OregonGuy

Test

2011-05-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

Crazy bug...seems that at some point it automagically diverts whatever I'm doing to some other task....

Test

2011-05-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

There's a bug in the house and I'm trying to find it. It seems that when I begin to type

Test

2011-05-12T07:26:00.001-07:00

Test

2011-05-12T07:26:00.000-07:00

Do You Believe In Jobs For Clatsop County?

2011-05-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

There are individuals who live here, next door to you, down the street, who view jobs as bad. Trees are good. Jobs are bad.

Trees are an important natural resource. But there are individuals who view not the trees, but the forests. To harvest a stand of trees is to destroy the forest, therefore, we must protect every stand of trees. There is no moderation for the true believer. If they don't protect every stand of trees, no forest will remain whole, or viable, or whatever. It's not just trees, it's habitat!

On and on they drone. Still busy boosting such valuable proposals as chrome and plastic light-rail trains, chrome and steel electric cars, unused to thinking about where these steel and aluminum constructs originate. (Fighting a war against plastic bags because somewhere along the line they picked up the idea that Exxon and the Saudi Arabian petroleum barrels they ship to the U.S. end up as bags in your local, corner market.)

Tonight these vaunted heroes of the Forests, of the Earth, the River and the Caring are planning on packing the Clatsop County Commission meeting tonight. Led by Pacific University Political Science prof Bob Van Dyk, the boys and girls who don't want to allow us to use the timber we own, on our own land, will be on hand, using keywords like "balanced," and "long-term," and "science-based." If you think that trees should be cut, you obviously lack any kind of science basis for your view. That means, you're a dummy and should shut up.

Geeze.

And it's not just the jobs. It's the money. Clatsop County has a lot of potential revenue setting up there on those hills. Trees we paid to plant. Land we invested in to allow the growth of that timber.

How to stop this rape of Gaia? We're going to be hearing about "clear-cutting." Clear-cutting! The indiscriminate rape of the forests! It destroys habitat, leaves hillsides bare! No mention ever, at all, of how quickly juvenile stands uptake carbon dioxide, or that younger stands have greater health than old stands. That would be science in the wrong direction. We need the right kind of science, science that sees that forests produce more than trees.

Well, good luck to my fellow county residents. We've elected a bunch of goof-balls in order to avoid developing any kind of commercial economy that doesn't rely upon antique stores or government grants. So, I don't expect the proposed timber plan to be adopted. The Left is Clatsop County is like a school of fish. Spook them and they all tend to dart in the same direction. You may get one or two of them to listen to reason, but in the main, they all tend to be fellow followers. Beat down one objection, like no salmon streams affected, and then up pops clear-cutting as an outrage.

They don't want you to different than they. It's in your best interest to be, just like them. Forward looking. Science-based. Hand out. It's a way of life.

Meetin' tonight, 6PM. Astoria. 827 Commercial St. If you want jobs in the woods, show up. If not, ho hum...why bother?

Why The Left Wants God To Be Dead

2011-05-09T18:33:00.000-07:00

There was a fascinating discussion on atheism on the Medved Show today. It was Medved talking to Vincent Bugliosi, the author of "Divinity of Doubt: The God Question."

Worth, in my opinion, listening. I am not a Christian, but that doesn't mean that I neither recognize the value of Christ, nor the value of accepting that there are things in this universe that decry description. If only our elitist masters were willing to admit it.

I'm re-reading my grad school macro text, "Macro-Economics Theories and Policies,(Maisel, Norton & Company, 1982.) Fix the footnote yourself.

What is amazing is that the objections I had to fundamental Keynesian belief is akin to Bugliosi's description of atheism, thirty years later. The irreconcilable belief that Keynesianism is both all powerful and all good. (6:40)

S. J. Maisel is not a bad text if you're thinking about learning the study of macro-economics. There is a great deal of balance in the text, although I'm tempted to suggest that it tends to lean towards Keynes. But Maisel is fair in his admission that there are schools of thought within the body of economics that tends to be more quantitative, rather than normative. Quantitative analysis tends to rely upon modeling and statistical testing than normative economics, whose aim seems to be maximizing results to a socially acceptable paradigm, rather than accept that outcomes often vary, even with the best impulses of those within the system.

Listening to the complete interview will give you some compelling questions to ask yourself. Why would a god allow for bad? Why would a god not want us to spend all of our time in Happyville?

And why would God want us to live lives without challenge?

If you want ultimate control over the life of your neighbor, the first thing you'll want to remove is our conception of God.

Not easy to do, since centuries have passed since the beginning of the Christian Era to present, and embedded in many of those centuries was the belief that being a subject to the aristocracy as an upper class was consonant with fealty to an All Supreme God, that much of our custom, our language, our manners is based upon historical precedence. Another way to look at is, if you wanted to have an understanding of what or who God was, you needed an intercessor (priest) to help you understand your relationship to God. Religions, cults, philosophies sprang forth under the mantle of understanding your, individual, relationship to God, as you worked to provide yourself and your family with the tools and skills of mere survival. Just as we were two-thousand years ago, it is a lot easier to subscribe to a set of beliefs than it is to determine your own set of beliefs. And I think that that works, in the main, pretty well, today. If you find yourself, not clear about certain theological priors within the context of thinking or describing religion or God, finding a close approximation of how you've thought of God or religion, it isn't an unfair template upon which to rely.

But, Bugliosi gives an interesting interview.

From Big Bang to Creation, what is the nature of those who choose to hold extreme views of God and religion? I think this an important idea to question, to discuss, since so much of how we talk and debate about what is right or wrong is dependent in many ways on how we view certain beliefs. If I believe in the fallibility of Man, how much of that belief can be ascribed to belief in God, or of an atheism? In reduction, how important is it to either have a God or not?

Which gets me back to Maisel.

Thirty years ago, there was a divide between objective and normative economists, which regularly was dominated by the objectivists. This was simple. Objective economists didn't rely upon the economy delivering any certain outcome. Economists didn't need a priest, neither were they priests. Objective economics simply described the events, as closely as any theory could, and of how those outcomes arrived. We are a political society, so, the reasoning went, it didn't matter if any particular fiscal or monetary policy actually moved us one step closer to paradise, what mattered was, given the fact that we are members of a political society, and, given that politicians tended to interfere with how things work in order to derive a benefit in favour of their particular constituencies, how best to predict outcomes of policy, based upon postulation and observation, as to how well those intended policies resulted in the intended, predicted outcomes? That is, a total divorcement of economics as a descriptive enterprise, and those who practiced economics as a prescriptive enterprise.

Sure, a lot of discussion was economics as a post hoc, ergo propter hoc variety. But early classicists tended to shy away from this kind of, "as I see it, this is what happened" kind of discussion. Early classicists tended to believe that any man's, or any government's, control over any situation was a reach too far. As men, we lack the ability or omniscience to predict, without any outside authority, to know, less to guess, what the outcome of any action we take may end up being. What we do know, as classicists is, that men attempt to effect any economic situation as to maximize their own self-interest, with disregard for the interests of others.

So, what is the interest of the atheist? How is the interest of the atheist different from that of the Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Jew? Well, if the classicists are correct, there is nothing different among those groups, or more importantly, nothing among the individuals of those groups, regardless of their aggregation. Of course, it's easier to identify with a group in the sense that aggregation of intent (outcomes) becomes more easily identifiable as a wished for outcome, than would be the mere statement of wishing for an outcome by an individual. Aggregation has rewards. If I hear voices, I may be wrong. If I and my friends hear voices, and, especially, we all hear the same voice, chances are that we're hearing voce Deus. But, without God, what does this coalescence of voices infer?

According to the atheist, it infers Science.

The Left doesn't want there to be a God, since that would mean that all of the meanings of reality, truth, existence, the physical world, the moral world, the ethical world, all could be subsumed by metaphysics that doesn't choose as conditional that which I believe. Any threat to the internalization of my independent world view becomes inconsequential, if not obsolete. The wildest ideas I choose to hold are no more important than those held wildly by others. The threat of the existence of God threatens more than mere anarchy. (Even if, as some hold, God Himself is an anarchist.) The threat of the external was recognized early on by the Existentialists. God cannot exist in terms of Man, without excluding the reality of Man which excludes God. You can't read Waiting for Godot with any understanding without recognizing that our tardy friend was nothing other than the Supreme Creator. So, expunging the last remnants of God is the primary focus of the Left. When you look into the mirror you aren't seeing your own face. Q.E.D., you can't see God. The reflection of God in Man is an error prior to the thought of seeing the face of God. Hell, you're not seeing your own face (in physical terms)!

It's almost cartoonish, with the Devil on your left shoulder, the angel on your right shoulder. Picking and choosing between actions, intent, thought, humour, speech; that there are, or could be, externalities from which you can gain or receive approbation, gain or receive condemnation. The advantage of the atheist is, there are no externals. Therefore, there are no priors. There are no mirrors.

Re-reading Maisel has been fascinating, since, in the ensuing years, there has been little or no advocacy of the normative values of failure. I joke about teaching my sons the first rule, "find someone else to blame." (Thanks to T. Bible.) Yet, it's refreshing to read about the impossibility of pushing string.

Following the Lakers loss in Game Four, I would ask you, who is responsible for their failure? I'm not. And there is no sense of Social Justice that demands that I attempt to make amends for their failure. You're not, although, if you a Lakers' fan, you may wish to impose a range of expediencies for the Lakers that involves personnel, coaching, ownership, or even, venue. The problem with God, with life, with the Lakers is, you can neither predict or be responsible for the outcomes or actions of others. The California legislature could have passed a resolution calling for the success of the Lakers, and nothing would have come of it. The federal legislature could have done same, all to the disgrace of the measure. But there is no one else to blame. Not the fans, not legislatures, nor Catholics, Muslims or atheists. There are some things that occur without regard to the best minds of our generation.

The Left doesn't want there to be a God, because their view of what would be a "good" God is inconsistent with their belief of what should be the outcomes of the world, or a god, as it affects individuals within this world. The Left doesn't believe that Liberty is more important than the struggle, and how we perform against that struggle. The Left views the world from a different lens than that which you and I share. The Left views the inequalities of the world as fodder for a certain demagoguery. It is the fact that there is inequality that proves the non-existence of a god. I joke about teaching my sons early to blame someone else. The Left does not. Outcomes matter to Leftists. Not the struggle to achieve outcomes. Not the perseverance of the individual. Nor overcoming obstacles. That there are inequalities disproves God.

Subsequently to Maisel, there has been a real push to equate outcomes with the performance of economic systems, not held previously to the mainstream goal of understanding economics in the academy.

Maisel writes about economic theory in the true professorial voice. He will be neither Keynesian nor objectivist, merely the vessel that carries the major arguments of each, with a background of statistical evidence that tends to suggest that certain beliefs and practices will have greater effects positively than the other. And, if you recall, 1982 was a watershed year. In 1983 we had the largest national deficit in history. Maisel was writing in advance of history, not consequentially. It makes the re-reading even more enjoyable. Maisel wrote about the attempts of policy to achieve certain outcomes, while giving evidence that however we worked to achieve "certain" outcomes, the system itself was beyond the control of one, two or several exogenous influences, and relied more upon those influences that occurred naturally within the model itself.

This is, I believe, the essence of Bugliosi. Note, Bugliosi is more akin to my own particular view of religion than most. While I may wish to describe the world, the Universe or existence in terms I find personally appealing, that doesn't give necessary, nor sufficient, reason to conclude that that Universe or existence should exist. So, I may be pleading in his behalf. Full disclosure. But what does the Left not disclose? It doesn't describe the existence of the the Universe as it is.

Just about everything else. But nothing about the existence of the Universe. That it is incomprehensible.

I don't need God to be a sentient Being, as you and I are sentient. To relegate God as merely another sentient being is hubris. What concept of God equates God with Man? But, if I believe that God created me in His Image, this is the kingpin of my recognition of God. Not that I am a god. Or, that I can even approximate God in His Being. It is not my adaptive behaviour. It is not my Hollywood good looks. It is in the fact that I can rationalize my thoughts to a point where I can punch a bunch of keys on a keyboard, that convey meaning, even if the meaning I wish to convey is pounced upon by others as being wrong, insipid, poorly expressed or simply wrong. I don't expect notes from trees, deer, crab, whale or elk. Or dogs.

God is Creation.

Me?

I am okay with the fact that God is an open-system. I don't think that God could be the product of a closed system, along the lines of a Big Bang Theory. But, along with Bugliosi, I think there are unintended consequences with a life without God. And it doesn't rely simply on the theological. It relies more upon the Rousselian or Newtonian ideas of those things which we cannot argue, but simply are. A lot of expense and effort is being expended upon proving the non-existence of God; few dollars are spent on proving God's existence. To suggest such an enterprise would be unscientific. And, I'm not advocating that line of scientific inquiry here. All I suggest is, that there is a degree of complexity in most, if not all, of our lives that exists beyond the boundaries of that which is simply explainable. To the unexplainable.

Yes, I am a fan of approximation theory. Engineers use it. We test. We break things. We test again and learn new ways to break things. We can build better houses, better buildings, better computers, better beer. But, can we build better theater? Better jokes? Better children? Better rugs?

And, if there is a God, what role would God play within that approximation theory? What constants would engineers rely upon? What would be the observations? Can you imagine a Universe with inconstancy? (I'm no fan of Berkeley, but isn't it amazing how "Hylas and Philoneus" regains a certain intellectual currency?) The Big Bang Theory attempts to put at rest religious inquiry. It does, as Bugliosi notes, instead open doors.

One of the anachronisms of Science Fiction has been its inability to accurately predict the future. Sure, Star Trek and phone that look more and more like communicators. A few medical advancements that come close to medical scanners. But do you actually believe that in the future we'll wear uniforms that let those around us know what our role in life is? (If you do, don't let your children ever wear red.)

The Left wants you to forget God. God's Purpose. God's Plan. All because those things are ineffable. Just as making wine from water. Or gold from dross. Sure, we can say that we want an efficient electrical grid based upon wind power, the problem is, those technologies are still years away from being cost-effective. To say that we need to take the plunge anyway is akin to saying we should scourge ourselves from our sins. It may make you feel better, but it's not reasonable to expect all of us to scourge ourselves, to merit your respect.

I respect myself. I have no reason not to respect you. All I ask from you is to share your common sense. If you choose to take an extreme view, I'm not going to scourge myself to simply share a kinship. That doesn't make sense. Nor, will I deprive myself from the realization that I'm simply not intelligent enough to know whether or not there is God. Not a god, but God. But, with God dead, there is no outside agency that we need be aware. There is not uncertainty that we must compensate for. And it is this last trait of God, the need to be aware and for which me must needs compensate, that most alarms the Left. If I must be aware of God, and the need to be aware and to live my life for God exists, then I cannot take guidance from any other source of authority.

And that is why the Left wants God to be dead. The God in me is His Path toward my own being. Without God, a path can be imposed upon me. That isn't right. Just as you are predisposed to finding your own path, God has lent Himself to me to find my path. And thanks to Christ, I think I'm closer to finding where God wants me to be than if I had remained within the Church. I don't have the organization of the Church, nor the wealth, which is a disadvantage. But, not enough of a disadvantage for me to stop believing that I have a better source, a priori, than that of any system of thought that attempts to impose itself on me, without my consent.

Somewhere over 90 percent of Americans view themselves as religious. And yet, the Courts have held that religion is anathema to the American Constitution. My sister, who has lived in China for around thirty years, has been the constant guest of Chinese schools in order to talk about Christianity. Imagine a United States where priests and clergy were invited into our public schools to talk about Christianity. Not to inculcate, but to educate.

No. Better to have God dead. Nothing to see here, move along.

The Left wants no god. To have a god would mean they have no authority.

Fun Survey

2011-05-09T11:41:00.001-07:00

You can find the link at Daniel's Place.

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T09:49:00.001-07:00

Taking my mom for brunch in ten minutes. Happy Day out there to all the moms. Couple of difficult hours, then have the Hubby shoulder all the heavy-lifting. Face it, moms are cuter than dads.

In other news, "The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.”

More here.

Fattening Your Resume

2011-05-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

As the operation to remove UBL from this mortal coil becomes more public, the failure of our Punter In Chief will become better known.

We all are aware of the consistency of the Democrat politician; deny and demagogue. Just kick the can down the road and wait until someone else comes along and attempts a fix. Then, deny there is a problem, and call the good Samaritan names.

What is clear to me is that the Punter In Chief, never having had the responsibility for ever having to accomplish anything, whatsoever, was not the best guy to have in charge over the past week-end. That UBL is dead is done. How to handle it?

Seems no one thought that through.
So, during the next few days and weeks, we're going to be hearing a lot about such things as releasing pictures, or not releasing pictures. Whether or not we violated UBL's Constitutional Rights, or, his human rights. Whether or not he was protected by the Geneva Accords. And the White House's response will be to kick it down the road. Punting the ball. (BTW--thanks to Rog for the above pic. I don't remember where the others came from.)
It must have been great fun sitting in the Situation Room as this was all coming down. And being fairly clueless as to what one would be expected to do. This was a real situation. Real pros doing dangerous things. With buttons that really work.

So, what happened? You can read about it here.

Math, Logic and Reason

2011-04-25T20:08:00.000-07:00

There are several problems that present themselves whenever we begin to talk about policy.

Policy, by the way, is exhibited by the laws that governmental legislatures pass. Then, agencies adopt regulations in order to achieve the goals of that, said, policy. Imagine, if you will, a policy that wants to reduce crime. One of the keynote policies that came about in the last 50 years was Neighbor Watch. It was a simple idea. If you see something suspicious in your neighborhood, call the cops. There wasn't any increase in cost projected. The campaign simply stated that if if saw something suspicious in your neighborhood, call the cops.

Of course, once someone tells you that if there is a thing out there that you don't understand is suspicious, and the consequent to that suspicion is a simple call to the cops, you don't think that several events consequentially occur. One, the "crime reporting rate" increases, even if the calls to the cops is nothing more than that of an elderly lady watching a suspiciously acting cat. Two, the costs of providing basic police services increases, as cops roll to venues that weren't actually sites of real crime, but the sites of potential crimes, as reported by well-intentioned neighbors who should have simply asked the potential miscreant, what are you up to?

If you look at crime rates and crime reporting from the '60's to present, you'll actually see an increase in crime reporting when you take into consideration the effects of public service campaigns that were directed toward "reducing" crime. Most anti-crime campaigns will have this feature. Even if real crime remains the same, the number of reported cases increase. It is a self-feeding phenomenon.

One of the things that you see if you actually spend time looking at crime statistics is, how they report crime statistics. The "how" is the thing. I can tell you something about statistics. Since most people don't understand math, it is remarkably easy to report statistics that have actually little or no value; statistically.

A short side-note; if you haven't visited Briggs recently, do. Briggs is a guy with issues. He teaches at the college level and is constantly disappointed by the level of preparation he faces because of the ill-preparation of his students, for every class. Statistically, each of his students is an high school graduate. Heuristically, few of his students are prepared for the rigour of college study. And it seems at times that those who are prepared, would rather be doing something else.

My point is, it seems true, to me, that most people who engage in debate have little or no math in their lives. A campaign to reduce crime actually increases crime statistics. Campaigns to solve poverty increase the number of poor. The easiest person to argue against is the man who doesn't have the math skills to fight his way out of a paper bag. Where I love to argue, then, is within the realm of mathematics. Not always with genuine argumentation to stand behind. Take the Bell Curve.

Taking a look at this chart, I would ask only one question; where are the turning points? For each of these curves there are simple points that occur. One-two-three-four-five. But, it is the difficult points that are the most important. The easy points are the general areas where it is apparent that the graphed lines are clearly changing direction. The difficult points are when there are an increases or decreases in the rate of change in the y-axis. And, these are smoothed curves. Let's take a look at one of the lines above. The red line.

It's easy to see that a change occurs when the red line begins to more steeply rise. But, back at -2.5, there's also a change. The red line had been flat, and now is increasing. Similarly, around -1.4, there is another shift, when the rate of increase beings to slow.

These differences in rate of change are important. Visually, there are points when you can see that changes have occurred. In the case of the red line, those visually clear points occur around -2, 0 and +2. You can see the bends in the line actually change. These are good to see, but really don't tell the story behind the lines.

Some lines are drawn that are increasing (positive) and some are drawn that are decreasing (negative). Since we're dealing with a simple, two-axis curve, as you move from left to right, you'll see the values of y increasing. Then, decreasing. What you may not see is the decreasing rate of changes that occur on the left side of the peak, and the right side of the peak.Let's take a look at a triangle.

If you look at this graph, the thing you will notice is, moving from left to right, there is only one moment when the direction of the line moves in a different direction. The rate of increase from left to right is constant. Until it reaches its highest point. Its turning point. Then, it decreases at a constant rate to the right. One could say that this graph has a single "turning point." When the triangle reaches its apogee. Given the mathematical constraints imposed by the resulting graph, we definitely have a graph that describes a clearly constrained system. And constrained systems are good, since they allow us to have conversations about the factors that determine the shape of the curve described by the graph. The big difference between this curve, and the curve above, is the sheer straightness of the lower, versus the curviness of the line above.

Why is that?

