Massive Socialist Government Gang Extortion

The gang of brutal socialists who have taken over control of the Presidency and Congress have escalated their extortion racket to much the worst levels ever. Have you ever wondered why many very wealthy businessmen and companies have for years donated more money to the Democrats who dislike business from an ideological perspective than they give to Republicans who are commonly thought to be the champions of the fat cats? Heck, have you ever wondered by the delegates to the Democratic National Convention are always wealthier than those to the Republican National Convention?

The answer is in two parts. First, many of these businessmen give more to the Democrats because they are trying to buy them off to keep them from doing as much harm to the businessmen. This is like Chamberlain buying Hitler off by giving him Czechoslovakia. Appeasement is always a popular strategy when the cowardly are faced with an especially vicious bully. The second part of the answer is that by allying themselves with the socialists they actually get a payment from those in power with legislation favoring them in a variety of ways. For instance, complex and intrusive laws will always create great opportunities for trial lawyers, who are massive donors to the major socialist party, the Democrats. Regulations such as the bureaucratically massive requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping procedures will hold back small and smaller mid-sized companies more than really big companies, so the big companies are protected from competition.

Cumbersome Federal contracting laws make it hard for small companies to go after Federal contracts, with their 10 pages of fine print references to many laws imposing obligations and mandates on the company taking the Federal contract or simply bidding for it. Generally regulations putting insurance, pollution, recycling, safety, family leave time, anti-discrimination, the display of tens of posters to employees, and many other mandates fall more heavily upon small and the smaller mid-sized companies than the large companies. The result is that it is common for the largest companies and the wealthiest investors to ally themselves with the Democrat mob than with the Republicans who pretend to stand up for small business interests. Yes, this is more pretense than substance on the part of the Republicans, but they really are a bit less active in doing harm to small businesses.

So, what is our small-time community rabble-rouser up to now that he has his hands on the big-time power of the Presidency? Well, he is unabashedly putting the extortion techniques the socialist Democrat Party has spent a long time perfecting to work. Let us examine how he is doing this.

According to a 9 April report by Eric Dash in the New York Times called "Banks Holding Up in Tests, but May Still Need Help," the 19 largest American banks are being given stress tests led by the Federal Reserve. Testers say there is a wide range of results on the tested banks. Those that fall short will have six months to raise capital from private investors, but if they cannot do this, the Treasury Dept. will make them take taxpayer money. Timothy Geithner says he will take a tough stance. He claims that many banks believe the value of investments and loans on their books is higher than the government does. He says the government will make some banks sell off the assets the government thinks are overvalued on their books at whatever private investors are willing to pay. What an extortion tool? If the bank does not give enough to socialist politicians campaign funds, the government in control of the socialists, declares that some of the banks assets are worth less than the bank thinks they are worth and forces the bank to sell them in a fire sale. Meanwhile, we can be sure that generous Democrat campaign contributors are likely standing in the wings willing to buy up assets at bargain prices offered at the coming fire sales.

On another front, the socialists are launching still another attack on start-up companies in Silicon Valley. They want to regulate venture capital firms to prevent systemic risks. Geithner wants to force these VCs to register with SEC and file reports with them on their investors and their investments, so that investors will be protected from schemes such as Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. This is odd. The SEC did not save anyone from Madoff though his firm was long registered with the SEC as an investment advisor and for decades as a broker-dealer. Very odd, indeed, it is. The Wall Street Journal Opinion piece by James Freeman linked to explains:

The entire venture capital industry is smaller than the Madoff fraud. VCs invest a total of $30 billion each year, far less than one-tenth of 1% of U.S. financial transactions. Venture investors -- affluent individuals and institutions -- are putting up equity and know that they can lose it all. SEC regulation could have the same negative impact on them that it had on Madoff's investors: creating an illusion of safety in what is an inherently risky endeavor. Or the regulation could become so severe that it actually does eliminate risk from venture investing, killing the innovative ideas that can only be funded by risk-takers.

The VCs use very little debt. The banks dealing with them are well-secured by the assets of the companies for the small amounts they loan to them. There is no reason for Washington to poke its nosey nose into the VC business. There is a strong downside.

Attempts to limit risk pose a systemic threat to American technology. Venture capitalists, mainly veterans of the tech industry, are deeply involved in the companies they back, often helping to recruit each of the key employees at a start-up. This hands-on feature of venture investing means that innovative companies and their backers tend to cluster in areas like Silicon Valley. If the VCs move offshore, that's probably where the next generation of companies will be born.

Cypress Semiconductor CEO T. J. Rodgers points out that the Democrats have already heavily burdened America's technology industry. Sarbanes-Oxley has imposed multimillion-dollar compliance costs since 2002. The SEC then forced companies to count stock options twice, once as dilution of stock and then as an expense. The result is already a disaster. Only one Silicon Valley company had an initial public offering of stock in all of 2008! Are the socialists purposely destroying the growth of Silicon Valley firms because Silicon Valley has had something of a reputation for being somewhat libertarian? I believe that this is a big factor in this attack on these rather independent-minded and innovative businessmen. The socialists hate business and they hate independence, rationality, and innovation even more.

Of course, we have already observed the socialists taking control of the banking and financial industries and not wanting to let go. We have seen them dictate who will manage GM and seen them micromanage which vehicles will be produced by American automakers, while dictating minimal changes for the United Auto Workers Union. They continue to encourage high risk home and auto loans for new purchases, while using the risk of defaults on prior risky loans as a club to gain control of banks and other financial institutions.

