Consumption is in Decline, Frugality is in the Ascendant

As reported here:

Legendary Swiss investor Felix Zulauf believes that the current rally in risk assets is likely to last until at least the end of March, but that global sharemarkets will again succumb to downward pressure in the second half of the year.

In a wide-ranging interview with Business Spectator, Zulauf, who is president of Zulauf Asset Management and who has been a member of Barron’s Roundtable for more than 20 years, paints a gloomy picture of debt-laden industrialised countries, where central banks have no choice but to print money in an attempt to stave off dire deflationary pressures.

He also predicts that dwindling demand from the West will force China to redouble its efforts to boost domestic consumption, but that this will reduce China’s rate of economic growth. ...

"I think we are now dealing with a structural weakness in consumption in the industrial world due to declining prosperity. Real disposable personal income in most industrialised countries is stagnating, or even declining. And that means China has to change its model. Its export industries won’t be as vigorous as they used to be, both as a result of the weakness in demand outside China, and also because Chinese labour costs have risen sharply in recent years." 

USPS Needs To Cut $20 Billion, Plans To Close 3,830 Post Offices To Save $0.3 Billion

"That doesn't make any sense!"

As reported here by Reuters:

The Postal Service chose post offices for possible closure based primarily on revenue. Two-thirds of the 3,830 post offices slated for closure earned less than $27,500 in annual sales, postal data show. Nearly 90 percent of these post offices are located in rural areas, where shrinking populations and dwindling businesses mean the post offices simply cost more to operate than they earn. ...

The statistics show that closing all of the post offices under consideration would save about $295 million a year - about four-tenths of 1 percent of the Postal Service's annual expenses of $70 billion. ...

To match the falling demand, the agency says it needs to cut $20 billion in operating expenses by 2015. Restructuring healthcare programs, eliminating jobs, ending Saturday delivery and closing post offices are among the moves being considered, though some of these would require permission from a Congress that remains deeply divided on how to address the Postal Service's woes.

The postal service question is a matter of civil liberties: the guarantee of private communication. No cost is too high to protect it. That we don't care about it anymore just shows we are no longer a free people.

If we repealed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, however, the costs of postal service would plummet almost overnight, and we might be less inclined to sell our birthright for a bowl of pottage.

Obama Plans To Cut Deployed Nukes To As Few As 300 From 1790 Now

So reports AP Obama here:

The potential cuts would be from a current treaty limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads.

A level of 300 deployed strategic nuclear weapons would take the U.S. back to levels not seen since 1950 when the nation was ramping up production in an arms race with the Soviet Union. The U.S. numbers peaked at above 12,000 in the late 1980s and first dropped below 5,000 in 2003. ...

The U.S. already is on track to reduce to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads by 2018, as required by New START. As of last Sept. 1, the United States had 1,790 warheads and Russia had 1,566, according to treaty-mandated reports by each. The treaty does not bar either country from cutting below 1,550 on their own.

The World Currently Owes Japan Approximately $3.23 Trillion

At an exchange rate of 77.87 yen to the dollar:

Japan’s current-account surplus has meant that it hasn’t needed to rely on foreign capital to finance its budget deficits, unlike the U.S.  Foreign buyers hold about less than 10 percent of the public debt, compared with almost half for the U.S. Yields on 10-year Japanese government bonds were at 1 percent, among the world’s lowest.

A legacy of years of trade surpluses has left Japan as largest net holder of external assets, a position it had for a 20th straight year in 2010, with a position of 251.5 trillion yen, according to the finance ministry. Figures for 2011 are due in May. China is second-largest, according to the ministry.

Japan has moved into trade deficit for the first time since 1980, according to the story at Bloomberg here.

Two Reasons For Legal Offshore Cash

Political risk, as in:

If the country implodes and you've got to renounce citizenship you'll have some resources abroad waiting for you.

Litigation risk, as in:

Rich people make big targets, so to prevent everything you've got from being exposed to a lawsuit, you park some money out of reach.

Brett Arends explains here.

Does it inspire confidence that a prospective president might think that way?

Romney Unlikely To Reform Tax Code Fearing Charges Of Personal Gain

So says Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dan Mitchell, here:

Romney will be reluctant - because of his personal wealth - to advance policies that can be portrayed as helping the so-called rich. We can't expect a Reagan-style agenda of economic liberty and individual freedom, so something like a flat tax is very unlikely.

Rick Santorum Blames His Wife For Blaming Feminists in "It Takes a Family"

And you thought Newt Gingrich was the only two-timing traitor in the Republican race for president.

From The New York Times, here:

Asked on the ABC News program “This Week” about the book’s contentions, Mr. Santorum noted that his wife, Karen, had written that section — though only his name is on the cover and he does not list her in the acknowledgments as among those “who assisted me in the writing of this book.” ...

In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Santorum pleaded unfamiliarity with the citation, saying, “I don’t know – that’s a new quote for me.” ...

Nevermind there's nothing new about it, as the evidence adduced going back many years shows.

"The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate."

Weasel.

h/t Chris

There is No Democracy in Greece: 43 Lawmakers EXPELLED for Voting the Wrong Way

As reported here:

Lawmakers voted 199-74 in favor of the cutbacks, despite strong dissent among the two main coalition members. A total 37 lawmakers from the majority Socialists and conservative New Democracy party either voted against the party line, abstained or voted present. ...

Besides the 37 lawmakers who voted against the bill or abstained, a further six voted against sections of the proposed measures. After the vote, the coalition government announced those 43 lawmakers had been expelled.

