A minimalist approach to essential, transparent, accountable, flat, adaptable, responsive, solution-based government, rooted in virtuous individual autonomy, traditional values and free markets, with a bias towards reduction of government functionality, cost and scope
Quote of the Day Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen, or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? Kurt Vonnegut Tweet of the Day
This is Soft Rock America. Remy mocks the faux outrage of hypocritical leftists over the election https://t.co/eyayRqytgT
FINALLY, the Donald has said something I agree with:
Protectionist Certificate of Need
It's like a new basketball team with 7-foot players asking for permission to play while existing team owners argue the market is already satiated; the reality is they don't want to compete.
A Fix For ObamaCare
Hallelujah: Remy's Back!
mocking hypocritical leftists who are suddenly worried about an autocratic Trump after years under autocratic Obama...
Quote of the Day Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering. Winnie the Pooh Tweet of the Day
I agree with George Will that Trump would do well by selecting Kelly Ayotte AG. He won't do so because she wasn't deferential to him.
Oh, there's a rationalization: the elitists want to discourage the consumption of "unhealthy" beverages for the consumer's "own good", of course. Of course, upper-income taxpayers only consume a small proportion of said beverages and probably won't flinch at paying a higher cost (or easily work around the tax hike). This shifts more of the revenue burden to where the goods are sold: to lower or middle income consumers.
Autocratic Illinois State Politics
Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go...
And we'll welcome the counties which have wanted to secede from the People's Republic of California...
Brooks On Earned Wealth and Happiness
The Reality of Diversity in America
Four of my 6 siblings married non-Catholics (3 converted years into marriage); at least 2 of my nephews and nieces have married people from a different race or ethnicity, and I have a gay nephew. I personally have dated a black woman and Latinas. I have had black, Latino and female supervisors. My best friends in fifth grade and undergraduate school came from different backgrounds. I went to public high school and private colleges in heavily Latino communities. Among my best friends are an Asian-immigrant (Taiwanese) female professor, a Southern Baptist, and Jewish and Hindu IT professionals. I didn't need progressive academia or the affirmative action industrial complex to lecture me on diversity, because I've been living it all my life, being raised in an integrated military community.
Facebook Corner
(National Review) John Bolton For Secretary of State. OH HELL, NO. We don' t need a goddamned neocon as Secretary of State. If Donald Trump is smart (and that's doubtful), he'll choose Ron Paul. What???? Ron Paul is an idiot and he is my senator.... well lets just say, he is way too old and not the conservative people thinks he is. And an isolationist in that position would not be a good fit. Commenter1 Ron Paul is a retired Congressman and has never been a senator. As for Commenter2, consider the fact that Trump spent all campaign criticizing the Iraq invasion; Ron Paul was one of the few lawmakers who opposed it from the start.. Political Cartoon
I oppose the War on Drugs, not because I think it's a good idea to abuse one's body with narcotics, but because it's bad economics and public policy. I've had to pass drug tests under several employers over the years; I've seen fellow employees stress out over whether the seeded bun they ate at lunch might result in a false positive. I once talked to a young enlisted man, griping over yet another mandatory drug test, saying the officers had it better. I ad-libbed, "Do you think they pee into wine glasses?" Exactly.
Stossel On Media's Knowing Distortion of Trump
Neither Stossel nor I supported Trump, but the evidence that the media intentionally distorted anecdotal events is compelling. Let's be clear: Trump mocking a disabled reporter was in bad taste, period, but to discuss his flailing arms as context-specific was intentionally misleading. The media's silence when Clinton talked about the photo as Trump "stalking her" (when in fact she had walked in front of Trump) is, at best, hypocritical. She was intentionally trying to recreate the infamous Lazio moment that gave her her first Senate win.