The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, sets grounds for anyone "who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part," to government inaction to file a "citizen suit." The term "harm" is broadly defined as "any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring." [See the Washington Times, 10-11 April 2009 edition.] Thus, any environmentalist person, imagining that he may one day suffer harm from global warming, will be able to sue the U.S. government to take drastic action to prevent global warming. If they find a sympathetic court, the U.S. may be held responsible for the harm of what may well be results caused by natural forces, and forced to take drastic action against fossil fuel users whether they have in fact caused harm or not. It also rewards the massive contributors to socialism among the trial lawyers, once again.

The mandated extent of the replacement of dependable coal-fired electric power plant capacity with undependable wind and solar alternative energy sources will be certain to result in widespread electric blackouts. The governments will undoubtedly then play a role in further rationing energy, giving more to favored users and less to the politically unfavored. No doubt, unionized industries will be allowed more access to energy than will un-unionized businesses. Large companies with sufficient political pull (givers of large campaign contributions) will get energy, while small businesses will not get it.

The tax system is also to be skewed to give the socialists much more power. They tried to take the influence of wealthy people over charities away by greatly reducing the tax deduction for charitable giving by the wealthy. This was checked, for now. They use taxes as never before to put the wealthy under the feet of the mass of less wealthy voters. They are using the tax system to bind college graduates to their cause, which reinforces the tendency of young college graduates to spout the propaganda of socialism which they were infected with while in public high school and college. They will then be enrolled in government service agencies, which will complete their indoctrination. The tax system also favors selected industries such as the alternative energy industry, so that they become dependent clients of the socialists.

Rules favoring the easy unionization of small businesses will also favor the socialist-oriented unions and hurt an enemy of the socialist cause. The broadening of the Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions will give government another tool to control our lives, which they will also use to pick winners and losers based on political pull. Tariffs, created under the guise of discriminating against polluters, low-paid workers, and non-union labor users abroad, will give the socialists still another tool to use to pick winners and losers in American industry.

Make no mistake, the Obama socialist gang wants control of every aspect of your life. It is a massive extortion ring. They are seizing power rapidly and with a breadth of attack which is mind-boggling. This assault on the rights of the individual has been long dreamed of and long planned. The worst thing is that it was very clear that Obama was the Messianic leader of just such a gang during the election process, but most Americans refused to see what was almost immediately before their eyes. He still has most Americans hypnotized even as most are now beginning to criticize his various programs.

Oceans are Source of CO2

According to an article entitled "Hemispheric Timing Shows Oceans are Source of CO2" by Dennis T. Avery, there are a number of badly flawed assertions in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming claims based on CO2 emissions from man's use of fossil fuels.

Tom Quirk, an Oxford-trained Australian research physicist has observed that the carbon 14 isotope generated by nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s took several years to travel from the northern to the southern hemispheres. Since 95% of the use of fossil fuels is in the northern hemisphere, northern hemisphere CO2 atmospheric concentrations should be higher than southern hemisphere concentrations, but they are not. Tom Quirk says:

“The seasonal variations in CO2 and the lack of time delays between the hemispheres suggest fossil-fuel-derived CO2 is almost totally absorbed locally in the year it is emitted,” he says. “This implies that natural variability of the climate is the prime cause of increased CO2, not the emissions of CO2 from the use of fossil fuels.”

Dennis Avery proceeds to remind us how the great "Nobel scientist" Al Gore informed us that more CO2 in the atmosphere caused the last four interglacial warmings over the last 400,000 years. But, .....more recent Antarctic studies have clearly shown that it is the CO2 atmospheric concentrations which are responding with increases to temperature increases. The oceans absorb massive amounts of CO2 from the air when they cool. The oceans hold at least 70 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere does. When oceans warm, they cannot hold as much dissolved CO2 gas. Since 1850, the climate has generally warmed as we have left the Little Ice Age behind and atmospheric CO2 concentrations slowly rose accordingly.

Avery says that we now know that the correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentrations and temperatures over the last 150 years is 22%, while that with sunspots is 79%. So, there is a CO2 warming according to him, but it is a function of CO2 being emitted from the oceans, not the results of man's puny contribution from the combustion of fossil fuels. The rapid local absorption of CO2 indicated by the nearly identical northern and southern hemisphere concentrations, indicates that the land and oceans can hold very much more CO2 than they presently do.

The heat energy content of the oceans is about 2000 times that of the atmosphere. Because of this, it is better to make judgments about whether the earth is warming or cooling slightly based on the temperature of the ocean than based at land surface stations. This is especially true given that so many land temperature stations are disproportionately sited in population centers and are not infrequently placed near asphalt parking lots and other heating sources. The Argo diving floats have given us the most accurate ocean temperature measurements ever. These measurements show that the oceans stopped warming in 2003. The atmosphere stopped warming after 1998, but it is reasonable that it takes awhile to fully transfer heat from the atmosphere to the ocean and that the ocean itself then takes awhile to come to be in a quasi-equilibrium state. Of course there will remain large thermal gradients in the ocean for any overall heat content, but if the atmosphere is warmer than the ocean surface, the overall ocean heat content will increase until the ocean and the atmosphere achieve a new quasi-equilibrium.

Avery says "the earth is now cooling, and any drastic actions to reduce fossil fuel emissions are premature." Dr. Kanya Kusano of Japan's Earth Simulator Project is advising Japan that the man-made CO2 emissions argument for global warming is an "unproven hypothesis."

