Monthly Archives: November 2013

Knowing when to take a hard line

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In Toronto, my native born city, they elect a mayor of a more libertarian persuasion so he is hassled and harried for smoking crack cocaine as captured on a video something like a year ago. He has, in fact, been hassled and harried by the good and the just since the day he took office. I’m not even sure he can be prosecuted for what he did, but that won’t get the dogs called off.

The Mayor can be removed from office only if incarcerated or through a defeat at the polls, legal experts said. Police have said there is nothing in the images that could lead to an arrest.

Something of the nature of Rob Ford’s politics might be discerned from this which have just now come back into fashion:

Yes! Toronto’s underground hit of 2010, our exclusive Vote For Rob Ford – He’s Not A Communist shirts are back, by popular demand (thanks to a mayor who can’t stay out of the news). Unofficially issued in limited numbers during Ford’s winning election campaign, this one has been unavailable since then. Members of Ford Nation can show their support for their beleaguered Mayor by buying one and wearing it around ‘left-wing pinkos’! (as Don Cherry puts it).

Meanwhile, in New York, there is a story of another mayor who has just been elected. At long last a Democrat and a breath of fresh air as this story reports a version of which you can find in just about any media story anywhere in the US and here as well.

De Blasio has campaigned hard against the yawning gulf between rich and poor, ‘a tale of two cities’ and for minority rights.

He has traded heavily on his family.

Like the Clintons, he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, have run as a package. Poet, editor, feminist and activist, she is a constant fixture by his side.

Their 16-year-old son Dante, instantly recognisable by his halo of Afro hair, has been credited with helping to turn around the campaign with an emotive TV ad about how great his dad is.

Deeply touching, heartwarming no doubt. But for a more nuanced approach, you might try this from a less than mainstream source:

Described by CNN as the ‘unabashed liberal,’ de Blasio is actually to the left of Barack Obama, in the sense that de Blasio didn’t disavow his communist background once it came to light. At least Obama tried to cover up his ties to communist Frank Marshall Davis.

De Blasio had scrubbed the Marxist connections from his campaign website, an omission that momentarily captured the attention of The New York Times. But once these connections and controversies came to light, he embraced his sordid history. He still embraces liberation theology and his work for the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

He’ll fit right in with the new breed of American politician and he will certainly get a good press. Glen Reynolds has the right attitude:

PUTTING TOGETHER A FILM FESTIVAL IN HONOR OF DE BLASIO’S ELECTION AS MAYOR OF NEW YORK. So far I’m planning to show Death Wish, Taxi Driver, Fort Apache, the Bronx, and Escape From New York. And maybe Serpico. Any other suggestions? . . .

But there are still scandals and the media are maintaining their proud tradition of holding politicians to an appropriately high standard as shown here:

The Washington Times newspaper announced that it is ending a regular column by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul following a series of plagiarism charges against his work. . . .

‘We expect our columnists to submit original work and to properly attribute material, and we appreciate that the senator and his staff have taken responsibility for an oversight in one column,’ said Times Editor John Solomon in the piece announcing the decision. [I have added the bolding.]

As is well known, every politician researches and writes their own speeches and newspaper columns. Unlike lying to the public over the IRS, Benghazi, the NSA, the effect of changes to a major piece of legislation affecting the health of a nation, an oversight of this magnitude is a hanging offence and they were of course absolutely right to take the hard line they took.

The fog of scandal

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http://youtu.be/-nfA7IyL1pk

It’s a mid-sized story on Drudge, the video is with Glenn Beck who couldn’t even hold his job at Fox, and it is obviously a zero story across the media in the US or here, but still this does have to make you think. The article title is, “Obama Secret Service Agent: ‘It’s Worse Than People Know… and I’m Not Trying to Scare You Either'”. C’mon, who’d be scared by this:

Dan Bongino has protected numerous Presidents over his career, including President Obama. He has been within ear-shot of many a discussion in the Oval Office, but up until this administration has stayed out of the lime light. Apparently, however, the activities of this administration are so abhorrent that he could no longer keep quiet.

There is a movie I’m going to miss about a White House butler who served across a number of administrations but now it is a secret service agent who has served in a number of administrations who is trying to tell us something no one wants to hear. He’s apparently written a book for which no one is seeking the movie rights and intends to run for Congress, so immediately it will be possible to ignore it all as a self-interested account to get a bit of traction. But still, he does say what he says, and I am still conscious that the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court changed his vote in the middle of writing a decision to bring the Affordable Care Act down. Think about that as you read the following:

You give the government information and it will be abused. It is not a matter of if it’ll be abused, it’s only a matter of when…

When the line between the personal self and the public self… when that line is determined by the government that keeps your information in a trove for release any time they need it, how are you free?