Being Raised By a Left-Fascist Mother
Is Inequality A Problem? No
Sometimes we see this in families; one of my (younger) brothers, an engineer, owned a house while I barely lived paycheck to paycheck as a teaching fellow while earning a doctorate. He and his wife have lived in nicer houses than we did growing up in a lower middle-class household (we 3 brothers shared one room), and they go on a nice vacation or cruise every year (e.g., a trip to the Holy Land recently). I've had a less stable career and have felt the down side of every economic recession, including a difficult transition from academia back to the IT profession. But when I initially started out thinking of the priesthood and later an academic career, I knew that I might live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, but I wasn't going to make a lot of money. My brother purposely sought a more lucrative career. No doubt that he has earned more assets over his career; do I resent it? No. He earned what he has. I could have made similar or other choices; I had the opportunity, the GPA to pursue anything I wanted, even medical school. I may not go out to eat as often, don't go on vacations, and have lived in more modest apartments, but I've had enough to cover the essentials and save something for a rainy day.
I don't obsess about the relative disparity of income and assets. My brother didn't steal his assets from me; he made it on his own. This is a different problem than poverty; neither of us is poor. Yes, poverty is a serious problem, but we have seen market liberalization, not social ideology, bring more people out of poverty. We see government standing in the way of people trying to help themselves: minimum wage and/or expensive benefit mandates, occupational licensing, business permits and zoning restrictions, etc. We even see people arrested over feeding the homeless, health departments putting restrictions on donated food. "Generous" government traps people into dependency, constitutes moral hazard.
Facebook Corner
(National Review). Conservatives should focus on helping the president-elect deliver on his promise of helping average Americans prosper. The Trump "outsider" pitch is a joke. He has been captured by the same Establishment he vowed to tame. He couldn't even get more votes than Hillary Clinton, the weakest Dem candidate in decades. I am a proud #NeverTrump er and always will be. His embrace of protectionism and xenophobia contradicts GOP policy for decades and is a form of economic suicide. True patriots will resist his anti-liberty policies and unconstitutional expansion and exercise of Presidential powers. Political Cartoon
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists Kenny Loggins, "For the First Time". One of my favorite Loggins performances. This concludes my Loggins perspective.
Over the past week, I've embedded the series "Freedom on Trial", a libertarian drama based on a small businessman put on trial for giving a young man an entry-level low-paying job which happens to violate the prevailing minimum/"living wage" law. Here are follow-ups (note that Galbraith is the devil's advocate trying to justify obscene minimum wage policy):
Kenny Loggins, "If You Believe". Although I have a considerable music collection, I most often purchase greatest hits compilations, rarely an album based on a single hit tune. This was an exception; I couldn't find the single and bought the album to get it. I love the choir backup, and the underrated tune is one of my Loggins favorites. We are heading down the home stretch, closing with an Oscar-nominated performance. Cher will be the last featured performer series of the year, with my annual holiday music retrospective to follow.
Quote of the Day Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats. Howard Aiken Tweet of the Day
Now over 8000 and counting...
I am amused by the overreactions to Trump's victory, particularly universities who pay hypocritical lip service to diversity and tolerance.
The Marines I've met are extraordinarily professional and polite, worthy of our highest respect.
The Free Market Renewal of New Zealand
Top Losers in Campaign 2016
Facebook Corner
(relative). I didn't know this! So far, this is looking like 2000 where the Democrat got the popular vote, but not electoral college to win. That's why Gore and Clinton lost, and W and Trump are/will be president. Fascinating video!