A Reader Request - The Humble Libertarian

A reader, Wesley Messamore, has asked me to share this with you:

To Dr. Anderson:

Hello. I'm a libertarian blogger who recently published a post with a graphic representation of the characters in Atlas Shrugged arranged according to their ability and morality.

I thought it might merit mention on your blog as your readers would find it interesting, relevant, and useful:

http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2009/04/atlas-shrugged-characters-according-to.html

Have a great day and thanks for your consideration.

Sincerely,
Wes Messamore

--
News and Commentary from a Libertarian Perspective: http://www.humblelibertarian.com

The graphic Wes produced may be useful for jogging some of our memories about some of the characters of Atlas Shrugged. I admit to being way overdue for the pleasure of re-reading Atlas Shrugged, but what can you do when you are trying to keep up with science, solve technical and scientific materials problems, run a small business, keep up with the attempts of socialists to steal away the sovereign rights of the individual, read excellent books for the first time by such authors as Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, Amity Shlaes, Jonah Goldberg, Robert A. Levy & William Mellor, Patrick J. Michaels & Robert C. Balling, Jr., Chris Edwards & Daniel J. Mitchell, and others, and formulate evaluations and responses to the myriad dastardly deeds of our would-be socialist slave masters? Add to this a wife and three daughters who deserve attention and love and you have one guy with far too few hours in a day. The pleasure of re-reading Atlas Shrugged will have to wait. But, sometimes when I need a pick-up, I do just thumb through it and find a passage to re-read for pleasure and inspiration. I admit that I never pick a passage about James Taggart, Wesley Mouch, or Robert Stadler. They are just too depressing for such a purpose. My picks are always passages about my heroes, my fellow heroes, the people I want to be my best friend.

But some of you may also enjoy thinking about where you would move some of these characters on the same plot or even about plotting them against other parameters. This could be a fun exercise.

I would prefer that those of us who are trying to defend the rights of the individual in these trying times would not be too Humble. We are engaged in the on-going epic battle of the last 200 years with respect to socialism and of all of man's history with respect to his freedom. Many of us are Americans, who look back to a brash tradition in which men sought proudly to manage their own lives and to be dependent upon their own minds and the product of their personal effort. Our tradition was simply this: Nature can and must be controlled for my benefit and I am just the man to do it with the use of my capable mind and my determined effort. This is a brash assertion, but it is what gave man the confidence to claim his individual sovereign rights to his life, to his liberty, to his property, and to his pursuit of happiness. It also gives him the confidence and the self-esteem that causes him pleasure in seeing others control and manage their own lives in pursuit of their self-identified values, without a twinge of envy and without a bit of desire to steal another man's self-attained values. I would rather Wes Messamore and Ben Bryan had called their blog The Arrogant Libertarian, The Brash Libertarian, The 'I have hardly begun to fight!" Libertarian, The Unconquered Libertarian, The Unchained Libertarian, The Untrodden Libertarian, or some such name. But, a Libertarian who likes the works of Ayn Rand is likely a good ally on many important issues.

Damn, I feel like sinking a government relief ship bound with American welfare goods to a socialist country or a dictatorship for a personal pick-up of my spirits. Ragnar, where are you? Or maybe Midas Mulligan and I could come up with a scheme to get some of the bank bailout money back into the hands of the American taxpayers. Or I could do some materials R&D to support Hammond Auto in putting GM, Chrysler, and Toyota out of their misery. We individualists need something to have fun with and to celebrate the fact that some of us, at least, still feel up to the task of managing our own lives.

Obama - American Rights and Interests Submissive

During the Obama presidential campaign, I pointed out that Obama wanted to make American individual rights and the interests of the United States submissive to the dominant role to be played by the United Nations and by international bodies. The Obama presidency has confirmed my understanding with a good number of dastardly deeds. Among these are:

• Patting rogue terrorist-sponsoring nations Iran, Syria, and North Korea on the head while telling them we should be more understanding of their needs, thus encouraging these bully nations to continue acting badly. Only the believed threat of strong forceful retaliation works to stop bullies.
• Stopping the programs to add components to our missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic because the Russians are not pleased by our idea of defending ourselves from their Iranian client and from them.
• Agreeing with the G-20 nations to close down tax havens, increase the regulations of financial markets and institutions, and give more foreign aid. The tired, socialist nations of Europe and the Obama-planned similar condition of the United States need to keep the wealthy from moving themselves or their money to zones where they might have fairer treatment. The American financial system will be controlled by 20 nations and their perceived needs, not by the free market or even the free market as modified by American governments elected by the American people.
• Obama has agreed to enter into new nuclear disarmament talks with Russia, now that he and Medvedev are Comrades locked in Socialist Solidarity. Russia must reduce its warheads since it cannot afford to modernize or maintain them in any case. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia have formed an alliance aimed at the United States.
  
• He maintains the United States breaks International Law if it does not get permission from the United Nations to defend itself against the use of force by any other nation. This means, that the U.S. cannot defend itself if China, or Russia, or any of several socialist Western European countries does not desire that we should defend ourselves.
• He is more friendly to enemies of freedom and of the United States than he is to our longer term allies and to countries which more nearly share our ideas of personal liberty. See how he has shunned Great Britain, Israel, India, and the government leadership in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  
• Obama says the U.S. caused the global recession and financial crisis. Actually, banks all over the world had too many high-risk loans. This was not at all just a U.S. problem. Iceland, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, and China have all been hard hit due to their financial over-extensions, along with many other countries.
  
• Obama declares the U.S. arrogant. Taken together with the item above, this would mean the U.S. owes a great deal of service to the rest of the world. Obama loves to serve. No, actually, he loves to tell you and me that we must serve others.