..the bottom line is, having worked inside the government, it will be abused. It is only a matter of time.
…

We are all doing something wrong. The catch is not ‘if’ we’re doing something wrong. It is ‘are your private wrongs impacting on my civil liberties?’ If not, the government has no business in your life… it’s a red herring…

If you’re not doing something wrong? The question is only whether your private wrongs that have no effect on anyone else become exposed for the government’s benefit.

…It’s only a matter of time before someone slaps an email on your desk from fifteen years ago… and says ‘look what we got against you.’

He describes the fantastic array of impeachable offenses by the Obama administration as a “fog of scandal”. It’s like Stalin’s line about one death is a tragedy but a million deaths are a statistic. The number of scandals is now so large each seems to push the others from the front page and limit our ability to focus on the totality of what is being done.

An Austrian course on Keynesian economics

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I have been hassling my Austrian friends for quite some time that it is not enough to be pro-Hayek and pro-Mises but they also have to be anti-Keynes. Unless they specifically present their own pre-Keynesian classical views as a direct counterweight to the Keynesian wreckage, they have no hope of seeing Keynesian economics finally removed from our texts. It still remains a mystery that the events of the past five years have not even commenced a massive overhaul of mainstream economics. It does seem as if the mainstream continues to believe they are on top of it all. But if mainstream economists still think that Y=C+I+G can explain what caused the recession in the first place or what is needed to create recovery, not only is their economic understanding now worthless but so too is their credibility.

But this morning I have received a notice from the Mises Institute that it is about to run a six-week online course on Keynesian economics:

Beginning Monday, November 11, William Anderson will be teaching ‘The Ghost of Keynes’ at Mises Academy. This six-week online course will examine how and why many economists and governments continue to ignore the numerous fallacies that accompany Keynesian thinking even as the Keynesian-influenced economies around the world continue to flounder in high unemployment and low growth.

Whether this will include a discussion of Say’s Law I do not know but it absolutely needs to. You can watch my presentation to the Mises Institute above on Keynesian economics and Say’s Law. But even though there is an appreciation amongst Austrian economists that the two are related, the importance of Say’s Law is not yet completely embodied in the way Austrians discuss economics. They, of course, do not reject Say’s Law but they also do not fully embrace it.

Nevertheless, I encourage you to sign up for this six-week course. You can enroll here.

Completely ridiculous and preposterous

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What do you do if you are a political leader and you think global warming is completely ridiculous and preposterous but most people think it’s a valid problem that needs immediate attention? Here’s one answer:

By late 2006 his government hit a ‘perfect storm’ with on-going drought, severe water restrictions, bushfires and the release of the Stern Review and Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth.

‘To put it bluntly, “doing something” about global warming gathered strong political momentum in Australia,’ Mr Howard said in his written lecture. . . .

But six years on, Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister insists the high tide of public support for “over-zealous action” on global warming has passed.

‘I am very sceptical about the possibility of a global agreement ever being reached when you look at what happened in Copenhagen,’ he said, adding there was no real prospect of a deal between the major emitters Europe, the US and north Asia.

Mr Howard believes anti-global warming policies should never stand in the way of economic growth in developing countries.

And in developed countries, what about them?

The president from a parallel universe

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http://youtu.be/mHk7Qtf6jX4

The president from a parallel universe that we were fated not to have. And these words from the speech say everything that needs to be said about why Mitt Romney is not President of the United States today.

Of course rules of fairness have to be enforced because what other safeguards do we have besides the press. [Drawing a big laugh and applause from the crowd.] Now I never suggest the press is biased. I recognise they have their job to do and I have my job to do. My job is to lay out a positive vision for the future of the country, and their job is to make sure no one else finds out about it. [Drawing an even bigger laugh and even more applause.]

FURTHER THOUGHTS: I of course put this post up because it is one year ago today that Obama was re-elected. There would be few here who would not have vastly preferred Romney to Obama at the time but in the twelve months since, you really do have to wonder how Obama has a supporter left. But he does because he represents a mentality that is hard to truly fathom, the religion of the left where actual accomplishments and dealing with our problems in a realistic way is a distant second to being virtuous and pure of heart. Not all on the left are like this, but the socialist ideal taps into a form of mental derangement that makes a large difference when the votes are counted. To most of us, Obama is beyond compare the worst imaginable president. To others, there is literally nothing he could conceivably do that would alienate them or their votes. Clinton sought to end welfare as we know it and actually legislated these changes into law. Obama exactly reversed what Clinton had done and has made millions dependent on the state. But they love Clinton and they love Obama because they have nothing else but the politics of virtue to sustain them.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

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obamacare cartoon

In politics you have little to trade with other than your word and your ability to bring others along with you. You can be the smartest guy in the room but if no one wants to follow where you want to lead than you are, politically speaking, a failure. But if your word cannot be trusted even by people on your own side, specially by people on your own side, then you are utterly done for, washed up and a cipher. The disintegration of Barack Obama’s presidency continues.

