Obamacare: The groundhog day

I've recently re-read an old novel by the very popular Russian science-fiction writers, the Strugatsky brothers. The name of the novel is "The details of Nikita Vorontsov's life". It's a story of a man, who keeps reliving his life over and over and over. You may ask - how is this different from the "Groundhog Day"? Well, for starters, "The details..." was published in 1984, while the "Groundhog day" was shown to the public in 1993. Secondly, Nikita Vorontsov has to relive his life from the age of 14 to 54. Unlike Phil Connors, who was busy taking piano lessons, eating dinners and seducing women, Vorontsov spent 40 years in the USSR - from the year of Big Terror of 1937, through the Great Patriotic War with Germany, another bout of Stalin's horrors after the war, the rule of Khrushev and Brezhnev. One can easily guess that Connors had a somewhat more comfortable, although shorter life. But more importantly, the Russian novel was written by the Russian authors - and that resulted in one important difference - the complete absence of American optimism.

I remember long time ago, maybe in 1989 or whereabouts, I was reading a review of an American movie in a Russian newspaper. I will try to quote the relevant portion of the article him my memory as closely as I can - but mind you, it was many years ago. It went something like this: "The main characters find themselves in a situation with no way-out. But it's an American movie, so a "situation with no way-out", simply means the main hero needs to work hard to find the way-out - while in Russia, "no way-out" means there is no way-out, and there is no point in looking for one."

The novel offers no happy ending to Nikita Vorontsov - he is destined to repeat his life over and over again, and there is no way-out for him. He is permanently stuck in the horrors of the communist regime for all eternity - and he has to relive the dread of knowing about the coming war, as well as the future deaths of his friends and close relatives. There are, of course, what you would call "romantic episodes" - which actually start rather early - a 14 year old boy with all the knowledge and experience of an adult is bound to wreak havoc in high-school, but it's not a happy story.

There was one episode in the book that made a particular impression on me. Nikita's high-school friend recounts that they were routinely bullied by a group of "youths", who would take they money and beat them up for sheer fun. This was going on for about 2 or 3 years. One day the "youths" meet them on the way from school - and suddenly Nikita Vorontsov (an adult who relived his life for thousands of times, and who is now trapped in a 14 year old boy), instead of escaping, turns around and punches the group leader right in the nose. The "youths" are startled, and Nikita kicks another youth in the groin, grabs the third one by the hair and hits his head over the knee. The attackers finally regained their composure and beat him up to a bloody pulp - but this was the day when everything changed. From that day on, Nikita would try to ambush the "youths" when they were alone and beat them up. And this time it was different - Nikita was not fighting as a boy, his goal was not to insult them with his punches or show his superiority. Instead, he was "working on them" - inflicting as much physical pain as humanely possible. He caught the group leader in the lavatory, and was beating him up the entire lunch break - after the boy fell on the floor he continued kicking him with his feet, punching him in the face - the whole nine yards. Even the kids much older than Nikita were too horrified to try to stop him. Nikita's friend said that "such an ice-cold cruelty I have only seen later in the gangster movies - no-where else".

And this brings me to Obamacare and the Supreme Court deliberations. For the last half a century (if not even longer), the liberal judges treated our Constitution as toilet paper. They made decisions according to their own personal preferences with zero regard for people's opinion, precedence or the Constitution. But today, the situation has changed, and at least 4 of 9 judges care for the Constitution, and one judge is a liberal Republican - which is a far cry from a conservative, but still, better than the liberal alternative. The Court is supposed to announce its decision on Obamacare in the next few days, and the liberals are whining about the need for "judicial restraint", to be "moderate", to "follow the binding precedents" and the like. Patricia Williams, a law professor at Columbia University, described it thus:

"In the face of seven decades of precedent, the Supreme Court’s grant of certiori to six cases attacking the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is an astonishing display of judicial activism. The decision to do so seems alarmingly consistent with the extremist philosophy of Clarence Thomas, who flatly does not believe in stare decisis. That the federal government’s power to regulate commerce is even being questioned is virtually inexplicable as a legal matter: the law deals with the $2.7 trillion health insurance industry, in a country in which 62 percent of all bankruptcies are occasioned by medical debt."

It goes without saying that the statistics on connection between bankruptcies and medical debt is utterly bogus - but that is a small peanuts, and I don't expect that Williams, who would be flipping burgers had she not benefited from racial preference policies our of colleges, to know the details. But most importantly - she never attempts to explain how can a person doing nothing be legally described as engaged in the "interstate commerce". As is customary, the left wants the Obamacare to be declared constitutional, and it does not matter what the logic, facts or the Constitution says.