The United States was long blessed with a belief in the principle that the Federal government existed to serve only as the protector of the American individual's life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. The individual was sovereign and the government existed only to serve the sovereign American individuals. It was understood that the only scale of government compatible with the rights of the individual was a minimal, limited government. Our Constitution carefully described the limited powers of the Federal government and further required that the limited actions it was allowed must be carried out in a manner consistent with the general welfare. It was made clear that the general welfare could only be served by a minimalist government so that individuals would be free to manage their own lives. A more empowered government would quickly become tyrannical.

Obama hates this idea. No, it does not make him a bit uneasy. With every fiber and cell of his body and mind, he hates the idea that the government exists only to serve the self-interest of self-managing individuals. He is determined to crush this principle and anyone who stands up for it. In domestic matters, he ignores the Constitution and he gets others to go along with ignoring it by offering them bribes of power, income, and publicity. In all matters with an international component, he enlists the aid of as many other socialist and/or Muslim and/or other dictatorial regimes as he can in order to accomplish this purpose. At all times, he is completely focused on forcing every individual American to become the servant of the government, which is to be controlled by committed socialist elitists such as himself. Only people such as himself are capable of wisely choosing your values for you and only they are intelligent enough to inform you on how you will achieve the values they have chosen for you.

If you do not achieve any values that mean anything to you, that is just too damn bad. After all, they do not choose to recognize your self-chosen values. You are selfish, while they exist to serve. This makes you unworthy and it makes them gods.

Tracinski - Why Women Matter - Women's Rights as a Measure of Civilization

Robert Tracinski puts out a very good e-mail subscription service in which he points out and comments on most of the key issues of our times, with many useful links to news articles and commentaries. It is called TIA Daily and is very reasonably priced. In addition, he offers a free 30-day trial, which I encourage you to take him up on.

Today's issue of TIA Daily was shorter than most and limited to one topic, a Feature Article called Why Women Matter - Women's Rights as a Measure of Civilization. It is an excellent essay and one with which I am in full agreement.

He begins by pointing at the recent public flogging of a Pakistani girl by a Taliban thug. He notes that the left and, in particular, feminists are not the foremost protesters against such evils practiced in Muslim societies because of their "deeper commitment to 'multicultural' subjectivism." The political conservatives, while lacking proper concern for other of women's rights, are better defenders of women with respect to the violent use of force by peoples of other cultures.

He points out that women are the physically weaker sex and hence the manner in which a society treats women is "a revealing measure of that society's attitude toward physical force." He goes on to say:

In a society where might makes right, where the rule of brute force has been thoroughly unleashed, women are always the first victims. Even the poorest and meanest man, the guy on the lowest rung who is oppressed by others above him who are bigger and stronger—even he can find one person he is still able to dominate and oppress: a woman, whether it is his mother, his wife, or his daughter. And he will oppress her—if the oppression of others by force is the accepted norm of the society he lives in. For examples, look to the Muslim world with its "honor" killings, arranged marriages, sexual segregation, and special restrictions on the travel and attire of women.

This is a complete contrast to the kind of society in which force is subordinated to morality. A society in which a woman can do whatever she wants without fear is a society in which the physically weak can rely on being protected from the physically strong. In fact, in a civilized society the physically weak feel safe because of the physically strong. The mark of such a society is a sense of chivalry—the idea that a man's superior physical strength is properly used to protect rather than to dominate, to serve the cause of justice and freedom rather than to assert arbitrary power over others.

He goes on to discuss some of Islam's foundational affinities for using force and violence and I will not discuss that here, since it is not for me to put him into such danger as that might engender. But he goes on to say:

This is the broader significance of the new Taliban video: it demonstrates the central failure of Islamism, revealed clearly even to those in the Muslim world. The Islamic theocrats offer their supporters one central promise: to establish the rule of virtue on earth. But they always provide the exact opposite: the rule of brute force and the doctrine of "might makes right." Their code actually banishes morality from public life, subordinating it to force. The routine brutalization of women and girls under the rule of Islam is a constant and vivid reminder of this fact.

I have always maintained that the reason men evolved to be stronger physically than women was because it was an essential part of their function to protect women and children and to provide for them using those abilities dependent upon strength, such as were once required of hunters. When a man fails to use his strengths to protect women and children, then he is unmanly and an abomination. Such a man is useless.

Great civilizations put fewer demands upon a man's physical strength and make women less dependent upon men specifically because the use of force between people is set aside and rational, voluntary trade of values takes over. In such a civilization, men, women, and children all thrive in harmony. In such a society, the values women can offer in such trades are understood to be of great value and women are treated with great respect. Unfortunately, some societies maintain the use and threatened use of force as primary in the relationships of men and women and in these societies there is no such harmony of interests.

Mexico Retaliates with Trade Warfare

One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to pay the Teamsters Union for its support in the election. They restricted Mexican trucking access to American roads. Mexico has now retaliated by raising tariffs on $2.4 billion of our exports. The Obama action was stupid in any case, but especially so in light of the recession. All we need to make matters worse is to incite trade wars with our important trade partners. Mexico is one of our most important trade partners.

Obama is trying to enlarge the trade wars. The administration is talking about how they will raise tariffs on the goods of countries who do not restrict the use of energy as Obama plans to and whose goods will therefore be relatively cheaper than ours. Of course, Obama can raise tariffs and protect American domestic market sales of our newly expensive goods. But .... he can do little to then make other people throughout the world buy our over-priced goods. In other words, we will lose much of our export markets. This could result in about 1 in 10 Americans becoming unemployed!