When we started this conversation, it began with a narrative about crime. Well-intentioned people wanted to do something about crime, and so began a plea for greater reporting of suspicious activity which might be translated later into actual crime. Whether or not the crime did or didn't occur is unimportant. What did happen is, that there were more calls made to police agencies and concurrently, reported crimes increased. What I'm attempting to show you is, if you ask for reports of things, don't be surprised when reports of things increase. Industries begin on assumptions like this. Whole sectors of our economy are affected by linear thinking like this. It isn't that such thinking is non-rational. The potential problems occur because they are too simple.

Bubbles occur because of simple causality. Or, better, observations that occur, implying causality. We knew that crime was a problem. To solve the problem, better detection must occur. But what we found was, as detection of possible crime occurred, crimes increased. Or, better, were reported. What occurred was an over-reporting of crime, and in many cases, reporting of suspected crimes that weren't crimes at all. Crime Watch programs create reporting of potential crimes that inflate crime statistics, but don't really affect the number of actual crimes. But, if you are a part of an anti-crime committee, whether it's Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or Neighborhood Watch, you've made a commitment to a program that thrives with increasing numbers, whether statistically important, or not.

Increased reporting of "crime" becomes more important than actual crime. If MADD or Neighborhood Watch became irrelevant, their fund-raising would suffer. Previously held positions of power in legislatures or courts of public opinion would be diminished. Obviously, victims should be held in special reverence. It is curious that their own success becomes their own denouement. I don't pick on the MADD moms, or the watchful eagles of my neighborhood. It's simply easier to pick on MADD than it is on the true maniacs, the environmentalists.

See, with MADD, there are people being killed by drunks on the highway. Not as many as would be suspect by the propaganda of MADD. But MADD is simply instructive. Comparing the rhetoric of a MADD member with a member of the environmental Left shows a certain softness in understanding and compassion. The MADD member understands the weakness and uncertainty of the human condition.

And viewing the simple illustration above, it is easier to see how such simple cognitive errors can occur. There is nothing in the slope of the increasing angle of the triangle that presages the abrupt turn that occurs at it's apogee! If you have a simple mathematical model that is based upon "what has just occurred is the best predictor of what is going to occur," then you begin to have an understanding of what passes for model-making in most arguments you will hear, either around the water-cooler at the office, or in the cloakroom in Congress. Ninety-nine percent of what passes for intelligent conversation relates to the model I've just described. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about investments, how you golf, or raising your children, most of us take a look at what we've been doing, and determining the good, commit ourselves to maintaining that course.

The Leftist Environmentalist does not.

We have viewed the math, in graphic form, in a brief manner. There are relationships that occur between increasing and decreasing values, that seem to be observable. And, we can graph those relationships. But one of the challenges of the Left is to graph the relationship between their prescriptions for fixing the world, and their actual ability to fix the world. I'll admit, Leftists don't want to fix the world. They just want to fix humanity. Or, people. Because moss just doesn't carry the death threat that people carry. Unless it's your yard.

The math says that certain things increase until they no longer increase. (See figure.) At that point, a turning point occurs, and whatever was increasing, decreases. If not absolutely, at least in the rate of increase. In absolute terms, I can't think of a single thing, action, product, act, where that isn't the truth. (See Butterfly Effect.) And, upon further reflection, I can't think of a single thing that didn't have an absolute reduction, over time, of whatever that thing was. So, absolutely, whatever a thing was, at its apogee, it isn't there now.

This is simply a false syllogism. Any engineer of any note will admit that the first thing that he doesn't know is what he doesn't know. Models are good. Simple models are, in the main, better than complex models. But models that don't give you any usable information are shit.

If you wish to make an argument about anything, it seems to me that what you should do is state clearly what your position is. Take the issue of saving the planet through control over the production of power. Electrical power. Motive power. Power that makes industry possible. Not, political power.

There is an unearned simplicity exhibited by the Left. Among those on the Left I include several, if not many, Leftists that include our President, our state's Governor, and finally, my congressman and my state legislators. The math is the problem. And I grant you, that the math is difficult. The beauty of having our public schools graduate a plethora of young people unequipped of basic mathematics as a brain-storm of someone in the union movement is without question. How else do you explain an unerring inability to teach our youngsters the fundamentals of mathematics? But this argument is about math, logic and reason. So, disregard the effects of twelve years of government education. If you've made it this far, you weren't a victim of public school intolerance of bright kids.

The math, however, is unerring.

Rates of change are among the simplest relationships that are teachable. I know. I taught.

If you have a buck and invest it and end up with two bucks, then you have a rate of change.

D2 minus D1 equals change. In our case, it's one buck.

Whatever the period of time was, starting with one and ending up with two represents a rate of change. Let's think how we can model this.

The change is the result of something. Compared to that thing, how do we express the change?

I can't begin to tell you how unequipped we are to answer that question. I deal with business people who balk at the question. Bright people. Who can't tell you what form of an equation you would use to express the question stated above.

So, what does logic teach us?

When faced with questions of importance, most of us either don't have the tools, or don't know how to use the tools, to make a practical evaluation of the question. And if logic no longer has a role in examining the issues we face, what possible value should reason have?

When I was in grade school, the underlying value was to teach kids to optimize the learning curve with the fewest possible unimportant curricula being imposed. I was a part of a two-year learning experiment that had a purpose that was directed towards increasing the amount of necessary information needed by a student in contrast to that information that wasn't needed by a student, in order to maximize the learning time and minimizing the time needed to express that information to the student. Speed reading and comprehension were the sought values. SRA gave us learning packets that allowed us to achieve the greatest learning potentials, against non-SRA teachers that used "traditional" teaching methods.

Those of us SRA students really thought that we were on the cutting edge of teaching techniques. What we found out was, that we were in the main, autodidacts. I'm not sure that the teaching profession found that reassuring.

Not that all of us were autodidacts. But, that for a certain percentage of students, left to ourselves, we would be able to learn at rates that were above the green line in the first graph. Standardization didn't really mean anything to us, since we never were standardizable. What we did find out was that there were a great number of students who needed to find acceptance. The grading system, the social system, were more important that actual mastery of math, logic and reason. For many of us, we've spent that time trying to encourage others to gather the skills that should be a part of the quiver of our human experience.

But, how should I express this division between those who adhere to math, logic and reason, with those who have no clue? Environmentalism is probably the best example.

Let's do some heuristics on environmentalism, based upon math, logic and reason. What is the goal of an, or the, environmentalist/s?

Goal One: A cleaner environment.
Goal Two:

Or, did I miss something.

The environmental movement, if there is any movement, is boring. A cleaner environment. Step Two...nothing.

This is a graph of our monetary base, expressed against the excess reserves held by the banking industry. Remember the graph above? Of the triangle? Something about turning points?

The "environmental movement" is up in arms about capitalism. See, capitalism is a sin. There's no social justice involved in capitalism. Poor people are poor, because of their own personal choices. Rich people are rich, because of their own personal choices. Personal choice doesn't stand a chance in the face of social justice. As you can clearly see, even though we've been through two rounds of what has been called "quantitative easing," we see that instead of loans increasing, greasing the skids of capitalism, a concomitant rise in excess reserves has occurred. Monetarists and Rational Expectations economists predicted this. But the current vogue is with the Keynesians.

Keynesians believe in Tinker Bell. Really, really believe. They also believe in glitter and unicorns. Alas, all but glitter is false. We do have glitter. But glitter and glue isn't a way to run a country, even if the promise of unicorns, Tinker Bell coming back to life, and prosperity on the back of the evil rich is a strongly held belief. Strongly held beliefs tend not to be predictive. Remember the graph above.

What we do have is the demogoguery of the Left promising us, that, if we choose to put the dilemma of prosperity on the backs of the rich, we have someone to blame for our own bad choices. Here's an old guy, dead white guy, on the principle of having someone else paying for our own bad decisions:

Okay. That's one dead guy's opinion. So let's take a look at the graph I introduced earlier.

Why did excess reserves increase as the monetary base increased?

As part of the cure of the collapse of the banking system at the end of 2008, our wonderful national legislature, in connivance with our nation's top administrative officer, decided that solvency was to be the number one priority of our nation's banking system. You heard them talk about it. Risk is bad. High incomes and bonuses based upon performance were bad. How to make a world where risk no longer lived? Several laws were passed in the intervening years that spoke of the need to protect consumers. Trillions of dollars were dedicated to boosting demand for goods and services. Then, when those attempts at kick-starting the economy failed to kick-start the economy, the Federal Reserve began one of the most pernicious attempts at creating a demand bubble that has ever occurred. It came in the form of Quantitative Easing.

Billions of dollars are marketed by the FOMC each month. The problem was, demand for FOMC offerings would decrease if there wasn't an active secondary market for securities.

Then, concurrent with FOMC Treasuries, was a law change that allowed for banks to park their excess holdings with the Fed.

It gave the Fed excess liquidity. Brilliant.

Problem is, the Fed rate on excess liquidity turns out to be higher than the funds rate on Treasuries. While Treasury was out marketing T-Bills, the Fed was offering higher rates on excess funds. The demand for Treasuries was low, keeping the discounts off Treasuries at lower than market rates. Then, with QE1 and QE2, it became known that buying Treasuries would be followed with re-purchase of Treasuries by the Fed at higher prices, in an attempt to give nominal rates a lower profile.

A T-Bill has an offered rate of interest on the note. If you buy an one-hundred dollar T-Bill for an hundred dollars, Treasury offers you a rate of interest on the bill, if held to maturity. In an auction, you may offer 95-dollars for an hundred dollar T-Bill. What you have done is guarantee yourself at least a five percent return for your purchase, plus the offered rate of interest on the bill. When T-Bill prices go up, the rate of return on your bill goes down. And, vice-versa.

So what has the FOMC (Federal Reserve Bank) and Treasury done?

Treasury offers deep discounts on debt, banks purchase the debt and then resell the debt to the Federal Reserve at a profit. And then, to add insult to injury, bank their excess reserves with the Fed at rates higher than the offered rates on Treasuries.

This is the first time in my life that this has happened. But, what happens when excess reserves earn more as reserves in the Fed, than funds lent, either to purchase notes and bonds, or as lending to business?

Oh, yeah, baby. Excess reserves sky rocket!

Of course, the demagoguery sky rockets, too. Whenever you hear the President talking about the billions, nay, trillions of dollars sitting in the pockets of the rich, ask yourself, why?

The answer is right there in your face. Federal policy makes it more profitable for banks to park excess reserves in the Fed than it pays to lend. So, who created this policy? It wasn't the banks. It wasn't the evil Republicans. The answer is, it is our current administration. It is your President, your President's Treasury Secretary, and your President's pick to head up the Federal Reserve.

Is it a Ponzi scheme? Men of good faith will differ on that.

Today I had a conversation with a noted local on Medicare and Medicaid. Let me give you a disappointing statistic: less than one in ten of men or women in my age group, 40 to 60, can give you any kind of idea what the differences are between Medicare Part A, Part B, Part C, or Part D. And yet, I hear all kinds of criticisms of Representative Paul Ryan's attempt to fix the nation's largest entitlement programs. This isn't shocking to me. It simply, again, underscores the effects that demagoguery can have when demagoguery attempts to motivate the electorate.

So, what do we know.

We can't keep up an almost "Ponzi" scheme of financing government.

We have to address entitlements, but we know next to nothing about the entitlements.

We know that the Left will demagogue any change as threatening to the elderly, education, the working-class and women.

And yet, none of the claims of the Left will be, or are, true.

When you peel away the profitability of private enterprise, you create dis-incentives for the productive sector of the economy. It is, indeed, our ski chalets, our motorcycles, our fast cars, our big homes, that encourages us to produce for you. Take away our Sketchers, our visits to Nordstrom's, our appetite for golf and gold and we are, just like you.

Of course, we hire you. So, you're out of a job. But that isn't the point of social justice. The point of social justice is that we're all the same.

Hella goal.

Grocery School

2011-04-25T12:31:00.001-07:00

Renewal

2011-04-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

He is risen.

The story of Christ, for me, is not a literal statement that Jesus was the Son of God. Which, I admit, is blasphemy for Christians. Not for me, since I'm not a "Christian." I was raised a Christian, and when it came to the moment when I needed to recite the Disciples' Creed, came up short.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.

The principle of Christianity was different for me. Not through the Catechism, nor through the dogma of the Church. My affinity to Christ was based upon His belief that knowing Him was a recognition that He was sent to us at a time when we needed a Christ. He worked hard to live His life according to His views of what was important for us to believe. He set about creating a new set of laws that transcended the laws, and the legitimacy of those previous and subsequent laws, that shifted the entire legal and religious structures of the World.

What Christ did was recognize that within us, God created a Man who had all the skills, perceptions and knowledge that was necessary for Man to go about his business on the Earth without the need for an authority imposed upon us, here on Earth.

From Webster's International Dictionary, Second Edition,come the definition of "demagogue":

1. A leader or orator popular with or identified with the people. Chiefly Hist.2. One skilled in arousing the prejudices and passions of the populace by rhetoric, sensational charges, specious arguments, catchwords, cajolery, etc:, a political speaker or leader who seeks thus to make capital of social discontent and incite the populace, usually in the name of some popular cause, in order to gain political influence or office.

Was Christ a demagogue? In my understanding of the word, at the time Christ lived he was not a demagogue. He live in apposition to the prevalent opinion of His time. You may have lived in Israel, or any other country, but your life didn't belong to the regent of you country. You were a part of the state within which you lived, but your life didn't depend upon the country of your birth, origin or nationality. Your life was greater than that. Your knowledge extended beyond your border. Your ability to perceive existed beyond the "mere" political restraints that you found were imposed upon you.

Yet, He admitted that there was a role for the political state to play in your life.

Where does this take place? At what point must you accede to the demands placed upon you to the state within which you exist? I used to wonder about this point. If we are truly free of the constraints that are demanded by our nation, then, what are the constraints that are imposed upon us by our existence within that state that we must accept? Can we actually be free of state constraints? Or, are there certain types, classes, of restraint (or constraint) that we must agree upon must exist for us to live within a certain country or society?

For most of the following text I give, unabashedly, credit to John Locke. It has been years since I've read Locke, so if I err, forgive. Please.

The political state is any state where more than one person comes into contact with another. How they end up treating each other is what is referred to as the Social Compact. We agree not to kill each other. Social Compact. We agree to help each other when our barn is burning down. Social Compact.. When a body of people come to rape our women, kidnap our children and steal our belongings, if we work together to resist this effort, this again is the product of this Social Contract.

The Social Contract is an important devise. It itself is derived from a construct, much like the perfect triangle, that the rules under which man finds himself are naturally imposed by the Creator. Reading the Bible, one finds certain natural rules. When Cain kills Able, the results of this murder are given as consequent to an action. Not planned, simply consequent. What we find is, that God wishes us not to murder. Murder as different from killing. It is important to examine those situations when killing another is not only deferred to as an action, but called upon as an action. Human life is the most important thing that exists in our world. Again, let us take a brief moment; when someone comes to rape our women, kidnap our children and steal our belongings, there is only one class of being that rises to a level that we can share, that will help us resist this effort. It will not be the fish in the river, or the birds of the sky. It will be others like us, men and women.

But, what is the Social Contract in the State of Nature?

During the years following the West's discovery of the New World, a lot of guys spent time wondering what the world view of the inhabitants of this New World would be. Derived from their experience, the idea of the "savage" was an important idea. The West was sophisticated, given the opulence of cities like Paris, London and Venice. The West, given the accounts of the explorers, was inhabited by naked savages. Which was more or less, true. The technology of the New World was limited. Compared to the technology of the West. The advantage given the New World had been a stochastic difference. In many ways, the West had had the time to employ a certain number of monkeys.

Unlike the Dark Continent, the New World offered a lot of fodder to an idea that had begun it's brewing centuries before. When you view the life of Luther, without understanding his ascension on his knees to the Scala Santa, his recognition of his life as independent from the requirements of faith imposed from above, are meaningless. When Newton discovered gravity, it wasn't Newton discovering gravity. It was a recognition that faith, imposed from above, was meaningless. When
René Descartes brought together the argument that independent thought with reason was the basis of Rational Thought, the world escaped, for the second time (?) the irrational arguments that had been imposed upon it for years, within recent memory.

The Time of Christ is an important epoch for evaluation. It has been, for the time challenged, a time of several eras. And I would offer you, that the era of Christ is far from over.

One of the advantages that the Time of Christ has over other previous eras is simply the devices we have at hand to carry on the story of Christ. Christ is known all over the Earth. Even if those who would eradicate Christ from the Earth were in the main successful, there is too much of art and literature that requires an amendment from the Christ story to be meaningful, that a total removal of Christ from art and literature would be impossible. (Although it is the aim of some intellectuals to reduce this influence from anything more than a useable metaphor.)

But you cannot reduce the role of Christ in literature. There is no more sense in reading "The Sun Also Rises," than reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

Or Barth's "The End of the Road."

There is no meaning in literature or art, which expunges the effect of religion upon Man. I cannot imagine the Pieta without reference to Christ. What would it mean?

Solzhenitsyn's view of Christ is different than yours. It's probably different than mine. But the truth of Christ is unriven. Here was a man who stood for something beyond Himself. He is one of the most sublime characters in human history. He taught us to love our enemies, He taught us not to call those with whom we disagree names, He taught us that truth was the enemy of evil.

I cannot know God. I cannot know God because I don't have either the ability, the conscience, the intellect, the probity or the invisibility of God. I am simply a man. For me to begin to offer you the essence or character of God is so beyond my pay-scale, the the humorous attempt to describe Him is laughable from the start. I look at the sky and ask if I can ken the immense proportions of the Universe. I cannot. That which is without definition remains, a priori, without limit. There is no person that I know of that can reduce this for me. I certainly can't reduce it for myself.

I do believe that Christ envisioned for Himself a role of Son of God. I know that He was a great Teacher. I believe that He came to this world to help us understand ourselves in ways that are simple.

"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

This is radical thought. Loving God. Loving your neighbor. No place for the demagogue. No place for the hater. There is a place for the human side of negotiating the social contract. But, we cannot forget our priors. Love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments.

Renewal. It comes from re-thinking how we got there. As much as we want to be different from those who preceded us, the older, and better read, we become, we begin to realize that the stories we tell each other still have the same punchlines. There is nothing new under the Sun. Just as there is nothing new under the Son.

¹ The words of David's son, Qoheleth, king in Jerusalem:
2: ² Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
3: ³ What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun?
4: One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.
5: The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises.
6: Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds.
7: All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going.
8: ⁴ All speech is labored; there is nothing man can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing.
9: What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.
10: Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed in the ages that preceded us.
11: ⁵ There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.
12: I, Qoheleth, was king over Israel in Jerusalem,
13: and I applied my mind to search and investigate in wisdom all things that are done under the sun. A thankless task God has appointed for men to be busied about.
14: ⁶ I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.
15: What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is missing cannot be supplied.
16: Though I said to myself, "Behold, I have become great and stored up wisdom beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem, and my mind has broad experience of wisdom and knowledge";
17: yet when I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly, I learned that this also is a chase after wind.
18: For in much wisdom there is much sorrow, and he who stores up knowledge stores up grief.

And in counter-poise, is Isaiah:
1

Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.
2: ¹ Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.
3: ² A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
4: Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.
5: Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.
6: A voice says, "Cry out!" I answer, "What shall I cry out?" "All mankind is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field.
7: The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it. (So then, the people is the grass.)
8: Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever."
9: Go up onto a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; Cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God!
10: Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by his strong arm; Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him.
11: Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, Carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.
12: ³ Who has cupped in his hand the waters of the sea, and marked off the heavens with a span? Who has held in a measure the dust of the earth, weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
13: Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or has instructed him as his counselor?
14: Whom did he consult to gain knowledge? Who taught him the path of judgment, or showed him the way of understanding?
15: Behold, the nations count as a drop in the bucket, as dust on the scales; the coastlands weigh no more than powder.
16: ⁴ Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor its animals be enough for holocausts.
17: Before him all the nations are as nought, as nothing and void he accounts them.
18: To whom can you liken God? With what equal can you confront him?
19: An idol, cast by a craftsman, which the smith plates with gold and fits with silver chains?
20: Mulberry wood, the choice portion which a skilled craftsman picks out for himself, Choosing timber that will not rot, to set up an idol that will not be unsteady?
6: ⁵ One man helps another, one says to the other, "Keep on!"
7: The craftsman encourages the goldsmith, the one who beats with the hammer, him who strikes on the anvil; He says the soldering is good, and he fastens it with nails to steady it.
21: Do you not know? Have you not heard? Was it not foretold you from the beginning? Have you not understood? Since the earth was founded
22: He sits enthroned above the vault of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; He stretches out the heavens like a veil, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
23: He brings princes to nought and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24: Scarcely are they planted or sown, scarcely is their stem rooted in the earth, When he breathes upon them and they wither, and the stormwind carries them away like straw.
25: To whom can you liken me as an equal? says the Holy One.
26: ⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these: He leads out their army and numbers them, calling them all by name. By his great might and the strength of his power not one of them is missing!
27: ⁷ Why, O Jacob, do you say, and declare, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?
28: Do you not know or have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.
29: He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.
30: Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall,
31: They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

To whom can you liken God?

We are not like God. We never will be. We were made in His image. But we'll never be God. Just the image of God. "An idol, cast by a craftsman, which the smith plates with gold and fits with silver chains?"

We are not godlike. Not even in our worst illusions. Why try to be something that is outside of your nature? I don't try to be a god. I can't tell you what will be. What I ask for is simple.

Spring.

New shoots. New faith. New life.

Renewal.

Peace be with you.