Barack Obama, the self-proclaimed "legal scholar", and arguably the dumbest president in the US after-war history publicly announced that "

Ultimately I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

All in all, this is the good old rehashing of the Brezhnev's principle - "What's mine is mine, what's yours is negotiable" - and the precedents be damned.

When I am reading the histrionics of the liberal class, my first instinct is that it won't be enough for the Supreme Court to declare the entire Obamacare unconstitutional. What I want is a hard blow, an ice-cold cruelty to make the American left understand their place. A simple 5-4 decision, based on a long and reasonable explanation why the "individual mandate" cannot be possibly considered to be part of the federal powers to regulate the "Interstate Commerce" is not sufficient. I believe the smack down of the Obamacare must be short and to the point, written in the language that the liberal can understand. Here is something that I think would send a message to the liberal class:

The right not to buy a medical insurance is a fundamental human right due to the penumbras which result from the emanations radiated by words of the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause as well as the federal enumerated powers listed in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) which are the Constitutional limitations on the federal powers. It is the decision of this court that the individual mandate is unconstitutional and is thus declared null and void. The pro-ACA side acknowledged that the "individual mandate" is inseparable from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and this Court has no choice but to declare ACA to be in violation of the Constitution and thus null and void.

If liberals thought that penumbras and emanations were a sufficient reason to declare abortions a Constitutionally protected right, if this sloppy legal reasoning is considered to be the binding legal precedent, then by God, conservatives must use the same argument to declare Obamacare unconstitutional. Obama is known for using violent rhetoric during his presidency. Here are just a few examples of his fascistic rhetoric:

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.”
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
“I want you to argue with them and get in their faces.”
“We’re gonna punish our enemies.”
“Our job is, keep our boot on [their] neck.”


Well, it's time for conservatives to get in the faces of their enemies and punch back twice as hard. That's the way of the world. The only way we can make liberal elites to be more "empathatic" for conservative causes is to make them live with their own sloppy arguments.

Ignorance is strength - 2012 edition

It seems that ignorance is a necessary condition to become a liberal activist. It's simply astounding how little some folks know about the government spending. A few days ago, I left a comment on a liberal site yahoo - and got a reply which left me speechless. In my post I pointed out two obvious things:

1. That the government (and American government is no exception) is very inefficient.
2. That our debt and deficit are mostly caused by an exponential growth of spending on the liberal holy trinity - Welfare, Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security.

The response from one of the liberals (code name WilliamM) was rather instructive. I will ignore the part where he claimed that the government run medical care would guarantee that every American gets the exact same treatment (an argument laughable on its face), and that the medical decisions would be strictly between the doctor and the patient (as if the government has unlimited resources). It's rather apparent that the liberal activist had no idea how the economy works. But what made me laugh out loud was his apparent ignorance of the federal budget (which was coupled with a profound arrogance and certainty that he was right). Here is what he wrote:

Social security, welfare and medicare/medicaid are not the biggest portion of the federal budget. The biggest expenditure is the Pentagon. About 150 billion dollars is spent supporting welfare programs like the ones listed above. Annually, the Pentagon receives 700 billion dollars, with 300 billion set aside specifically for war.

In reality, the numbers that the activist quoted are not even close. Here is the truth. I am referring to the 2011 budget. In order to put things in perspective, I included also the numbers for the entire US government, federal, state and local - and I did it so that people had some feeling of how much money is spent by the government.

Total Military spending: $878.5 billion.
Federal spending on health care: $858 billion.
Federal, state and local spending on health care: $1,073 billion
Federal spending on pensions: $776 billion. The Social Security portion of this is: $730 billion.
Federal, state and local spending on pensions: $978 billion.
Federal spending on welfare: 473 billion
Federal, state and local spending on welfare: $745 billion.
Last but not least - Federal, state and local spending on education: $876 billion.

The total federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare is: $2,022 billion dollars.
Total federal, state and local spending on pensions, health care, welfare and education is:  $2,600 billion dollars.

In case you are wondering if I covered the entire government spending, I must ad there are still other items which I left unmentiond:
Protection (federal, state and local): $320 billion dollars,

Transportation (federal, state and local): $277 billion dollars
General government (federal, state and local): $110 billion dollars
"Other spending" (federal, state and local): $460 billion dollars


I believe the number of Americans who believe in liberal orthodoxy would decrease significantly if two things happen:
1. People start ignoring the the myths above government spending and instead find out the actual data.
2. People understand the Law of Supply and Demand.

One liberal article at a time, 03-19-2012

Have you guys heard about Paul Krugman? He is a left-wing "economist, worked as a consultant for Enron, got a Nobel award, and haven't heard about the Law of Supply and Demand. Yap, that Paul Krugman, the most dishonest columnist for the the New York Slimes, and that says a lot about him. The last time I've heard about him, he was into burning the effigies of different political leaders (or hanging them). In short, Paul Krugman is known as a person of moderate honesty and there are internet sites that delight in exposing his lies. He is a small target for Hyphenated-American, but this does not mean I can't have fun at his expense.

