this round, just in case you can't get anything hotter.

.22LR is the world's most popular cartridge, available wherever ammunition is sold. If you can buy commercial ammunition, even in an out of the way locale, you can find something to load into a .22. A revolver is better than an autoloader because it will cycle with poor quality ammunition, while a .22 automatic is more finicky.

Ruger's LCR-22 is, of course, based on their LCR .38 Special. The .22 holds eight shots. The .38 holds five. The LCR's are double action only. I do not see this as a drawback in a defense gun or a trainer for defensive shooting. The LCR design is noted for its smooth and even trigger pull; DA is the only mode you have but it is good DA. Since the .38 LCR seems to be holding up well, and the slightly beefed up .357 Magnum version does too, I conclude an LCR revolver using the .22's trifling power level will stand up to long use indeed.

Insofar as I can tell, there are no speedloaders available for the LCR-22. Perhaps they will be along shortly; the gun is new on the market. You can carry your spare ammo in Tuff QuickStrips if you like.

A good .22 snubnose is pleasant to shoot and easy to carry; in some circumstances, at least, it is even useful. I think the new Ruger will prove a fine example of the type.

The "Buck and Roy" rifle: Roy Rogers, meet Buck Rogers

2011-12-14T18:17:00.000-05:00

The lever action .30-30 is one of the handiest and most useful light rifles ever invented. I now count five manufacturers offering versions of this old weapon and I see it is as popular as ever among hunters of medium-big game.

The great virtue of the .30-30 is its fast handling. It is well balanced and points swiftly and naturally, the mechanism is quick and simple to operate, and the cartridge does not have so much recoil that it rocks you back on your heels.

The little rifle's chief drawback is the antique, cowboy-style sighting arrangement. The factory sights are all right for backup but they don't give you all the accuracy the rifle has in it. The adjustments are vague and approximate and the sight picture is quaint.

The modern sight that best suits the .30-30, in typical uses, is the red dot. It improves on the rifle's best trait by making the weapon even faster to put on target. To use the dot sight, you look downrange with both eyes focused on the target, just as you would normally look at something. When you raise the rifle, the sight adds an aiming pip to your natural view of your surroundings. Sight picture acquisition is speeded up and your situational awareness is not compromised by peering at the front sight.

Doubtless some purists will take umbrage at the idea of mounting a 21st century sight on a 19th century rifle. They may take all they like, and send a truck for any they can't carry with them. The rifle and sight are very efficient when used together and that is what matters. Roy Rogers' rifle is much improved by a touch of Buck Rogers technology.

In my opinion the dot sight is best mounted aft, over the receiver, instead of forward over the barrel in scout rifle fashion. This mounting makes the dot slightly quicker to acquire, because the opening in the sight is relatively larger in appearance when it is closer to your eye. Once your eye has found the opening you can use the dot; you do not need to center the dot in the sight. I do, however, like to mount the sight far enough forward that it cannot possibly hit me in the eye. I have a tendency to "crawl the stock," so I like the optic far enough forward that it is well out of my way in any shooting position.

A word of caution is in order about red dot sights. There are some putridly bad ones on the market. In part this is because the better brands are being bought up, these days, by the military, reducing the supply and jacking up the price in the private sector. In part it is because some unscrupulous chaps are cashing in on the public's inexperience with this kind of sight, and palming off cheaply made garbage as if it were serviceable gear. I mention this because there are many shooters who are convinced that red dot sights are no good. And they are partially right: The ones they have tried are indeed no good. If the lamp won't stay lit, if the dot isn't bright enough to use on a sunny day, if the adjustments won't hold zero, the problem isn't the concept; the problem is you've been had.

Though unconventional, the match-up of red dot sight and lever carbine is a very good one. The .30-30's long suit is speed, and so is the red dot's. The two complement each other extraordinarily well. The dot sight is not the best thing for long range work, but the long range specialist probably does not pack a .30-30.

Federal Cartridge's Handy Ballistics Calculator

2011-12-08T12:53:00.001-05:00

Click here to get the app. It is free.

This application for the PC has been around for years. It is now more stable and reliable than it was, early on. By using a point and click interface, you can get the detailed ballistic behavior of any factory cartridge offered by Federal. A clever feature of this app is you can use it to compare the performance of cartridges you select; you get graphs and tables that show your choices plotted against each other.

The interface is a trifle busy looking but after using it for a little while everything is easy to find. Installation was quick and trouble free.

