Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity
opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment.
Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
Nanny of the Month: July 2013
As someone who is very familiar with the San Antonio area (my undergraduate alma mater is there, plus I started my IT professional career there), I am dismayed to hear that some progressive piece of work is trying to legislate political correctness. The rank hypocrisy of a "diversity" proponent who is demanding groupthink to public office, regardless elected or appointed, versus a true diversity of perspective is appalling. I have not sought elected or appointed office and have no relevant future plans, but as a matter of principle, it's never a good idea to filter the best candidates for any position based on artificial criteria. What you end up at the end is incompetent ideologues or mediocre people whom muddle through life without doing or saying anything that may offend some special-interest group. Moreover, what people have said or done is not necessarily indicative of current or future views, and whatever those views are should not be relevant to policy, which is the province of elected officials.
On a side note, I hate the victimization philosophy and the laundry list of various politically favored groups. For those of us who are Christian, we ideally operate by one principle--the golden rule. We don't need to lectured about treating other people fairly based on incidental characteristics like gender, race, religion, etc. [Has this happened? Of course: slavery, Jim Crow laws. But those were failures of the justice system in protecting individual rights. We are not talking about implementing laws adverse to these protected groups.]
I think we should be much more worried about the motives of self-anointed moral policemen legislators. Adding more and more regulations is adverse from the interests of justice; almost no one could pass a "white glove" test of arbitrarily enforced, unknowable laws. We need to demand concrete net benefits to new laws (beyond the relevant costs) and realize it's difficult to legislate fairness in all human encounters: for example, is it fair that some women prefer to date rich men, tall men or celebrities? Government must be limited and chose its battles carefully...
It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Rome....
Are you kidding? A sexually obsessed culture, unsustainable empire building, buying votes by promising all sorts of government freebies or below-cost entitlements, transition from more republican to statist/autocratic government (consider Obama's manipulation of the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, picking and choosing laws to enforce--for example, if Arizona police have retained an undocumented alien, INS would release them, using executive orders when the Senate turns down the legislation he wants, e.g., the Dream Act, gun control, etc.; also rule making in health care by unaccountable bureaucrats). In fact, Politico has a current piece on Obama's "no-Congress strategy".
Mexican Immigrant Restaurant Owners Find Themselves Extorted by ADA-Based Fraud
The next time I'm in the Los Angeles area, I'll have to make a point to visit La Casita Mexicana; the food looks magnificent and very nice owners. Incidentally, I think Bell, where the restaurant is located, must be the same city of the infamous public pay scandal: remember this? "Rizzo collected a salary of US$ 787,637 a year, with yearly 12% increases scheduled every July, he received $1.5 million in the last year. Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia collected $376,288 a year, with a similar 12% annual pay increase. Rizzo remained unapologetic about his salary and said, "If that's a number people choke on, maybe I'm in the wrong business ... I could go into private business and make that kind of money. This council has compensated me for the job I've done." Spaccia concurred, saying: "I would have to argue you get what you pay for." Rizzo and Spaccia had never achieved such a salary in the private sector."
Paul's Proposal to Strip Post-Coup Egypt of Aid is Tabled/Killed 13-86: Thumbs DOWN!
It should not even be necessary to force a vote on this question except for the lawlessness of the Obama Administration. Let Politico explain this in a nutshell:
The Obama administration has declined to deem the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian military a coup, a designation that would have automatically cut off U.S. assistance. If enacted, Paul’s amendment would have made it a finding of Congress that a “military coup d’etat” occurred in Egypt, as several other senators have suggested occurred.Even neo-con John McCain recently acknowledged the nature of the coup and what the legislation said. Why are we subsidizing other countries and/or their armies? Make no mistake: not only does this constitute moral hazard, but we assume some of the responsibility for enabling the rogue leadership we subsidize. I am no admirer of the divisive Muslim Brotherhood, but brutal crackdowns seem counterproductive in the long run.
However, I am not happy about Rand Paul talking about sending the Egyptian government money while Detroit is in dire straits. Paul was admirably quoted earlier saying a federal bailout of Detroit over his dead body; Detroit's problems reflect public policy failures; ultimately, the fault rests with Detroit voters whom choose to believe in unsustainable paper promises of politicians whom rarely look beyond their next election. Paul needs to focus more on the soon-to-be-$17T debt, not phrase things in a typically Dem argument of zero-sum economics, the spending on a space program vs. poverty programs, etc. Neo-cons like McCain flipped, rationalizing this vote as pro-Israeli policy. Foreign aid decisions as protection money for allies? Are you serious? This constitutes national policy?
Obama Economic Illiteracy Watch
It's time for me to break in a new tag, which I should have started a long time ago. I stumbled upon the following Obama quote via Libertarian Republican (and share the sentiment of the blogger's post heading):
“the economy would be much better off,” unemployment would be 6.5 percent and the national deficit would be in decline if there were more federal, state and local government workers.
“If those layoffs had not happened, if public sector employees grew like they did in the past two recessions, the unemployment rate would be 6.5 instead of 7.5,” Obama said.
“Our economy would be much better off, and the deficit would still be going down because we would be getting more tax revenue.”It's so crystal clear to anyone with a modicum of common sense that Obama doesn't know the hell what he's talking about, it shouldn't be necessary to discuss it. But for the benefit of those who don't know better, here's a brief start:
The government labor force (at all levels) is about 22M, roughly 1 in 6 workers. Government workers, unlike private sector workers, were actually net gainers under Bush, by just over 1M workers. Even after the state/local cuts, they've lost a net few hundred thousand under Obama--and still a net increase since Clinton. At last glance, we're still a couple of million down since the start of the recession--meaning most of the hit has been in the private sector--which cannot print money to pay its workers.
But here's the main point: government doesn't create wealth--it is a consumer of wealth. Suppose everyone tithed to churches; this is like Obama saying, "Well, a lot of pastors went out of work during the recession. The economy would be much better off if we hired more pastors." But money people tithe to churches could be otherwise saved, invested or spent in the economy. Pastors, of course, save, invest or spend money in the real economy--but what they add is at best netted out from people whom give them the money.
Those dollars paid to ineffective teachers all but impossible to fire do nothing for the economy. Hiring bureaucrats to push paperwork doesn't add a single widget to the economy. The private sector has to streamline its costs, and government layoffs are much lower than in the rest of the economy. Obama, like any petty manager, just wants a bigger personnel budget to reward his crony union allies. But the private-sector is far more efficient than the government sector, often restricted by cumbersome work rules and other agreements: those dollars would go a lot further if they stayed in the productive real economy instead of serving as Obama's mad money for the benefit of his minions.
Don't expect Obama to grasp the concept of opportunity costs--he probably thinks that Bastiat is a French merlot wine.
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups Redux
The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"