A few days ago, Mitt Romney had the audacity to give the following advice to a student about his university education: "Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on." Paul Krugman was so outraged by this apparently insensitive remark, that he wrote the whole column wailing and moaning about evil republicans who want to destroy American education.

"Ignorance is strength", Paul Krugman
The above remark by Romney made Krugman quite furious, and this article is his answer, his "J'accuse".
Apparently, Republican advice to a student to choose the college based on its quality and not the price (i.e., instead of choosing the most expensive university, he should choose the one with better education) drove Krugman into paroxysms of fury. Apparently, this is a bad advice - even though it's not apparent how anyone find wrong with it. Who in his mind would object to this?! Of course, a cheaper and better university is preferential to a more expensive and worse one. Here is how Krugman explains his view that more expensive and worse should be preferred (indeed, according to the Enron consultant, it's "callous and destructive" to think otherwise):

"For the past couple of generations, choosing a less expensive school has generally meant going to a public university rather than a private university."

I kid you not - this is the sole reasoning he is giving for calling Romney advice to choose cheaper and better colleges "callous and destructive". Apparently, public universities are getting more expensive (same is the case for private colleges, and government K-12, btw) - so somehow it's "callous and destructive" for people to choose cheaper and better colleges.

To be Continued Tomorrow.

One liberal article at a time, 03-18-2012

Sometimes I amuse myself by reading articles written by liberals. It's sheer fun to watch them start with a wrong premise, apply faulty logic and then arrive with an obviously mistaken conclusion - indeed so mistaken, that a  5 year old girl could immediately detect it if she were not busy playing with dolls. I believe it's my responsibility as an American citizen and a patriot to share this fun with the rest of the reading public. And thus, I created a new topic: "One liberal article at a time". I will try to publish a take down of one liberal article per day. There it goes, March 18, 2012.

"Economic pie grows, but workers' slice shrinks", Robert Reich
The content of this article is rather simple. Apparently, the US economy is growing. And yet, the working men and women are not doing any better. According to Reich, "most of the gains are distributed narrowly in the form of higher profits to owners and fat compensation packages to the "talent." That obviously cannot be good, because "If the trend continues, inequality will become ever more extreme." And if we don't get this inequality under control, then the economy will "face chronically insufficient demand for what the economy can now produce" and  our economy will collapse due to lack of "consumer demand". As a typical leftie, Reich believes there is only one true issue: "the real challenge ahead is to distribute those gains more widely".

What does he propose? His cure for inequality and perceived lack of demand is something that could have been written by Lenin in 1904:

...higher taxes on the rich, that go into wage subsidies for lower-income workers, combined with job sharing.
...better schools (from early childhood through young adulthood, followed by systems of lifelong learning) so everyone has a fair shot at a larger share of the gains.
...more abundant public goods - cleaner air and water, better parks and recreation, improved public health and better public transit.

Reality Check
It's best to start with looking at the actual numbers - and I will use the exact same base line year as Reich. In 2007, US nominal GDP was $13,580 billion. In 2011, it grew to $15,320 billion - an increase of $1,740 billion. On the other side, total government spending (federal, state and local) in 2007 was $4,923 billion. In 2011 it grew to $6,050 billion, an increase of $1,127 billion. This means that 65% of the nominal GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 was spent by the government.

If we re-do the calculation in real dollars, the result will be even more startling. The 2007 GDP in 2011 dollars was $14,666 billion, which makes the real GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 shrink to a paltry $656 billion. The same calculation for the growth of the government yields $733 billion in 2011 dollars. This means that 112% (!) of the GDP growth from 2007 to 2011 was spent by the federal, state and local government - or in other words, the increase in government spending was larger than the entire GDP growth!

 I think any attentive reader will be able to notice that these numbers prove conclusively that Robert's recipe for improving the lives on Americans was used with a vengeance during the last 4 years - and yet as Reich himself concedes, the working men saw nothing but misery. In short, we have already tried what Reich proposed - and it has already failed miserably.

This concludes my daily transmission.

The heart of stone

You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh
Oscar Wilde

"This administration – I try not to pat myself too much on the back – but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration. Whether it’s making sure that our intelligence cooperation is effective, to making sure that we’re able to construct something like an iron dome so that we don’t have missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, we have been consistent in insisting that we don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.”  

"U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged Israel to get to the "damn table" in peace talks with the Palestinians, an unusually blunt comment that inserts him into the Middle East peace process. In remarks at a Brookings Institution conference, Panetta called on Israel to again start negotiations with the Palestinians. "Just get to the damn table. Just get to the table," Panetta said during the event in Washington. "The problem right now is we can't get them to the damn table to at least sit down and begin to discuss their differences." 