Gorilla

2011-04-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Quiz: Are You Willing To Learn Who Progressives Are?

2011-04-20T09:25:00.000-07:00

If so, just hit this link.

Take some time and read the comments, too.

Pop Quiz? Are you a Progressive?

Sarah PAC

2011-04-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Sarah PAC has a new website. Add it to your Bookmarks.

Oregon, My Oregon

2011-04-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

Land of the Empire Builders, Land of the Golden West;
Conquered and held by free men, Fairest and the best.

On-ward and upward ever, Forward and on, and on;
Hail to thee, Land of the Heroes, My Oregon.

Land of the rose and sunshine, Land of the summer's breeze;
Laden with health and vigor, Fresh from the western seas.

Blest by the blood of martyrs, Land of the setting sun;
Hail to thee, Land of Promise, My Oregon.

Sarah Here

2011-04-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Gotcher fix of 'Cuda lately?

Liberty Versus Whatever Else There Is

2011-04-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

Liberty is a concept that I'd like to you to view as a condition of the State of Nature.

Two, three hundred years ago, folks just like you and I decided that the conditions under which we lived trampled over our natural state. That there was a thuggery of influence and power that attempted to keep us, the common man, under the heel of the thug. The Parliament. The Congress, if you will. There are several recent attempts at compensating us for this thuggery. One is, health care reform. Nowadays, it seems that there is a class action suit waiting behind the curtains for any imagined or real threat to an individual, under the guise of protecting the individual described in the context of the State of Nature.

There was a convenient convergence that occurred in English Law and the writings of political and logicians between the 16th and 17th Centuries. The critical moment in my view of history, was the moment when Martin Luther decided to oppose the Church. This was, in my opinion, the single most important moment of the Western Movement. Three hundred, four hundred years ago, my ancestors were chattel. Four hundred years ago, my ancestors worked under the ownership of their Baron. My ancestors were part and parcel of the land they laboured under. The Baron that owned them had ultimate rights to them, as chattel, as mere accoutrements to the land they owned. This, because my ancestors lived under the European autocracy, rather than the British aristocracy. My Great-Grandfather left Schleswige-Holstein when it was under control of Austria. It had been a part of Denmark. It was later a part of Germany. Then, France until today, who knows?

Recently, it has become a part and parcel of political debate that the forces that allowed us to create a free society are commensurate with the forces of slavery. I can't even begin to think about the kind of mind that would allow those two thoughts to formulate within the same brain at the same time. Much of what I hear of the current political debate surrounds itself in rhetoric that announces that the role of government is to "take care of" those who either cannot, or choose not, to take care of themselves. I keep thinking back to those years when my ancestors were chattel to their Baronic masters, and ask myself, "why would I want a return to seigniorage, when the whole affect of the Western Movement was to accept the primacy of the individual, and to encourage the protection of the individual, in the face of the collusion of the State.

Walking the steps of Il Duomo, walking on the graves of the Medici, as a free American, was an interesting exercise. The State without limits. A Church without limits. In it's time. As an American, I grew up knowing that there was not other person on the face of the Earth with greater, or fewer, rights that those that I had. Whether Bishop or Pope, King or Sultan, I was imbued with the same, inalienable rights as that Bishop, Pope, King or Sultan. Four hundred years ago, my ancestors were the chattel of their Baron. In the 16th Century, this Augustinian prelate, this Luther, wrote some terribly seditious words against the Church. Those words planted seeds. The need for intercession was questioned. Then, for the Protestant, negated.

The State of Nature is an important idea. What is the State of Nature? Upon discovery of the New World, European philosophers spent a great deal of time trying to ascribe to the New World characteristics that never existed in the New World. However, following upon the footsteps of Luther, their ideas weren't solipsistic in the main. Some were. There was a beginning point that developed on the thoughts of fellas like Newton and DesCartes that built upon the ideas of tabula rasa, and created the first rational ideas of humans, and their existence in political terms, that worked toward a reduction that left out prior beliefs that there was a hierarchy of men over others based upon externalities. Just because you were "born" a King didn't mean that you had any rights other than those accorded to any other human being.

This kind of thinking wasn't prevalent in 16th or 17th Century Europe. Remember, the Revolution in France didn't occur until after the Revolution in America. Readers of American History tend to miss the importance of their relative independence, prior to the Declaration of Independence, to European history, which lagged behind the "progressiveness" of the American political situation for more than decades. Not that there's any thing wrong with a monarch. We just chose not to have one. England, among others, still chooses. As Americans, the bonds that held us as "subjects" were tested on several fronts. Those bonds are being tested today.

Is there a class of people who have greater authority over us than ourselves? We don't allow it from prelates. We don't allow it from the landed gentry. We don't allow it even from those who tell us that they have title over us. There is no slavery in America. In America, no man shall hold sway over me. And I shall not have title to hold sway over you. To allow any man sway over you is to allow his tyranny over you.

What Martin Luther wrote about some hundreds of years ago is important. But we don't teach anything related to religion to our children anymore. Luther was a "Lutheran." And a "Catholic."
It can't get any more terrible than this. Imagine what it must be like, being a child, to try to follow the development of Western thought while excluding Luther, the Church and Religion. The secular Left is attempting to create an ex nihilo world that doesn't make any sense, any more sense than the existence that is explained by a giant turtle carrying the world on its back.

As the off-spring of a serf, the most important thing I can tell you is, working your way back to serfdom seems like an ill-advised course. A brief digression.

In 1963, a young man came to live in my house. He was an Iranian. His family owned the villages under his family's control. I asked him, what do you mean? He told me, he owned them. He didn't want it to be the case, but how, he asked, was he to change the system?

How do you change the system?

Most, if not all of us, come from "humble roots." For those of us whose families lived in the North prior to the Civil War, for some of us whose ancestors lived in the South prior to the Civil War, for all of us who came to this country after the Civil War, what roots do we have in the slavery of Blacks in America that differs from our slavery under Europe? And, what conditions of privilege of this mendacity of spirit would allow us to defend a system of tutelage, under which we give up certain human liberties in order to be assured of being kept well, would allow us to accept this tutelage?

Liberty is our right. From God, to Luther, to DesCartes, to you, if you think you know the truth about any, single, one, thing, it comes to you as the truth, and no other interlocution can, or should sway your thinking. Liberty isn't always about being right. If you're wrong, you must needs pay the price for your failure.

But, liberty is about the freedom to hold your own opinions. And, to be secure in yourself and your possessions, even if you hold an opinion contrary to those around you.

Our Founding Fathers knew this. So, you should know this, too.

Irony

2011-04-12T11:26:00.000-07:00

How Can I Calculate My Body/Fat Ratio?

2011-04-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

A: If you have body and you have fat, ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, ratio is two to one, etc.

The rest here.

AFL-CIO On Drugs?

2011-04-08T09:04:00.001-07:00

This is the economic analysis of the AFL-CIO, as presented earlier today in a presser titled, "An Oregon Senator wants to Repeal Measures 66 & 67?"

" **Newsflash** - when the wealthiest Americans get tax breaks they invest that money in stocks and bonds and multinational corporations, put it away in savings, and take it out of circulation."

Just once I'd like to read something intelligent from the AFL-CIO. If they can't see that increased taxes puts pressure on businesses to reduce costs--including labour--then maybe they should send away to economics land for an employee who could point out what increasing costs through increased taxation, ceterus paribus, does to producers of goods and services. You can't magically whisk away money from the producers of goods and services without impacting those producers.

Likewise, reversing high taxation returns revenue to producers. And guess what? They use it to produce goods and services, and among the inputs of the production process are employees. Labour.

Should the AFL-CIO be able to see the connection between profitable businesses and happy workers? I think so. But the kind of rhetoric coming out of the AFL-CIO is not encouraging. I'd counsel that instead of "jobs with justice," they should concentrate on jobs.

Merkley Demagogues It

2011-04-05T16:46:00.001-07:00

This one-sentence quote just arrived in the form of a presser from Sen. Merkley's office:

“The House leadership’s budget resolution is great if you happen to be an oil executive or a financial titan on Wall Street, but not for our seniors. Dismantling Medicare while giving bonus tax breaks to the very wealthiest in America is what may pass for bold in Washington, but in Oregon it is unacceptable.”

Hey, thanks, Senator. We needed some quick demagoguery. Fortunately, you were there for us.

UPDATE: Seems that our Senator used Cliff Notes for his statement. The President's statement here.

UPDATE: Here's the take away; "If Obama believes there is a "more balanced" way than Ryan's approach, why hasn't he pursued it in the past two years?"

Mandating Higher Costs; Unobtanium

2011-03-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Meredith Willson's iconic con man, Harold Hill, is alive and well in the think-tanks and corridors of legislatures across the globe. His bald-faced scheming has been adopted and adapted to drive common sense from the conversation.

Want an amazing life? It's simple! Just imagine it!

Want to drive a car magically? Simple! Imagine it! No need to scour the surface for any type of understanding what technologies, what inputs of production are needed to create this magic. Instead, we are told, the technologies we're pouring our national treasure into--or down--will produce the miracle of sustainability. Just imagine it.

The things that actually work, like nuclear, coal and gas powered plants are bad. Nuclear because we'll end up with three-eyed fish. (Don't believe me? Just watch The Simpsons.) Coal because it's dirty. Gas, because, well, just because. And don't you know how much damage you'll be doing to the Earth? Mining. Ugh.

But electric cars? Just fine. (Just don't tell me how their made!) (La-la-la, I can't hear you.)

In my in-box today came this missive from Governor Kitzhaber's green-shirted thugs:

"Oregon is being targeted for liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines, and our legislature is poised to make approval of these projects easier. Almost 600 miles of pipelines have been proposed through more than a dozen Oregon counties. Although the first version — the Palomar pipeline — has just been cancelled, NW Natural Gas Corporation has promised to bring it back next year. Another LNG pipeline, from Coos Bay to Ashland, would be dramatically sped up if HB 2700 passes as currently written.

"Tell your state senator to protect Oregon and either reject or amend HB 2700 to avoid fast-tracking LNG.

"Thousands of rural Oregon families could have their lives disrupted and their property damaged by HB 2700, a bill that would make it easier for LNG projects to move forward in Oregon. The bill would change Oregon laws to allow LNG projects to cross protected streams and wetlands on private lands, farms and forests without the owner’s permission." (The Team at Onward Oregon, presser, March 31.)(Their "scare" bold.)

Pretty scarey stuff. Crossing protected streams. Wetland. Private farms. Etc.

I live in Seaside, and use natural gas. Know how it gets here? Beats me.

Using the Think System, I think it gets here through the wires that come to my house. The same wires that will power the cars of the future.

Thirty years ago, Diamond Shamrock was running around the county, offering leases on your land in order to develop the natural gas fields in Clatsop county. My neighbor, Hank, talked to me, and we decided to wait until they found marketable deposits, since the price offered would be higher than for unproven gas fields. But folks out on the Walluski were abuzz with the idea that they would be wealthy, if D/S proved to be right. It was reminiscent of an Al Capp cartoon.

Around that same time, in 1984, Diamond Shamrock planned for development (.pdf) of a 32-acre site in Alaska. Object? To ship a billion tons of low sulfur coal. At $77.00 per short ton, that's a lot of wealth. How has that worked out?

Well, it hasn't, really. When it comes to electric cars, the fact that the amount of rare metals that need to be excavated from hillsides around the world is mind-boggling, it is because we rely upon the Think System, we are able to ignore the mining that must take place to build our Vision!™

But to retrieve from the earth usable commodities like coal, well, unthinkable. So, the project has, like the other projects that would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, not moved forward. When we talk about exploration of our own oil resources we are told that reliance upon oil is reliance upon a source of energy that "isn't sustainable" so, not worthwhile pursuing. Then we are told, that it would take ten years before that energy became available to the market. So, why bother.

Why bother, indeed, when we can instead rely upon the future deployment of unobtanium, that miracle energy source being produced by the Think System.

So, a coupla years ago, the guys behind the Cook Inlet field came up with a stunningly good idea; "CIRI proposes to use a process called underground coal gasification to turn a coal seam into synthetic gas."

Carbon dioxide? Dealt with. 150-megawatt power plant? Dealt with. This is real technology, a real break-through, a real source of baseline power. Then there is the Think System solution.

"...hydrokinetic means using the motion of the water to create energy."

Yeah. We know how well that worked the last time. Or, is working this time;

"That bright yellow contraption bobbing in the saltwater offshore of Seattle is a small version of what may dot the oceans one day. The prototype is successfully generating clean, renewable power... though not very much."

The major difference between the two-sources of energy is one of funding. Who pays. Funny, that the stuff we're told is "unsustainable" is profitable, but the stuff we're told is "sustainable" is unprofitable? And all these plans are opposed by the same group of green-shirted thugs who oppose any resource utilization as injury to the planet. Fish, streams, grasslands, wetlands, forests, hillsides, valleys.

The adults in the room, those who don't rely upon the duplicity of the Left, are getting frustrated. Proven methods of providing cheap sources of power, for cars, for businesses, for manufacture are being denied and destroyed. (See Boardman power plant.) The Think System approach is also being denied, which lends a certain comic quality to the debate. Here's President Obama on gas and oil development:

"Right now, the industry holds tens of millions of acres of leases where they're not producing a — a single drop. They're just sitting on supplies of American energy that are ready to be tapped. And that's why part of our plan is to provide new and better incentives that promote rapid, responsible development of these resources. And we're also exploring and assessing new frontiers for oil and gas development, from Alaska to the Mid- and South Atlantic states, because producing more oil in America can help lower oil prices, can help create jobs, and can enhance our energy security. But we've got to do it in the right way."

Here's the American Petroleum Institute (.pdf) response:

"The report completely whitewashes the fact that in many cases, the reason these leases have no exploration plans is that (the federal agency that oversees oil and gas leases) is sitting on those plans.

"This is like leasing an apartment from the government for $20 million dollars – the government refusing to give you the keys to the apartment – and the government proceeding to complain because you are not occupying the premises.

"The disturbing reality is that 2011 could go down as the first year since 1957 that there has not been at least one offshore lease sale. Not one."

I watched with interest the interview of Washington Democrat Representative Jay Inslee, last night on the Kudlow Report. Why don't we drill, drill, drill? Because, according to Representative Inslee, there are only 65 years of oil in the continental United States, and we're better off using alternatives to gas, oil and coal. How did he arrive at this conclusion? The Think System.

Ron Paul, Nutz, The Gold Standard and a Balanced Budget Amendment

2011-03-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

I'll make this brief.

I'm not a Ron Paul fan. Or, a Paulist.* The reason is simple. Even if we have a gold standard, the gold standard itself doesn't constrain the money supply. Money is the amount of cash in circulation, and banks create money. Not the Fed. (Okay, the Fed can "print" money, but if you understand QE1 and QE2, you realize that the mechanics of money creation by Treasury are significantly different from the mechanics of bank created money.)

Even without federally mandated reserve requirements, banks make money whenever they loan money. Whenever a bank makes a loan, it occurs as a subtrahend. But not just as an subtraction of an asset, but as an increase in an asset. It does increase the liability of the bank. But, it also increase the holding of the bank.

The Paulist guys that I've conversed with seem to feel that losing the Federal Reserve is key to some constantly brilliant economic future. Which, I just don't get. You and I know that prices and wages tend to be sticky. And, while I rail again and again against mandated minimum wage levels, my advocacy relies less on the stickiness of wages as it does on the dignity of labour. Let's take the level of contract law as is. Which includes so many different levels of commitments, moral and contractual, that it would be hard if not impossible to parse those commitments into different degrees of dissimulation. That is, at what point does the contractor have to, or need to, unilaterally apply a contract-breaking action that allows for wage stickiness to no longer have effect?

A gold standard does not, and cannot, eliminate the creation of money by banks, without outlawing lending.

Think about it. Keeping your money at a bank. A bank that doesn't lend money.

This is one of the ideas that needs to be addressed by Paulists. By the way, banks without lending have a different name. Big Vault. Which is a model we can adopt. My understanding of Mohammedan law is, that lending with interest is not allowed. So, to say that interest free banking and lending is impossible isn't supported by empirical fact. There do exist banks that neither charge nor offer interest.

But we're only talking about one aspect of an interest free, gold-based currency.

One of the greatest risks facing anyone in business is the challenge of price fluctuation. Coming from a farming family, the risk faced by anyone involved in farming is challenging. (A sidenote: why we should disallow bankers from making money based upon their risk, while allowing farmers to make money based upon their risk is an unqualifiable stupid for me. Why should farmers be allowed profit based upon their risk, and not bankers?) When you plant a crop, whether it be corn, or wheat or peas, what level of risk should the planter adopt, against the zero risk of planting nothing?

We need to ask ourselves, what role do we wish money have? There are several roles we wish for; a store of value, portability, a medium of account, and a method for payment. But this isn't all we get for our money. We also get a hedge against other currencies. And, I submit, there are other advantages we get from currency that I'm not listing here. But, you must admit these are some pretty powerful characteristics!

Without getting into some mathematical equations, the role of money is important, but the major roles of money are as a store of value, and as the means to set up accounts and manage payment. This is how most of us view money. But what happens when we replace money--fiat currency--with a gold standard (the Paulist view)?

Without a total re-regulation of the banking industry, the primary defect of banking (the expansion of the monetary supply) will still occur. As long as banks are allowed to depend upon fractional reserves, the money supply will increase, without regard to the amount of gold held in reserve by the central bank. A brief example: a bank takes in 100 dollars worth of deposits. It determines that it has 10-thousand deposits of 1oo dollars. To take care of drafts (the checks you write against your account) it needs only have on hand a smaller amount of cash that the million dollars it has in deposits. It is that difference, between it's obligations on a daily basis and it's needs for cash on hand to meet depositor requirements, that allows banks to lend money.

Idle money has a cost.

It is the cost of interest not returned due to inactivity.

Banks warrant that the deposit you make will be honoured when you make the claim.

Now, the Gold standard doesn't change this particular relationship between you and your bank. What has changed is the role government has assumed in banking. In 1933, the government decided it was important to protect banks from failure. It did this in the guise of protecting depositors, with the creation of the FDIC.

This is no knock on Sheila Bair. I think we have one of the most competent chairmen of the FDIC we've ever had. What I don't appreciate is the economic milieu she's had to compete with. Honesty in banking is at a low point. Bankers do know things that you and I aren't supposed to know. Take problem banks.

Loan balances continue to decline.

The number of institutions on the FDIC's "Problem List" rose from 860 to 884.

What I offer is, that none of these problems could be, or would be, avoided by either a Gold Standard, or by a Balanced Budget Amendment. The reason is simple. We don't want to cut our prices.

Our prices are either the prices we ask for your good and services, or, more importantly, the price we'll accept for our labour. A gold standard does not favour labour. If we have a consistently gold-based economy, where the amount of cash in circulation is determined by the value of gold deposts held by our country, without an expansion of our gold assets, there is no mechanism for increasing the amount of cash in circulation. As the economy expands, the competition for resources in one market will require a reduction of resources available in another.

That is, if gold is equal to 100, then cash is equal to 100.

If increases in demand in A requires an increase in cash by ten percent, then, given no reduction in demand from all other sectors, to meet the increase in demand by A, all other sectors must reduce their prices by their share of A's increase in demand.

Which is why Paulists don't have a clue.

Milton Friedman was the guy who worried about money supply. Prior to Uncle Miltie, we had Keynes and the Classicists. Following Bretton Woods, there was a general understanding that prices were sticky, both in commodities and labour, and that a general rise in price levels would allow for adjustments that were socially unacceptable under the gold standard. The key for Friedman was, that increases in the money supply should only accommodate increases in productivity. The easiest way to understand this is to view the way we agglomerate independent variables to come up with the Consumer Price Index. The CPI doesn't take all prices of all goods sold last year, and then compare those prices with this years prices. What the CPI does it take a look at the weighted values of what was sold in the last period, to the weighted value of what was sold in the current period, to determine changes in the price index.

It's an important distinction.

In 1973, x number of colour televisions were sold. In 1993, y number of televisions were sold. Even though the number of colour TV's sold increased, the total cost of those televisions went down. But the amount of cash spent buying computers went up amazingly!

How did we find the amount of cash to finance the expansion of computers, while absorbing the loss to televisions? Simple.

As demand increased for both televisions and computers, the amount of cash supplied to the economy rose. As productivity in television construction increased, productivity in computer manufacture increased. Labour, involved in television manufacture, decreased. Labour, in computer manufacture, increased. Changes in manufacturing processes occurred, some segments of the labour market decreased, while others increased. But, prices for televisions didn't decline because of decreases in the money supply. Prices for television decreased because manufacturers were able to increase productivity over fixed costs, while improving reliability and quality, due to changes in technology. While the demand for television sets remained fairly constant, increases in productivity due to technology changes allowed manufacturers to increase their productivity while reducing costs. As their profitability margins improved, they were forced, through competition, to reduce their prices, allowing me to buy, a couple of years ago, a forty-inch TV for $299 a couple of years ago.

Wages didn't decrease in the television sector. Productivity increased. Meaning that companies were able to make more money without changing their inputs. (Later on the meaning of unions and "outsourcing".)

But it's important to note, that whole ranges of products came onto the market that increased the general wealth, without any particular person having to take a hit. Prices tend to rise. To an economist, this is known as the ratchet effect.