On economic issues, it is very clear that few Democrats ever think. They do not seem to do any better with foreign policy or with matters of national security.

Cost of Waxman-Markey House Cap-and-Trade Bill

The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade energy bill in the House is more intrusive in restricting energy use and in raising energy costs than a plan whose costs were estimated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be about $3,128 per household per year.

But the Dems promised us that 95% of the people would not have taxes raised. Ha! If you raise taxes on 5% of the people as Obama has promised he will, then much of that tax cost to the most dynamic workers in the marketplace will be passed on in higher costs for goods and services. We are also in effect taxed by increased government regulations and by mandates applied to resources. Any government action which results in a loss of productivity of any part of the population or by businesses, as well as any explicit taxes, costs us all. The cost can never be isolated upon just 5% of the individuals in America.

Unfortunately, this Democrat and Obama ploy did work well enough to give them huge power and to greatly diminish any practical checks upon their wrongheadedness, their corruption, and their lust for power. What were the American people thinking? Well, given how transparent the ploy was, it is clear that the American people were largely in on the effort to delude themselves. They averted their eyes willingly from what they saw and fogged their eyes over so they could hope for a new beginning. Of course, they were then given just one more huge dose of very tired socialist ideas, which are known to reduce men to intersocietal warfare and to produce a despairing poverty of wealth, security, and intellectual activity.

Insane Mark-to-Market Finally Killed

Congress has finally killed the insane mark-to-market assets evaluations which the Democrats imposed through the Sarbanes - Oxley accounting regulation bill in the aftermath of the Enron collapse. This, in so far as a banking and financial crisis befell us, was more the cause of company failures and potential failures than even the inflated home and real-estate values which began the crisis. Yet correcting this very transparent problem, after much time with their fore paws up their Donkey hind quarters, took a backseat to all kinds of posturing and claims that the market was too little regulated. It also took a backseat to executives flying corporate jets and managers being paid bonuses.

The mark-to-market provision, coupled with threatened law suits against accountants who did not rigorously apply it, meant that an asset had to be valued at its very immediate market value. If the asset was illiquid, it was worthless. So, how much is your home worth? You have one day to sell it. How much do you think you can get for it in one day?

Of course this is nonsense. But there is hardly any nonsense too transparent that Congress will not buy into it, if they can put on a grandstand show by going along with the nonsense. That they were certainly able to do following Enron's demise. But, they could have quietly eliminated this part of the deadly nonsense long ago and prevented the current crisis. But, they were asleep at the wheel as usual and well, that fore paw was pleasantly occupied.

The problem of valuing somewhat illiquid assets held by banks and other financial institutions at much lower than rational values is that these institutions can commonly loan out many times as much money as the value of their assets. If the asset is artificially undervalued, then the amount of loans must drop by about 9 times the amount of the undervaluation. It is also ridiculous to tell a bank that an asset is nearly worthless when it is providing a healthy stream of income in the form of mortgage payments or other loan and interest payments. Yet, despite that healthy income, the banks were crimped in how much they could loan by the mark-to-market provision of the absurd Sarbanes-Oxley accounting act.

The end of mark-to-market and a vote in the Senate which will make it unlikely that Congress will pass a carbon cap-and-trade tax-mandate is the reason the stock market went up last week despite the fears of the federal government choosing business managers as they did for GM and as they threaten to do to banks and financial institutions.

Anti-Consumerism

One of the favorite complaints of G-20 protesters and of environmentalists is that too many people are consumerists. Now this is just a terrible thing to be. Imagine people making goods and services available to others who will voluntarily pay them money in exchange. This is awful. This is pornographically obscene!

No, it is much, much better if in the name of the planet and to prevent workers from exploitation, we simply hire large numbers of government thugs to keep us from producing goods and services and from going shopping. This is the way for nice people to go.

Down the road, when we are all poor and huddling masses, unplagued by consumerism, we will all be so, so happy.

Steyn - The G-20 doesn't offer plenty

Mark Steyn has written a fun and insightful commentary in the 6 April 2009 Washington Times. He starts by describing how the Obama administration gave journalists covering the G-20 meeting in London a phone number to listen to Sec. of State Clinton give them a briefing. On calling the number "the gentlemen of the press were greeted by a honey-voiced seductress, presumably not Mrs. Clinton, offering them 'phone sex' and seeking their credit-card number if they 'feel like getting nasty'."

He notes that David Patterson, the NY governor, said that if he had known that his latest tax increase would drive Rush Limbaugh to sell his Manhattan apartment, he would have raised taxes earlier. But, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has recently pointed out that the wealthiest 1% of New York City dwellers pay 50% of the municipal revenue. So, Governor Patterson has very few rich people to drive out before NYC has a government crisis.

Meanwhile the G-20 is seeing to it that the wealthy have no tax havens to turn to. This is because they think this is at the heart of the financial crisis, right? Well, no, they are not really that dumb, but they do think that the non-elite people of all of these countries are dumb enough to be distracted from those realistic steps which the G-20 nations might take.

So, what are the real problems? Steyn notes that Japan, Germany, Italy, and Russia have shrinking populations and that the rate of population shrinkage is going to go up! So, unlike the United States, they can't run up the national debt and stick it to their kids and grandkids, because they don't have any kids and grandkids to stick it to. If New York is running out of rich people, Germany is running out of people, period. The Chinese and other buyers of western debt know that. If you're an investor and you're not tracking gross domestic product (GDP) versus median age in the world's major economies, you're going to lose a lot of money.