Leon Paneta, December 3, 2011.

Currently, PLO refuses to negotiate with Israel unless she forbids the Jews from building houses in the disputed territories. This makes Leon's demands to Israel all the more absurd - and damaging to Israel. All in all, he is now claiming that it is Israel that refuses to negotiate, and this issurely bad for Israel and is helpful for the PLO and Hamas. Is this what true friends do?

"Speaking Wednesday at a Jewish conference on anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Union (EJU,) Howard Gutman told participants he was apologizing in advance if his words are not to their liking...

A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, Gutman said. He also argued that an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty will significantly diminish Muslim anti-Semitism. The American envoy, a lawyer by training, is Jewish and played a major role in fundraising for the Democratic Party. He was appointed to the post by President Barack Obama. " Howard Gutman, US ambassador in Belgium, November 30th, 2011.

I assume the next thing we will hear is Obama's proclamation that we must make distinction between traditional Islamo-phobia, which should be condemned, and Jewish-Christian-Hindu hatred for Moslems, which stems from the ongoing conflict between the Moslem world and the rest of the planet. Obama needs to argue that the peace treaty between Islamic world and Israel, West and India will significantly diminish Jewish-Christian-Hindu Islamophobia. Oh, and last thing - if Moslems stop blowing themselves up, it would also help with the air-travel. BTW, do you feel a little bit Islamophobic, each time you need to go through the TSA? It's quite understandable, actually, according to the Obama administration. Ah, but I say this in jest - the Obama administration has no problems finding excuses for Anti-semitism - but Islamophobia is something it would never accept.

And now for something completely different

"Both parties came together to cut payroll taxes for the typical middle-class family by about $1,000, but that tax cut is set to expire at the end of this month. We can’t let that happen. We’re going to keep pushing Congress to make this happen. They shouldn’t go home for the holidays until they get this done."

 Barack Obama, December 3, 2011

President Barack Obama will be setting off later this month for a 17-day Christmas vacation in Hawaii with his family. The White House travel office said Obama has no public events scheduled for the trip, which is scheduled for Dec. 17 to Jan. 2.... The 17-day Christmas vacation follows Obama’s 11-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard this summer. From Blaze

This takes the prize
I remember years ago reading Hayek's proposal for multiple currencies, and Thatcher's criticism of the EU currency. About 6 years ago, I've learned about the CIA's prediction of the imminent EU breakup in 2012. While CIA is not known for its predictive power, this intrigued me, and I started following the EU and I've learned about the euro-skeptics, the shenanigans with referendum (there is even a blog called EU Referendum) and the EU constitution  Lisbon Treaty. Of course, when famous Russian dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky compared EU with the CCCP back in 2006, I got even more interested. And most certainly, no story about EU would be complete without the issue of moslem immigration to EU. And now, we can see the European Union rapidly coming to an end - and no amount of American help can stop it. The project was doomed from the start - and what amazes me most is the fact that this was known to the EUs architects. I am curious if it is possible to file a civil lawsuit against those bustards.


"Euro doomed from start, says Jacques Delors"

The euro project was flawed from the start and the current generation of European leaders has failed to address its fundamental problems, Jacques Delors, the architect of the single currency, declares today....

Famous in Britain for his public clashes with Baroness Thatcher in the 1980s over closer European integration, Mr Delors says that he shares some of the concerns that were expressed by British politicians and economists about the euro before its creation.



When “Anglo-Saxons” said that a single central bank and currency without a single state would be inherently unstable, “they had a point”, he admits.

In summary - the European Union and the euro currency were launched by the left-wing bureaucracies and supported by the mainstream media in order to bring peace, democracy and prosperity to Europe. Today, both EU and euro are bankrupt and we are told that if euro is not saved, European continent and the entire world will be on the brink of economic destruction. Moreover, European people must immediately give up democracy and sovereignity to save the euro - there is simply no other way.

