Quote of the Day
Murphy's Second Law: Everything takes longer than you think.Chart of the Day: So You Want to Sell Your Own Brew....
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| Via the Mercatus Center of George Mason University |
The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects, to his laziness, incompetence, improvidence or simple stupidity. -- Henry Hazlitt "You didn't build that..." (HT Tom Woods)Election 2014 Stunner: Eric Cantor Defeated in Election Primary
A funny thing happened on the way of the House Majority Leader's quest as the likely successor to Speaker John Boehner: he got beaten badly in his primary by a little-known, vastly outspent David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va. The Tea Party has had mixed success in challenging the status quo this election season, most notably unable to stop Boehner's renomination or tonight's Sen. Graham (R-SC) renomination. (I would have liked neo-con Graham's primary defeat.) But the Tea Party had a successful run in Texas, and Cantor's defeat is probably the biggest political upset since Speaker Foley's general election defeat in 1994.
I have mixed feelings. I am not a fan of symbolism, and I don't underestimate the difficulty of the House leadership having to deal with the likes of Sen. Reid or Obama. Cantor is a decent, principled conservative whom probably let his ambition to succeed Boehner underestimate discontent on the home front.
As for the Tea Party, of which I consider myself part, one must remember the movement is a coalition of sorts, not necessarily ideologically driven. Anti-Obama conservatives have co-opted the movement, including the anti-immigrant populists and/or neo-cons. I believe the concept of small government includes liberalized immigration, law enforcement more respectful of a citizen's right to privacy, and a less activist foreign policy. That Laura Ingraham, an anti-immigrant populist, helped promote Brat's insurgency campaign nauseates me, but I'm far more concerned about an economics department chair whom runs an anti-immigration campaign.
It's 'Slick Hillary' Now
Look, I have never been a Hillary Clinton fan. For me, it came very early, from the Tammy Wynette moment to Whitewater to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to HillaryCare. She's always come across to me as evasive, self-serving, shrill and manipulative, all too eagerly playing the victim (whether it was the GOP or President Zipper), having a good work ethic but lacking the oratorical skills and personal charisma of Zipper or Barry. She was all but handed a Senate seat in deep blue New York, giving her instant national coverage from which to launch her inevitable Presidential campaign. As for her brief Senate career, I personally disagreed with nearly every vote she ever took; she didn't really have a signature legislative accomplishment, and her voting record was pedestrian "progressive", somewhat to the left of Zipper, although I think she worked on projecting a hawkish image on defense matters, no doubt trying to co-opt a traditional GOP strength. As for her tenure as Secretary of State, I have issues starting with my emerging non-interventionist perspective; it's difficult to know how much credit or blame is attributable to Hillary or Barry. I will say I was not impressed with a term of underwhelming accomplishments in foreign policy; the handling of the Arab Spring was inconsistent, unprincipled and convoluted--Egypt, for instance, was badly handled by the seat of the pants. We will undoubtedly cover the Benghazi scandal many times before 2016, but the defensive, unresponsive nature of handling the situation (refusing to accept responsibility, throwing subordinates under the bus) puts her integrity, judgment, and character in question. This particular recent quote troubles me:
"What I did was give very direct instructions that the people who have the expertise and experience in security," Clinton told Sawyer, referring to her actions prior to the attack that claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. "I'm not equipped to sit and look at blueprints, to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be," she added. "That's why we hire people who have that expertise."Notice how she tries to redefine the issue; she's not explaining why there was a Benghazi outpost in the first place, why Britain responded to deteriorating security by withdrawal while the US stayed the course, why there was no accommodation to feedback about inadequate security. She doesn't explain where Benghazi stood on her list of priorities or why her management style would have bottlenecked relevant alerts. It looks as though she snoozed through her 3 AM call from Benghazi.
But her complaints about leaving the White House in 2001 broke are disingenuous:
CLINTON: Well, you have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt. We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education. You know, it was not easy. Bill has worked really hard and it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard. First of all, we had to pay off all our debts. You know, you had to make double the money because of, obviously, taxes, and then pay off the debts and get us houses and take care of family members.
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| Courtesy of Washpo |
On the other hand, millions of people during the Great Recession have had to dip into savings, even retirement funds to make ends meet. To call themselves broke when they probably had something like $300K a year in salary and pensions before Bill Clinton cashed out lucrative speaking gigs, no doubt with any number of corporate boards, universities, etc., willing to pay big bucks for Clinton's name, is out of touch and outrageous.
Interesting Tidbits
Do I really need to explain a sense of deja vu of overextended households or the vulnerability of investors to severe stock market corrections? "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - George Santayana
Facebook Corner
( Mercatus Center at George Mason University). Who benefits from Virginia's cease and desist order on Uber and Lyft? Hint: It's not the customer: http://bit.ly/1uxULpu
get a good deal from an unlicensed perfect stranger to drive you to some place.
Anyone who trusts a license issued by government never understood the George Ryan scandal in Illinois..
(Tom Woods). See guest quotation of the day.
If your measuring success as money , and people should be worshipped that achieved that success, I've worked for a few successful rich people in my life, I've seen them cheat and rip people off out of greed costumers and employees, are you bowing before the golden alter, for all the kingdoms of the world , some feller was offered that years ago by Satan
I thought that Tom Woods was going to nail the "progressive" troll as not understanding Say's Law, but to be honest, what I thought he was describing was legal plunder, the State, and politicians.
(Cato Institute). "When we have access to cheaper goods, our quality of life improves because we can buy more with the same amount of money. This is especially true for the poor who spend a higher percentage of income on household goods and food. "
Sigh. I knew just as soon as I saw the topic that you would get blasted by the economic illiterate trolls and protectionists. Mark Perry of Carpe Diem (AEI-ideas.org) has had a couple of photos this week on a WalMart in Bakken shale oil hub Williston, ND (unemployment 0.9%) where many jobs start at $17-20/hour and business is so brisk that despite restocking shelves overnight, shelves are often picked clean and customers grab items for sale straight from pallets.
It doesn't surprise me even some gullible anti-welfare state conservatives have been taken in by the idea that low wages reflect not supply and demand market conditions but somehow indirectly subsidized by social policies. How do we explain the fact that WalMart in Williston doesn't exploit the same alleged subsidies? Or that for many higher skilled positions WalMart pays above the subsidy-eligible income caps? Or why WalMart doesn't hire even more lower-wage workers to exploit the alleged subsidies? The fact is that WalMart has to compete against other retailers and smaller businesses for those same subsidy-eligible workers; if WalMart didn't offer competitive wages, it would lose those productive workers to the competition. Of course, WalMart has no way of knowing which potential employees are eligible for government assistance: for example, that teen or young adult applying for a position may be from a middle-class household ineligible for subsidies; that subsidy would be need to be visible to WalMart to be salient for hiring decisions, e.g., directly lowering the labor cost. But of course this is all disingenuous propaganda; the welfare state policies are intrinsically morally bankrupt, and workers may find themselves ineligible for government freebies (say, deeply discounted healthcare) if they upgrade their skills.
The fact is that protectionism is a form of business welfare for the politically well-connected; it is not sustainable in the global markets and lowers the standard of living for consumers. That a few connected businesses and workers may stave off the day of reckoning for pursuing an uncompetitive business model at the expense of the many consumers is unconscionable.
Another Proposal Encore
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Breen via Townhall |
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| Courtesy of Joe Heller via IPI |
Musical Interlude: My iPod Shuffle Series
Tina Turner, "The Best"