Banks Make Out Like Bandits Again, Mortgage Settlement a Drop in the Bucket

As detailed by Gretchen Morgenson for The New York Times here:

There's no doubt that the banks are happy with this deal. You would be, too, if your bill for lying to courts and end-running the law came to less than $2,000 per loan file.

As for the supposed benefits to the economy, skeptics abound. One of them is Paul Diggle, property economist at Capital Economics in London. In a report last week, he rejected the notion -- espoused by both banks and government authorities -- that this deal would help turn around the American housing market.

For most homeowners, it will barely move the needle. Forgiving $17 billion in principal "is a drop in the ocean," Mr. Diggle said, "given that close to 11 million borrowers are underwater on their loans to the tune of $700 billion in total." Doing the math, $17 billion in write-downs would be about 2.4 percent of the total negative equity weighing down borrowers across the nation now.

Gov. Romney Repeats the Myth of First Amendment Priority

Quoted here:

"We must have a President who is willing to protect America's first right, our right to worship God," he added.

The First Amendment was originally the Third Amendment. If religious liberty had really held priority in the founders' minds, this would not have been the case.

So what did pre-occupy their minds? The issue of adequate representation.

No one today can argue that we have it.

Sarah Palin at CPAC: Still a Vulgarian and a Believer in the Imperial Presidency

As reported here:

Palin zeroed in on President Obama. The current state of the economy "is not a failure of the American people," she said. "It is the failure of leadership. We know how to change that, oh yes we do. Oh yes we can," she said, echoing Obama's campaign line. "Hope and change – yeah, you gotta hope things change."

"He says he has a jobs plan to win the future. WTF, I know," Palin said, spelling out W-T-F. Palin hasn't endorsed any candidates and didn't do so today, telling the crowd that "For the sake of our country we must stand united, whoever our nominee is." Palin left the stage to an extended ovation, having managed to do what none of the candidates except Santorum could: get social conservatives truly fired up.

That's right. Never tell the people they have the government they deserve, especially that crowd. 

Ann Coulter Still Thinks Newt Gingrich Is The Main Threat To Mitt Romney

Quoted here:

So I ask you, CPACers, who are you willing to stake the future of this country on winning? Who is going to appeal to the most Independents? Because, if we’re betting the future of this country on Next Gingrich not being repellent to Independents, I want my money back. I’m not taking that bet.

So, the three back-to-back victories this week for Sen. Rick Santorum are chopped liver?

Mitt Romney (and Rush Limbaugh) Do Not Understand The American Founding

Here's Rush cheer-leading Gov. Mitt Romney for something Romney said today at CPAC, something which shows neither he nor Limbaugh really understand the American Founding:

ROMNEY: We believe in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence!  We believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!  We know the brilliance that suggested that individuals pursuing their own dreams would make us the most powerful nation on earth, not a government trying to guide our lives.  This is who we are! This passion we must take to the American people.  This is our moment! This is why we're conservatives.  The task before us now is to reaffirm the convictions that unite us and go forward, shoulder to shoulder, to secure victory that America so desperately needs and deserves. 

CROWD: (cheering)

ROMNEY: Let's do it together! Thank you, and God bless America. 

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

ROMNEY: Thank you.

RUSH:  Right on, dude.  Right on.  I mean, that's... What did you think of that, Snerdley?  Did you it? That was! It was severe.  It was.  It was "severely conservative."  You know that I'm just gonna get beat up so bad for this.

Rush should get beat up for this, along with Romney, because becoming "the most powerful nation on earth" was as foreign a concept to the Founders as it is to conservatism.

The Founders sought independence from England in order to enjoy membership in the family of nations, instead of enduring the on-going disrespect with which King George treated his colonies in America. A grandiose design to become world hegemon, pace Mitt, pace Rush, was a . . . uh hum, foreign concept.

From "The Original Intent of the Declaration of Independence" by John Fea, here:

Historian David Armitage, in a fascinating book entitled The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, has argued convincingly that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty in the hopes that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was "decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them."

To put this differently, the "self-evident truths" and "unalienable rights" of the Declaration's second paragraph would not have been particularly new or groundbreaking in the context of the 18th-century British world. These were ideals that all members of the British Empire valued regardless of whether they supported or opposed the American Revolution. The writers of the Declaration of Independence did not believe that they were advancing political principles unique to America. This was a foreign policy document.

In an 1825 letter to fellow Virginian Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson explained his motivation behind writing the Declaration:

When forced, therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our jurisdiction. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.

John Adams, writing five years after he signed it, called the Declaration "that memorable Act by which [the United States] assumed an equal Station among the nations." There is little in these statements to suggest that the Declaration of Independence was anything other than an announcement to the world that the former British colonies were now free and independent states and thus deserve a place in the international order of nations.

Alas, we are left with ignorant fools, appealing to ignorant fools.

Same as it ever was.

Fritz Vahrenholt's Climate Apostasy Partly Due to Solar Research of Henrik Svensmark

So says journalist and film-maker Michael Miersch for Germany's FOCUS, as translated by Phillip Mueller in "Solar Shift Rocks Germany", here:

The work of the Danish researcher Henrik Svensmark and other climate scientists convinced him that the fluctuating magnetic field of the sun is a driver of climate change, because it shields cyclically more or less cosmic radiation from the earth. This particle radiation from space contributes to cloud formation.

A Little Friday Night Truck Humor

h/t Scott

Potential Juror Number 382 in Hutaree Trial Sticks Up For 4th Amendment

The Detroit Free Press has the story here:

The last person added to the final jury pool said he is skeptical about police and paid informants going undercover to spy on people.

