Quote of the Day
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.Friedrich Nietzsche
The One Obama Initiative I Support: Liberalized Trade TPP Fast Track Authority Passed: Thumbs UP!
Trade has been on my mind over the past couple of weeks. I'm a radical free trader, and one of the things I really can't stand is cheap demagoguery when it comes to free trade, typically fear-mongering about jobs lost because of competition from new competition. And it caught me flat-footed, because Republicans had generally been pro-trade over the past generation or so. Then one pro-trade piece (there haven't been many) quoted Goldwater on free trade, when one discussant said something like "Why are you quoting Goldwater on free trade when he voted against JFK's expanded trade bill?" He was right... I still couldn't find an explanation for the vote in anything I could find on the trade bill. And then I ran into a post that Sen. Robert Taft, a politician I have repeatedly praised in the blog, was also against trade.
I've even been testy against two politicians I've normally respected: Rand Paul and Justin Amash. Rand Paul went over the top in a Twitter-thon against TPP, in particular, talking about fast-trade authority being a "power grab" by Obama (Oh, come on! This has been granted to most Presidents in recent memory.) Amash isn't happy one of his pals is going to stripped of a coveted assignment because he decided to push against the trade authorization bill.
Now, of course, one can legitimately argue this isn't a real "free trade" bill--and let's be clear: I have an issue about human rights, wage policies, environmental laws, etc. being part of trade bills, I don't like bailout funds for potentially displaced workers, etc. But the bottom line is American exporters will gain from lowered tariffs overseas, and Americans will gain from lower prices and more selection for foreign goods. I'm still pushing for unilateral free trade; even if this agreement is neomercantilism as usual, it's still a positive step forward and I want to move the ball down field.
Return of the Passenger Pigeon? COOL!
Facebook Corner
(Narional Taxpayer's Union). Trade Promotion Authority is on its way to the President's desk!
Your efforts have been crucial to advancing more open trade - expanding economic opportunity & American leadership. Thank you!
I'm just amazed that Obama is doing one thing that might actually be good for the economy.
What's in the Bill, no one ever read it??
These are economically illiterate anti-traders. This was about giving the President a stronger hand negotiating; the Senate still has to approve any treaty that is negotiated. What it does do is prevent the anti-trade retards from kicking the legs out of a multi-nation agreement one cut at a time.
(Rand Paul 2016). The governor's spokeswoman has called the flags a distraction.
Apparently, the political whores see more benefit to capitulating to the political correct police on the anti-Confederate bandwagon. There may be a backlash to questioning the motives of those who see the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage and regional pride.
While they have the country talking about a flag... http://www.cnbc.com/id/102785680
Liberalized trade would be the one good economic policy Obama has made during his presidency.
(Citizens Against Government Waste). Spending taxpayer money to KEEP systems from 2003..
I can't go into specifics, but I've seen similar things as a government contractor (at all levels) in the past. I've also heard of similar things in the private sector. To give a simple example, I have a lot of experience with Oracle ERP product, e-Business Suite, from versions 10.7 through R12.2. I never worked on release 9 but I recall when I was working on an 11i upgrade project, I was told there was a major business that was still running on version 9, that they were happy with their current configuration, didn't see an upside to the risk and costs of the upgrade. Obviously there are expenses to maintaining a platform with a shrinking number of customers; Oracle has been willing to offer, in some cases, ongoing support for premium maintenance rates (alrhough usually they indicate a deadline on premium maintenance).