Because we rely upon a fiat currency, we are able to adjust the quantity of money, enough to enable transactions, without having to enforce price reductions. I will admit that fiat currency is a social choice. We could require all inputs to production to have to face their decreasing value to the production process more immediately. Again, I'm not sure that this is wise.

So, too, is my impression of advances towards a Balanced Budget Amendment.

It sounds good. Kicks butt and all that. But I look at the U.S. economy following 9/11. 43 was right to cut taxes. My friends, following 9/11, the economy was in a spin. We hadn't experienced anything like 9/11 before. Pearl Harbour? Close. Mebbe the same thing. I should look at some charts. But I won't. As I promised, this is a short not.

Our country needs to be able to spend more than it takes in, from time to time. Our current emergency isn't about debt, it's about legislators who attempt to cure all of life's discourtesies through legislation. If you think we should attempt to breed unicorns and outlaw bad things, you're willing to vote for anyone who agrees with you. If you think that law should be about either a national interest, or a state's interest, then you will vote accordingly. And it doesn't matter what side of the fence you find yourself on. If you want government to do anything for you that it doesn't already, chances are, you're a slacker/loser. If you want government to do less for you, you're probably willing to pick-up the slack, yourself.

Looking at an end of the FDIC, or the Federal Reserve, or the, whatever, probably isn't a good idea. A gold standard isn't going to happen. A Balanced Budget Amendment isn't going to happen. I'm willing to talk about it, but, in my own experience, disagreeing with those who want either is shouting into a blind tunnel.

*Catholic joke. I am a Paulist.

Vox Populi, Pax Romana

2011-03-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

Watched a presentation tonight about the justification for the Aztlan movement. The first thought that kicked through was, why not Israel?

The argument being forwarded is, this is what my race, or, ethnicity, or, my county of origin was at some time in the past. Therefore, I should be in charge of the land that is currently represented under that surmise. Because, this is the land of my people.

There is a certain harmonic to this argument. Which is why I'm asking for a return of Pax Romana. As the descendent of Scottish heritage, I know that I should be, or my antecedents where, under the control of the Roman Empire. Pax Romana is my new battle cry. Under my creed, we need not look for justification for invading Libya. Libya is ours!

John Locke is an old, dead guy. His most important work, in my estimation, is his Second Treatise. You don't have to read it, and most people haven't, but if you haven't and you wish to opine on the issue of nations and nationality, you really don't have a leg to stand on. Remember, that I was at university during that time when SB 100 was passed. I was open to argument that it was necessary, to save the state, to pass laws that,until then, had never been before contemplated.

Central planning control. In Oregon. To defend Oregon. "Visit, but don't stay."

Crazy talk.

All I'm saying is, maybe I have standing to sue the state for its role in creating central planning agencies. Because, they aren't based upon Roman law. Oh, by the way, the reason why the Aztlan Movement prior doesn't work is simple. They weren't there. Just ask them to do the DNA testing. It's great, it's freeing to be a radical without impulse control. It's a little harder when there are test to disprove the rhetoric.

Dosha Vote

2011-03-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

I posted earlier about this. No link. My post was recent. Scroll down.

Dosha lost. Union won. 154 employees.

Let's see how long Dosha exists.

Time To Shut 'Er Down

2011-03-30T18:23:00.000-07:00

A lot of talk going on about how irresponsible Republicans in Congress are for holding fast to their promise to cut government spending.

If you are reading this, then you've seen it, too.

Chuck Schumer telling fellow Democrats to blame Speaker Boehner for truculent behaviour.

I will tell you; the Republican Party lost faith with the American public when George Bush 41 broke his pledge, "Read my lips, no new taxes."

Republicans would be walking on water today if GW had kept his pledge. Priors are important. Trust is important. Doing what you say you are going to do is more important than what you've said. Don't have an opinion on abortion? Okay. Won't hold you to that. But if you say you are either for or opposed to the criminalization of abortion, and then you vote a different way in your tenure as a legislator, guess what?

I don't trust you.

Closing down the Federal government isn't a task to be undertaken lightly. I know that. You know that. The kicker is, once close, it could be opened almost immediately, as long as the President decides not to boogy down to Rio.

Taking America back. What does it mean to you?

Keeping your promise is job number one. Those who disagree with us must be put in a place where they need to defend their decision. Republicans were elected to make a difference. Without a difference, why elect Republicans?

Somebody explain to me why I'm wrong. Not about my policy choices. But about the promise a candidate makes to his or her constituency, and the outcomes that should result when those promises are broken.

Stare Decisis

2011-03-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

I posted some time ago about the perils facing radicals in Clatsop County. I had spoken with a, then, majority of the Clatsop County Commission about the rules imposed on Multnomah County following the decision in State ex rel English v. Multnomah County.

Following this decision, it became apparent that the leadership of the Left in Clatsop County, who view themselves uniquely qualified to run your life, didn't understand the rules of law, and the concomitant jeopardy which they were going to place the county.

I didn't understand why Cindee originally granted cert in this case. The case law was ironclad. Her rescission was, and I conjecture here, based upon someone getting to her and letting her know that she was ill-served by counsel before the bar.

More on this farce at North Coast Oregon.

Notice Anything?

2011-03-29T16:48:00.001-07:00

Here is a chart of increases in state expenditures by small states in the Western United States.

One of the questions this chart raises is, whether these debt levels are being expressed in nominal or real terms. For the sake of argument, we need to assume that these are nominal amounts. Here are the rates of change in the price index for the years 1998 to 2009:

1998 1.6
1999 2.7
2000 3.4
2001 1.6
2002 2.4
2003 1.9
2004 3.3
2005 3.4
2006 2.5
2007 4.1
2008 0.1
2009 2.7

Nothing in these numbers can produce an alibi for our state government. Oregon, unlike her sisters, rapidly expanded government expenditures, even in the face of the economic stresses that face those citizens who participate in the private sector. And remember, even though we've increased taxes on the productive sector of the economy, rather than our state reducing the rate of increase in our debt, in 2009 and 2009, the rate of increase in our debt went up.

Sure, it's nice to live in a state where we can send kindergartners to school for a full day. Of course, this is just baloney, since public schools have a vision of full days equalling six hours. And all the studies I've read show little or no improvement of scores for third-graders based on kindergarten, part-time or full-time. When it comes to settled science, whatever the OEA says is what we believe. And, they spend a lot of money supporting political candidates that support them. Which is natural. It's like a crime syndicate. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.

My mentor, The Real King of France, asked the question, why? And then answers it. Democrat control versus Republican control.

It's like living in a Ray Stevens song. "Everything Is Beautiful." How can we cut money for schools? Well, easy. But it takes spine. How can we cut money for the arts? Again, easy. Spine. No matter where you turn, cutting is attacked as cruel, unfair, racist. Sexist. Helping the rich. So, since everything is beautiful--and necessary--our debt continues to mount. While our neighbors manage on less.

Wish Oregon luck. We do things different here.

Textbook Study

2011-03-28T10:48:00.000-07:00

Are unions good?

The events unfolding over at Dosha Salon will provide you with a case study of how businesses transform when faced with hostile employees. When I was young, you got your hair cut by a union barber. Then, during the seventies, rules changed. What made a barber different than a hair dresser? A hair dresser couldn't give you a shave. Hair dressers came into salons as independent contractors, paying rent to the salon owner for their space, perhaps a chair and sink. Some hair dressers went to work as employees for a salon's owner. But, when accredited by the state board, a hair dresser could usually find a niche for themselves. Lots work out of their homes. Some rent small spaces. The degree of independence for hair dressers is really quite remarkable.

I had my hair cut by hair dressers for decades. The salon was Richard Herrera. The guy who cut my hair had worked for Richard when they were in the bank tower, worked out of his own shop on 23rd for years, and then returned to Richard's shop. I knew the guy who cut my hair personally...we would sometimes bug out to the tavern next door and play PacMan. Richard's daughter was an Econ TA when I was at Oregon State.

How good is Richard? I know that, at least when I was going to Richard's shop for my haircuts, that Richard was the guy who cut José Eber's hair when José was in town.

Point is, working for Richard is a privilege. From what I can see, working for Dosha would be a privilege, too.

But some employees don't like the work they've chosen. They want the rules to be changed, and that agent of change is union organization.

From what I can see, there are employees who don't want to be responsible for their scheduled shifts, their own need to save and plan for the future, and are demanding something they call "respect." Let me tell you something, campers. If I hire you, that means I respect you enough to hire you. If you've lost my respect, or feel I don't respect you, the problem is deeper than you think.

So let's watch together the demise of Dosha. The two sides have divided up. You can get the Dosha As Is side here. You can get the union side here. You can get the union overview here.

Once equality of outcome is mandated, the best will move away. The worst will remain. Because of the rules enforced by unionization, the company will be forced to spend a lot of money to simply close their doors. When bankruptcy occurs, the equity holders of Dosha will be demonized.

Not the union.

155 jobs. Portland. Keeping weird.

We Do What We Can

2011-03-21T23:34:00.000-07:00

Still testing posting.

Hate this.

Software

2011-03-21T23:21:00.000-07:00

My machine hasn't changed.

The software has.

I will continue to post...but, more than just a few posts have ended up in a dump that neither I nor "blogspot"s administrators will ever find.

It's prolley my fault. I work to tomorrow.
.

Attempting to Post

2011-03-21T20:44:00.001-07:00

So, this is totally screwed.

Attempting to Post

2011-03-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've had my share of prollems.

Still have.

Two weeks lost to virii, trojans and mis-directs. I don't think I'm done now.

test

2011-03-21T20:42:00.001-07:00

Test

Curricula

2011-02-15T18:51:00.000-08:00

Pic available at this site.

In 1943, one of the greatest frauds ever put upon man was published.

The article was A. H. Maslow's A Theory of Human Motivation.

Just as "modern" science has placed Man Made Global Warming on par with the most important thing any reasonable person would, or could, ever think, worry, consider, engage upon, Maslow offered that human dignity was inconsequential. That it was only the after product of the struggle against the indignities that we face on a daily basis, the worrying about finding a place to sleep, to find the food to eat, to clothe ourselves, to begin to educate ourselves, and that at the pinacle, our goal as humans was to find in ourselves a sense of being that transcended all other previous states.

This state, of transcendence, was referred to as self-actualization.

Basically, this sense of self-actualization has been present in literature since the beginning of literature. That it took until 1943 for us to realize--thanks to Maslow--that we wanted to know who we are/were is simply silly. But for anyone entering the field of Education after that point, it was necessary that we study Maslow and all of his new age theories. And the keystone of Maslow was his pyramid.

We like pyramids. Soon after Maslow's was introduced, we got the "food pyramid." Pyramids offered the consoling thought that we were building upon firm footing. After that we got such things as vitamin pyramids. Ecology pyramids. Education pyramids. Each purporting to show a relationship--moving upward--to each inevitable increase in proportion, while the area under the defined area was reduced. To become self-actualized was something that only few of us would be allowed, either through genetics or education, to achieve.

And the beauty of Maslow's pyramid wasn't that we all didn't find ourselves at the top of the chain immediately. The beauty was, we were all "becoming."

Self-actualization wasn't necessary. What was necessary was the process.

Any thinking man, woman or child was stuck in Maslow's world. What kind of day would, or could, a human have waking only to find that the near problem of physiological need would dictate the day's enterprise? Whether or not mere survival was rudimentary was lost. Simply providing for one's self, or one's family, was lost in the world of Maslow. To simply survive was blasphemy. To live to one's potential, one must slip the surly bonds of humanity, to achieve the "next" step of self-actualization. Which is in itself wrongfully asserted provinance.

The earth-shattering assertions of Maslow is nothing. Never was. I've always found more strength in Marcus Aurelius than I ever found in Maslow. Yet, Aurelius is not taught, and Maslow is. Did you ever wonder why?

Well, the question is important, since the theories of Maslow are a part of every college's education requirements. To gain a degree in Education requires one taking a Psych 201 course, in which Maslow is taught. To get an A requires a restatement of Maslow. It is pernicious and it is wrong. But educators don't buck the trend of the check. You want a check? Here is the curricula.

So, at every step of the way in the life of the young educator-to-be is this Maslow thingy. It is pyramidical. It is not sequential, nor is it logical. It is assertive. But we're beginning to find out that not all assertions are true. Yet, every successful educator has gone the the training necessary to adopt Maslow. Without exception.

A simple test; next time you have to appear at a "student/teacher" conference, ask the teacher whether or not they are employing Maslow's goals in their classroom work. They will, to a man or woman, assert that they are.

I call them idiots. You can call them whatever you like.

Dorchester

2011-02-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

Sign up here.

If you've never gone, treat yourself. Talk to people who believe in an exceptional America.

If will fire you up.

Governor Proposes Plan To Avoid Fixing Education

2011-02-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

Forever.

"Tomorrow, February 11, Governor Kitzhaber will announce his Executive Order to create the Oregon Education Investment Team with a tour of the Portland State University Helen Gordon Child Development Center to follow. The Executive Order is the first step toward investing in a seamless zero to 20 education system, with the goal of ensuring that children enter school ready to learn, teachers have the support and resources to teach, and high school graduates are prepared to pursue post secondary education."

Investment. Sure.

Government cash (taxpayer money) and the Oregon Education Association (labour union). Adding seven more years into the process.

What could go wrong?

A Modest Proposal

2011-02-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

I was reading this at Ace's place when the thought popped into my head.

"The current plan would have the 220-mile-per-hour train running through well-populated residential areas. It also pits the Authority against Union Pacific over track resources, meaning the bullet train would essentially replace freight—the one genre of rail transport that remains viable and important to the economy—with a passenger rail project that has no hope of ever becoming sustainable."

The thought was this; what if we replaced the word "sustainable" at every turn with the word "profitable"?

So, the discussion on Green Technology would become one of profitability. "We are supportive of wind-power because it is profitable." Of course this statement is not true. Whether it was PP & L or PGE going in to talk about the current plan for Oregon increasing Green Technology, when asked if this technology was profitable, they would have to say, no. Is light-rail profitable? No. Is making the Chevy Volt profitable? Well, not without massive subsidies. Ethanol profitable? No. Not without massive subsidies.

I hear politicians talking about what business leaders should do with such a degree of certainty that it exceeds the bounds of credulity. Our own Junior Senator, Mr. Merkley, recently came up with this exceedingly interesting proposal:

"Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley released the following statement Thursday in response to President Obama’s call for tax incentives and financing for energy efficient building renovations:

“Energy saving renovations are our best bet for creating a lot of jobs fast. Beyond putting Americans to work, these renovations save families and businesses money, utilize materials made in America, and reduce harmful global warming pollution. These energy efficiency efforts have the support of both Democrats and Republicans. I’m committed to continue working with my colleagues from both parties to get these initiatives in place.”

"The proposal President Obama discussed today includes the commercial portion of Senator Merkley’s Clean Energy for Homes and Buildings Act. In the 111^th Congress, Senator Merkley also introduced several other bills promoting energy efficiency renovations, including Building Star and the Rural Energy Savings Program. Senator Merkley also co-sponsored the legislation to create the Home Star energy efficiency program."

Is it profitable? When any activity requires massive subsidy from governments to "achieve savings" one can fairly question the underlying assumption that the speaker has a clue as to what constitutes profitability. Yes, the beneficiaries of government largesse will have profits (normally). But the activity being undertaken--without subsidy--would be unprofitable. Not sustainable. And an activity not actionable. Normal people just don't spend money that costs more than the benefits received for taking that action. Throw in massive government subsidies and the rules of normal decision-making goes out the window.

So, I simply submit that, the next time you hear the word "sustainable" you simply replace that word with profitable. When activities are profitable, they are sustained. Without government subsidy or mandatory regulation.

Senator Merkley, without a shred of private enterprise experience to his name, is setting policies that reflect his level of experience. In his experience, the private sector needs to be hectored in order to assure us, the folks, that the private sector is "doing its job." What a bunch of unsustainable blather. The private sector does this, does that, all without the guiding hand of the political elite (in fact, in most cases, despite the guiding hand of the political elite.) We do it because we enjoy doing it. We can see our way clear to earning a few bucks. And when it no longer is profitable, we turn our ruminations toward new paths, new products, new services. Of course you can generate bubbles in markets by introducing massive subsidies. And then when the bubbles pop you can blame the markets for the bubbles.

Sustainable. Profitable. Which word should be the most operative when looking at Merkley's call for putting Americans to work?

I think Senator Jeff, and definately President Obama, have no clue.

A Beautiful Woman (NSFW)

2011-02-07T12:22:00.000-08:00

Photo credit: Jensen Sutta

You can click on the picture for a larger view. If you want to see what happened, you can get a great article at ZinOwl.

Understanding Constitutionality of Law

2011-02-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

From time to time I come across someone who expresses their belief that the only understanding of the Constitution that is required is a simple reading of the Constitution. If this were the case, a class on the First Amendment would seemingly only require an afternoon, at best. A lot of folks happen to think that what occurs in courts is either the end result of personally held beliefs of judges, or random. Reading the Constitution and understanding the clear meaning of the words there can be frustrating when one attempts to understand the reasoning behind a judge's decision. For, example, the First Amendment tells you that Congress shall make no law abridging speech. Try yelling something obscene at someone and defending yourself in court with the brick of "free speech." Courts have faced these situations earlier and have come up with ways to abridge your free speech rights in ways that make for a civil society. Take the example of yelling fire in a crowded theater. In the mad rush to escape, people are injured, perhaps killed. Does the utterrer have King's X when it comes to this speech? The courts have said, no.

Building upon prior decisions by previous courts is known as stare decisis. "Previous decisions."

Whatever has been legal before, is legal now.

Understanding the role played in appelate courts, like our Circuit Courts or the Supreme Court, is essential to understanding that the clear words of our Constitution have been modified over the years by our courts decisions on previous cases. Stare decisis.

Studying the First Amendment is therefore a lengthy endeavour. Not an afternoon's work. Even more daunting are Commerce Clause cases. This is due to the fact that the courts have adopted the attitude that certain cases deserve outcomes not expressed in the limits on government enumerated by our Constitution. These are the cases decided by what are referred to as "activist" courts. Now, as a more careful reading of the enumerated powers given our government by our constitution are more carefully followed, a new breed of "activist" is being bred; the Originalist. Or, the Strict Constructionist. These are jurists whose simple readings of the words of the Constitution have found that some of the decisions that have allowed far-ranging intrusions into our personal liberties may have been poorly decided. It is this "revisionism" that is coming under scrutiny by the Left, who have been well served previously by activist judges.

So, one can be labelled an activist for either finding meaning that was never there before, or for refusing to adhere to poorly crafted precedent when overturning poorly written legislation. Therefore, to more fully understand the issues surrounding Judge Vinson's recent declaration that Obamacare is unconstitutional, I offer you this illuminating, and at times humorous, understanding of the issues (.pdf) as presented by Jonathan Adler in the Lewis & Clark Law School Review.

Read, enjoy, learn.

UPDATE: If you took the time to read the Adler article, the brevity of the comments here will make a lot more sense.

Pornography

2011-02-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

"I know it when I see it." (Justice Stewart Potter.)

I understood at an early age that the decision to abort a fetus was dependent upon the counsel of ones cleric, doctor and family. Before Oregon passed a law, which removed criminal penalties for abortion, in the 1960's, I knew that women, girls, girls like my sisters, were getting abortions in what were referred to as back-alley abortion clinics. Or, worse, self-aborting. With a wire coathanger. And women were dying.

I, myself, am opposed to abortion. My wife and I were older when we decided to have our first child, and there are dangers involved when a woman approaches a certain age. So we did the usual thing, and in the case of my wife's age, the amniocentesis was paid for by the insurance company. But amnio didn't answer the particular question; if there is a genetic error discovered through testing, what would be the rational and right thing to do?

Let me put aside my wife's thinking. I knew what her thinking was. If the fetus had a flaw, end it. This was not my natural impulse. So, I had a talk with a man who I knew had a daughter with Down's Syndrome. The upshot of that conversation was, once you hold that baby in your arms, it doesn't matter if it's a puppy. You're going to love it.

Given how red and rat-faced ugly my boy was, I got to tell you, it's true. And reading about child-bearing doesn't prepare you for the mess that is your new baby. But holding your newly born baby in your arms is a feeling that we each are unprepared for. My son. What a beautiful, red-faced critter! Marvelous!

Life is a gift. It doesn't drop out of the sky. It is given you by your mother and father. The miracle of life is a gift that comes bound up with responsibilities and requirements that affect and determine your actions for every subsequent day of your life. For those of us who appreciate that our existence is different from the existence of other things--like rocks--the miracle of life is an awe-striking moment. For some of us, seeking a reason for existence, we tend to look for an answer in terms of Our Creator. For others there is an attempt at certain tautology which reduces existence to the mere creature of the random. In any event, the biological impulse has to be recognized, nutured and respected (if not revered.)

The video here is jaw-droppingly obscene. Which, I suppose, is the natural product of a way of thinking that reduces the miracle of life into a garbage disposal industry. The heartlessness, the uncaring thinking, the repudiation of the value of human existence underscores a belief I hold when talking to those who trumpet the values of a "woman's right to choose" as having a higher moral plane than those of us who believe that abortion is wrong, and should be rare.

For me the issue of when life begins is simple: zygote.

But ask any student graduating from your public schools when life begins. And then ask yourself, why can't these students see that it's more important to live your own life, than to have your healthcare, housing, meals and education provided you by the state?