You can input your own parameters for altitude, temperature and wind, and you have your choice of English or metric units of measure. I do not see a way to calculate time of flight, but that is of no interest for most uses. Of course the app lists only Federal products, but the performance of most brands is similar enough that you can get at least an approximation for other products by picking the Federal cartridge most like the one you're wondering about. In all, this is an app worth having if you are at all interested in the flight of your bullets.

Elizabeth Warren's Famous Rant

2011-10-29T11:26:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth Warren achieved national fame overnight with some pungent words, widely reported: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for..."

The rest is quoted below. She makes a powerful appeal in the populist, soak-the-rich tone the White House has been setting. But I find her understanding flawed. It overlooks (or ignores) that before we, the "rest of us," pay for anything, there must be enterprise and profit first of all. Most of us pay taxes out of wages, and wages come ultimately from the existence of profitable enterprises. That is true even of wages paid by the government--since those come out of taxes, and taxes come out of wages, and out of profits.

That has, of course, been true all along and it is true now. The government would have nothing to spend on roads, schools, police or fire fighters if there were no business being done. She has put the cart before the horse.

She is arguing the status quo, as if it justified more of the same. That is a trifle dangerous: Could not the reverse be argued at least as well? All that is at issue is the amount of profit that should transfer from the private sector to the government. She obviously believes the proportion should increase, but that is not the case she made.

We already have rather considerable levels of taxation and regulatory overhead and business leaders are saying less of that kind of thing would help them expand their enterprises. To turn Elizabeth Warren's argument on its head for a moment, "You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You already paid, directly or indirectly, for all the government services we have. You paid, by paying the wages the rest of us earned, for the roads, for the taxes we paid to educate our children, for the cops and firemen. What that didn't cover you paid for directly, through business taxes and fees and all the rest. God bless--keep an even bigger hunk of it, so you can do even more business. We can struggle along with less government spending, somehow."

What she is doing is clever, arguing the obvious as if it supported her case. You're not supposed to notice that.

"I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

More Rule Four -- a death this time

2011-10-23T19:46:00.000-04:00

This story out of Oregon is a tragic one, a young life snuffed out in a failure to apply Rule Four: Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target.

I remarked on a similar story just last month. To repeat: It is hard to imagine how you are going to have a shooting misadventure if you internalize the Four Rules pertaining to gun safety and always hold yourself to them.

If you do not know what the rules are, or have forgotten them--if you cannot repeat them off the top of your head--lock away your gun until you can recite them, with feeling.

How to reduce defense spending

2011-10-22T15:07:00.003-04:00

The U.S. started out without a large standing army and with militia units under state authority, that could be transferred into federal service at need. The idea was to avoid the risks to liberty, and the expense, of having a lot of armed federal employees trampling about.

Militia defense is a robust system. No one fights harder than someone defending his own turf. We saw this, for example, in the Second World War. The Japanese defending Japanese territory, on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, were reported by those on our side to be the damnedest thing you ever saw. These Japanese were regulars, in a national army, not militia, but the feeling--as reported from their side--was it was now personal. Other examples, from other countries, may come to mind.

Switzerland has a good example of a modern militia system. Their stance has long been one of neutrality backed by good riflemen. It seems to have worked very well: They have managed to stay out of the wars for a long time, with obvious benefits. Peace and prosperity generally go hand in hand.

The drawback of this kind of system is it is no good for conducting large scale wars abroad. I do not see this as a great drawback, for the world has not exactly fallen over itself thanking America for our foreign wars. Going back to a militia system would require a shift in emphasis to territorial defense. That idea is perhaps a little bit scary, as it might lead to war in our own streets, not someone else's. But if we are really clever about it, like the Swiss, we are unlikely to need to fight. Their habits of being financially welcoming, politically neutral and stubbornly independent are things we might advantageously consider.

The unpleasant solution to the public benefits problem

2011-10-22T12:49:00.001-04:00

Social welfare schemes have a built-in tendency to grow and multiply, as politicians discover it is in their interest to expand them, and add new ones. Recipients of public largess tend--understandably--to support parties, politicians and programs that deliver the benefits.

If we want to know how all this ends we need look no farther afield than the countries of the Euro zone. Greece is the first to crack under the strain of debts it cannot pay; it will not be the last. Here in the United States are not at the breaking point yet but we are getting there. We are making the same mistake; we are spending money we do not have. Of course it seems like a good idea at first to dole out benefits at public expense, but there is a very considerable downside. It is difficult to shrink social spending, a process that amounts to clawing back benefits from people who have become accustomed to think they deserve them.