His views struck a nerve with the prosecution, whose key witnesses include a federal agent and paid confidential informant who infiltrated the Hutaree group, secretly recorded conversations with members, then reported everything they saw and heard back to the FBI. ...

He said he believes spying on people is an invasion of privacy. 

“You’re basically paying someone to lie and deceive people. I don’t think that’s right,” said the potential juror.

The country could use a lot more jurors 382.

Mormons Still Practice Polygamy in the Form of "Sealing"

So says Tresa Edmunds here:

Today polygamy still echoes in our doctrine as men can be "sealed", or united for eternity in a religious ordinance, to more than one woman. ... 

[M]y co-blogger, Lindsay Hansen Park, . . . writes . . . "[H]istory forces us to reflect on current practices and policies and we begin to question the reasoning of it all. Mormons still practice polygamy posthumously in the temple? Is polygamy the law we're to expect in the afterlife? And better yet, who are we to tell the world what a traditional family looks like, when our past is far from traditional?"

One's a Creep, the Other a Monster

Tim Noah of The New Republic (who admits Edward Kennedy was "criminally irresponsible" in 1969) helps you decide which is the creep, and which the monster, here.

Progressivism can only be said to be making progress, however, when people such as these are flailed while they are alive and still in power.

The West's Problem: Ongoing Misdirection of Capital

So says Nicole Gelinas, here:

In the years leading up to 2007, the rules necessary to govern a flourishing market economy broke down, producing a financial and economic crisis. Rather than responding to the crisis by fixing those rules, the West aggressively repudiated market economics, and the repudiation continues to this day.

Or, to put it the way George Bush did, we've abandoned free-market principles to save the market.

Never works. Never will.

Guttmacher Institute Report Claims 2% of US Catholic Women Use Natural Family Planning

The Guttmacher report also claims 98 percent of sexually-active American Catholic women use contraceptives:

Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women. ...

Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family planning; even among Catholic women who attend church once a month or more, only 2% rely on this method (not shown). Sixty-eight percent of Catholic women use highly effective methods: sterilization (32%, including 24% using female sterilization,) the pill or another hormonal method (31%) and the IUD (5%). ...

Data were gathered using in-person interviews with 7,356 women aged 15–44 between June 2006 and December 2008. All data used for this analysis were weighted, and the findings are nationally representative. ...

Current contraceptive use was measured only among women who had had sex in the three months prior to the survey and refers to the method used in the most recent month she had sex. Among women who reported using multiple methods in the survey month, priority was given to the most effective method. The category of “other” methods mainly consists of withdrawal but also includes less common methods, such as suppositories, sponges and foams. Natural family planning includes periodic abstinence, temperature rhythm and cervical mucus tests.


The Guttmacher Institute was originally in 1968 a creature of Planned Parenthood, and became independent from it in 1977. Alan Frank Guttmacher was once the president of PP.

The 4-6 year old study on which the data are based is described as "weighted," which means some data points count more than others. Which ones no one knows. I'll leave it to statisticians to decide if 7,356 women comprise enough of a data set to draw sweeping religious conclusions about any religious group, Catholic or otherwise.

From what I know of Catholics, however, the religion is "orthopractic" more than it is orthodox, emphasizing religious obligation more than religious belief, which would help explain why US Catholic women apparently routinely ignore official teaching.

Protestants have tended rather to emphasize correct belief, but in truth are not really less likely to practice otherwise.

Catholicism is a much bigger tent than Protestantism, which is a sea of tents. The strength, and the weakness, of Catholicism is its ability to co-opt pre-existing belief and absorb it.

The present struggle over reproductive issues in America highlights a struggle against an ideology not unlike that which the church faced in the Soviet era in the Eastern Bloc.

This may be a long war which doesn't end until America does.

Catholicism, however, will still be here when America is gone.   

German Lefty Fritz Vahrenholt Questions CO2 Climate Change Hypothesis

Interviewed here in Der Spiegel:

"Today, I want new scientific findings to be included in the climate debate. It would then become clear that the simple equation that CO2 and other man-made greenhouse gases are almost exclusively responsible for climate change is unsustainable. It hasn't gotten any warmer on this planet in almost 14 years, despite continued increases in CO2 emissions. Established climate science has to come up with an answer to that. ...

"The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news. ...

"In terms of the climate, we have seen a cyclical up and down for the last 7,000 years, long before man began emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. There has been a warming phase every 1,000 years, including the Roman, the Medieval and the current warm periods. All of these warm periods consistently coincided with strong solar activity. In addition to this large fluctuation in activity, there is also a 210-year and an 87-year natural cycle of the sun. Ignoring these would be a serious mistake …

"In the second half of the 20th century, the sun was more active than it had been in more than 2,000 years. This "large solar maximum," as astronomers call it, has contributed at least as much to global warming as the greenhouse gas CO2. But the sun has been getting weaker since 2005, and it will continue to do so in the next few decades. Consequently, we can only expect cooling from the sun for now. ...

"Many scientists assume that the temperature changes by more than 1 degree Celsius for the 1,000-year cycle and by up to 0.7 degrees Celsius for the smaller cycles. Climatologists should be putting a far greater effort into finding ways to more accurately determine the effects of the sun on climate. For the IPCC and the politicians it influences, CO2 is practically the only factor. The importance of the sun for the climate is systematically underestimated, and the importance of CO2 is systematically overestimated. As a result, all climate predictions are based on the wrong underlying facts. ...