In the world of the Left there are no miracles. Mentioning miracles is an attempt to foist religious views upon others. And no one should have to live a life where we recognize that there are miracles occuring around us, every day.

That would be wrong. Almost, pornographic.

Video found at PJ Tatler. H/T Instapundit.

Memories Die Hard

2011-01-28T11:01:00.001-08:00

Why we watched Gilligan's Island.

Heads Up

2011-01-25T07:48:00.001-08:00

Part of the delusion of the Left is that we can ignore what is going on in the world. If you are a devotee of Chomsky--as is our President--American foreign policy is just an extension of imperialism.

Common sense dictates that we remain aware of what is transpiring in foreign places, even if we may choose to remain aloof. Aloof, as a policy, seems to fit our current regime's leaders. Fortunately, we have Michael Totten to keep an eye on what's transpiring in Lebanon.

Steampunk Palin

2011-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

Paroxysms of disbelief are shooting through the eyeballs of our cultural elite.

Me, I find this pretty amusing.

You can purchase this at Antarctic Press.

Learn more here. And enjoy the comments. (Can you hear the 'splodey?)

Portland: Paradigm of Self-Indulgent

2011-01-20T12:34:00.000-08:00

Is it comedy?

Not if you live here. You may be tempted to say to yourself that this is a parody. It isn't. I live and work among these people. The bicycling idiots, the second-hand smoke idiots, the eating is murder idiots. The idiots who believe we need to reduce our incomes in order to live a life closer to earth. We have the idiots of the Animal Liberation Front who raid a closed mink farm. We have anti-development idiots at the Attorney General's office. We have the environmental idiots at our state's DEQ office closing down power plants.

We have an employment department that makes the following assertion in its last report on unemployment; "Oregon's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 10.6 percent in December, essentially unchanged from the revised November figure of 10.5 percent."

Yeah. It went up. Essentially unchanged. Unchanged, too, from a year ago.

One of our U.S. senators has hatched the following Six Point Plan to deal with the mortgage crisis:

· Bolster the market by providing a permanent tax credit for first-time homebuyers;

· Assist families facing foreclosure through a national “short refinance” program that would enable homeowners who are facing foreclosure to refinance their mortgages based on current interest rates and home values;

· Stop the “dual track” that continues foreclosures while loan modifications are evaluated until it is determined that the borrower is not eligible or does not qualify for a loan modification;

· Provide homeowners with a single point of access when they seek a loan modification to improve accountability and ensure greater clarity during the process;

· Establish a third-party review prior to foreclosure and fully enforce existing law; and

· Implement the “lifeline” bankruptcy option by providing bankruptcy judges with the power to modify the terms of home loans just as they can with vacation homes and yachts.

Wow. Talk about over-reach. "Bolster the market." When will our idiots learn that markets are bigger than governments? You can pass all the social justice legislation that you want to pass, but give it a few years and the rich will again be rich, the poor yet again poor.

The problem our idiots have isn't wishing for nice things to happen to nice people. It's the entire disconnect from the process that allows certain people to have productive lives that bring with them the accoutrements of success, and those who choose to disregard the process that brings these accoutrments, instead relying on pandering politicians like Senator Merkley who hand out pressers that promise equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.

Our idiots care about everything. Using plastic bags to carry your groceries home. Is it the right kind of organic? (Did you know there are several different "organic" standards? Do you care?)

Our idiots want to build light-rail lines for public transportation, even though every single study done shows that busses are more efficient.

In Oregon, you can't swing a cat without hitting an idiot.

Portlandia isn't a parody. It's reality T.V.

David Wu: Loser

2011-01-19T11:01:00.001-08:00

This is not unbelievable. Ameri Goli attempted to talk about this buffoon's behaviour, but, she was a Republican, after all. And you know Republicans.

More at Instapundit.

A New Hero: Matt Wingard

2011-01-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Take a look at House Bill 2915.

Right there, on your ticket, you'd see how much it cost the taxpayers of this state to pay for your shiny train ride.

Sort of a Susan Powter moment.

Bob Loblaw

2011-01-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

If you're not a fan, it's from Arrested Development. I found it on the IFC and became addicted. I thought my family was dysfunctional!

Dysfunctions occur because of the need to be perceived as someone you ain't. Not saying I agree with everything Gide wrote, but there is a certain freedom with being simply who you are, without regard to how others may view you. My old writing coach called this authenticity. Remember your audience, write to them, tell your story. It took years for me to figure out that elegance in a writing style is not the same as being flowery. If you want to be read, figure out what you want to say, then say it. Simplicity is a key to authenticity. Ernest Hemingway understood this.

I avoid groups like the Rotary, the Elks, the Businessman's Coffee Group and the Chamber. Just as I rolled my eyes during seminars as an undergrad, I'm sure there are several Popes spinning in their graves as a reaction to the shift in meaning in a great word; pontification. The worst of these experiences take place in settings like seminars, retreats, and the Merchants' Association. It always happens. Somebody gets a lightbulb in their head and the need to expound on the perceived lightbulb overpowers the normally responsive impulse control. I've taught my kids over their lifetimes that simply because you can do a thing, it is not sufficient to choosing to actually do that thing.

I took a First Amendment course at Portland State years ago--think the professor's name was David Smith--and, it being summer and an upper division class on ConLaw, the class size was comfortably small. At the time I was living off Taylor's Ferry Road, not far from the law school library at Lewis and Clark. So, mornings it was off to PSU, afternoons spent at the Northwestern law library. Studying law is a precise endeavour; one wants to find citations that are brief, concise, germane and robust. Good judges write good opinions. Good judges write good opinions badly. Not all good judges write well. If you want to determine the thought processes that went into a judge's decision there's going to be a lot of time looking at footnotes. And then reading other decisions. The concise mind looks for the kernels, the grit, of decisions and begins to respond to questions of law in much the same way the carpenter goes about his business of building a home. And the first question is, are you building on sand or rock?

Irritatingly, one member of our happy little band of students was a City of Portland employee who was taking hours in order to fill some check mark box on his resume. While we were debating the merits of restrictions on speech, he would chime in with his opinion of how the world should be. If he were king. Or, whatever. It was always a gob smacking moment, when all thought would disappear from the room. Eyes would lower to the papers on the table before you. I would write brief notes to remind myself of where the conversation had been before this far from rare hijacking. Alternatively, I was impressed with Professor Smith's patience with this over-bearing gentleman.

But the thing that sticks with me, was the man's choice of words. Why use an ordinary, simple word when one can create the unordinary? Comment became commentation. Word constructions never before heard were uttered. The object of this impressification? I guess his fellows sitting around him. Sadly, no one ever uttered a correction. Which is one of the reasons you won't find me at the next meeting of the Rotary or the Merchants' Association. No one ever utters the corrections that are needed. It is impolitic. It is impolite. Who died and made you logic and grammar Hitler?

The unfortunate truth is, because we don't raise objection to the stupid that confronts us every day, we allow those who offer nothing more than Bob Loblaw when we speak are never confronted with the harsh realities of speaking, or writing, without concision, precision and relevance. To do so would be rude. But, I think, it is probably more correct to say, to do so would be to draw a line in the sand. You need to declare yourself as being on the side of clear, rational thinking, and an enemy of all the fuzzyheadednesses that populate the pages of your local newspaper, or the screen of your favourite talking head. So, with no further ado, I offer you one of the strangest dialogues I've ever come across. Two people, with rising inflection, talking nonsense to one another. With increasing passion.

The standard of debate for a new America.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Brilliant Memo On Federal Budget

2011-01-17T11:44:00.000-08:00

Ever want to know the kind of briefing an incoming member of Congress gets?

You can read it here. Read it. Gain some insight.

Paul Krugman Is An Idiot

2011-01-17T10:10:00.000-08:00

Doing a little high-tone cruising on the teh interwebs, I came across this sentence at The Corner, "The case for a transnational currency is, as we’ve already seen, obvious: it makes doing business easier."

This is a Nobel laureate, fer crisakes. Do you have any idea of the incredible body of work one needs to produce to be considered for a Nobel Prize?

Okay. I'm a cranky old guy. I happen to think that both the Fed and Treasury are attempting to create rules and regulations for banks that essentially eliminate an autonomous nation from controlling its own currency. The regulations being proposed will increase the costs of banking, and rather than unilaterally imposing these external costs to our domestic banks, we have kindred hearts in Europe wishing to impose "regulations" that again, seek to "protect us" although it seems the only ones being protected are those imposing higher costs on banking institutions to meet the needs of their international masters. ( There is no "scare" quote. This isn't a lame conspiracy theory. These guys are quite publicly working toward international regulation of large banks, under the guise of regulating banks deemed too large to fail, therefore avoiding systemic risk:

"Is the financial crisis over and could it happen all over again? National supervision and regulatory systems were inadequate to manage transnational institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, Citibank, AIG, Dexia Bank among others. Yet, national authorities have to pay more attention to risk taking, limit leveraging, tighten capital regulation, and attend to liquidity supervision as well as supervision of complex cross-border financial institutions, and improve transparency of transactions. Very little has changed in terms of regulating the US and European financial system. "

...

"Systemic risk can be minimized by limiting regulatory arbitrage but imposing same regulations on all financial firms that take deposits or borrow in the market place."

If one nation's banks are able to operate in a more efficient manner, those banks will have an unfair advantage, and deposits will move to those banks. It's a regulator's nightmare. If money can flee, how are they going to gain control over those pesky banks? Don't you realize, that if money flees due to structural externalities that impose higher costs, those banks won't attract depositors? How to avoid moral hazard? Impose equally inefficient costs across borders. It's magic!

So, I see where the Important People are trying to take us, and our economy. By making all banks unattractive, no single bank will be less attractive than any other. Social justice has made it to the big time.

But where I choked when I first read the Krugman line was just the simple naivete of the thing. There already exists a trans-national currency. You see it everywhere, from Moscow to Iran. It is the U.S. Dollar. Accepted everywhere. Preferred almost everywhere, too. Taking a trip to Venezuela anytime soon? Take bucks. You won't want to use the social justice currency issued by the Venezuelan government. And you'll love the exchange rate. Remember, ask your taxi driver first!

For those of you who didn't choke over their coffee when reading Krugman's line, here's one of those fundamentals of the economic set (which I had believed was Professor Krugman's line): Gresham's Law.

Have a nice day.

For Gordon

2011-01-17T08:38:00.000-08:00

He asked "what next?" I offer this.

New Oregon State Forester

2011-01-11T11:56:00.000-08:00

Here are the three finalists:

Jim Paul, an assistant director with the Oregon Department of State Lands; Paul Bell, associate state forester with the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) and chief of the agency's Fire Protection Division; and, Doug Decker, acting chief of ODF's State Forests Division.

Paul has been in his position with State Lands since May of 2010. He previously held a variety of positions at ODF, where he had worked since 1997, most recently as chief of the Private Forests Division.

Bell held seasonal positions with ODF from 1977 through 1982, and returned to the agency in 1990, holding positions including Cascade district forester, based in Lyons, and private forests program director.

Decker began with ODF in 1987 as the agency's assistant director of public affairs, and has held positions including public affairs director and State Forests Division project leader.

I know who my bet is on. The emphasis will be on public relations, not cutting trees. Business as usual.

Go Ducks!

2011-01-10T15:15:00.001-08:00

I mean this is the nicest way, of course.

Songs For America; Parts Three and Four

2011-01-06T20:46:00.001-08:00

Ray Charles. They say he was colour blind.

1972.

Later.

God Bless.

We cannot be beaten. We can either choose to win or quit.

How To Lose Your Insurance Benefits

2011-01-06T18:44:00.000-08:00

One of my buds has offered, until recently, full family health insurance coverage to all of his employees.

It was part of his contract to his employees.

This willingness to protect his employees and their families was a sacred trust to my bud. The story of the rock and the hard place is instructive.

When you have 70 employees, you're not a huge business. You're probably in the twenty to an hundred million dollars in annual sales. For most of us, a million dollars is a lot of money. And, there are a lot of businesses in Clatsop County that earn more than a million dollars a month in revenue. Most of these businesses don't proclaim their revenue flows. And a lot of people would be amazed at the folks who are turning those kinds of numbers. So, think about owning a business that is earning revenues of a million dollars a month. I know, it sounds huge. And wildly successful.

Thirty years ago, I worked for a company in Astoria that grossed more than $500-thousand dollars a month. That's thirty years ago. Back when a dollar was worth, well, let's just say, it only took $208. 10 to buy an ounce of gold. So, if gold is selling for $14-hundred dollars a month today, our monthly revenue stream would be running around 3.5 million dollars a month. Or 42-million dollars a year. That's a lot of cash. And that is a business in Astoria.

What has happened in the last 30 years?

It's gotten a lot more difficult to produce revenue streams that were available 30 years ago. Taxes, regulations; Astoria, and Clatsop County, even Oregon, have become places where change is ridiculed, admonished, resisted and decried. Most of us in the county heat our homes with natural gas, yet building a new natural gas line is viewed as a calamitous event. Fuckin' hippies.

While the hippies worry about natural gas, the channel of the Columbia River has been deepened up to Portland. The problem is, Portland has no transportation access since the policies of the State of Oregon have been to constrict the flow of traffic through Portland, rather than to improve the traffic flow. Just take a look at the ridiculous debate going on over the new I-5 bridge between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. The Bridge of the Clods. (Unwanted pop-up alert.)

Let's get back to my bud. And health insurance. And the arguments going on now in Congress.

I watched Antonee Weener tonight on television. What a weener.

This is a guy that has never had a job, never made a buck, never signed a paycheck. (See his bio here.) Whenever I hear a guy talk about stuff he of which he has no clue, I dismiss him. Antonee Weener is the most dismissable guy I've ever come across. He is all boot and no cattle. For him to offer advice to guys like my bud is laughable. Just as most of what you hear from the electronic media you come across, or worse, the laughable expressions you read in your local newspapers. These are people entirely bereft of world experience. None. Tabula rasa. But they will lecture you. They are part of the intelligensia. They are smarter than you. (And not afraid to share their views, since they have been told they are sciency and stuff.)

So my bud had full, family coverage for all of his employees. And what he found was, that his employees were using their emergency room benefits whenever one of his employees--or their kin--were coming down with an ague. Why?

Because their insurance policy would pay 100 percent of an emergency room visit, but regular doctor hours required a co-pay. They were driving the costs of the insurance company through the roof, in order to avoid a twenty dollar co-pay. The economics of a doctor's private practise are completely different from the economics of an hospital's emergency room. When I cut my hand off, I go to the emergency room. When I have a cold, I wait two weeks. But my bud's employees were taking their sick children to the emergency room for illness care in order to avoid a twenty dollar co-pay.

For Congressman Weiner to attempt to put forth the idea that ObamaCare would reduce health care costs for those covered under the plan is specious at best. Why wait for an office visit when a visit to an emergency room carries the same net cost, and no negatives? And why worry about the costs of ObamaCare when the costs are going to be absorbed by your employer?

I've given you a couple of example of businesses that I've either been associated with or know of. And their revenue figures are huge! Millions of dollars! I must be a rich guy! The corporations I've worked for have exploited their workers! Social justice! We must make The Man pay! It's one of our rights!

Posh.

Here's the problem with guys like Weiner. They have no clue what the costs of inventory are, what the opportunity costs of inventory are, what competition means, how to organize a business, or, what margins are. Weiner, like most Democrats, have never had to write a paycheck. They just look at the millions of dollars out there and figure that lying to a vast majority of their constituencies means that they will be elected and re-elected. Dumb, and dumberer. The problem we, in the productive sector of our society, face is this complete inability to see that going into business requires a certain faith; in our product, our service, our abitilities and our willingness to spend money on ideas that may or may not produce a profit. This is a totally different model than the one adopted by governments. Governments may compel. Governments may punish. Governments may harrass. Governments may destroy.

But governments will never create.

Governments, whether they are local, state or national, can claim some creativity. The best example I can think of is NASA; reflective tape, shoes that don't have shoelaces, robotic arms. The F-22.

Other than these examples, I don't know of any thing else of value (TVA, sure, Bonneville...etc.) that has been "created" by government that is worth having. Green Technology? Boggling. The costs have been so mired in subsidies that there is no rational yard-stick with which to measure the billions of dollars wasted on this nice sounding thingy. Rational decision-making has been replaced by a meme of science. Like, if we don't, you know, do something, then, well like, you know, we won't have the science and investment, you know, like to have something sustainable.

My bud had to end his commitment to his employees. The costs of providing his employees was outpaced by the stupidity of his employees. Their "self-interest."

Thinking that ObamaCare will reduce costs is a fool's errand. The CBO numbers do everything but consider the impulse of average, avaricious, idiotic people, who have been told that by using their access to ObamaCare, our nation will save billions of dollars. Emergency room visits will skyrocket. I know it. You know it, too. Baby sick? Emergency room. Tooth-ache? Emergency room. Lost a hand? Emergency room. Private practise doctors?

When you think about all the bubbles in the economy in the last thirty years, and you look at the antecedent legislation that created those bubbles, is it wise to rely upon the competence of someone like Antonee Weener? A guy whose whole world has circled around the flush of congressional competence?

I do have a suggestion. If your company still provides your employees with medical insurance benefits, take the time to talk to an insurance advisor with medical insurance benefits experience. Chances are, he or she will advise you in ways that may not benefit them. You may find that your best choice is to delete your employees' medical insurance benefits. And rely upon ObamaCare.

Here's the last bit of this post. Fifty-five employees. Each making 35 to 55 thousand dollars a year. Average wage expense? About 2 and a half million dollars. Against sales of ? And, a margin of mark-up of 3 to 5 percent? It's becoming hard to imagine why anyone would want to invest in a business in this country, let alone our state, and particularly, this county. Return on investment is being totally ignored by our "elite" political class. Antonee Weener is just one of the more egregious examples of this dedication to stupidtude. In Oregon, we have our own models.

Too numerous to mention. (But, we can start with Portland's mayor and end with our local state representative. And, state senator. But I'm being gratuitous. We all know their number one concern is the elderly, the poor, the kids and education.)

Listening to the Democrat Colloquy

2011-01-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Democrats. Their brothers in socialism in Europe--advanced countries these--have "a better" health care system than ours. I'm listening to Representatives Frank Pallone and John Garamendi (on C-Span) explain how socialism promotes job growth.

This is a chart of bond spreads in Europe. From Calculated Risk.

"Clearly investors are pricing in a haircut."

And Democrats decry efforts to put our country back on a sound financial footing. "But we're promising you everything!" Can't pay for it, 'cause promising is cheap. (Reminder, send note to new Oregon governor.)

Fuelled By Unbalanced Media Reporting

2011-01-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

This, according to the British Medical Journal.

You've probably heard the hype about vaccinations creating developmental problems in children. There's even a "movement" out there of "concerned mothers" who are holding their children's health hostage by failing to innoculate their children. Why?

Because of fraudulent "scientific research."

Will you read about this in the Oregonian or the Daily Astorian?

Prolly not. Imagine having to tell your base that another Moonbatty idea is just a moonbatty idea. That's not what polite people do. It's up to us rightwing cranks to point it out.

Now, about that Al Gore thing...

Allow Me to Self Insure

2011-01-05T20:45:00.001-08:00

Have you ever borrowed money?

From a commercial lender. You go in, you give them your financials, they check your Beacon Score, and you either get your loan, or you don't. Pretty cut and dried.

Let's just put it this way; if you need the money, you won't get a loan.

Financial regulation has increased the cost of lending money. Banks won't give you the type of return on your investment that they have historically, since the cost of money to banks through the Fed are at historical lows. Why would a bank take a risky loan, when they can make money on the spread from fed rates and prime borrowers?

Insurance companies view the market in much the same way. Why insure against risk with a pool of high risk applicants? Let somebody else to it. The cash is in higher returns, not lower returns.

Congress needs to provide an alternative to the current system. The current system rewards large companies who provide their employees with health insurance. Small companies can't afford to pay the kind of insurance premiums that large companies can pay. Health insurance costs are too high for small companies to adopt. But individuals are penalized when they attempt to pay for insurance themselves.

What I suggest is simple. Allow individuals to place money into accounts that are defined as health savings accounts. Any dollar put into such an account would be pre-tax. That is, the amount placed into a health savings account would reduce the taxpayer's annual income. Put in $500 bucks? That five hundred goes in, tax-free. Put in $10,000 bucks? That amount goes on to line 44 of your 1090, and you don't pay tax on that amount of income.

After five years of saving $10,000 bucks a year, you've got a nice little "health nest egg" of $50-thousand plus. Since, for that much cash, banks would be willing to pay interest on your balance. Imagine what slathering would occur if you were an insurance company exec. If you had 50-k of your own cash in the game,what would be the actuarial cost of providing you with "secondary" insurance? Most of the use of your health account would be for small expenses; whether they were annual check-ups, dental procedures, or the occasional bump in the road. You don't access your "insurance" until the funds in your account are depleted.

What would be the annual cost of health insurance, if each of us had $50-thousand in the bank for medical costs?

The additional feature of such an account would be the effect of having such an account during a downturn in the business cycle. If I had an account with fifty to an hundred thousand dollars, and the business cycle was putting business into the tank, I could make a withdrawal against my health savings account, with the penalty of paying the taxes against such withdrawals. Revenue to the government would actually go up as a result. And I would have the cash to continue my business operations; I wouldn't have to fire people, reduce my inventories, or miss payments. it would be my choice, my decision.