The comparison is not comparable. In 2000, the Florida race was called early for Gore, and when Gore lost Florida, the deciding electoral votes, he refused to accept subsequent machine recounts confirming Bush's election and tried to reverse outcomes by manipulative recounts of disqualified ballots in Democrat-controlled precincts, hoping to mine enough votes to reverse the outcome, which the courts rightly decided was blatantly unconstitutional. The Gore court challenge was also aimed at preventing the participation of Florida's electors at the college. (This would have probably resulted in the election being decided in the House of Representatives.) For all practical purposes, Gore and Clinton tied their opponents in the popular vote, neither receiving a majority, both under 50%. Clinton's lead (with several votes still uncounted) is roughly 200,000 out of nearly 120M votes. In many voting systems, there would be a runoff between the top 2 finishers. It is still possible, based on voter distribution, for a candidate to win a majority of voters but lose a majority of electoral votes, e.g., disproportionate voting in big states. But our federal system is not really based on universal equal votes. For example, your vote has more of an impact in sparsely populated Alaska than in California. The popular vote distorts the outcome of states. For example, in many states like Illinois and Nevada (which went for Clinton), the big urban areas traditionally stockpile votes to offset more conservative rural areas of the state. I looked, for example, at Wisconsin (which went for Trump): you see a huge red map with only a couple of blue spots. If we went by the popular vote, we would see a different type of politics, with candidates pandering for the large urban area votes at the expense of rural areas. Oddly enough, Jefferson, who founded the Democratic Party, openly resisted the influence of urban-dominated New England. For this election, I think there are 3 states still undecided, with Trump leading in MI and AZ and Clinton in NH. Thus, assuming the leads hold, Clinton gets 232 and Trump 306. This is not the case where 1 state makes the difference; Clinton only won 4 states outside the Northeast/mid-Atlantic, West Coast/NV and Hawaii.
(relative). America is a system of checks and balances. If your candidate won or didn't win, please remember that they can't have ultimate power to do their will. Congress and the Supreme Court will make sure that America doesn't change too radically. This extreme change happened in 2008 with Obama, and some were thrilled. Now, we see just as radical a change in the opposite direction in response 8 years later. Those who loved W, but not Obama, survived the last 8 years. We will survive these next 4, maybe 8 years, for better or worse with Donald Trump as president. If you don't like the results of this election, pray. If you are happy, pray. God is in control. America needs our prayers. We need to unite as Americans, no longer Democrats and Republicans. Pray for our country. May God's will be done. Actually, the comparison is invalid here. The 2008 election bolstered an existing Democratic-controlled Congress, to the point that the Democrats (with Specter's party change) held a filibuster-proof Senate majority. In 2016, the GOP Senate majority has shrunk to maybe 52 seats (with Louisiana runoff on Dec. 10), with the Dems flipping IL and NH seats. So this Congress is more like what Bush had with his first election. The Democrats will likely reverse the pattern after 2010, with the Dems filibustering significant reforms and Trump using executive orders. The GOP will probably have to make concessions on major pieces of legislation and/or make modest changes through the filibuster-proof budget resolution process.
(National Review). How long is "never"? I am an open proud #NeverTrump er, and I won't be a Ryan or McConnell, trying to square the circle of supporting a Big Government liberal's agenda. I didn't compromise my pro-liberty political principles. I predict many true libertarian-conservatives will have the opportunity to point out Trump's departure from principle over the coming 4 years, and I will be one of the few who can claim they never supported Clinton or Trump.
(Mises Institute). Matthew McCaffrey: We are confident claiming that, true to his character, Mises would firmly defend free trade and peace against all their opponents on the left and right. Agreed. In fact, no libertarian/conservative could consistently vote for Trump's embrace of authoritarianism, protectionism, and Know Nothing xenophobia. NAFTA and TPP are not free trade and they compromise American sovereignty. In the age of regulatory, defense, labor and other inequalities, the US is paying a defacto tariff negating the opportunity for truly "free" trade. Don' t be a pseudo-libertarian! All trade pacts are mercantilistic in nature, of course. But the trade pacts are a clear pro-consumer advance over the status quo. When you oppose foreign producer access to our markets, you are de facto rationalizing existing protectionism, which is anti-market. No pro-liberty person would ever make a nationalist appeal, which is purely Trumpkin rubbish. If progressive policies are not competitive, the answer is not to impose American policies on foreign producers but to change anti-market policies. The OP is an economic illiterate. Political Cartoon
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists Kenny Loggins, "The Real Thing". By the 1990's, Loggins' pop success had peaked and he was mainly hitting the A/C chart.