"[T]he declining solar activity, as well as the fluctuations in ocean currents, such as the 60-year Pacific oscillation, which was in a positive warm phase from 1977 to 2000 and, since 2000, has led to cooling as a result of its decline. Their contribution to the change in temperature has also been wrongly attributed to CO2. Most of all, however, the last sunspot cycle was weaker than the one before it. This is why the sun's magnetic field has continued to weaken since 2000. As a result, this magnetic field doesn't shield us against cosmic radiation quite as well, which in turn leads to stronger cloud formation and, therefore, cooling. What else has to happen before the IPCC at least mentions these relationships in its reports? ...

"In addition to carbon dioxide, we also have black soot, for example. It creates 55 percent of the warming effect of CO2, but it could be filtered out with little effort within a few years, especially in emerging and developing countries. And, in doing so, we would achieve huge benefits for human health. ...

"All I'm saying is that CO2 is a climate gas, but that its effect is only half as strong as the IPCC claims. ..."

Total World Stock Market Capitalization Year-End 2010 at $56 Trillion

Data here.

Total Demand Deposits in January at $0.8 Trillion

Total Savings and Money Market Deposits in January at $6.057 Trillion

Irrational Exuberance in Home Ownership Rates

MJ Perry has a good post on the deflating home ownership bubble here, and this cool chart, which shows once again that starting in 1995 all manner of metrics assumed an irrationally exuberant upward trend.

An additional chart at the link less convincingly makes the case that low down payment loans were a cause, rather than a by-product, of the bubble.  Looks like a lagging indicator to me, but obviously it is an imprudent policy to require only 3 percent down.

Famous Republican Ted Olson Responsible For Challenging CA Proposition 8

Conservatives needing another reason not to support the Republican Party need only look to this case:

Ted Olson, one of the lawyers representing couples who challenged Proposition 8, said: "This case is about equality and freedom and dignity and fairness and decency. It is about whether we are going to eliminate government-sponsored discrimination written into the constitution of the biggest state in the U.S."

Mr. Olson, a Republican stalwart, teamed up with David Boies, a Democrat and his adversary in the 2000 presidential-election case of Bush v. Gore, to bring the challenge to Proposition 8. ...

Six states, plus the District of Columbia, permit same-sex marriages, and proponents of gay marriage are gearing up to press their cause during this election year, including in Maine and Washington state.

From the Log Cabin Republicans to Ted Olson, Republicans have been in the vanguard of the insane waging war on nature and nature's God.

To hell with them all.

Radioactivity 150 Miles From Vermont's Troubled, Aging Yankee Nuclear Plant Blamed on Atmospheric Testing in 1940s and 1950s, and on Chernobyl

Strontium-90 has been found in bass far from Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, according to this story:

Now, new tests of bass caught 150 miles away in northwestern Vermont and outside the area affected by the plant's groundwater show similar levels of Strontium-90, said William Irwin, chief of the Vermont Health Department's radiological division.

The likely source, rather than Vermont Yankee, is residue from above-ground nuclear testing in the 1940s and 1950s and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in the Soviet Union in 1986, he said.


This report puts it as follows:

Irwin said Lake Carmine, in Enosburg Falls, is about as far away from Yankee as you can get and still be in the Green Mountain State.

"The results are that cesium-137 and strontium-90 in Lake Carmi fish is in the same range as Connecticut River fish," said Irwin. "We take this as some evidence that all fish in Vermont are likely to have radioactive cesium and strontium at these levels and that, as we've hypothesized, it is from nuclear weapons fallout and the releases of Chernobyl. All of us are glad to have proof and not just conjecture."


The similar levels of radioactive contamination suggest that the reasons for shutting down an aging plant like Vermont's Yankee Nuclear are distinct in this case, not the least of which is that the design is identical to the Fukushima, Japan, nuclear power plants which melted down after the earthquakes and tsunami in March 2011.

Obama: Pesky Constitution Gets In Way of Getting Things Done

Quoted here:

"What's frustrated people is that I've not been able to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes. But what we have been able to do is move in the right direction," Obama said.

Obama Knows His Base Is Women, And ObamaCare Was Designed For It

Romney would lose in November because he's competing for a voting block which Obama already owns. While 48 percent of Romney's voters said they were Republican, 41 percent self-identified as Independent.

Once again, from the Florida exit polling here, Romney's biggest support came from women (52 percent), Hispanic/Latino (54 percent), moderate/liberal (59 percent), oppose Tea Party (57 percent), Roman Catholic (56 percent), and the abortion should be legal crowd (54 percent).

Compare that with this from CNN (here):

Catholic teaching opposes abortion and the use of contraceptives, though a 2011 study by the Guttmacher Institute showed 98% of sexually active Catholic women had used contraception.

The Democrat strategy, as always, is to divide and conquer, but when it comes to the Catholic church, there isn't a lot of dividing work to do. Obama has known for a long time that the loyalty of Catholic women to the church is divided over reproductive issues, as is the loyalty of Christian women generally.

Women in this country want the freedom to kill their unborn children. Otherwise Roe v. Wade would not continue to stand.

Obama knows his base. ObamaCare was designed for it. Catholic women in Florida went for Romney like they'll be going for Obama in November. The better to eat you with, my dear.



"Those domestick traitors, bosom-thieves,
Whom custom hath call'd wives; the readiest helps
To betray the heady husbands, rob the easy."

-- Ben Jonson

Thomas Sowell Says Mitt Romney's Minimum Wage Views Prove He's No Conservative

Here:

When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don't get hired. It is not rocket science.

Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, "Capitalism and Freedom." So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself "conservative" has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to. 