Amazingly, none of the EU optimists and promoters in the government and the media are in any danger of losing credibility. What's even more amazing is that most of the liberal ideas in the 20th century are faced with the same imminent threat of destruction as the EU. Walk down the memory lane and check out the liberal predictions about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. All of those programs were supposed to solve our social and economic problems, cut the government spending (in the long run, of course), eliminate poverty and make poor people self-sufficient. Conservative predictions of the fiscal unsoundness of these programs (as well as the creation of a permanent class of people dependent on the government handouts) were brushed aside as mean-spirited. Today, our federal, state and local governments are on the brink of bankruptcy, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare grew beyond the wildest dreams of the most ardent socialists - and yet, the American poor are apparently getting poorer and poorer. In case you are wondering, the total federal, state and local spending on Medicare+Medicaid+Social Security+Welfare is a staggering 2.6 trillion dollars in 2011 alone (and don't forget to add 900 billion dollars on education). And somehow, as the New York Times recently proclaimed: "Yet one old problem has not changed: the poor have rapidly gotten poorer." In summary, the US government is spending itself into oblivion trying to save the poor from poverty, and yet the poor get poorer. And apparently we cannot get rid of all those liberal programs, because this would destroy our country. The same programs that were supposed to bring the era of peace and prosperity to US are now threatening to bankrupt the nation - and we cannot get rid of them because that would cause the economic Armageddon. So let me ask again - was it a mistake to start these programs in the first place - just as it was a mistake for Europe to launch the euro? And why do the same people people who cheerleaded the euro and the Medicare-Medicaid-Social Security-Welfare sound so smug today?

As Oscar Wilde famously said: "You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh". Indeed....




Barack Obama, November 30, 2011

Science - this is what people use to predict the future

Opinions differ. But if I have to express an opinion based on my education as an egineer, I would say that science is a method of analyzing the facts and coming up with a theory that explains them and allows to predict the future. No more, and no less. A theory or a suggestion is not a science - but a method which is to discover that theory and test it against existing and new facts is science. Albert Einstein is famous for proposing a "Special Theory of Relativity" - a theory that nicely described existing facts. What is less known is that Einstein worked very hard to develop a set of experiments that could test his theory. The great scientist refused to conclude that his ideas were correct until they were compared with the results of 4 rather complex experiments.

And this introduction brings us to Paul Krugman, probably the most talented and famous among the liberal economists.

The Comeback Continent, 2008, Paul Krugman

Today I’d like to talk about a much-derided contender making a surprising comeback, a comeback that calls into question much of the conventional wisdom of American politics. No, I’m not talking about a politician. I’m talking about an economy — specifically, the European economy, which many Americans assume is tired and spent but has lately been showing surprising vitality.

Why should Americans care about Europe’s economy? Well, for one thing, it’s big. The G.D.P. of the European Union is roughly comparable to that of the United States; the euro is almost as important a global currency as the dollar; and the governance of the world financial system is, for practical purposes, equally shared by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve.


But there’s another thing: it’s important to get the facts about Europe’s economy right because the alleged woes of that economy play an important role in American political discourse, usually as an excuse for the insecurities and injustices of our own society.

In fact, however, tales of a moribund Europe are greatly exaggerated....


Since 2000, employment has actually grown a bit faster in Europe than in the United States — and since Europe has a lower rate of population growth, this has translated into a substantial rise in the percentage of working-age Europeans with jobs, even as America’s employment-population ratio has declined.

In particular, in the prime working years, from 25 to 54, the big gap between European and U.S. employment rates that existed a decade ago has been largely eliminated. If you think Europe is a place where lots of able-bodied adults just sit at home collecting welfare checks, think again.


I don’t want to exaggerate the good news. Europe continues to have many economic problems. But who doesn’t? The fact is that Europe’s economy looks a lot better now — both in absolute terms and compared with our economy — than it did a decade ago....

What’s behind Europe’s comeback? It’s a complicated story, probably involving a combination of deregulation (which has expanded job opportunities) and smart regulation. One of the keys to Europe’s broadband success is that unlike U.S. regulators, many European governments have promoted competition, preventing phone and cable companies from monopolizing broadband access.

What European countries definitely haven’t done is dismantle their strong social safety nets. Universal health care is a given. So are a variety of programs that support families in trouble, helping protect Europeans from the extreme poverty all too common in this country. All of this costs money — even though European countries spend far less on health care than we do — and European taxes are very high by U.S. standards.

In short, Europe continues to be a big-government sort of place. And that’s why it’s important to get the real story of the European economy out there.

According to the anti-government ideology that dominates much U.S. political discussion, low taxes and a weak social safety net are essential to prosperity. Try to make the lives of Americans even slightly more secure, we’re told, and the economy will shrivel up — the same way it supposedly has in Europe.

But the next time a politician tries to scare you with the European bogeyman, bear this in mind: Europe’s economy is actually doing O.K. these days, despite a level of taxing and spending beyond the wildest ambitions of American progressives.

Learning from Europe, 2010, Paul Krugman

As health care reform nears the finish line, there is much wailing and rending of garments among conservatives. And I’m not just talking about the tea partiers. Even calmer conservatives have been issuing dire warnings that Obamacare will turn America into a European-style social democracy. And everyone knows that Europe has lost all its economic dynamism.