Indeed, the United States' highly touted welfare reform under Clinton did not lead to permanent reductions in welfare spending; the total outlay has instead increased, when you consider all programs combined.

Well, if that isn't going to work there is another solution, which is to do nothing, or give lip service to the idea of reform while making only small cosmetic changes, and let the costs run up. That can't go on forever, but it will eventually solve the problem, when everyone wakes up and sees they are redistributing less pie as time goes on. When there is no more pie the situation will obviously require fresh consideration. I don't know if anything less than that--a large scale economic breakdown--will be sufficient to prompt reconsideration of the basic dynamic: social programs are easy to grow, difficult to shrink.

The 'Hands Off My Department' Department

2011-10-18T03:50:00.001-04:00

In this article the IRS commissioner claims that cutting his operating budget would be disastrous. Where have we heard that before? Why, we hear it every time anyone proposes cutting any spending in Washington. Can't be done! Preposterous! Impossible! It would wreck the economy or be cruel to the least fortunate, or something.

It happens every single time! A government spending cut is proposed and then the howling starts--oh no, you must not cut this. So you move along to the next thing, only to be told you can't cut that, either. Or the other thing! It ends up in a big double shuffle in which you're told you can't cut anything. At all. Ever. At least nothing serious--maybe the Marines have too much coffee money. Take it up with them.

The Puerto Rican Resident Commissioner opposes cuts for Puerto Rico.

“I recognize the need to reduce our nation’s deficit in a thoughtful and deliberate manner. But, as a recent editorial stated, ‘these are the wrong cuts, to the wrong programs, at the wrong time,’ said the Resident Commissioner in a statement he submitted for the Congressional Record.

Okay, Mr. Commissioner. Give us a call when it's the right time for you, and let us know what programs you want cut. You know--when it's convenient.

A suggestion to trim the Federal Aviation Administration budget was shot down by opponents who said it would hinder economic growth and was dangerous.

I can never find a story where the response is, "Why sure, cut our budget if you like; we're mostly useless in this department, anyway."

Could every government project we are funding be all that valuable? I guess so! To hear them tell it in Washington, not only do all projects need doing, we shouldn't propose to do them for less money. It's the wrong time. Dangerous. Disastrous. Or cruel. They all say it, so it must be true.

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Just for fun: Search Google for "opposes budget cuts."

The invisible hand is clutching our throat

2011-10-10T22:14:00.007-04:00

The economy is on everybody's mind these days. No one, aside from a few professionals, thinks about the economy when it is good. It's like your health: You only think of it when you are sick. Here are a few thoughts that are rattling around in my head, these days.

1. The bailouts were categorically mistaken. When businesses fail they should collapse. This is as natural, and as necessary, as fallen leaves providing mulch for the forest floor. When businesses fail in the normal and proper way, the people who take the losses are those who invested in questionable schemes and the rest of us get off scot free. New opportunities are created for new businesses that will seek to avoid the mistakes of their predecessors. This leads to improved business practices and a better economy over time, but of course that only works if people bear their own risks and take their own losses.

2. I knew just what was wrong when I heard Dubya gabbling about violating free market principles to save the free market. I knew we were doing something stupid and self defeating. There would have been severe short-term disruptions in the economy if nothing had been done. So we traded that for long drawn out suffering with no end in sight. That was not an intelligent tradeoff. We should have taken our medicine--ridden out the crash, then gotten on with our lives and rebuilding the economy.

3. But, having committed ourselves to the course of bailouts and takeovers and 'quantitative easing' (over my objections) we are now stuck with it. If we could claw back the TARP money and all the rest, the same thing would happen that the government's interference was meant to avert, the collapse of some firms that are called too big to fail and short term disruptions to the delivery of goods and services. There is some reason to suppose the crunch would be worse now than it would have been had it occurred a few years back, for we are now maxed out on public debt.

4. We have at best postponed the inevitable reckoning. At worst, we have distorted the economy in ways that assure a Greater Depression. I am not an economist. I have some measure of business experience and it has taught me to respect the 'invisible hand' economists talk about. TANSTAAFL! Instead of dealing with our problems in ways that honestly confronted the problems of over-valued assets and runaway debt, we have masked the underlying problem with more debt. So far as I can see, the present economic policy is composed entirely of moonbeams.We can't get traction for a real recovery because we won't face the real problems.