The Difference Between Us and Them, Well Stated

Here:

For conservatives, answering the essential question of what our political goals are is not difficult. We do not believe in the perfectibility of the world. Those of us who are Christian conservatives believe that the government can fight wars, as well as provide protection from discrimination and a safety net for the poor. Capitalism and the free market are not perfect systems, but they are the best systems for providing human flourishing. We believe in progress that reenforces timeless truths.

Yet if you do believe in the perfectibility of the world -- or "fundamental transformation" in the president's phrase -- then nothing, not even the human conscience, can be allowed to get in the way.

F. Fukuyama: Our World is Devoid of Monstrous Projects of Social Transformation

The Big Lie, softly told.

In The New York Times, here:

"The undergraduate students I teach . . . are fortunate not to live in a world where ideas could be translated into monstrous projects for the transformation of society, and where being an intellectual could often mean complicity in enormous crimes."

He's never heard of Barack Obama, I guess, nor the enormous crime of abortion in which all our intellectuals are complicit, nor the compulsion of ObamaCare, targeted drone killings, the TSA's war on the fourth amendment, the illegal war in Libya, TARP and the fascist bank bailouts, the zero interest rate policy war against elderly savers, the war on carbon, the war on the rich and the middle class, gays in the military . . ..

Obama's Attack on Roman Catholicism Evokes Charges of Tyranny, Fascism, Totalitarianism

From one Mark Judge, here:

The New Comstockery is a metastasizing liberal cancer not just of intolerance, but of hatred for those who disagree. ...

The New Comstockery is fascist. ...

[L]iberal tyranny ... has become evident recently in both the Obama administration[']s violation of the First Amendment in forcing Catholic institutions to sell birth control, and the reaction to the Susan Komen Foundation's attempt to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. ...

[S]omething ... in our time has become a terrible reality: the totalitarian impulse of liberalism, particularly when it comes to sexual matters.

Pace Mark Judge, the consequences of the relaxation of morals in the West produced a horrific 20th century on both sides of the Atlantic. It makes no difference that the tens of millions killed here in America have been faceless. Their blood cries out no less than the millions of Stalin's and Hitler's victims.

Nor has the impulse to liberal tyranny been only just recently evident.

It was evident to many of us much earlier, especially in ObamaCare in 2010 and in the fascist bailouts of 2009, which gave rise to the Tea Party. George Bush's liberalism which ended with TARP at home was just the kinder, gentler Republican version of it, trampling out the vintage for the most part in foreign fields.

But Obama has brought the grapes of wrath back home.

Few have been the voices decrying the expansion of the national security state in 2011. The Department of Homeland Security and the TSA have been hard at work implementing nationwide checkpoint programs, using scanners and military surveillance technology, particularly drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) to "patrol the borders," hunt down cattle rustlers and execute without trial (admittedly noxious) American citizens in foreign lands.

In 2012 the Republican House is actually cooperating by passing legislation which routinizes the domestic integration of UAVs under the control of the FAA. And Republicans think Mitt Romney is going to make a difference?

The revolution has been measured, taking off one obstacle at a time so as not to cause widespread alarm, but its objectives are indeed totalist.  Dismissing religious freedom now in 2012 almost comes as an afterthought, a mere by-product of ObamaCare.

The spider weaves its web, and soon we will all be caught it in, if we aren't already.

It's good that Mark Judge is finally paying attention.

Is anyone else?

"There is no contradiction between economic Liberalism and Socialism."

                               -- Oswald Spengler, 1933 

Women Are The Ruin Of Many Tyrants

The Tax Man Stands In The Way Of The Deleveraging Crisis

Household net worth in Q3 2011 has fallen to $57.4 trillion, and relative to GDP this is still well above historical peaks in the post-war period in the 20th century.

If total household net worth relative to GDP fell to the post-war historical peak before the recent silliness, at present levels of GDP this implies a further pull-back in total household net worth of roughly 7 percent, or $4 trillion, to $53.4 trillion.

It is interesting to note that mortgage debt relative to current GDP also as shown here should correct down about 33 percent to match the post-war historical peak of that metric. With about $10 trillion in mortgage debt currently outstanding, a 33 percent adjustment down comes to $3.3 trillion, a figure very similarly sized to the outsized net worth noted above.

In other words, we could come a long way toward rectifying both metrics almost instantly by taking from net worth and paying down mortgage debt, if only the tax man didn't stand in the way.

It should be emphasized that roughly $5 trillion of $18 trillion in retirement funds stands ready in IRA accounts alone to address this problem, if only government gave people the freedom to do so.

Another interesting point suggests itself.

The post-war average GDP of 3.5 percent per annum has utterly failed to materialize in the first decade of the 21st century, as GDP has averaged instead in the neighborhood of 1.7 percent per annum.

Both net worth and debt measured against an economy pumping out 50 percent more GDP would mean I wouldn't be writing about this right now.

I'd be too busy relaxing and getting ready to make lots of money tomorrow.

There's more than one way to skin a cat: less meddlesome tax policy, or growth-oriented economic policy.

Preferably both.

Does The Fed Help Precipitate Recessions By Raising Rates, Or Lowering Them?

Yes!

Alan Greenspan was confirmed as Federal Reserve Chairman in August 1987, Ben Bernanke in 2006.

Two Episodes of Nearly Vertical Exuberance in Net Worth

Two recent episodes of nearly vertical exuberance are shown by dramatic spurts in total net worth of households over 5 year periods: beginning from the mid-1990s and from about early 2003, coincident with stock market and housing bubbles.

A correction to trend implies a net worth decline to around $45 trillion, or 21 percent from the present $57 trillion.