I know that politicians think they are smarter than me. They know it. I've heard it. But simple solutions to the health care problem, and how to deal with the "greedy" insurance companies exist. Unfortunately, the system as it is creates a lot of discord. We could end the discord. But why would lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of dollars if we actually fixed the system? ( And how much of those hundreds of millions end up in politicians' pockets?)

Fixing it is easy.

Letting markets work is easy.

You simply have to have faith in people and their own common sense. I believe in your common sense. I'd make a terrible politician.

The New "N" Word

2011-01-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

There's a chance that we'll find ourselves again facing the "N" word. The House has the chance to apply a "Nuclear Option" reminiscent of the nuclear option advanced in the face of a Senate minority that obstructed the majority in the Senate from confirming judicial appointments during the Bush Administration (43).

The last Congress has put us into a place where the legal limits or our nation's debt must be increased to meet the debt requirements of those congressional actions. The debt ceiling must be increased, or the Nation won't be able to meet its commitments.

I'm going to offer you a simple statement; you can't s(*t money. It has to come from somewhere. For years--decades--we've lived in a world where there will always be enough money. My mom and dad don't understand where this type of thinking came from. They lived during the Great Depression. There is an end to money. When there is no more, there simply is no more. For decades, since the Johnson Administration, there's been a belief that we can simply tax the rich in order to pay for the choices our congresses have made. It took Ronald Reagan to fix that mis-belief. And yes, he drove our economy against the wall with deficit spending. Until the foot was taken off the accelerator of increasing debt.

If Congress fails to increase the debt ceiling, there will be chaos. Uncharted territory. You and I will be okay, since our currency will still be operational. The costs of bread, electricity, most of the things that you and I need for our day-to-day, won't change as a result. What will change is our ability to shift our debts to foreign investors. The gravy train will have arrived at the station. There will be no more free rides. We'll become a cash basis economy.

Living with fiat currency, you expect sound fiscal and sound monetary policies. The last four years--since the Democrats gained control of the House and Senate--have allowed us to experience the most profligate expenditures in the history of our nation. Unparalleled. Simply, never before have our expenditures outstripped our economy's growth, or our revenue stream based upon taxation. Ever.

The Democrats have put us in a place we've never been before. We've watched as children have taken to the streets in France and Greece, complaining about tuition fees. We've watched as union workers in France, Germany and England have refused to pick up garbage. Or mine for coal. Or work.

We're at our crisis moment now. Do we want to be more like England? France? Germany? Greece? Spain? Portugal?

Hell no.

We're Americans. Let's deal with this today.

Want an extension on debt ceilings? Agree to a repeal of Obamacare. Simple. Do the right thing, and we'll do the right thing. Oh, and by the way, the economy will be fixed by year's end. All except the housing thing, just because the way we're dealing with our housing problem right now is extending the problem, on attenuating the problem. Funny. You'd think "policy makers" would understand the effects of their policies. (But they can't do the math. What were you thinking?)

The new Nuclear Option.

I hope they do it.

A Song For Americans; Part Three

2011-01-05T18:56:00.000-08:00

The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them. (Thomas Jefferson.)

The Left has a problem. In order to promulgate their agenda, they need to minimize the Roussellian and Newtonian ideas of Origin. The promotion of an agenda that attempts to minimize the human from the process of the human race is pretty big stuff. At this juncture, they've been successful in a lot of ways. We end up questioning some pretty basic stuff. Just look at the Global Warming thingy. There's an important post over at Wm. Briggs. Read it. If you don't understand it, mention it in the comments here. Yeah, it's that important. You don't want to walk away from this post without understanding Wm's post.

It really doesn't matter to me how convoluted or obscure your arguments for Global Warming may be. Really. It doesn't. No one with a background in statistical analysis, whether physicist or mathematician would accept most of what has been advanced as "proving" Man Made Global Warming. They couldn't. Just to start, how are the endogenous variables determined? You have a clue? I do. Randomly, at best. One of the advantages of grad school is learning that there are "data miners" out there who do their best to advance based on regressions that are fit to theses post hoc. It's like taking money for sex, wearing lipstick and high heels, but refusing to call yourself a whore. This is the major body of science today. It's especially silly when you view a lot of the work in the social sciences. Sociology majors looking for "significance." Really. It's both boring and obnoxious. My favs are MSW's. Absolutely no clue.

Dr. Johnson refuted a lot of this years ago. And the essence of Dr. Johnson's refutation is critical for each and every one of us. If you sniff bullshit, chances are there are bovines nearby. (Or were.) Educators, specialists, politicians, all expert bullshit dispensers. If there were a craft, we'd have to applaud the craftsmen.

But I have noticed one dominant trait amongst all these bullshitters. What you and I would call a "learning disability." These guys--not stupid--found out years ago that they have no ability to read. Literature, texts, all these are lost on these guys. One of my favourite tests is to simply ask, "what are you reading now?" And watching blank looks.

I don't have a problem with the fact that people are different. I don't mind that people I know, work with and for have a simple problem; they think differently than I do. Most of education up until the 1990's was based on a simple model. It required reading, writing and arithmetic. That model has been displaced by the current model (0ne that requires self-esteem) since actually teaching reading, writing and arithmetic required teachers who were capable of performing the tasks of reading, writing and arithmetic, demonstrated by a mastery of these crafts, themselves.

The transition from merit based education--for both educators and their studentry--to a system of socially defined outcomes, such as self-esteem, were the result of unionism in education during the 1960's. Once unionized, the education industry became dominated by employees who were more concerned with benefits and pay than performance. For years, educators cried, our education system was unable to attract the best and brightest due to poor wages and small budgets. Which was a lie. People who enjoy teaching will do it at the drop of a hat. It's in our blood. Buy me a beer. There. Better.

Now we have the Union/Government complex to defeat. Those who have the power to reform education are hostage to the unions that pay for their political campaigns. "Beware the Military/Industrial Complex!" Repeated daily in our public schools. I don't know if you've noticed, but the "military/industrial complex" isn't really on our radar screen today. What is, is the attempt to change our attitudes towards ourselves. The split is between those who view themselves competent to run their own lives, with those who view themselves indispensable in running our lives for us. Hence the need to run down religious beliefs.

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them."

We are people. With all our failings, our weaknesses, our sin, we are perfect. We cannot abjure that which composes us. Amongst our strengths, our weaknesses, our loves and our petty hatreds, we are human. We are perfect. Amongst the angels. (See Paradise Lost.)

We always forget the battle that occurred after our Creation. The strength of humanity was lost on Lucifer. We are weak, stupid, dumb, inartful, ridiculous, vane, cowardly, impecunious, greedy, sinful, jealous, adulterous, murderous, proud and perfect. There is a certain Comedy Français about life that most of us never get. What gets us by is another curious trait of humanity; curiosity. And, hope.

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them."

This is what we call priors on the Right. You cannot separate from me the gifts that were given to me because of what I am. A Human. I can no more accept your agenda to become greatfully stupid, than I can escape the fact that I will be weak, stupid, dumb, inartful, ridiculous, vane, cowardly, impecunious, greedy, sinful, jealous, adulterous, murderous, proud and perfect.

What you view as a bug, I view as a feature. I am human. I think. I know. And no amount of attempt at telling me what to do or what to think will change this. So, why don't you give up, huh?

Miserably Inept

2011-01-05T09:50:00.000-08:00

The State of Oregon is spending thousands of dollars to advertise a program which is so inept, it boggles.

You can find a link to the state's website here.

"Will homeowners who receive Mortgage Payment Assistance have to pay it back?

"It depends, but it is unlikely. Mortgage Payment Assistance payments will be five-year, forgivable, interest free, non-recourse loans. OHSI will defer all payments and forgive 20 percent of the balance each year."

What is the motivation behind the program? It's "Obama Money." It comes from Treasury. Treasury submits a chit to the state, and voila! money appears. BTW--you're probably eligible. And the cool thing is, once your application is accepted, the outcome is determined by lottery!

So, if you'd like five years of living large, make sure you apply.

Will this impact the need for the market of housing to settle? Not really. Haircuts are being delivered daily. This is not the housing market you were looking for if you need to sell. Here's an hilarious article on condominiums in Washington state.

"In addition to the more than 400 unsold units, he said, more than 100 units remain on the market at Washington Square, the towers' closest high-rise competitor in downtown Bellevue."

Okay. For the five-thousand Oregonians who win the mortgage lottery, it's gonna be cool. Moral hazard? Not for thee!

But will it impact prices in the housing market. Prolly not. Which is a moderate statement compared to my closely held belief that it won't help a wit. But don't take my word for it. Here's Mort Zuckerman; “That’s what’s going to put downward pressure on residential prices,” Zuckerman added, “And in my judgment, that’s going to continue for several years.”

So, free mortgages for five years, and then you're still underwater. What then? If you can't make the payment today, why would you think that you'd be able to make a payment in five years? I mean, you're not going to be saving any money. If you could, you'd be making your mortgage payments today, right? So, in five years, another five thousand homes will be going through foreclosure, just as the market approaches some level of clearing.

Market Clearing Price

View more presentations from matt.

Millions down the drain. Another price shock in five years. Adding to grief and misery.

Markets want to clear. Leftists think they are more powerful than markets. Not true. But who cares. "We're doing good." That's all.

A Song For Americans, Part Two

2011-01-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

The server really balks with this at the start...so let it load while you pause the audio.

Then turn it up, have a cup of coffee and a smoke, and be proud that you are an American.

A Song For Americans

2011-01-03T22:27:00.000-08:00

Don't watch the video. Do something else. Let the music run in the background for awhile.

Enjoy.

You're an American.

God Bless, and Happy New Year!

Cannon Beach Nuttery

2010-12-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

Should be a name for a retail shop.

Instead, it's one of those politically correct issues that makes absolutely no sense. Cannon Beach Resolution 11-02 is being offered to the Cannon Beach City Council when its January 4th meeting convenes. What does it do? It offers support to the Oregon Legislature in passing legislation which "bans single-use plastic and paper check-out bags."

Whether I go into the wine shop, or the grocery store, the last thing on my mind is how to negotiate my purchases out the door. The practical matter is, when you buy stuff, you typically need some contrivance to help you negotiate that trip, that allows for a certain degree of central bundling. I think this was the motive force behind the creation of the shopping bag.

Common sense would dictate that governments not try to substitute dumb thinking for common sense. But, I guess that degree of common sense would seem not just redundant to people with important agendas and ideas, but unnecessary. Plastic and paper bags are just so wrong on so many levels; litter, destruction of ancient forests, death-traps for wildlife. Oh, and Global Warming and unsustainable consumption. Silly people, with silly ideas that have been elevated to Profound Caring.

A Brief Christmas Post

2010-12-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

Go ahead and click on the music, and I'll make this brief; Merry Christmas!

Later today I take my prime rib and begin the process. Tomorrow morning, the rolls will start rising while the final motions of getting ready for the arrival of Christmas grind to a halt. And then? It's Christmas.

Lots of fellers have made an impact on what you've read here this year, and thanks to all of you who have contributed, from Anonymous, to Max, T.D., graphics from Ignatowski at Endangered Owl, LT, Inno, BB and others, thanks. Especial thanks to Max for cleaning up my video embeds.

I'll leave you with this thought, from a dry academic:

"We value authenticity. We want to be loved but that is not enough. We want to be loved for what we truly are, not what someone imagines us to be. We want love and respect to be earned. We value it so much that we imagine the love of others to be earned even when we don’t deserve it."

As we move toward Christmas Day, it is time to remember that Christmas is a simple story. It's a story that begins with God's love for Abraham, and ends with John 3:16. The story of the Life of Christ is worth knowing about, studying and understanding.

Authenticity. Rigour. Robustness.

Merry Christmas!

How Being Special Is Coming Out of Your Wallet

2010-12-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

Oregon Catalyst re-visits a post I made last year.

Whatever macro-economic effects that were "supposed" to accrue to our benefit were dodged by our own Immaculate Conception; the Oregon State Legislature.

They are all virgins in Salem. Never a one had a job, made money, or signed checks. But, to their credit, they all believe in the same thing. Change!™

So, here we are looking at the New Right, talking about things that should have had a hearing years ago.

What is even sillier? The folks who passed it, Democrats all, still don't understand how their plans went aglee.

Gotta love the wave. The wave never thinks. The wave just...

Merry.

In Response to Mike

2010-12-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

(In response to Mike. In comments.)

Well, duh.

More importantly, if you haven't yet, get her latest book "Sarah Palin: Faith, Family, Country." There are things in my life I call "priors." These are the fundamental beliefs that I hold, and believe that most people will discover over time, that lend credence to the idea that the United States of America is the most gifted nation in the world.

We begin the establishment of our country with the recognition of Natural Law. What is true is true because it is true. That there is, within the process of reduction, no further reduction possible. I think, therefore, I am. I cannot be unfaithful to myself. To do so would be madness. If I see a thing, no a thing to be real, and someone suggests that what I see, feel, experience, know is false, I must refute it. Thusly.

People don't need perfection. They are perfect. Yes, a certain segment of the universe of "people" make mistakes, some of them serially. (We usually call these serial abusers "criminals.") Government, "elitist" types view ordinary people as rather pedantic, if they regard them at all. Elitism is a curse of the educated class. Elitism teaches our children that if they adopt certain views, then they will be successful. This as counterpoint to the view that if you are faithful to yourself, and to your beliefs and ideas, you will be happy.

When I look at the founding documents of our Nation, I don't stop at Madison. The year of the Renaissance wasn't 1776. But, the Renaissance was the end of the tyranny of force. The lessons learned from the Renaissance Movement were spurious attempts to defend a secret of humanity; those who attempt to tell you that they deserve your feasance are probably the worst malefactors against the human condition.

There is a reason why I've been successful in my endeavours while others, engaged in the same industry, have failed. The attributes with which I comport myself are simple: be honest; be as intellectually rigorous as is necessary to bring to my clients a robust solution to their problems; to agree that I am not the expert in any situation, since it isn't my money I end up dealing with.

I'm a consultant. With a degree and everything. Year of experience. My oldest son has been told, when I lose my grip on my gifts, well...it's okay to think about pulling the plug. Serially. I don't want to be a doddering relic. It would be time to retire.

That point is far, from my way of thinking, away. But my understanding of human beings hasn't changed in 46 years. I was ten years old when I recognized that there is a serious imbalance between popular opinion and thoughtful inquiry. (My fault lies in my inability to understand that other ten year-olds wouldn't have the same world view that I held. I've learned a lot about projection since then. Scroll down to "Freudian Projection.)

I know that there are among you who repudiate Freud, so, I offer you a Jungian interpretation.

Wanted to be a hero, found out you were a goat?

There. Even Joe Campbell would be pleased with the realization that word don't always convey the meaning we wish others to hear or interpret correctly. All that I can tell you is, if you project upon others your interpretation of what they should think, should feel, should value, should understand, then you're an idiot.

Imagine, tomorrow, waking up and finding that you're a goat, or a fish, or a cockroach. Interpretations of how others would find you, relate to you, accept you, even recognize your existence might be laden with expectations of how you expect to be found, related, etc. It wouldn't alter the fact that those who ran across you would find themselves, at the least, puzzled by your appearance. And for those we don't understand--apparently--we find ourselves guessing about how to deal with what is apparent. Our expectations aren't being met. It's frustrating. We get angry. And fearful.

I'm making grade-school spaghetti tonight. I made taco meat last night, and tonight I've mixed the excess taco meat with marinara. (What I hated most about "institutional" spaghetti wasn't the sauce, it was the noodles.) I have a certain expectation about the flavour, consistency and enjoyment I'm going to receive in fifteen to twenty minutes. If I don't hit that level of expectation, I'm going to be a little disappointed with myself.

My oldest sister believes in the Goddess Gaea. She views herself as an "White Witch." She and I don't talk. I call her on her birthday each year. I get electronic cards for seasonal events. The key is, she won't pick up her phone. She doesn't want to talk with me. What can one say about expectations? I, her only brother, represents to her a white/male/patriarchy that she has repudiated. As a Jungian analyst, she has a practise set up in Lake Oswego. She has repudiated the lessons of Freud as a necessary pre-cursor to her "Jungian Analysis." She believes that Capitalism is the tool of white male domination. It is the edifice of a Patriarchy. Her hatred of things that make sense is based upon a certain group-think that attempts to repudiate common sense in order to create an appreciation for a new set of values; values that contemplate a certain realization of the Feminine. Feminine, I ask, as opposed to what, human?

The "Feminine" is an occult branch of Jungian "psychology." If you have read C.G., you'd realise that he hadn't intended his works to become cultish. He was simply trying to help people understand, in a different way, the frustrations that occur under his teacher's tutelage, that of Freud. The best example of this, in my opinion, are the writings of Erich Fromm. Which ties back, almost directly, to Freud's views. Expectations of others beliefs, actions, heartfelt wishes are simply our own projections of what you or I believe to be the necessary outcomes of a certain train of thought. However well I express myself, I know that given to a general audience, most of what I say, believe or write will be missed. Most readers read for their own reasons. Most writers--such as I--write for our own reasons. I remember my favourite writing coach, Dr. Steve Curray saying, you write for our audience. Your success as a writer depends upon your recognition of your audience. And if your writing has wide appeal, you will be noted as a successful author.

I have no such vanity here. I write for myself, for you, and a select handful of others. Same with Sarah Palin. "America By Heart."

It's the book I'm reading now.

Sarah is writing about her priors. Those beliefs that she holds as central, critical, to her beliefs about you, me, and the guy who lives next door. Regardless if he is an angel or a crack-dealer. Because we start with the same, natural, origin, it is critical that we adopt an agenda--such as that adopted by our Founding Fathers--that reflects our understanding of our nature and origins. Who we are in a State of Nature. Without the oppression of the other. How would you be, and would expect others to be, without government?

Sarah's willingness to admit to the goodness of her fellow man is revealing to me. It is what I would expect from someone who has truly looked into, not only her own heart, but the heart of those she loves, to see the commonality of those she, you and I, live among. We will find ourselves let down by our expectations, from time-to-time. She admits this. I admit this. But she is unwilling to give up on how wonderful free men are. We care about each other. We are patient. We are industrious. We are human.

We are not perfect when it comes to meeting of exceeding the expectations of others, at all times. But I would assert to you, that the fault lies not in your imperfection, but in my expectation that you would choose to do that which I wish you would do, when I wish it.

That, my friend, is vanity. Tolerance, on the other hand, allows you to choose a path that I choose not to take. Tolerance allows me to question my own, closely held, beliefs. Tolerance allows me to ask questions that I feel must be asked. How much money do we need to spend on Green Technology before we ask the question, is there going to be a return on investment? How much money must we give people who choose not to work, before we begin to realise that these people choose not to work? How much can we cut budgets for art, before art disappears?

So, yes, Mike, I like her, too. She's hot.

Sarah versus Huck

2010-12-22T11:34:00.000-08:00

I've never been comfortable with Huckabee. Reason? I'm more a libertarian, he's more a social conservative. The No Labels Movement may chastise me for pointing this out, since labels don't serve any purpose other than to diminish the feeling of self-worth of the labeled. Labelling creates victims of the labelled class. When I feel the need to do good, I do it. When I don't, I don't. When asked to do good, there is a simple word that must be present in that request before I even consider the request. Can you guess what that one word might be?

So, Governor Mike Huckabee. Always willing to do the reasonable thing, and government is the tool of that reasonable thing. Just look at the kids in third grade! (I was the chubby cheeked kid in third grade. I mean, cheeks!) Both of my sons were "chubby" in grade school. Their mother was horrified. I told her to relax. I was 5'10" and 176 when I graduated from high school. When I graduated from college I was 6'00" and 184 pounds. The chubby was gone. How did that happen?

I don't know. And I don't know if I should have been part of a study on obesity. Which, again, begs a whole lot of questions. In a New York Daily News story, the writer refers to "studies" that show that less than half the kids are overweight, or obese. Which is pretty good, I think. But that's simply because I think of the Bell Curve and what percentage of the population lies under the first standard deviation. The Bell Curve would, under assumptions of normal distribution, tend to predict that two of three kids--or around there--would be included within the first standard deviation. That is, not so far from normal.

I've spent a lot of time with kids, coaching soccer, basketball, even chess, and the one thing I have noticed with kids, especially with the fatties, is that when they become adults it all makes sense. One of the hugest kids in my youngest's class turned out to be a great football player and trackster. Even ran the Fat Man Relays.

Earlier this year, my college roomie showed up and mocked me for my size. He bullied me. Ridiculed me. Then, after he left, I noticed something in the mirror as I walked down the hall that preceded me. It was my belly. So, I made the choice, and dropped forty pounds. I can take my shirt off when I'm working in the yard, again. (Still too white, but the previous image was unattractive,too. It was a personal step-up.) No longer Beached Whale. Liberated from my fattitude.

We must do something. We are always told so. If we don't do something, who will?

So, I have a problem with the ole Huckleberry.

I also have problems with Mitt. Massachusetts Health Care.

But there's a huge difference between Sarah and either of these guys. How do you learn what you are responsible for? Are you responsible for your choices, or not?

Huckabee had a stomach band. I mean, before the stomach band, this one one seriously large guy. Some people are cursed by their genes. You and I both know there are men and women out there who, try as they might, are not going to lose the weight you and I are able to lose. And nothing is worse than a fat man who isn't jolly. It's just ugly. One of my friends is close to 500 pounds. Hella cook. Enjoys his cooking and his eating. Do I worry for him? Yeah. He's like one stairclimb away from major infarction. I've talked with him about his weight, since I do care, and you can't help but notice. He's big and will always be. Just one of several examples of folks I know who are grossly obese.