I had started this one gig as a government subcontractor working in southern Maryland. A major defense contractor was supposed to take a custom application which was running on Developer 6i to Oracle 9i Application server. They had failed twice to install 9iAS. They had told the military clients they had upgraded the application to 9iAS. (In fact, I was able to prove this wasn't the case. There was an Oracle script that would flag any obsoleted code/function calls, and the script found a number of violations.) This point actually goes to the point; I noted that 10G AS was also in release, and the version of 9iAS was actually on the schedule for desupport. I was told that if I tried to install 10G AS on even a test system without military approval, I could be prosecuted. In any event, I had installed 9iAS, but the defense contractor claimed that I had screwed up the install because their application wouldn't run on it. Long story short, I discovered it was failing because they were trying to do a print with obsoleted custom print codes. Oracle wanted developers to use one of a limited number of standard document types, like pdf or rtf files. I worked with a contractor developer to do a prototype of a pdf file for the report (the developer had to copy and paste code he found via Google). Think the military project manager would be impressed? Think again... For her, not doing the MS Word document setups for custom reports was a flagrant violation of the upgrade instructions of no changes to operational procedures. Not a single word about the defense contractor lying about upgrading the application; that secretaries didn't need to adjust page margins for pdf outputs---"it's not a feature; it's a bug". When I protested we were talking about a product design decision that Oracle wasn't going to reverse just so military secretaries would have to play with page margins. She responded by calling me "incompetent" and saying, "Oracle will do whatever we want them to. We're the freaking military..."
I was supposed to work on a follow-up project, which was another desupported nightmare that the major defense vendor didn't want to deal with. The military had licensed a product that Oracle later desupported in favor of migrating it to a product called Oracle Portal. The problem was that part of the supported upgrade path to Portal required a version of Application Server that Oracle had desupported. I tried to get a copy but Oracle Tech Support refused, saying they would not release a copy of desupported software. Well, how then am I supposed to upgrade this? "Not our problem. [The product and/or bridge application server] has been desupported for 2 years now, and we announced desupport years earlier. The military should have planned better." That premium Oracle Tech Support didn't exist on the CSI I had been given. I waged an escalation battle and finally got them to agree to give me a copy of the required App Server version, but it was like pulling teeth.
I don't know what happened to that project because the PM decided she didn't want me on the account after the first project, and I had to find a new job. Now these projects were a very limited sample from the federal government, But I can easily believe the XP story.
I do think things are beginning to turn around. For example, in two gigs in 2009-2010 (different federal agencies), from my perspective, there was a noticeable pickup on government audits of databases and operating systems, including checking for the latest security patches from Oracle.
The Navy began a transition away from XP in 2013, but as of May it still had approximately 100,000 workstations running XP or the other software." Misleading headline. It takes years a millions more to upgrade such a large system and still maintain security.
This thread is mostly spot on. Just to give a scenario (I'm not saying this is factual): the military licenses a software application, they build a lot of reports and custom functionality., the original software vendor goes out of business, and it would take significant dollars to migrate or even redevelop from scratch to new product/platform. For whatever technical reasons, the application is not compatible with newer Windows platforms, so they are willing to pay MS big support bucks.
It's deeply libertarian to deal with social problems through voice and protest, and not state force. I add my voice to those who view it as a symbol of hate and deeply repugnant. I choose to judge and ostracize those who display it. It's my right of free speech and free association to do so. It how civilized, free people should deal with social ills. Those who want to fly it off of taxpayer property are free to ignore me. I'm free to say what I want about their choice to do so and hold them with contempt. That's freedom.
It is true that you are entitled to engage in intellectually and morally bankrupt politically correct cultural fascism, instead of exercising civility to those sharing an opposing point of view. You can have your little temper tantrums, engage in protests, shunning, boycotts, etc.; of course, your opponents can turn the tables on your group of elitist bullies. I myself find the institution of slavery abominable, and have never owned a Confederate flag. But when you look at the war criminal most historians seem to regard our greatest President, a man responsible for killing the most Americans in our history, the crimes against humanity by Sherman and his like on civilians, etc., for anyone claiming to be a libertarian and not understand the non-aggression principle or the right of free association is a flaming hypocrite and deserves no respect. I understand why Southerners honor the Confederate battle flag, but I am repulsed by judgmental cultural fascists.
Cultural Facism is not a thing. It's totally incoherent. Fascism by definition denotes the use of state force.
I have coined it and it exists. I'm referring to the use of the State in conjuction with the special interest crony politically correct "police".
Political Cartoon
 |
| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"