Irrational Exuberance In Credit Creation Has Stalled

Yet one more metric showing how a new trend line began in the mid-1990s coincident with dramatic new housing and banking legislation of the time. A reversion to the status quo ante implies an overall reduction in asset values of at least 33 percent to 42 percent, and perhaps more in a crash which over-corrects below the more modest trendline set by bank credit of approximately $5.5 trillion.

Democrats and College-less Least Likely To Vote For A Mormon

Well, there goes the crossover vote.

Gallup has the data here:

The New Republic's Tim Noah Is A Crapy Spellur, For The Sure

Seen here:

Unemployment Falls to 8.3 Percent: Obama's Average 9.3 %, 36 Straight Months Above 8 Percent

See the graph of historical US unemployment at The Wall Street Journal here:

Ratio of Employed to Population Remains Mired at 58.5 through 1/12

Ads For Democrats Assault Readers of Conservative Websites

This wouldn't have happened in the good old days of print:

Depth and Breadth of Current Employment Recession Still Far and Away Worst in Post WW2 Period

So says calculatedriskblog here:

Manufacturing Payrolls Under 12 Million, Down 30 Percent 2000-2012

Jesus' Message About Rich And Poor Is Meaningless To Us In Obama's Hands

President Obama (here) has invoked a saying in the Gospel of Luke to buttress his argument that the rich should give up some tax breaks they enjoy:

"Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required" (Luke 12:48b).

From this easy misappropriation of a text, which is set in an apocalyptic future where a final reckoning between God and man occurs, one might conclude that President Obama has become a fundamentalist who thinks the teaching of Jesus speaks directly to marginal tax rate policy of the federal government of the United States in the year 2012.

Somehow I don't believe that's what they taught him in Rev. Wright's church.

It is left to us liberals of a certain sort to point out to the president that the teaching of Jesus is not exactly a guide book for conducting our happy lives here in the 21st century, and that this text is instead a witness to the meaning of the true cost of discipleship which Jesus taught, its true cost not just to the wealthy but also to those "to whom little is given".

To his own disciples, his own little flock, Jesus says in the very same chapter the president quotes, "Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth" (Luke 12:33).

Sell that ye have and give alms.

From this we learn that Jesus expected his followers, whether poor or rich, to turn their backs on their former way of life in every detail, goods, fame, child and wife, liquidate that way of life, and help the needy and prepare for God's kingdom which he said was "at hand".

Accordingly much is required of those who have much, because what they have is much. Little is required of those who have little, because what they have is little. By definition a rich man who repents turns his back on much, and by definition a poor man who repents turns his back on little. The teaching is cast tautologically to emphasize the point.

But it is all required of the disciple nonetheless, whether the much or the little: "So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).

Do you know anyone like that? I know I do not. And I know that I am not one of them.

I am not a disciple of Jesus.

Now, if we were to apply this teaching evenly, unlike the president, to the contemporary tax debate, it would naturally mean that rich and poor alike owe everything which they have to the government, which is of course absurd, except under a Marxist interpretation of the text, which is exactly what many in America suspect underlies President Obama's rhetoric.

That Jesus' teaching is so one-sidedly represented by our leftist president in the public sphere shouldn't really surprise us, however. He is not the first trimmer to address the American people.

That we owe everything to God according to Jesus' teaching is not even acknowledged in the one place where you should expect to hear it: the church.

The most you will hear you owe is 10 percent, the tithe.

So-called disciples of Christ everywhere trim and hedge around these texts because these texts are simply too difficult to square with the reality of a mundane existence which quietly whimpers, decade upon decade, century upon century, that Jesus' predicted in-breaking of the kingdom of God, final judgment and establishment of God's justice never happened. We continue to live in a broken world where good and evil grow up side by side, within us and without, while Christian utopians everywhere deny this reality and proclaim not just that God's kingdom is here, but that they are it.

After long experience of them, however, many of us beg to differ.

They have more in common with Barack Obama than they care to admit: a delusional version of reality, often accompanied by a healthy helping of contempt for the non-believers.

It is a unique experience to be hated by the Democrats and the Republicans alike.

What we manifestly should not do today is apply the teaching of Jesus to the tax debate . . . because Jesus did not. As far as he was concerned, taxes were beside the point. The world was coming to an end, so let the dead bury their own dead. They would not remain unburied for long.

Inevitably we would fall short of Jesus' teaching, and we do, as any honest observer will admit. Jesus' teaching had its historical opportunity, and we live in our own unique moment. He is not here to speak to us in ours. His voice reaches us from his past, spoken to us, let us at least say, as true man. As true men like him we should listen to it. And therefore inasmuch as his moment was everyman's moment, it is not without significance in our own time.

For example, if (leftist) Americans who import one half of the teaching of this failed utopian preacher for their own utopian schemes stopped doing so, would this not instantly become a much better country?

If the teaching of Jesus about rich and poor means anything in the present debate about taxes, isn't it that  our expectations of each other should mean that we treat all human beings as human beings? But I highly doubt very many on the left want to talk about the poor paying their fair share of taxes, especially when nearly half of us scandalously pay nothing. The poor are too good to be talked to like that, they tell us.

The rich by virtue of being rich thus receive their opprobrium, while the poor receive an exaltation they do not deserve.

To make the contribution of the poor fair, should it not be proportional, a percentage, so that in that way they are made equal to the rich, who would also pay proportionally even though in sum their contribution will make them superior to the poor?

It is wrong to inflame the poor to hate the rich, to awaken the greed, envy and covetousness to which all are susceptible by nature, and of which all are guilty, poor and rich alike.