If government has a role in this crisis, it ought to be to reverse the combination of unaffordable social programs and deathbed demographics that make a restoration of real GDP growth all but impossible in many European nations.

So, instead, French President Nicholas Sarkozy said the conference gave a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give capitalism a "conscience." He means a global regulatory regime to protect France's "sluggish, uncompetitive, protectionist, high-unemployment business environment whose best and brightest abandon the country in ever-greater droves, it obviously makes sense to force the entire planet to submit to the same growth-killing measures that have done wonders for your own economy." The IMF is being set up as the global central bank, with its Special Drawing Rights a kind of global currency.

He observes that too many of the profits in recent years in the United States and Great Britain have been in the financial industries. This is thanks to the government annexing too much wealth through income taxes and small-business regulations and much more. It is now much harder to "improve your lot by working hard, making stuff, selling it."

He concludes that instead of addressing the real problems of excessive government, the G-20 governments are "erecting a global regulatory regime to export their worst mistakes to the entire globe."

As they say on the State Department phone-sex line, it's going to get nasty.

We Americans have to become very aware that Obama's driving ambition is to make the United States after the image of France, Germany, and Italy. At least this is so when he is not dreaming of being Hugo Chavez and making the United States into Venezuela. Obama has very clearly signed on to growing this global regulatory regime and to placing its hob-nailed boot on the neck of every American!

Why did banks take TARP money?

Many healthy banks have reported that they were forced to take TARP money even though they did not need it. Today, Judge Andrew Napolitano, said on FOX News that the chief executive of a $250 billion asset bank told him that his bank was threatened with 5 consecutive years of tax audits by the IRS if the bank did not take the TARP money (bank bailout money) that it did not want to take. The Secretary of the Treasury, who did not pay his own taxes, is apparently very comfortable in using the power of the IRS to make others miserable to further the cause of fascist socialism. If the government would use this fascist tactic, it would undoubtedly be likely to use other tactics equally reprehensible to force banks to take TARP money they did not need and did not want. The banks are heavily regulated, which undoubtedly gives the Federal government a huge degree of power over them.

This may explain why the very free market oriented BB&T Bank, whose Chairman John Allison requires high-level bank executives to read Atlas Shrugged and donates money to colleges which introduce Ayn Rand's works into the curriculum, disappointed many of us by taking TARP money. Earlier reports that bankers were forced into a room in Washington and told that they would not be allowed to leave until they accepted the TARP money were apparently not exaggerations. As we now know, those banks who were force-fed TARP money are now under either the direct control of the Federal government or being threatened with it if their policies do not comply with the Federal government wishes. The latter state is little different from the former. If you must do something because someone is holding a gun to your head, then you clearly have no real control and you are nothing but a slave.

Many bankers do not wish to be slaves. Many banks are offering to pay back the government the money given them with interest. The government is refusing to allow the larger banks to do this, though they have taken some payoffs from the smaller banks given money. Why are they refusing to allow banks to pay off their loans? Why did they force them to take the money in the first place? The answer is clear. This money loan was a pretext to gain control of the banks and the Federal government does not want to relinquish that control. Fascism is both tempting and addictive to the kind of politicians who seek to control our government. Government is then used as the tool to gain control not just of banks and auto companies, but of each and every one of us individuals. Of course, they offer various social program bribes to individuals under the same principle as the TARP loans as a means to gain control of us individually.

Governments in the United States have long been trekking down the road to fascist socialism, but the pace of the forced march has picked up markedly since Obama has been united with the Democrat-controlled Congress. We individual Americans have been like frogs placed in a very deep pot on the stove and the heat has been turned up gradually until recently. This has kept us sluggish and pacified. We are now being put to the boil. When the boiling is done, we are all to be one intermixed, indifferentiable mush. The socialist ideal of equality in total poverty will have been accomplished. Unless we strive most mightily to jump out of this deep pot of water immediately.

Supreme Court Says EPA Cost-Benefit Analysis OK

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 last Wednesday that the EPA can use cost-benefit analyses when deciding how to upgrade water cooling systems for power plants. The Riverkeepers environmental group had won a decision earlier at the 2nd U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals that cost should not matter in ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of system upgrades to protect aquatic life. More than 500 older power plants use cold water to cool their plants.

Environmental groups are not very concerned about this ruling against them. Now that they control the EPA, it is irrelevant.

Hudgins - Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism

I am not pulling my punches in my evaluation of Obama and the Democrat Congress. I believe that they are taking the United States down an insanely destructive path. I would like to point out a very good article taking a similar stance by Edward Hudgins of the Atlas Society. It is called "Obama's Grab-Bag Socialism."

I have heard and seen several references lately in which generally freedom-loving commentators are claiming that fascism is not socialism because socialism takes over the ownership of the means of production and other property. I think this is wrong. Socialism takes over control, sometimes ownership, of the means of production and of property. The Marxist forms of socialism, such as communism, take ownership, while fascism leaves nominal ownership in the hands of individuals or groups, but applies incentives, pressures, and force as desired to make those individuals or groups do the government's bidding. Both Marxism and fascism offer the people status as dependents by bribing them with health care and other state-provided or mandated benefits. It is the last coupled with the control of property and business that makes both fascism and Marxism socialism.

Mussolini and Hitler were of the socialist mindset. After being drummed out of the Italian Socialist Party for favoring Italy's participation in WWI, Mussolini started the Fascist Party with much of his viewpoint already set by his long allegience to the Socialist Party. Hitler gave his party the name National Socialist Party and even admired Joe Stalin, despite fighting the communists for power in Germany.