Are there outliers then? Yes. One girl who was in my class from First Grade through high school was always a bit chubby. I met her one day on the bus as I was headed to PSU and she was headed to the Art Museum.

Beautiful? Man, oh man! What a change. From little porky-pie to goddess.

I don't buy all the "studies." What I do buy is the idea that you let people grow-up. And that, friends, is the difference between Sarah and Huck. Sarah thinks of you as adults. Huck? Not so much. Or, not so much that a little government in your life wouldn't be appreciated.

A Clever Find

2010-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Memento Moron.

Enjoy.

The Problem With Education Is Educators

2010-12-22T08:41:00.000-08:00

Teachers are real good at reinforcing self-worth. Step out of line--the approved OEA/NEA line--and you will find yourself being ridiculed for having different views than those that are approved. Disagree with the prevailing winds of political correctness? Well, sorry sonny, you've just engaged in bullying behavior. Educators are very good at instilling political correctness. Not so good at math and science, but is that really the goal of education?

Oregon State University CLA Dean Larry Rodgers, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. English:

“CLA takes its foundational teaching role very seriously. Every student in the university takes our classes. But if you take a more specific area like climate change, you find that while scientists have strong, data-based research validating disturbing planetary trends, the move to public action has been a tough sell. Why? I would say that we haven’t yet found a persuasive public narrative that translates solid science into policy and policy into action. How to achieve buy-in is where CLA needs to be a world-changer. We teach our students how to communicate, how to think deeply and ethically about tough issues, about the responsibilities of citizenship. I strongly believe that our ability to address an issue like climate change lies in how well we use these kinds of skills.”

No need to worry about precision. No need to question. Think deeply and ethically about tough issues. That's all. (The voice in my head was Ralph Henshaw's, "That's all, I didn't mean to kill 'im.")

The purpose of the State? To do good. To help us achieve the Vision!™ That we haven't established Ecotopia yet is a sign that we haven't addressed the issue of communication, not that the ideas implicit in Ecotopia are either impractical, or worse, juvenile. We need "buy-in."

How practical is that? Here are some announcements that have come across my desk recently:

Oregon Arts Commission Awards Opportunity Grants to Oregon Artists. $12,839.00.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is soliciting public comments on reporting protocols for facilities and businesses required to report their annual greenhouse gas emissions. DEQ is updating the reporting protocols to conform with recent amendments to Oregon’s greenhouse gas reporting rules and to conform with new federal reporting requirements. (Cost to government and to business? Left unsaid.)

At their monthly meeting, the Commissioners of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission voted unanimously in favor of beginning the rulemaking process in regard to an alcohol impact area in Downtown Portland. (No word why the State is dealing with a city issue. But I don't think this will be costless. No budget numbers were supplied.)

The Oregon Department of Transportation is seeking input from the public on 85 projects from around the state under consideration for funding through the Transportation Enhancement program. The Transportation Enhancement (TE) program provides federal funds for projects that strengthen the cultural, aesthetic and environmental value of the transportation system, such as bicycle facilities, historic preservation and archaeological research. Projects that have advanced to the public comment phase represent about $92 million.

The Oregon Environmental Justice Task Force has received a National Achievements in Environmental Justice Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for effectively implementing Oregon's environmental justice legislation and incorporating environmental justice considerations into state agency programs. (No mention about the increased costs to the private sector that led to "winning" such a prestigious award. Remember, we need to achieve buy-in.)

Oregon has moved up a notch, from sixth highest unemployment, to fifth. How to achieve buy-in. Oh, we'll just rely upon our schools. Merry Christmas!

A Note For Chas

2010-12-21T14:36:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, there are limits.

A post, over at Chas' Compilations, sparked the comment below.

When I attempted to post it as a comment there, Blogger got upset.

Had a conversation with a fella who wanted to replace the current, privately-held utility with a public utility.

I asked him what the difference would mean to either him or to me. He pointed out that he believed the PUD would be able to produce electricity more cheaply, since there wouldn't be a profit motive.

Okay. But where are you going to find the funds to replace or repair equipment that wears out, or build more generating capacity?

Easy. Sell bonds! (Everything is so easy!)

But who, I asked, would buy the bonds? And what rate of return would a bondholder need to have offered, in order to entice his investing in your bond, rather than some other instrument of investment? And, if you're an unprofitable enterprise, what is your ability to finance your debtor obligations? And who is responsible for making the decisions of the PUD, the Board? An executive director? And, how much do you pay the Board, Exec, and the other administrative and other personnel necessary to actually do the work needed to supply electricity to homes and businesses in your district? And aren't you simply trying to transfer all of that economic activity out of the private sector, in order to achieve a goal that might be praiseworthy--of sorts--but is actually just create liabilities for people who may not wish to have those liabilities placed on their backs? Why should I be responsible for your PUD? When, today, all I have to do is pay my utility bill, and I get electricity?

Social justice, was his answer. It isn't right that large corporations make profits on the backs of the little guy. I offered that it didn't seem right to burden the little guy with the liabilities of a public corporation, when that service is already being provided without that burden.

So, I guess the view on the Left is that a pubic corporation is okay, but a private corporation is bad. NPR? Public corporation. NBC? Private. Which one is good? And why? Does NPR issue bonds?

Well, the chickens are coming home to roost, and the states, in my opinion will not be able to use bankruptcy in order to avoid the oncoming financial disaster. So, who will be made to pay? The bondholders or the public employees? Which group is evil, which group is good?

Mark Steyn Wishes You Merry Christmas!

2010-12-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

Your welcome!

Net Neutrality: FCC Grabs For Power

2010-12-21T10:15:00.000-08:00

The vote was three to two, on party lines. Three Democrat commissioners voted to take powers not authorized by Congress, opposed by the two Republican commissioners who pointed out that the Federal Communications Commission has not been authorized by Congress to regulate the internet. It's called Net Neutrality.

Got enough hope and change yet?

You and I have been free to choose the level of service we have from a wide range of providers competing for our business. That will end under the FCC's plan. They will regulate the type of service you receive, something never needed before. And once they have their hands on the internet, they can begin to regulate content.

And who wouldn't want the FCC to tell you what is permissible?

UPDATE: From Reason TV.

This Is What Lightbulbs Look Like

2010-12-20T18:58:00.000-08:00

Why this pic?

It's easy.

This is 240 60 watt light bulbs. Soon, these will become contraband. When the "public" becomes aware of the contraband nature of lightbulbs, the price of these lightbulbs will go up.

You will not be able to purchase them, because the Congress of the United States of America has determined that in order to save the world, these bulbs will kill polar bears, raise the level of the oceans by thirty feet, and lend themselves toward the destruction of all that is important in a neo-post-apocalyptic world.

I figure I have about twenty years worth of light bulbs here. When you are struggling to read at night, I'll have warm and cozy lighting and a year's worth of books. Thankfully, I have UPS back-ups at each of my outlets, so even when the power is "blacked-out" I'll be able to read. And, I have several pairs of glasses, so even if I step on a pair, I'll still be able to read.

Maybe, neo-post-apocalyptic is the wrong word choice. Mebbe the right word choice is going Mormon on technology. I don't know. I never thought that Congress would be able to use the Constitution to outlaw the production of the miracle of light and electricity. When I was a kid, the fact that there were still large areas of the U.S. that didn't have electricity seemed an idea that couldn't be right. Until Kathy Cobb came back from time in Appalachia, and told us first-hand, that that was not only true, but seen, first-hand.

Appalachia is an odd thought. Fifty years ago, we were being asked to relieve the Appalachians from their backwardness. Now we're being told that becoming Appalachia in a fifty-year redux, is the goal of society. Talk about wheels within wheels. Oh, and Man Made Global Warming? It's now Man Made Global Cooling. Which does have a shorter cycle than electrifying Appalachia.

I know that there's a chance that the ban on incandescents will be repealed. But the Senate won't come under Republican control--if House Republicans can remain consistent with Tea Party priors--until 2012. During the next two years, if not repealed, the price of incandescents will be going through the roof. Even if the ban on incandescents is repealed, by the time the repeal is removed, the cost, through increasing inflation, still makes this a smart investment.

If you have a chance to lay-up some everyday provisions, why not do so? This isn't a bunker mentality, or, survivalist mentality. It's a common sense thought, what do you want, that has an unlimited shelf-life, that will increase in cost more quickly than your income? There are a lot of things that come to mind: clothing, such as socks and t-shirts; laundry detergent; sheets and linens; aluminum foil, plastic wrap and kitchen utensils. If you don't have a back-up coffee maker? Time to put one away.

The next project I have, and I have several right now, is pricing out an LNG generator. It is not the type of aquisition that I would have thought of a year or two ago. But, in Oregon, we do things differently. Right now, the State of Oregon is pressuring one of our two largest utilities to close an electrical generating plant by 2012. This plant produces 25 percent of Portland's electricity. Mebbe 20 percent of the state's total energy. This isn't new. I've posted before about the decision to close Trojan.

Keeping the cost of energy low is viewed by many--a majority?--of Oregonians as an evil.

The cost of such an idea will become apparent at a certain point. Just as the cost of California's ridiculous adherence to carbon trading will become apparent, at some point. The problem will be, finding one's self in a death spiral is a different experience that avoiding a death spiral. When one is in a death spiral the only outcomes are either death, or luck.

Anticipating behaviour that can produce a death spiral, and backing away from that behaviour, well that's different.

I only hope that Oregonians can appreciate the difference. And truly, do things differently here.

The Struggle for Fiscal Sanity: Can We Make Necessary Choices?

2010-12-20T11:06:00.000-08:00

Via The Corner.

This morning in my inbox was a note from the Oregon Arts Commission announcing grants of 110-thousand dollars for "Arts Build Communities."

"These grants reward and encourage the work, planning and innovative arts partnerships that were developed to improve lives in communities large and small across Oregon," said Jean Boyer Cowling, Chair of the Oregon Arts Commission who led the proposal review. "The most competitive and interesting projects responded directly to challenges facing Oregonians today."

Hey, I like art. My son's middle name is Art. I can read music, play the piano. Sing from time-to-time. MOMA? Hey, if you're in New York and can't spend some time at MOMA, you're missing one of the world's great treasures.

The problem is, the state is broke. We spending hundreds of millions of dollars we don't have. I've a clue I'd like to share; art won't go away simply because the government fails to pay for it. Art, from the mediocre to the great will persist. Art for art's sake. (Did you ever see those words in Latin? Used by a private corporation?)

The next session is going to be bloody. We have the votes in the House to block excess spending, but lack the votes to pass legislation because of a Democrat majority in the Senate. And, from his track record, I don't think we'll be able to count on the Governor-elect to provide the leadership the State needs to overcome this legislative impasse. Democrats get elected because they pander to any and every "group" out there. The Arts represents one community. There are lots of other "communities." Each with their own message of indispensibility. We simply can't live without them.

They are wrong.

New/Old Blogger

2010-12-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to B.B.

I'm an old guy. If you've followed B.B., you know his life. From culinary school, to parenthood, to not hittin his numbers, to divorce.

Merry X-n Chrstms.

But, B.B. is a mensch.

We, and there are several of us who have asked each other "how is he doing?" have finally found out. Stink is stink. Down is down. But God didn't make us to believe that's where we belong. He also didn't guarantee that we'd be rich.

Let me editorialize.

The only thing that God guaranteed us was, if we believe, we will be saved. Recognizing what it means to be saved is different for each of us. Even for those of us who aren't Christians. Being something other than Christian doesn't mean that one wouldn't have an understanding of God.

B.B. has been a mensch among Oregon bloggers. Welcome back, bud.

Learning the Game

2010-12-15T20:13:00.000-08:00

Republicans, nationwide, made a stunning recovery in the last election. Even here, in Oregon, we've been able to make a modest recovery, as house districts allowed for a tie in the lower house.

There are some things occurring in the national legislature that makes me give pause on the idea that values, other than the values of the Left, have been able to reassert themselves in order to balance the notion that we must tilt unerringly towards socialism.

Let's call it strong side offense.

Bodies of politicians call themselves either Republican or Democrat. But some players find themselves merely filling space. I call these guys idiots.

If you play, the key to playing is to make the defense react to motion. Republicans have motion. Democrats are playing defense. What to do?

On every pass, you have to send at least one player into the key. Whether you're playing low or high, sending a player through the key requires at least on player to pick the man up. If you don't pick him up? Two points.

It is time Republicans quit playing zone. It's time to play man. We have the numbers. We simply have to be committed to win.

If we're going to cut government spending, everything has to be on the table--yes, even defense spending (although I view defense as one of the best investments this country can make.)

Education? What would the priorities of the Secretary of Education be, if the budget was cut forty percent?

Interior? What would the priorities of the Secretary of the Interior be, if the budget was cut forty percent?

If the Department of Education was turned into rubble tomorrow morning, would one fewer child fail to meet the minimum standards of Math, English or Science? (Trick question.)

We spend billions on stuff that someone has a constituency for. None of it is necessary. But "smart" politicians have built their careers upon funding of stuff nobody ever questions. Republicans have one chance to change the culture. Not by endeavouring to compromise.

We must drive into the paint.

Great News!: Wyden Calls For More Debt!

2010-12-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

To find this in my morning in-box is just the kind of Monday morning treat that is hard to resist.

Our Senator can't figure out why we don't want to run deeper into debt. Four years ago, he had an ally in a Republican. Today, he can't find a Republican willing to put his name on such a bill. But, he has several fellow Democrats willing to support his run to increase our debt. Things change. A Republican can see the need for change. Democrats? Not so much.

I give you Senator Ron Wyden.

News Release . . .

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Jennifer Hoelzer
December 14, 2010 202-224-3789

Wyden Calls Congress on Failure to Renew Build America Bonds

BABs have created jobs and saved state and local governments millions – yet they are set to expire this year.

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) filed an amendment today to renew what has been called “one of the most successful programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Since becoming law more than $150 billion worth of Build America Bonds have been issued to finance public infrastructure in all 50 states. The taxable federal bonds have allowed state and local governments to save millions while putting Americans to work building and repairing bridges, roads and schools. Earlier this year, Oregon’s Treasurer said that Build America Bonds have saved the state over $58 million.

“Politics shouldn’t get in the way of renewing a program that works and Build America Bonds is a program that works,” said Wyden. “Before BAB’s were ever associated with the stimulus bill, they were a bipartisan idea to make municipal bonding more efficient. Since becoming law they have made it possible for state and local governments to get big-ticket infrastructure projects, which have proven to be job-creating machines, off the ground quickly. They have saved taxpayers millions of dollars in the process while putting Americans back to work. Regardless of how it became law, renewing such a program should be a no-brainer.”

Wyden’s amendment will extend Build America Bonds for one year and lower the subsidy slightly from 35 percent to 32 percent of the interest.

While Build America Bonds became law as part of (ARRA), the concept was originally proposed in 2006 by Wyden and former Senator Jim Talent (R-Mo) and then again in 2007 with several bipartisan cosponsors. Uniquely designed, BABs offer the issuer of the bond a percent of the interest federal subsidy in a market usually dominated by tax-exempt bonds. Build America Bonds are attractive to issuers because they provide the initial startup capital needed to get projects off the ground and lower the net borrowing costs for the project. Unlike municipal tax-exempt bonds, Build America Bonds are designed to appeal to a broad set of investors including pension funds that do not traditionally hold tax-exempt bonds.

The amendment currently has 7 cosponsors including Senators Mark Begich (D- Alaska), Benjamin Cardin (D- Md.), Debbie Stabenow (D- Mich.), Bob Menendez (D- NJ), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Chris Coons (D- Del.) and Maria Cantwell (D- Wash.).

###

The O-Ring Subsidy

2010-12-13T19:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to T.D. for a recent comment. Just so's you knows, I've picked up several good accounts this past six months. Unlike some people who feel that the only "real" added value that makes sense is manufacturing, my company, which is a purely "service" company, does help those value-adders who make or sell finished products. I would refer you to the "bible," which is Drucker's Management: Tasks and Responsibilities."

Having a certain uncertainty, hiring new employees is next to impossible. One doesn't want to grow too big, nor offer pay or benefits too large. Back in the 1970's, I remember a conversation I overheard between my mom and one of her co-workers, talking about the then current tax rates. It simply didn't make sense for someone making over 200-thousand dollars a year to try to earn more. As much as I would urge you to understand the marginal propensity to consume, I would urge you to understand the marginal propensity to produce.

One of the worst bosses I had actually would cut your commission if you earned over a certain amount. As the commission employee, the reality of this boss made me understand that if I had a down-turn in productivity, he would reward me with a higher commission rate and a bonus.

Taxes are the whip in the hand of our Congress. Unfortunately, few of our members of Congress have actually worked or had a job. They were, and are, the "popular" guys with the commonly held beliefs that are held by the cool kids. Things like diversity, tolerance, and social justice. I only take umbrage with the acquisition of one of those terms: tolerance.

Tolerance is an acceptance that your views may not either be right, may not be universal, or are perhaps, simply wrong. Tolerance is not a commitment to either ridicule or to a belittling of those beliefs that you don't accept. Tolerance requires one to step back and ask the question being asked in the argument that is proposed by those who may disagree with you. Is it right? Or, are you correct, is it wrong? Moving forward on the question being raised requires a certain degree of confidence. That is, when I come to a Stop Sign, do I question its octagonal shape, or the word "STOP"? Is it intolerant of me to expect that others, especially other drivers and pedestrians, understand the meaning of a Stop Sign with the clear certainty that I find in Stop Signs? Or, am I being merely intolerant?

That allows me to ask a simple question; what level of subsidy should we have for the o-ring industry?

Mebbe you know what an o-ring is. Mebbe you don't. That doesn't matter.

If you are curious, you might be able to find out that most of the technologies we use, everyday, exist because of the o-ring. And this is an important lesson for you to learn; the things we need, everyday, don't need subsidies. They are so important that we would pay the price to have them without need for a subsidy.

Can you come up with a list of things that you need? I mean, really need?

Whether its food, or clothes, heat, fuel or water, I gotta tell you, when it comes down to fan time, whatever it takes is what you're going to be willing to pay. Or, to take. (Fan time is an euphemism.)

Trying to create a political world that ignores the reality of the "fan time" moment is worrisome. We are on a path to create a certain European feel to our economy, with "free" health care, a "free" Green economy, an environment without pollution or cost, an economy that doesn't require one to exert any effort greater than being "creative," and a guarantee that any and all beliefs have the same validity as any other held belief. "You can't tell me I'm wrong!"

Well, of course I can. It is your choice to decide whether or not you are tolerant.

Tolerance is an acceptance that your views may not either be right, may not be universal, or are perhaps, simply wrong. Tolerance is not a commitment to either ridicule or to a belittling of those beliefs that you don't accept. Tolerance requires one to step back and ask the question being asked in the argument that is proposed by those who may disagree with you. Is it right? Or, are you correct, is it wrong?

Too many, among these Senator Grassley, improperly believe that tolerance is a sign of acceptance. To continue the ethanol subsidy is to incorporate into public law the kind of stupidity that makes all "O-Ring Subsidies" okay. It is the kind of thinking that has created, and is willing to create, the forces that allow for certain types of economic bubbles. That, under an Obama Presidency, would allow for further intrusion into the private sphere, public policy.

I just can't think of many examples where this process has ended up, in the long term, giving advantage to you and I.

Tax Atrocities

2010-12-09T12:21:00.000-08:00

Dialled back from Holocaust.

The words we choose to describe the events around us are important, I think in part because of the reflexion word choice has on the speaker/writer. When I think atrocity, I think about atrocious behaviour, or, behaviour that produces the atrocious. In this, what Oregon's Representative DeFazio had done in Congress today, elevates itself to the atrocious,

Oregon self-identifies as a place where the public trough is preferred, and private enterprises that persist in choosing to do business in our holy place must pay through the nose for their sad determination. No less important a figure than Phil Knight finds Oregon's political scene incomprehensible. "I can't figure those political people out."

So why be surprised to find out that DeFazio introduced the bill to reject the plan cobbled together by the President and Republicans?

The idea that people who earn money should think that it is their money is being tested on a short-schedule by our Democrat friends. They think that keeping current tax rates is a subsidy for "the rich." If you're a Democrat, you must think that "the rich" are bad people. Since "the rich" don't spend enough of their time making sure that people who choose not to work, choose not to contribute, choose not to take responsibility for their own life's challenges don't have to work, contribute or take responsibility, they must be forced to do what they choose not to do by a class we refer to as politicians.

Don't want to work? Politicians will make that okay. Don't want to contribute to what others around you are doing? Politicians are okay with that, too. Want to avoid the responsibilities of life, from raising your children, learning how to drive, or whether or not you can afford a monthly house payment? Just sit right back, and I'll tell you a tale; it's about politicians.

Is there not a thing in life that can't be made better without the involvement of a politician? I don't think you could find a single politician who wouldn't argue the point. It's what they do, even if they have to bankrupt us to prove it.

If You Can't Drive In Snow, Stay Home

2010-11-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

I don't know why people attempt driving in conditions that they haven't any degree of sense, common sense or experience. Or why they're surprised when they find themselves in a ditch when certain rules of physics have been ignored. Yes, I have found myself in a ditch. Once. It happens. But this?