5. I used to think it was neat being a fiscal conservative because in the long term, anyway, you are always right, regardless. If people do stupid things with money it will catch up with them. This is true when great nations or big companies do it, just as it is true for individuals. So the fiscal conservative always has some idea what is likely to go wrong, in situations where money is changing hands. Now I'm not feeling so good about it--it's all right to be smug when you have money, but I don't.

The real Greek crisis

2011-10-08T17:42:00.000-04:00

In this article, AP's Christopher Torchia gives us a somber reflective look at Greece's economic situation, and sums up with some words from Aristotle on the seductiveness of riches. I like the article but the author quotes the wrong ancient Greek. Aesop's story of the goose that laid gold eggs is more apropos.

Greece's problem is government took too much out of the economy to give to too many people for too many reasons. Greece is not the only country that is doing this and it won't be the only one to fail economically because of it. They are going first because they have relatively a small and weak economy. The others will succumb by and by.

The idea of paying people with their own money is so preposterous that, like the big lie, it escapes immediate detection. In the long term, of course, truth comes out whether we like it or not.

Æsop. (Sixth century B.C.)  Fables.
The Harvard Classics.  1909–14.

The Goose With the Golden Egg

ONE day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering. When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a trick had been played upon him. But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold. Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich he grew greedy; and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find,—nothing.

         “GREED OFT O’ERREACHES ITSELF.”

Science versus religion? Ah, go on with you!

2011-10-06T15:58:00.010-04:00

People who assert that science trumps religion are making a logical error. It is a subtle error but serious.

Science has for its basis the philosophical idea called naturalism. (Consider science's former name, "natural philosophy.") Naturalism is the assumption that we will explain what we observe without reference to gods, devils, ghosts or fairy godmothers. What can repeatedly be observed and measured is the whole scope of discussion. It is a good and useful assumption: It has been a great help, in bygone times, in sorting out received superstitions from actual facts about the natural world. It has also led, in our era, to progress in finding ways to manipulate the world around us: new medicines and materials and machines and marvels galore. (It has also brought us atom bombs, gas warfare and unintended consequences like drug resistant bacteria and ways to die by accident that no one a century or two ago had heard of or imagined.)

Naturalism, though a very useful assumption, is an assumption. That is what we must not forget. By ruling out the supernatural, science can now say nothing about it. It must remain silent on such matters, because the grounds of discussion have fenced them out.

When you hear science argued as if it contradicts or disproves religious beliefs, the assumption about no gods or devils is being regurgitated as a conclusion. That is not good logic; it is an empty tautology.

The problem is not in logic itself, nor is it a flaw in science. It is a matter of exceeding one's warrant. We know logic is no bar to religious thought; some highly logical theologies show us that. We need a different starting point, that's all: for example, the assumption that the Bible describes reality as it exists beyond our everyday experience. From a truly scientific viewpoint, that assumption is, at best, true but irrelevant. At worst it is false and irrelevant. But science is powerless to say which. How can it?

Divine revelation is a miraculous matter. A miracle, by definition, is not an everyday occurrence, but a one-off event. It is not repeatably measurable. (Notice the same is true if you do not believe in miracles.) The explanation the text offers, for the events it recounts, is inherently outside the naturalistic assumption of no supernatural factors. A scientist can say, quite rightly, that he can't investigate that, using only the rules science gives him. He may say more if he likes, but not as a scientist.

Rule Four in San Francisco

2011-09-17T16:33:00.000-04:00

Every shooting misadventure I hear about involves violation of at least one of the Four Rules of gun safety.

In this story from the Chronicle, cops in San Francisco shot at a suspect, missed, and hit two bystanders. This shows us the reason for Rule Four, Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target.

To the obvious question, "What were the officers thinking," the obvious answer is, "They weren't."

Fair Play To Obama

2011-09-15T13:28:00.010-04:00

I do not believe claims that Obama is intentionally working to tank the American economy, by following the radical Cloward-Piven strategy. I am no fan of Obama but this seems to me an unwarranted charge. For it to be true, we would have to prove the same against all the European heads of state. Europe has the same kinds of problems we do: The governments spend too much, borrow too much and lack the political courage to make changes that are big enough to amount to more than halfway efforts at reform.

Since Europe has the same problems, we would need a worldwide conspiracy theory to explain why all the governments are headed by Cloward-Piven radicals. It's ridiculous.