The United States has long been a mixed economy. The freedom of the individual to offer his services in employment, to hire others, to produce, to trade, to transport, and to control his property has long been interfered with by our governments. Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson began controlling private property and business in heavy-handed ways long ago. The aspect of socialism in which the government heavily began bribing the people into dependency began with Franklin D. Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was tinged with fascism and Woodrow Wilson was very substantially fascist. Woodrow even had the fasces applied to the dime in 1916 and was an admirer of Mussolini.

Many claimed failures in the economy have come about due to government intervention.
The recession under Hoover, which Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression is one such example. Politicians and governments of the modern era love socialism as a means to control and power. For most, it is irresistible. So, the Federal, state, and local governments of the United States have all heavily applied socialism, sometimes in the form of government ownership of property (public schools, roads, parks, national forests, mass transit) and sometimes by the control of property and businesses through mandates, subsidies, tax deductions, tax credits, safety and pollution regulations, zoning, licensing, tariffs, banking regulations, accounting requirements, and much more. These controls can be gauged by the very high rate of expansion of the Federal Register and other government publications of regulations and contracts.

The public ownership of property is very considerable (consider the western states with huge portions, often the majority of the land, owned by the federal government, see my entry of 8 November 2008). But, the principle means used by government in the United States to control the lives of the people has clearly become the fascist model, with a number of features adopted more to the American character, primarily as misleading deceptions. It is entirely reasonable to call this socialism American Fascism. The core of Obama's goal is to turn the United States into a subordinate cog in an international fascist socialist regime. Of course, he avoids using the honest terms fascism and socialism like the plague, which is exactly what they are.

American Individuality, American Arrogance

Obama dislikes American individuality and he also dislikes what he calls American arrogance. America is truly distinctive in that we are the only country whose principles of governance state explicitly that the purpose of government is to secure the right of the people to their own life, liberty, and the pursuit of their happiness. None of these are group concepts. Only the individual has a sovereign right to his life, to his liberty, and to his pursuit of happiness. Obama resents this individual concept of rights and wants to force every man, woman, and child to subsume their personal right to the service of some group of people. He is fascinated by groups and by service. He greatly distrusts the self-interest of the individual.

Yet, we each and every one of us have to do our thinking with our individual mind, though some, like Obama, try to somehow submerge their minds in group-think. Each of us has our own individual life experience, which is always unique and never the same as that of everyone else in any group, not even one as close as our own family. Each of us is bound to have our own unique values and there is simply no satisfactory way to sacrifice those values and adopt some group consensus values as a replacement. Yes, we all have reasons to work within groups for various purposes and we do make compromises as need be and where it is rational to do so, but when all is said and done, we need to maintain our individuality and our own chosen values. Obama frowns on this because he believes this is arrogant and it does not serve his purposes of converting America into a socialist, group-think, internally and internationally sacrificial nation.

Americans have always relied primarily upon their own minds and their own experiences to become among the best problem-solvers in the world. They take on a task and focus on it and they try out ideas to see if they will address the problem. If something does not work, they will study the problem anew and then try another possible solution. They tend to have great confidence that they can get the job done with enough thought, experimentation, observation, and effort.

I have worked with many scientists and engineers from outside of the United States. Very many of them have expressed amazement that Americans are so confident of their ability to address technical and business problems. Some of them say they wish they shared this attitude, some say they wish this attitude were as strong in their home countries, and some are self-selected in coming to the United States in good part because they share this attitude and feel a bit out-of-place in their home countries. Some equate this confidence in our American know-how with arrogance and actually resent it.

In international political and military spheres, this same American tendency to believe in an active and a let's try this and amend our methods as we go attitude is also considered arrogance. Sometimes the complainer is a petty tyrant or some socialist who simply resents everything about America and what it stands for. But, it is also sometimes the case that our activity and confidence that we can get the job done is just strange to other peoples. Most of the people of the rest of the world have long traditions in which slavery and serfdom applied to most of the people of their culture. Most of these cultures passed through long nation-building phases with kings, aristocracies, and priests as the authorities in whom all sovereignty rested. The people had only such standing as these groups gave them and could not stand up for their individual rights. No such concept existed. You did as you were told to do, or you kept your head down very low. If you asserted yourself as an individual, you were certain to be challenged that your position in society did not allow this. In the best of situations, you had better have done something very right which would meet with approval from the powered elite. One mistake and your head was in a noose or under the guillotine. This cultural tradition leads to a very different worldview and a very different idea toward individual initiative. It also puts very real shackles on a man's self-confidence.

Sure, modern Europe is not Medieval Europe. Nonetheless, it is more socialist and culture-bound. It is more inclined toward group-think than is America. The role of the individual is much more constrained than ours has been, though Obama is trying very hard to change us into Europeans. To modern Europeans, Americans individually look brash and over-confident. Yet, when something important needs to be accomplished in world trade, in research and development, or militarily, look to whom most of the world tends to turn, including the Europeans. They turn to the can-do nation of brash individualists.

Obama wants to change this. He wants the United States to be just one nation among the 20 nations in the G20. He wants the United States to submit itself to the United Nations and international law bodies, who will become supreme over our own Constitution and who will not recognize the right of the American individual to his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness. He wants Americans to submit themselves to sacrifices to be demanded by other nations ruled by socialists and by petty dictators. Symbollically, he even bowed to a Suadi prince at the G20 meeting. This is the end to American arrogance which he pursues. He has many allies among the American elitists of our day and among the elite and powerful of many other countries.