But it would also be helpful if more so-called Christian Americans came to terms with their proclivity to view "success" from such a paltry, materialist perspective which insists that not having a job makes one nothing more than a depreciating asset. This is but the flipside of the Marxist coin which treats everyone as chattel, as productive assets of the mere material variety. We are richer in things than failed Marxist regimes, but no less dead inside for de-humanizing the unemployed, the elderly and the unborn, some of whom we have now killed in the millions for almost four decades.

How long can that injustice tempt fate?

Jesus clearly understood the dangers of wealth to the individual soul, the responsibility wealth imposes, and how the sheer size and weight of it can keep one from entering the kingdom of God. But American Christians no less than others press on in pursuit of a secure retirement and the paid off mortgage which has replaced the BMW as the status symbol of choice, gathering up in barns and building bigger ones to hold the increase.

Their recourse to measures which now threaten their own freedoms show that they fear this night their soul shall be required of them and that they will be found wanting.

Wealth exerts a powerful magnetic pull which sucks people inward like a black hole sucks in light. The darkness of it blinds us to the reality of suffering and injustice swirling all around us. Turned by it inward in this way, wealth finds opportunity in in-dwelling evil where it concentrates pride in ourselves to such an extent that it becomes incapable even of the honest human feeling of sympathy, with the result that charity becomes the opportunity only for the praise of other men instead of the relief of suffering which God rewards when done in secret.

Our poorest American brothers and sisters, it should be remembered, are better off than 2/3 of the rest of the whole world.

"Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me."

In truth God calls to the American Empire, but not through the spokesmen du jour.

This is why Jesus is worshipped.

Labor Participation Rate Falls To Carter Administration Levels in 1979-1980

The average civilian labor force participation rate during the Carter Administration was 63.2 percent.

Famous Democrat Notices Romney Doesn't Understand Conservatism

James Cueball Carville, here:

"[H]e doesn’t understand conservative doctrine."

Romney Came Late To Conservatism And Still Can't Speak It Very Well

So Charles Krauthammer, here:

"Romney is a guy who came late to his new ideology and still can't speak it very well."

Well, he doesn't even understand what it means when he says it. He's a fake.

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't Conservative

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't conservative.

At least since her endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2008 we've had, on the other hand, some good clues about what she in fact is.

For example, she was willing to endorse Hillary Clinton and campaign for her were Hillary the candidate for the Democrats for president. The reason? Because Senator John McCain, the Republican, was determined to end the practice of waterboarding prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Now she has endorsed John McCain's one time nemesis from 2008, Gov. Mitt Romney. And Gov. Romney has just put his foot in it twice only days after winning the very same Florida primary McCain won four years ago, and shown us thereby that he isn't a conservative, either.

Proclaiming himself content with the social safety net for the very poorest Americans, Gov. Romney pledged on one day to expand it in the event it becomes inadequate to the task.

On the very next he announced his commitment to the federal minimum wage, and indexing it to inflation.

This is the same Gov. Romney Ann Coulter predicted would lose to President Obama, and therefore the Republicans had better nominate Gov. Chris Christie instead. Also the same Gov. Romney now endorsed by . . . Sen. John McCain.

Thus Ann Coulter is on record in support of a vigorous and muscular government, one which tortures prisoners of war, further entrenches entitlements which create a class dependent on the dole, and interferes in the free marketplace so that the unemployed, and especially the young, gather no useful work experience because employers cannot afford to pay large numbers of them the minimum wage.

In keeping with this unlimited government philosophy, Ann Coulter now defends RomneyCare in Massachusetts on the grounds that government compulsion is quite American:

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

To the likes of Ann Coulter, "government is" evidently means "government ought."

Nevermind that conscription was resisted and unsuccessful from the beginning of the country. Fewer than 9 percent of Civil Warriors were drafted. The vast majority were volunteers. And volunteers alone comprise our Armed Forces today and have since 1973.

No one is compelled to marry, only to fulfill certain basic requirements if they choose to. Those who remain single aren't obliged to get blood tests. And those who cohabit forego them entirely without fear of the blood test police knocking down their doors.

Yes "we" pay for public schools, that is, we who own property, but the non-propertied classes do not. But no one forced me to buy a house which is taxed to fund schools.

It's in our interests to comply with government which clearly secures our interests, which is why we support property laws which guarantee clear title and oppose shortcuts which undermine them, like the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, a colossal assault on the most basic of all rights we look to government to safeguard but hasn't.

We also expect government to regulate banking to protect the integrity of our savings and of our currency, but it has done neither.  

And no, I didn't have a six hour wait at the DMV. I mailed my check and got my driver's license renewal in the mail. So what if the picture is four years old? But my mother killed the neighbor's prize sow with a car when she was 16, and never drove again. From then until she died at the age of 93 no one forced her to stand in line at the DMV to get a license she would never need.

To hear Ann tell it, we might as well castrate and sell our young, or even eat them because these things were said to be the custom once upon a time, as adultery, incest and sodomy manifestly ever are:

Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.  -- John Locke

Is this the reason Ann Coulter is friendly with sodomites today? Because they exist? Or should Thomas Jefferson's advice to castrate sodomites carry more weight?

Did someone hit Ann Coulter with a rock? And is she now living under it? More than half of the country hates ObamaCare because it is compulsory.

The animus against compulsion is as old in America as the revolt against taxation without representation. And older still for refugees from religious compulsion.

If Ann Coulter were alive in 1776 with her present views she'd be a loyalist who would have ended up fleeing to Canada. And in 1861 she'd have gladly plunged the country into a war which killed hundreds of thousands of fathers and brothers because some South Carolinians killed a Union mule at Ft. Sumter.