Strange to say, however, what everyone knows isn’t true. Europe has its economic troubles; who doesn’t? But the story you hear all the time — of a stagnant economy in which high taxes and generous social benefits have undermined incentives, stalling growth and innovation — bears little resemblance to the surprisingly positive facts. The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.


Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.

In any case, the statistics confirm what the eyes see.

It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!


Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.


What about technology? In the late 1990s you could argue that the revolution in information technology was passing Europe by. But Europe has since caught up in many ways. Broadband, in particular, is just about as widespread in Europe as it is in the United States, and it’s much faster and cheaper.

And what about jobs? Here America arguably does better: European unemployment rates are usually substantially higher than the rate here, and the employed fraction of the population lower. But if your vision is of millions of prime-working-age adults sitting idle, living on the dole, think again. In 2008, 80 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 in the E.U. 15 were employed (and 83 percent in France). That’s about the same as in the United States. Europeans are less likely than we are to work when young or old, but is that entirely a bad thing?

And Europeans are quite productive, too: they work fewer hours, but output per hour in France and Germany is close to U.S. levels.

The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issues — and like some individual U.S. states, some European countries are teetering on the edge of fiscal crisis. (Sacramento is now the Athens of America — in a bad way.) But taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it’s as dynamic, all in all, as our own.

So why do we get such a different picture from many pundits? Because according to the prevailing economic dogma in this country — and I’m talking here about many Democrats as well as essentially all Republicans — European-style social democracy should be an utter disaster. And people tend to see what they want to see.

After all, while reports of Europe’s economic demise are greatly exaggerated, reports of its high taxes and generous benefits aren’t. Taxes in major European nations range from 36 to 44 percent of G.D.P., compared with 28 in the United States. Universal health care is, well, universal. Social expenditure is vastly higher than it is here.

So if there were anything to the economic assumptions that dominate U.S. public discussion — above all, the belief that even modestly higher taxes on the rich and benefits for the less well off would drastically undermine incentives to work, invest and innovate — Europe would be the stagnant, decaying economy of legend. But it isn’t.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they’re down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

In the real world, the European paradise appeared to be built on sand. Apparently, Paul Krugman's theories are proven wrong - the European continent, instead of coming back, is taking it in the backside - and rather hard. Here is just the latest news about Europe...

Europe's Crisis to Overshadow U.S. Data in Coming Week, 2011

U.S. investors will return from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to face continued uncertainty over Europe's debt crisis.

Since spiraling into chaos in the early summer months, Europe's debt crisis has confounded policymakers' attempts at containment.

As Americans were gorging on deep-fried turkey and stuffing on Thursday, European officials from Italy, Germany and France were busy shooting down proposals that might have helped put the eurozone on the path toward fiscal stability.

Among the rejected proposals was the creation of eurozone bonds. Meanwhile, European Central Bank policymaker Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo said eurozone nations should not rely on the central bank to resolve the debt crisis, confounding observers who contend more ECB action is needed.

By Friday, Italy was forced to pay record interest rates at a government bond auction in order to raise a planned 10 billion euros. Italian 10-year bond yields rose to 7.32%, considered too high to be sustainable. Economists are doubtful that Italy, which faces a debt pile equal to 120% of its gross domestic product, will be able to escape trouble purely through fiscal austerity measures.

Pessimism surrounding Europe's debt dilemma remains persistent, with analysts anticipating a worsening of conditions next week. A report from Barclays Capital on Friday predicted Europe would slip into a recession in the fourth quarter as Italy and Spain were forced to seek financial aid from outside sources to prevent a collapse.

Does Europe circa 2011 look in any way like the Europe that Krugman described in 2008 or 2010? If I were cruel, I would say that Krugman's prediction of Europe's future is only matched by his marvelous ass kissing of Enron in 1999 (after all, he was Enron's paid consultant). But I want to be fair now, and I must concede that one of Krugman's statements was undeniably correct and struck into the heart of the European economic model: "...what European experience actually demonstrates is... : social justice and progress can go hand in hand."

In reality, social justice and progress always go hand in hand. There are no "ifs" or "cans" - one follows the other, like the seasons. If YOU take from the man who earned, and give it to the man who did not - YOU commit the social injustice. And when economic progress comes to a screeching halt - don't ask who caused it, because YOU did it, it's YOUR fault. We cannot achieve economic progress without social justice - and Europe abandoned all the pretense of the standards of justice when they decided to build welfare socialism. And now, the bell tolls for you, Europe - and for all the pseudo-scientists like Krugman. And if America does not wake up and abandon the road to serfdom - this country will be next and follow Europe into the abyss. Economic science had long discovered it - which is why conservative, libertarian and objectivist economists knew that Europe was about to fail, while liberal economists like Krugman were blind to this eventuality. If Krugman were a scientist, he would be brave enough to concede that welfare socialism was a failure. But Krugman is not a scientist, he is a left-wing ideologue who does not a crap about science. The poor shmuck is paid to to give left-wing spin to whatever news NYT chooses to publish - which is why he was never able to develop a theory consistent with the facts observable in real life. And this why nothing that he writes can be used to predict the future. The end.