We are in for a battle royale if we insist on asserting our right to our individual rights. I do so insist. I hope you will also stand beside me in this terrible conflict to preserve, protect, and defend our individual rights and our Constitution. Unfortunately, we will have to do so against Obama, the Democrat Congress, most of the university elitists, and many elitists abroad. Let us be proud to be rationally arrogant!

On Warming in Colder, Drier Climates

One of the reasons some people believe increased carbon dioxide caused the warming from the late 1970s through 1998, is because most of the warming occurred in cooler and drier areas of the world. These areas included parts of Canada, Northern Europe, and Siberia, as well as some of the northern parts of China and the United States. Increased amounts of gases which absorb infrared radiation might do this. One such gas is CO2, but anything causing an increase in water vapor in these drier areas would be as likely an explanation.

There may be another explanation. As noted in an earlier post or comment, about 11% of the incoming radiation from the sun is in the form of ultraviolet radiation, about 44% is visible light, and about 45% is infrared radiation. It has been noted that increased solar activity accounts for some of the increase in temperature from the 1970s until 1998. We know that Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, and Neptune's moon Triton have all similarly warmed. Some scientists claim that this does not account for all of the warming on earth in this period, though a similar increase did in the early warming period of 1910 through the 1930s.

During a period of increased radiation from the sun, the warming due to the increased visible light portion of the sun's spectrum is treated by the models, but the effects on the incoming infrared radiation from the sun are cavalierly ignored. In the colder climate areas in the northern latitudes, the atmosphere is drier and there is less water vapor in the atmosphere to absorb incoming solar infrared radiation at higher altitudes. More of this infrared radiation will then reach the ground and lower altitudes and warm them. This would cause a given increase in solar radiation to have a greater warming effect in the drier and colder areas of the earth. Hence, warming occurs more in these areas than others, entirely independent of the wee little concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In other words, there is no reason to believe that the observed added warmth in the late 1970s to 1998 period found in these cold, dry areas is evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide was the primary reason for temperature increases. This may well make sense also in light of the fact that if CO2 were responsible for that warming, then the highest temperatures should be found in the atmosphere at altitudes of about 10 Km. Atmospheric altitude temperature measurements have been unable to find a maximum in the temperature profile at that altitude or anywhere near it. This has long been a serious reason to believe that the models predicting the warming based on increased CO2 are simply wrong.

Another serious problem with the idea that CO2 has caused the warming is that before 1760 the CO2 concentrations were extremely low at less than 280 parts per million. The rise in CO2 from that time has been appreciable since 1850 and rapid since 1950. Yet the temperature increases in northern, dry latitudes did not start until at least the mid-1970s. This is important since additions to CO2 are supposed to have more effect when the concentration is low and less and less added effect as the concentration increases. The carbon dioxide warming hypothesis does not work well and is not required as an explanation. Natural solar activity appears to be the primary reason for the warming of the 1970s to 1998, with a complex coupling with ocean currents.

It is critical to take the incoming solar infrared radiation into account as well as the visible light when calculating the temperature in various regions due to solar radiation.

Congressional Climate and Energy Mischief Afoot

So, what else is new?

The mischievous bad guys Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey have put together a 648-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 which will provide Congress and the Federal government a powerful death grip on the American economy in the guise of solving mythical catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and energy security problems. The revelation that the catastrophic AGW is based on bad science will not likely do much to decrease the desire of these powermongers for such control of every American individual's use of energy to provide the force multipliers that make us efficient and individually powerful. We are all to be cut down to size.

Of course, the route to maximum energy security is not to be addressed either. That is to allow companies to pursue the development of oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, which Obama has denied them the right to do, and to develop ANWR and the many fields on the too extensive Federal lands of the American West. Energy security would allow the develpment of oil sands and tar fields in the West. And, it would allow the storage of nuclear fuel wastes in Yucca Mountain, which Obama has denied, and the building of many new nuclear power plants. It might even be served by building wind farms, solar power stations, and geothermal plants, but the environmentalists in control of the Democrat Party will never allow that. They merely serve as the answer given to how we are going to meet energy requirements without fossil fuels and nuclear power, but they vaporize as real solutions due to their high costs, undependable power generation, and because no one can get the necessary permits to actually build them anyway!

So, what does this Shoot-Yourself-in-the-Foot bill call for:

• 25% of electric power must be renewable by 2025
• Vehicle fuel standard increases
• Smart electric grid development
• Energy-efficient appliances
• Cap-and-Trade energy permits
• 83% reduction in energy use by 2050 compared to 2005
  
• A new National Climate Service to payoff Global Warming Alarmist researchers no matter what the science actually is
• Retraining of unemployed oil, gas, gas and oil pipeline, coal mining, railroad, trucking, and nuclear power industry workers to pick up dead birds at windmills, to wash the dust off solar panels, and spray perfume to hide the smell of hydrogen sulfide at geothermal plants
  

Congress cannot manage Social Security or the Medicare/Medicaid systems, so, naturally, we ought to keep letting them try their hand at managing everything else in the hopes that someday they will find something they can manage. As they say, "Hope springs eternal." With Congress this phrase takes on new meaning. Hope is eternal, infinite, and never in need of any rational justification! So, we give them farm subsidies, the auto industry, the banking and financial industries, ethanol, accounting, pollution, employee-employer relations, energy and power, safety, home-building and financing, and many other tasks which they are unable to manage. We never learn from the inescapable observation that they only know how to do one thing: Pull the wool over enough people's eyes to get re-elected over and over again.