It of course does not matter that I and others like me do not trust the American president. That distrust goes back to virtually the day I first learned anything about him. But it has taken a while for the American electorate in general to even begin to have an inkling of just how dangerous to their own future health and welfare having elected Obama as president has been. And it has been the lies he told to get his most important single piece of legislation through Congress that is doing him in. With his friends in the media, there is no reason to be certain that this will remain a problem into the longer term but it is a problem for now.

A quite remarkable assessment has been offered by Marc Thiessen who was a speech writer in the GWB White House. The article is titled quietly enough, A dishonest presidency but it truly brings home just how much damage Obama has brought upon himself.

It’s not easy to get a lie into a presidential speech. Every draft address is circulated to the White House senior staff and key Cabinet officials in something called the ‘staffing process.’ Every line is reviewed by dozens of senior officials, who offer comments and factual corrections. During this process, it turns out, some of Obama’s policy advisers objected to the ‘you can keep your plan’ pledge, pointing out that it was untrue. But it stayed in the speech. That does not happen by accident. It requires a willful intent to deceive.

A willful intent to deceive is a lie. You cannot trust Obama on anything. He is a flimflam man, con artist, a flake and two-bit hustler. You may think such lies are common in politics but they are in fact quite rare. Gillard never overcame her false promise that there would never be a carbon tax under a government she led just as George Bush Snr never outlived, “read my lips, no new taxes”.

But what does Obama care? His constituency is made up of the lofo voters, the one’s who are made dependent on the state and for whom nothing matters but the free stuff that must continue to flow.

Peter Hitchens on Q&A

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q and a with peter hitchens

It seems from the thread that most of those who watched Q&A last night were disappointed but for me it was not only the first one I have been able to get through from end to end but when it ended I could not believe that the hour had gone by so quickly.

Hitchens for me was amazing. Absolute and complete disdain for everything said by the others and a total grasp of the moral facts in play. He cared nothing at all for the good opinion of any of them – not the host and not the other guests – and mowed them down in turn with an incredibly deep understanding of the values and culture of the West which in his hands made the rest of them appear for what they were: shallow, destructive, vulgar and vile. I have never seen anything like it. Even if these others were unable to experience shame, they would have known they had been completely done over.

And while I had not come across that Savage chap, Germaine Greer and Hannah Rosin are not rookies in presenting their line of argument and I suppose Savage had been at it for a while himself. But they were absolutely done over. And Hitchens’ disdain for the host was in itself a pleasure to see, which really came out when he asked why he alone from amongst all the guests was being interrupted in the middle of his point. And he would not let go and made the point over again even while being interrupted.

There is not much you can do with the ABC but trying to get more people like Hitchens in front of a camera seems a good place to start.

You can watch the entire show or read the transcript here.

Never too old to learn

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There was an article on Alan Greenspan the other day in The Business Australian about his new book The Map and the Territory in which he made an interesting set of observations, both political and economic. First the political:

ALAN Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, goes to a lot of parties. He and his wife, the TV journalist Andrea Mitchell, ‘sort of get invited everywhere’, he says, sitting in front of the long bay window in his office in Washington.

Lately, though, cocktails and dinners seem to have guest lists drawn almost exclusively from one political party or the other. ‘It used to be a ritualistic 50-50 at parties – the doyennes of culture and partying were very strict about bipartisanship,’ he adds. ‘That doesn’t exist any more.’

Talking to each other is what much of politics is about. Although there’s not a lot to say for Canberra, it is small enough that you are always bumping into people and the informal side of making contacts helps. Now we find the former more collegial atmosphere in Washington has been superseded by a poisonous rancour to such an extent that people don’t even meet each other any more.

Even here, the kind of viciousness that seems to have invaded Gillard’s speech on misogyny was personal and would have made it much more difficult for Abbott to even pretend to have a friendly relationship with the then-Prime Minister. As I learned in industrial relations, you can only settle a dispute by sitting down with the other side. Turning opponents into visceral enemies cannot be good for getting on with the business of getting things done. “Electricity Bill” Shorten travelling to Afghanistan with Tony Abbott is how these things ought to be.

But it was what Greenspan says about economics that I found perhaps even more interesting.