In search of cheap amusement: listening to Air America

When I drive the car, I normally listen to the progressive right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin or Lars Larson. If there is a commercial break, or my shows are not on the air, I switch to the NPR channel. And if NPR is boring (well, more realistically, when I get bored with NPR's prudish liberalism mascarading as objective reporting), I switch to the reactionaries at Air America. And these folks never fail to say something stupid in 5 minutes tops.

Today, I was driving to the car repair and I could not find anything on the progressive radio, so I switched to Air America. The AA host was talking about all kinds of stuff with some left-wing patsy.  I switched to AA when the guest was complaining about the medical insurance companies - apparently those evil capitalists for some reason don't want to give away all of their money to cure all diseases at once for all of mankind - unlike, say, Soros, Obama or Kerry who donated their riches to the poor.

Later, the show condemned the evil conservatives who dared to have their programs on the AM-radio and thus broke the left-wing media monopoly. It's no surprise that the "democratic", "progressive" left wants to shut down the opposition because liberal ideologyis always crushed in the free marketplace of ideas. Every ones knows this, including the left-wing patsies. And this is exactly why all "people's democracies" maintain "people's" control over media - only NPR and PBS are allowed in the socialist paradise, no Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity.
The funniest part is that the self-proclaimed "progressive" Air America is as reactionary as the good old Brezhnev style communists - and for some reason even the host of today's show sounded like Brezhnev in 1981 - a man who could hardly pronounce a single word due to his mental and physical exhaustion. At some point, the Air America's General Secretary wandered into the discussion of the evil coal and oil companies and how renewable energy was a cheap and reliable way to sustain our civilization. A minute later he shared the following pearl of scientific knowledge (I quote him from the memory):

"Renewable energy sources like wind PRODUCE ELECTRONS, which they then put into the grid."

As an electrical engineer I was dumbfounded -  how could anyone who has finished American high-school (equivalent of a Russian middle school back in my days) say such an obviously stupid thing. I don't want to go into details, but wind-powered generators do not "produce electrons", nor do they "put them on the grid". What they do is generate the Electromotive Force, which pushes the electrons which are already in the grid into particular direction. The grid is made of conductive material (copper for example) - a material which already has an abundance of free electrons. In order to generate electric current you need a force applied to those free electrons - which is what the electrical generators do. To presume that the electrons are produced in the electrical generators is simply wrong. That's even dumber than Obama's promise that Obamacare would cut medical premiums by 3000% or Obama's discovery of the Austrian language. It surely is not as stupid though as when Obama told the crowd that he had already visited all 57 states of the Union, and there was only one remaining state he needed to visit - but then, Obama is a brilliant guy, so his stupidity is unbearably brilliant - Nobel Peace Prize level of stupidity.

But that is not all, of course. A few weeks ago, alas, there was a commercial break on the progressive radio talk shows, and I switched to Air America. I was confident that they would not disappoint me and I was expecting them to say something stupid. And boy, did they ever! The host was interviewing one of the Occupy Wall Street scumbags - and the scumbag explained what kind of food, blankets and stuff they needed people to donate to the movement (those folks always need handouts because they are useless scumbags - but it goes without saying, right?). At some point, the scumbag veered into more philosophical issues and he started complaining that Obama did not fulfill his election promises. And then he said something which was rather startling - apparently, what America needed was the return of FEODOR Roosevelt. He repeated this at least three times - FEODOR Roosevelt this, and FEODOR Roosevelt that. I assumed that the dumbass was talking about FRANKLIN Delano Roosevelt - but I may be mistaken, maybe indeed there was a Feodor Roosevelt who changed America during Great Depression, and the books will be written about that miracle maker, Feodor Roosevelt. But more realistically, I guess he heard a lot of times about FDR - and his feeble mind decided that the letters "F" and "D" stood for Feodor. After all - liberal education is not about learning facts and history - it's about brainwashing the students with politically correct propaganda. And who cares if the liberal saint who pushed through the New Deal was Feodor or Franklin Roosevelt - heck, it could have been Nadezhda Konstantinovna Kruskaya - who cares?

The last episode, of course, reminded me of Joe Dumbass Biden. Any time someone says something really dumb - I measure it in Bidens (Bd). It's quite rare though than someone reaches the level of 1 Bd - most of the time it's mBd or even μBd.