Sarah Palin Tainted

2010-11-22T11:23:00.001-08:00

At least that's what I've read on several "conservative" or "Republican" websites today. If this represents the Governor, I wish more Governers were tainted.

Interesting View On California's Future

2010-11-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

Business Insider posted this video Tuesday.

You've got brakes, a steering wheel, and a clear view of what lies ahead. And yet the people we elect do nothing to change our financial course.

Who are the idiots in this piece?

Attempting Logical Consistency

2010-11-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

An amazing line from an Oregonian story about a proposed coal export terminal up the river; "The fact that it's being ignored is hugely problematic. For us to simultaneously oppose coal plants here and happily export that coal to China is inconsistent."

I agree. I oppose closing the Boardman plant, just as I opposed Governor K's decision to ax two new proposed coal-fired generating plants earlier. The problem with coal is that it is cheap and electricity rates would remain low. Low electricity rates would lead to increased investment in business investment. And the Ectopia that would be Oregon would face increasing pressure to stand-down. Productive, employed people tend to prefer productive employment. Sort of a gene marker.

We could have had a coal-export facility in Astoria, but the smart guys in charge didn't feel that was a good use for the port. It would have meant trains coming into town, pulling cars that were filled with coal. It would have meant improved rail service, and demand for more port access by companies that wanted to take advantage of Astoria's nearness to the Pacific Ocean, and hence, cheap transport of goods to ports like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Oh, and ever since they developed that "canal thingy" ports like New Orleans, Baltimore and New York.

The Eco-folks are just fine with things the way they are now. Portland has a port that can grow because the folks in charge have said that the Port of Portland is in a growth zone. Rational investment and growth along the lower Columbia is to be avoided, since that would give an unfair advantage to lower Columbia ports.

The fix is, as they say, in. Investments in things that produce goods, services, jobs, well, is just inconsistent with the belief set of the Eco-folks.

Oregon. We do things differently here.

Unfair And Unbalanced

2010-11-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

Fox is definately not like their brothers and sisters in the media. Newspapers, radio, television, where did you hear reporting on the massive number of waivers being given to private companies, so that they may avoid the financial hardships that are being imposed by ObamaCare?

If you'd like to see this list, you can find it here. It is not a link to some Right Wing Conspiracy webpage. It's the Health and Human Services website.

Who was it that said, "we must pass the bill to find out what's in it"?

Do the ends ever justify the means?

Repeal The 22nd Amendment

2010-11-10T18:52:00.000-08:00

1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

There is a lot of talk about our prospects, as Republicans, in 2o12. I offer you this; Bush/Palin.

I don't think that a Bush/Palin ticket could be beaten. Yes, I am aware that 43 made a lot of errors. I am aware that his changes to medical benefits were wrong. Yes, I admit that his reaction to the terrors of 2008 was wrong.

But, he's not a stupid man. He's a smart man. And after a couple of years out of office, I believe that he understands in ways you and I cannot, the Tea Party Movement.

Pundits are asking the question, who in 2012? Romney? That Southern guy? I hope you know that I believe that the best candidate we had in 2008 was Guiliani. He ran a campaign poorly. But if you haven't watched him, that's your fault.

You can fix that by going to Annenberg Media.

It should take you to the Annenberg Media "learner.org" site. The link is for a discussion on immigration law. If you get stuck at registration, go ahead. It's free and immediate. If you get stuck, the main page for this series of videos is here. Scroll down to “11.Immigration Reform” and click the “VoD” button. You will be asked to register. It’s free and fast.

The bad news is, GW will never again be President. The good news is, Bubba will not, either.

Do I think that GW made mistakes? Yes. Did he cost us control of the House and Senate? No. The House and Senate are responsible for their own institutions. The current debate over issues like ObamaCare, earmarks and committee assignments are interesting, as they are instructive. We, as Republicans, have the pen that will write history in our own hand. How we choose to write that history will be intereresting to say the least.

If I Want It I Will Pay For It v. If I Want It You Will Pay For It

2010-11-08T19:07:00.003-08:00

I took a trip a couple of weeks ago, and visited with family, my cousin especially, is the point of this post.

In 1984, I had the chance to go to work for my uncle. He knew about my background and training and wanted to have a more expert hand involved in the investments of his portfolio than his son, my cousin. No knock on my cuz.

My then wife nixed the project. Too much wheat. Not enough coast.

Marriage is about compromise. I later learned marriage is not about voluntarily waving the white flag at every turn. Enough about me.

When I visited recently, I couldn't help but notice that my cousin had a thirty-thousand dollar runabout in his shed. Okay. It was two-years old.

Yes, I wanted it. No, I didn't covet it. Don't be silly. I left the "corporate world" decades ago. I wanted to be independent. When 9/11 hit, it cost me a bundle...and the turn down in 2007 didn't help. Today I have more cash in the bank than at any other time in my current company's history. Why?

Choices.

You can choose a lot of things. At the top of the list of "national concerns" is the question of health care. I don't, and haven't had for years, medical insurance. Why? Because the State of Oregon has weighed in and decided that if a medical insurance provider wants to sell coverage for guys like me, they can't "discriminate" against other policy holders who may want to have insurance to cover their pregnancies, their mental health, even their sex-change operations. All I want is a chance to shelter some of my income in an Health Savings Account (HSA). Even then, the rules of HSA's work against the interests of people who wish to self-insure. Does the expression "crony capitalism" strike a note?

Sure.

Why else would companies like AARP support ObamaCare, and then turn around and screw their employees? What was the Obama line? "If you want to keep your current coverage, you will be able to"? You won't be able to afford it, but if you choose to keep it, you may. Screwage. Pure and simple. And, we haven't even got ourselves to the point of total adoption of ObamaCare. When that happens, you won't even begin to realize how badly you're screwed...if you're under the age of 55. Under 55, you don't normally have huge health issues. You don't want to get anybody pregnant. (Well, let's say, 38 to 55. A lot of years.) You've probably worked through your mental health issues. And changing your operating sexuality mode is ridiculous (not that there's anything wrong with that.)

The 1960's were the modern version years of coveting. I don't know about you, but by 1965 I had my complete indoctrination about the horrors of Appalachia. They didn't have electricity. They didn't have phones. They were dying of diseases that nobody should die from. There was a national movement to bring electricity, telephones and medicine to Appalachia. This was the cry of social justice in the early 1960's.

Let me re-write that. Nobody should live without electricity. Nobody should be without a phone. Nobody should die from the diseases they were dying from. Whatever they were. Pelagria and the like.

And yet, today, the "progressive movement" seems to be about living without electricity, phones, and don't talk to me about immunization clinics. Total madness. But you can't be a real Progressive without the adoption of certain 19th-century beliefs. Like rail for transport. The whole "solar thing" is probably more BCE than 19th-century, but the concept of Gaia is clearly pre-BCE, so there is a certain consonance in the current Progressive Movement. Looking backward in order to look forward.

And conservatives are the anti-science crowd.

Conservatives, broadly ranging from libertarian to Republican, happen to believe that individual choices are more important than choices dependent upon government. No, not in all cases. That, I suppose, makes us a "big-tent party." But there is a certain syntony in the belief that individuals make the best choices for themselves. That making criminal individual choice is ridiculous, and that trying to save people from themselves--what used to be called "human foibles"--is not an appropriate use of governmental power. People are both brilliant and stupid. That doesn't make any particular individual less than perfect. And it doesn't mean we have to lower a bar of corporate, government authority on all individuals simply because some individuals don't have bright tools in their toolsheds.

If you have a class of people that you choose to define as "unable to make appropriate decisions," why is it that we, the autre must needs be taxed to provide for them? When has a large-scale taking ever had a long-term effect upon those who fail to provide for themselves?

Tonight I had a neighbor show up at my doorstep, inquiring about a dog igloo in my yard.

With my fences down, it's pretty obvious that I don't have a dog.

He saw my large-dog igloo, and made a clever induction; mebbe he could get this doghouse for his own dog at a fair price. Actually, he offered to take it off my hands. It is a sore reminder of my two bitches. His six-month old pup is a mutt with a strong pitbull gene. And, totally out of control. Not vicious, mind you, just completely untrained. At thirty pounds cute. At sixty-five pounds, a problem.

I brought him into my house, and showed him my shelf of trophies. After two GSD's that were shown for years, it's not a bad shelf.

Yes, she needed a good brushing in this pic, but the legs are of one of my sons whose job it was to get her ready for this show. At nine o'clock on Friday morning, it's more a chore to get your kids out of bed. Most of my pics then were film. This is one of the few that I've put into digital. Forgive me.

Point is, a neighbor came up to my door with his pitbull pup asking for my dog igloo. His pup was out of control, on one of those dog-halters that does nothing to transmit a message to the dog. When a dog strains against a leash, and that weight is distributed across the dog's chest, I guess that it is possible that a sharp jerk may inhibit a small dog. But that is just the start of training any animal. The jerk is a teaching cue. There has to be a consonant command. And then, reward.
Corrections are difficult.

One sharp jerk on a choke-chain is a teaching moment. But that simple jerk isn't the end of the teaching moment. You never make a correction without a series of thougts running through your mind; correction, command, reward. Clear command. Profuse reward. Kinda the way your school teachers have rewarded social justice thinking while failing to teach your kids maths.

Before you jerk a choke-chain, you must ask yourself the question, "will I require that the action I find objectionable worthy of the time I am then required to supply to make that initial jerk worthwhile?" A lot of parenting failure and success is dependent upon the same type of inquiry. If you have a child who mis-behaves, are you willing to spend the time to make sure that the time your correction of behaviour attempts exists? Or, are you one of those sloppy moms found in grocery stores with a trailing bevy of dirty, rude children, some of whom are squaling, who have to endure the intemperate mom for moments, before another child earns her ire?

So I offered this contract to my doorstep's visitor.

Read "The Art of Raising a Puppy." Written by the Monks of New Skete. (Spelled "skete" out for him.) Search out a dog-trainer. Buy a reasonable collar. I showed him two.

The first is a pinch collar. The next is a slip collar.

I slipped a slip collar over the head of his pup. His pup immediately changed. Someone had spent time with his pup with a slip collar. But, the current owner, worried about seeming severe, had replaced what the pup was used to with a more humane harness. And the pup was out of control.

I took the time to show this fella how a slip collar works. And the importance of keeping the slip on the highside of the chain. I showed him the two slip collars I still kept, the working slip collar and the show collar. And my pinch collar.

Look. A dog that is going to weigh over 65 pounds is not fun if it is out of control. Neither is a 15 year-old kid that weighs 150 pounds. Correction is not about creating pain. It is about getting attention. And correction without praise is wasted correction. Your goal is to make praise more valuable than correction. At a certain point, simply making the slip collar create a noise is enough to make corrections for a well-trained dog. And all this must come before you get to your show collar.

Show collars are the gentlest of collars. And, they're pretty. And you get to choose colours. The hours you spend currying your dog, compared to the years you've spent training your dog, come down to that moment in the ring where you've chosen the right show collar to hide or accentuate the colour or traits of your dog. Can it feel it? Does it become invisible on the neck of your dog? Can you make a correction sightlessly? (Out of the sight of a judge?)

Socialism is a creed spawned by those who wish to take from me what I have earned because they deserve it. And, given the weakness of democracy, when critical mass is reached, they can take whatever they choose to take, regardless of the weakness of their argument in favour. That is, I believe that if Iwant it, I will pay for it. They believe that if they want it, I will pay for it.

So I told this feller, you come back when your dog is under control, and I'll make you a deal on this dog igloo that will make it affordable. I'm looking forward to finding out if this feller is a libertarian, or a Leftist.

Maurice Passes

2010-11-01T20:31:00.001-07:00

A note from Michael Allen Harrison.

Many of you probably heard that Maurice Lucas died last night.
Maurice was mostly known as a basketball sports legend
and a fabulous friend of our great city.

I had the honor of being his friend. One of the toughest, nicest guys I ever met.
He had an infectious twinkle in eyes whenever he shared a good story.
Maurice was an up-attitude, warm, engaging, gentle giant.
A true gentleman with a big, big kind heart.

When I was 18 years old, I witnessed his courage and toughness as he led the
Portland Trailblazers to an NBA Championship. When I was in my late 30's and 40's,
I witnessed his dedication to raising thousands of dollars for local charities.
We shared time on the golf course, scotch and cigars; we talked sports,
exchanged business ideas and sometimes I'd even get the inside scoop.
I loved every moment when I got a chance to hang out with Big Mo!

When I turned 50, Maurice and his wife Pam were at my wedding
and 50th birthday party just before he started battling bladder cancer.
Their gift to us was a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne.
We've been saving it for the right moment. The moment is tonight!

We toast you, Big Mo, for all the moments you shared with us on your journey.

Big love to you and your family!!!

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

2010-10-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow riviers to whose falls
Melodious birds sings madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slipper for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherds’ swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

--Christopher Marlowe

Carbon Trading Collapse

2010-10-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

Cap and trade proposals were made in an attempt to shift the costs of resource utilization towards technology and production inputs that are currently not economically viable. Simply put, Green Technology has two problems; it doesn't work or it's too expensive. Talking about a viable battery powered car is akin to envisioning everyone with jetpacks. Must be fun when all toked-up, but on the other side of a thick, haze-induced vision not practical.

Of course, when the majority of Oregonians can't handle the math, questions about affordability are never addressed. I guess it's like compulsive gambling or compulsive shopping. You can't win if you don't play and you can't save if you don't spend. Just ask the 75-thousand problem gamblers who live in Oregon. Remember the history of the gas station? Remember the millions of federal and state dollars that were used to develop a network of gasoline distribution points across cities, states, the entire nation? Planning was required to develop the infrastructure necessary to make use of the gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks possible.

Sadly, younger readers may believe that the above statement--about using public funds to develop a network of gas stations--is true. They are a generation that has been taught that nothing good is accomplished without the gentle hand of government planning and subsidization. Quite the contrary is true, of course. Innovation is the playground of the entrepreneur. But, to listen to your self-chosen masters, we simply can't rely upon greedy people to provide the services society demands as it moves forward with its Vision. Hey, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money!

Some of us, people referred to as conservatives, libertarians or Republicans, have attempted to point out that most of the economic mess we find ourselves in today is directly related to actions taken by our governments; the housing bubble, the banking crisis, the health care crisis, even unemployment. So no surprise when the latest bubble pops.

Found this chart at Watts Up With That?

Crony capitalism was at the heart of the socialist experiment found during the 1930's and 1940's in Germany and Italy. When the nationalist socialist parties of these two nations broke with the Internationale, it lead to severely strained relationships between the states denominated as "socialist," most notably, the strain between Germany and Russia. Russian socialists viewed themselves as leading an international movement. German and Italian "exceptionalism" was viewed with a certain distaste. Eventually, the Germans decided that what would be best for the socialist movement was for the entire world socialist movement to be headed by a German view.

Now that was a bubble.

By avoiding proposals for Cap and Trade, we have avoided the creation of one of the most outrageously destructive bubbles in the history of economy. To say "Cap and Trade is chimerical" overstates the reality of chimeras. For a state dedicated to Unicorns and Pixie Dust, it is business as usual. The woods remain locked up. Land use planners have thrown the lock on developing new factories and businesses. Developers are unable to utilize the land they own to build affordable homes for folks on a budget. These are the realities of living in Oregon.

The lesson, of course is that carbon trading is a hoax. And unless mandated by the federal government, as useless as Democrats in...

Well, useless.

We can't do the math. We can't compare value. Why is coal power better than wind power? For those wedded to Unicorns and Pixie Dust, it's not even a question worth pondering. And without critical questions being asked, Oregon is poised to achieve even higher rates of unemployment. Which, I think, is the goal. The question asked on the Left is how can we reduce the size of our economy in order to create a more sustainable economy? So far, this track is working.

Whistling past the graveyard is an ordinary occurrence in Oregon.

More on the carbon debacle here.

Learning About Islam

2010-10-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

You may never have heard of Geertz Wilders. The long and short of it is, Mr. Wilders had an opinion about Islam and spoke it. That ended him up in court. Never lose sight of the value of our First Amendment. That being said, as a result of this trial, testiimony was read into court about the nature of Islam.

I recommend you spend the half-hour and watch. And, if any of your children have been exposed to Islam through their public schools, ask your school's principal to review the embedded video found here for use in our classrooms. Islam is not "just like any other religion."

Sarah

2010-10-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Want A Job?

2010-10-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

You'll need to talk to Florence.

You'll need to be there tomorrow at nine in the morning.

Evidently it requires being away for about 3 weeks and then coming back for a few days.

Contact Florence at 503-397-4226. Florence works at Camp Emerald Forest.

If you're out of work, it's better to work than to ask for help, innit?

Growing Up In Oregon

2010-10-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

I don't know if you've ever read O'Neill. But it seems to me that we're still waiting for the Ah, Wilderness! moment.

So, let's take a look at Oregon's "Adequate Yearly Progress" reports. We'll start with the largest of the area's school districts, Astoria.

Male students in the 3-8 and 10th grade that did not meet state standards:

In English, 30.4 percent, or, three out of ten students.

In Math, 34.7 percent, or, almost three and a half out of ten students.

In Science, 42.4 percent, or, more than four out of ten students.

Remember, that the goal of education in Astoria is

"Students of the Astoria School District will achieve their individual potentials through academic excellence and the use of critical and creative thinking. Students will be citizens of the earth, embracing responsibility for self, family, community, and democracy."

I still hope that some day, the school board will lose the members who believe that being a "citizen of the earth" is somehow more valuable for an American than being a citizen of America.

By the way, the school board members are Brad Pope, Marin Dursse and Shawn Helligso. You can get their e-mail addresses here.

The numbers for girls are even worse in science; 44.2 percent, almost 4-1/2 out of 10 girls did not meet the state standards.

What happened in Seaside?

In math, more than two in ten males failed. In science, more than three in ten males failed. The sad thing is, more than four out of ten females failed.

Imagine, if you were making hubcaps, and four out of 10 hubcaps were unusable. How long would you stay in business?

Warrenton?

Not good but better. In math, males who failed to meet standards was lower than three out of ten. Women in science performed even better, with 29.2 percent failing to meet the standard.

That is, if you owned a hubcap factory, only three of the ten hubcaps you produce would be unable to be sold. A thirty percent loss of potential return, against the same cost as a successfully produced hubcap.

And then, there's Knappa.

The boys in Knappa outperform any other school district in the county in science, and the girls underperform any other school in the county. To be fair, in English and math, Knappa has a higher success rate than any other school district in Clatsop county. And, they teach basketball well, too.

The fact is, our school districts are approaching a half-way mark of failure. Is 44 percent that much different than 50 percent? Four and a half out of ten, or five of ten?

If you ran a hubcap factory, you wouldn't be surprised to find out that you were out of a job, if you could only successfully produce a marketable product fifty percent of the time. In education, you get a raise. Only in government does failure equal success.

Why are our kids unable to figure out, that if you want health insurance, then, you buy it? Why are our kids unable to figure out, that if you want a high paying job, you earn it? Why are our kids unable to figure out, that if you want to be successful, you need to devote yourself to hard work, suffer loss and privation, be earnest and honest with those around you, and strive to overcome the obstacles that arise in your path as you work toward your own goal? I grant you, it is easier to believe that innovation comes from government, when you have no sense of personal innovation. I grant you, that it is easier to believe that success comes from government, when you have no history of personal success. I grant you, that the road to serfdom comes easily when your life relies upon others to supply you with the means of survival, rather than carve from the rough rock of life, your own path.

"Students will be citizens of the earth, embracing responsibility for self, family, community, and democracy."

It's all wrong. Students will be responsible for their own lives, their own choices, their own families. But what the hell is "citizen of the earth"? Who the &*(%^ cares about being a citizen of the earth? What country offers "earth citizenship"? Why would I teach a child he needs to take care of his "community"? What the hell does that mean?

We do not want a teaching community in Oregon that requires our kids to grow up. That's clear. If we did, we wouldn't allow schoolboards to have such flaky statements of purpose as does the Astoria School District. That is clear, when we allow boys and girls to go through school more concerned about the social aspects of fitting in, than the tedious work of learning the fundamentals of English, math and science.

Boys who don't want to learn about math and science is an indicator of failure. You can tell a kid, all day long, that he has a lot of self-esteem. But if he can't succeed after twelve years of public schooling, he knows it's all a lie.

Sure, he'll get food stamps. But he'll never know the joy of work and success.

The Socialist

2010-10-07T10:55:00.000-07:00

Stolen from Lumberjack, who stole it from Ben Howe.

Theft, of course, is the highest form of flattery. Ergo, socialism.

Good News for the Housing Market!

2010-10-05T20:25:00.001-07:00

Fingernails On A Chalkboard

2010-10-05T10:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I'm a moron.

LauraW posted this up over at Ace's place.

This is a well-educated man, who hasn't a clue as to the process of starting and running a business. There seem to be a lot of well-educated people working for our state's government who are similiarly clueless. For them, I assume, it's a feature rather than a bug.

Bawney Fwank

2010-10-04T20:37:00.000-07:00

I've embedded this video at least a couple of times.

What I never expected was this.

Palin Strong

2010-10-04T20:27:00.001-07:00

Interesting post over at "Mitt Romney Central."

Sarah is doing well.

She's not even runnning, and somebody at RMC is trying to chump her.

Hmm.