‘I’ve always considered myself more of a mathematician than a psychologist,’says Greenspan. But after the Fed’s model failed to predict the financial crisis, he realised that there was more to forecasting than numbers. ‘It all fell apart, in the sense that not a single major forecaster of note or institution caught it,’ he says. ‘The Federal Reserve has got the most elaborate econometric model, which incorporates all the newfangled models of how the world works – and it missed it completely.’

Econometric models are based on the past so that they can really only forecast the kinds of events that have happened before. But even after the event, I would have to think that the linkages from the housing market to the world’s financial system would have made forecasting what did happen all but impossible, which is why no one did. Many claim they did but no one did. So the story goes on:

‘A few days (after the crisis hit), I run into an article, and it is titled, “Do we economists know anything?”‘ he says.

Greenspan set out to find his blind spot step by step. First he drew the conclusion that [A] the non-financial sector of the economy had been healthy. The problem lay in finance, [B] because of its vulnerability to spells of euphoria and irrational fear. Studying the results of herd behaviour provided him with some surprises. ‘I was actually flabbergasted,’ he says. ‘It upended my view of how the world works.’

He concluded that fear has at least three times the effect of euphoria in producing market gyrations. [My letters and bolding.]

A bit of economic history and a study of the history of economics would not go amiss. The man who invented the term “irrational exuberance” now says he’s just discovered that “irrational fears” drive markets. Middle stages of dementia, obviously.So please let me point out that so far as [A] was concerned, the problem was the housing market which had over-produced and found a sub-prime market amongst those who could never repay their debts. This was a real problem, not financial and not psychological. The underlying structure of the American economy was fantastically distorted and has become even more so with the coming of the stimulus. He needs to read a bit of pre-Keynesian business cycle theory, or if he would like a short cut, he could read my Free Market Economics.

And so far as [B] goes, if he thinks that fears that mounted at the end of 2008 were mere shadows with no substance then he is even more off centre than he thinks he is. If this is the new wisdom in Washington, I can only think it would be better if both sides stop inviting him to parties if that is what he now has to say.

Savages with cell phones

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This is from Sultan Knish and the modern world of Government by Magical Thinking. People without a single technical skill trying to manage a modern economy is the disaster we have visited upon ourselves. Presidents until recent times actually had done something complicated before they took office. This article is definitely onto something about the incompetence of those we have now put in charge of our political fortunes where none of them have ever done anything themselves in their entire life.

Healthcare.gov, like ObamaCare, was going to work because it was ‘good’. Its goodness was by some measure other than result. It was morally good. It was progressive. And so the deity of liberal causes, perhaps Karl Marx or Progressia, the Goddess of Soup and Economic Dysfunction, would see to it that it would work. Karma would kick in and everything would work out because it had to.

This brand of magical thinking was once commonplace. It still is. And it’s why things so rarely work out in some of the more messed up parts of the world. But the sort of attitude that would once have made anthropologists shake their heads is now commonplace here. Savages in suits, barbarians with iPads are certain that things will work because they have appeased the gods of modernity with their fonts, they have made a website that looks like a functioning website. And like the cargo culters who built fake control towers expecting planes to land, they thought that their website would work.

Competence is built on the unhappy understanding that things won’t work because you want them to, they won’t work if you go through the motions, they will only work if you understand how a thing works and then make it work by building it, by testing it and by expecting failure every step of the way and wrestling with the problem until you get it right.

That’s modernity. It isn’t glamorous. You can see it in black and white photos of men working on old planes. You can see it in the eyes of the astronauts who first went to the moon. You can read it in the workings of the men who built the longest suspension bridges, laid undersea cables and watched their world change. They were moderns and their time is done. They have left behind savages with cell phones who make decent tinkerers, but whose ability to collaborate falls apart in large groups.

It is bizarre

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In the Salem Witch trials as I recall – my memory is a little rusty here – there were a bunch of fanatics burning climate change deniers at the stake. To think there is anything needed at all to “fix” our carbon emissions is a kind of loopyness that I just see as part of the world today, something along the lines of wanting to spend your way out of recession. Which brings me to this:

FORMER Treasury secretary Ken Henry has described Tony Abbott’s direct action scheme for tackling climate change as ‘bizarre’ and predicted the Coalition will wind up implementing an emissions trading scheme.

Direct action, as I understand it, says that we will wait for the rest of the world to come up with some kind of carbon-limitation scheme but in the meantime we will try to lower carbon emissions in ways that actually do some good of some other kind even if there isn’t a carbon emissions problem in the first place, and we will spend far less money on it as well. Carbon taxes and carbon-emissions schemes are both 100% wasteful if there is no carbon problem to solve. Direct action actually takes some positive actions. It is bizarre that people who believe carbon taxes or an ETS will actually do some good can rise to such high places of authority over our lives.