What Europe and America are finding out is that government programs for social welfare--public solutions to private problems--are double whammy poison. These programs suck money out of the production economy. At the same time they take labor out of the economy, to the extent that people take government money instead of working for the things they need. When a good intention has two bad effects, we ought to reconsider whether the intention is as good as it seems.

The recipients of government largess are not the whole problem, though. We have too many government workers, busy about too many affairs and costing us far too much. A number of them are involved in administering social programs. Recognize this quote? It's from the Declaration of Independence. "He [King George III] has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance."

Of course there will always be some people who must be wards of charity, for they can be nothing else, the very crippled, the profoundly retarded, the thoroughly insane, the deathly ill, the very old. That has always been so. It is not at issue, and that is where the issue sometimes becomes confused. Here or abroad, any talk of cutting and eliminating programs is met by hand-wringing references to throwing these truly helpless people, friendless, into the streets to die. This is always a straw man argument, for no one suggests doing that.

It is sometimes said that we cannot cut social payments to the rest of the recipients either, or the poor will riot. Many attribute the recent disturbances in England to plans to reduce payouts. But there is something odd about this whole line reasoning. If the poor are hale and hearty enough to riot they are fit enough to work at steady jobs.

But--it may be said--that's heartless! There aren't jobs for them!

And why are there not? Economies with high ratios of public spending to GDP have chronic unemployment, or low growth, which is the same thing. So it becomes a vicious cycle in which the poor do not have work because government has become inclusive of everyone's needs.

So, no, Obama isn't a secret radical intent on destroying the economy. He is simply in a trap that he can't figure a way out of, and he is not alone.

Snitch Watch

2011-09-14T11:08:00.007-04:00

The Obama administration has launched a new web site were right-minded followers can report media, net traffic and rumors unfavorable to the Prez:

This begs the question of how you tell an "attack" from the usual, and necessary, debate that happens in elections. Is it an attack to say Obama is massively confused on basic issues to do with the economy? Or is that a legitimate thing to say, if you think it?

The attackers featured on the site today include rival candidates Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, and broadcaster Glenn Beck. You can also click a link to get "the facts," such as:

By providing assistance to auto companies, President Obama saved more than a million jobs and prevented the American auto industry from collapsing.

The Affordable Care Act promotes quality, affordable health coverage for all Americans, regardless of the industry they work in or their union status.

I hope this is all transparent to American voters: It is an attempt to put a patina of truth and fairness atop the same old spin doctoring. It has a worrisome aspect, though, despite its apparent silliness. It invites Obama supporters to be snitches: To point the finger at fellow Americans for saying things which they have, last I checked, every right to say. This new effort at election spin resembles, though in a half assed way, the 'official truth' of totalitarian regimes. Good Obama supporters will go to the web site to find out what to think when they hear something that confuses them; the Orwellian note in all this is clear, but muted by overtones of farce.

Train Wreck America

2011-09-05T16:28:00.000-04:00

The country's financial course is unsustainable. The way I visualize it is as a train on a track. We need to get off the track we are on, and switch onto another. Yet we continue to rumble past the switches that could head us toward safety, as government shows a lack of political will to do what is necessary to live within its means, which means within our means. Washington continues to spend money nobody has.

Representative Maxine Waters, long a proponent of generous government spending, is now calling for a trillion dollar jobs program. She is one of the most vocal proponents of a particular vision of government: To right wrongs and solve problems, the government must spend money. Lots of it.

She is not alone; there are many who share this vision, of a world where things are put to rights by the strong hand of government intervention, including the wielding of vast sums of public money.

I am not sure what Rep. Waters would say to this, but some of her fellow liberals plainly believe something like this: The reason stimulus spending has failed so far is that we have not done enough of it. The reason previous jobs programs have been failures, to the point of being ridiculous, is that we have gone too cheap on them. We cannot look to that kind of thinking to bring about a change in policy that gets us on a different track.

What Republicans have done so far is not encouraging either. They have staved off a small tax increase and slightly slowed the increase in government spending. Of course, this made the Democrats howl like it was the end of the world, but it really is peanuts when you compare it to the total size of the problem. After the 2012 elections the Republicans hope to have more clout. They may have a great deal more. But even in the past years of their ascendancy they have not really been about shrinking the government.

The people we elect to look out for our interests, of both parties, are asleep at the switch. There is not the moral courage on either side of the aisle to say stop, enough, we are on the wrong track. If you think about this you know where things are heading: Right where they've been going all along. We are headed for the end of the line, and picking up speed.