Ann Coulter's way of thinking has a long pedigree. It's called tyranny.

Ann Coulter Flashback: Hillary Clinton More Conservative Than John McCain

Reported here four years ago today:

"She's more conservative than he is," Coulter said on Fox News. "[Hillary Clinton] lies less than John McCain. She's smarter than John McCain. I will campaign for her if it's McCain," she said.


Coulter's "reasoning" had to do with John McCain's resolve to stop torture at Guantanamo.


CNN here had reported just the day before:

[Sen. John McCain] passed a key test Tuesday in winning Florida's primary, the first early contest that only allowed registered Republicans to participate.

Reacting to criticisms from his party's most conservative quarters, McCain told the San Francisco Gate Thursday, "I'll continue to reach out to all in the party, try to unite the party, until everybody realizes that the only way we're going to defeat the Democratic candidate is through a united party."


Ann Coulter has now famously endorsed McCain's defeated opponent Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election as the most conservative, but just yesterday Romney re-affirmed his support for indexing the minimum wage to inflation, as reported here:

[A] reporter asked Romney aboard his campaign plane Wednesday if he still believed the minimum wage should be indexed to account for inflation, essentially increasing the minimum wage each year to keep up with the cost of living.

Romney failed to expound on his position, but said he has "the same thoughts as in the past." Since he was governor of Massachusetts, Romney has said he supports automatic hikes in the minimum wage.


That may be a Republican position now and again, but it's never been a conservative position, let alone a free-market capitalist position.

Maybe Mitt learned to like it at Bain Capital.

At least now we know what Ann Coulter thinks conservatism is: waterboarding people and interfering with what employers pay them.

FBI Mistakes Apartment 2R For 2F, Terrorizes Tenant With Chainsaw

In Fitchburg, MA.

Story here.

Instead of 10,267 US Representatives We Had 12,592 Lobbyists in 2011

If we followed the US Constitution our House of Representatives would have 10,267 elected representatives today.

Republicans and Democrats put the kibosh on that in 1929 to concentrate power in themselves, which is why today we have only 435 elected to the House. They don't much give a damn what we think about anything, and the approval rating of Congress is now so low it's almost within the margin of polling error.

Instead of the founders' idea of adequate representation we had 12,592 active lobbyists in 2011, spending over $3 billion to influence the 435 petty tyrants. Isn't it odd how closely the natural lobbying market today approximates what the authors of the constitution deemed to be a suitable level of representation?

Does anyone really think Occupy Wall Street, The Tea Party, The Heritage Foundation, The National Association of Realtors, The American Bankers' Association or any of the other myriad interest groups would exist in their current form if Congress were more representative of the individual American? Congressmen must sit in their offices and laugh at all the wasted, disorganized and therefore impotent effort spent influencing their votes.

When a representative's constituency is only 30,000 strong instead of 700,000, however, the prospects of his reelection are more sensitive to a narrower range of interests: Yours. Blow it with a few thousand of us and out he would go.

No wonder they got rid of the idea when they could.

Isn't it time to right this wrong?

Romney Will Be Competing For The Same Voters Who Already Prefer Obama

The metros:

Romney beat Gingrich in the urban centers of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County, in the cities of Southwest Florida, across a swath of Central Florida from Tampa to Orlando and Daytona Beach, and in northeast Jacksonville. Gingrich defeated Romney in 35 less populated counties -- painting a contrast between Romney’s urban and suburban support and Gingrich’s appeal to rural Republicans.

More here.

Florida Liberals Help Republicans Select Mitt Romney, A Candidate They Can Beat

Fully 59 percent of Romney voters in FL said campaign ads swayed them.

And no wonder. Romney spent more on ads in Florida's primary alone than John McCain spent in the entire country in the 2008 primaries:

It's estimated that the Romney campaign and its associated bodies spent $15.3 m[illi]on on TV spots in Florida in the past month alone. To put that into context John McCain spent just $11 million on ads during his entire 2008 primary campaign.

There have been a number of academic studies that suggest that while negative campaigning can motivate the base of support it can also alienate other voters, thus reducing voter turnout.

The negative ads motivated Romney's base alright, the liberal base:

females (52 percent of his vote);

people who believe abortion should be legal in all cases (57 percent);

think of themselves as moderate/liberal (59 percent);

are opposed to The Tea Party (57 percent);

favor illegals as temporary workers (51 percent);

make $200,000 or more (60 percent).

And yes, this alienated other voters, namely the conservatives who even in Florida outnumber such liberals nearly two-to-one: just 11 percent of Romney's Florida voters think Romney is a true conservative. Hence the immediate appearance of Ann Romney last night protesting how conservative is her husband.

The fact is 41 percent of Romney voters in Florida self-identified as Independents, not Republicans.

Just 48 percent of Romney voters called themselves Republican in the exit polls.

Considering that Republican turnout was down 16 percent from 2008, it is hard not to conclude that Democrats this year especially queered the vote in the Florida Republican primary. With over 360,000 non-Republicans trying to select the Republican candidate, conservatives arguably had two not entirely satisfactory candidates and lots of negative ads dividing and subduing their turnout. Divide and conquer, and personally destroy, both the strategies of Democrats. In 2008 when Republican turnout was much higher, the number of non-Republicans interfering was only slightly higher at 390,000. Romney's victory in 2012 thus owed much more to them than it would have in 2008.

Florida liberals have just helped select the Republican they know they can beat in the general: Mitt Romney.

Unfortunately Republicans nationally may not realize that the well was tainted before it's too late.