As you may recall, Obama thinks very highly of Slow Joe. Apparently, the two fit each other perfectly on the intellectual level - two mediocrities amplify each other's stupidity - a perfect lossless resonant circuit . As Obama proclaimed a year ago: "The single best decision that I have made was selecting Joe Biden as my running mate. The single best decision I have made. I mean that. It's true."

And speaking of Biden here is the quote from him that would make you laugh until you realize that this imbecile is a heartbeat away from the presidency: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.” Granted, he got the name right (it's Franklin, not Feodor - so well done, Joe), but the rest of this statement is utterly wrong. FDR was not, of course, the US president when the stocks crashed in 1929 - nor did the television exist during the Great Depression.


Mind you, that Biden is also the same foreign policy expert who in 2008 debates with Sarah Palin managed to say the following: “When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.” Now what’s happened? Hezbollah is a legitimate part of the government in the country immediately to the north of Israel.” Apparently, US and France kicked out Hezbollah form Lebanon - which must be a huge surprise to Hezbollah and Israel and everyone else in the Middle East.

The same Slow-Joe Biden said in 2008 that the reason why republicans didn't like Obama was simple - they were not used to someone who was very smart and educated and they didn't know how to handle it. Yes, Joe, you are 3000% right. God love you, Slow Joe, and I hope Air America will help you with all those electrons that they put in the grid. Just follow the one in a big yellow hat - and it will get lead you to all the 58 states of the Union so you could spread the message - and people won't mind if you speak the Austrian language, which came from the countries like Europe.

Once more, we need to hear Feodor Roosevelt talk on the TV - party like it's 1929. All the smart folks support you.

P.S. On my way back from the gym today, I turned on Air America again. One of the occupistas was breathlessly explaining all the wonderful things that the occupy-wall street mob was achieving. Here is a passage that made me laugh out loud (I quote from memory):

I am sitting there with people I would have never met otherwise and we are discussing things. It's quite amazing that we together are changing American democracy.

Can you imagine the arrogance and stupidity of this girl? This poor creature seriously believes that because she was having a chat with a smelly hippie - she somehow changed America. "That's one small chat for a liberal girl, one giant leap for mankind". At least, I hope it won't become the "Great Leap Forward" - although with those cretins you never know - sometimes things spiral out of control.

I can only imagine the amount of disappointment that this liberal patsy will feel when someday she understands that she achieved nothing, that her talks in the park were worse than useless and that her brain is filled with mush. But then, the real question is - does she have or will she ever have enough grey matter to comprehend this? What really bugs me about those fools is their complete and utter lack of humor and self-awareness. And yet, I can tell you that these creatures remind me of myself - when I was younger, much younger. I think I was about 5 years old when I draw a picture of a car, and I was very proud because I also included my ground breaking ideas on the actual car design. I came to share my geniosity with my Mom, and according to my parents, the following dialogue ensured:

HA, 5 years old: Mom, look at this, I've designed a car.
Mom: Very interesting. Explain to me how it works.
HA, 5 years old: There is a button, you press it, and the car goes faster. And when you need to slow down, you press another button. And then there is a button to turn left, and a button to turn right.
Mom: Hm. And how do the buttons do all that that?
HA, 5 years old: It's very simple - there is a mechanism inside the car that reacts to the button.
Mom: How does this mechanism work?
HA, 5 years old: I haven't figured out this yet, but I think that's not relevant - my invention is to use the buttons for the car. Isn't it cool?

Granted, I was 5 years old back then, so I have a valid excuse. But what excuse do those 25-30-50 year old occupistas have for proposing essentially same stuff I had proposed when I was 5 - and applying it to the American society?

If you listen to those guys, you will realize their plan is even more primitive than my ingenious invention - at least my plan could not hurt anyone. And what do these guys propose?

Question: How do you propose to make America better?
Answer: Hell, let's spread the wealth around, abolish capitalism and declare free love. And let's not forget the most important part - pass the joint, comrade.

That's all it is to the Occupy Wall Street movement - and Air America and the entire Democratic Party. It's nothing more complex than that. It's sad - but funny. Very funny indeed. As Karl Marx famously said: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” I believe the occupistas are that farce, the comic re-do of the 1960-70ies left-wing movement which lets us all have a good hearty laugh before the hard work starts in 2013. We need to clean up the country we call "United States of America."

Let's talk about the occupistas

I was watching the Occupy Wall Street movement, and there are quite a few things I wish to say about them. Luckily, plenty of people said a lot of smart stuff by now, so I will be mostly quoting them. All in all, the Occupy Wall street needs to ask itself a few questions...

Uncle Ed: You always have to question everything, don't you?
Billy Costigan: Maybe it would have done you some good to have some *questions* from time to time, you know? "Am I an asshole? Are my kids a mess? Is my wife a money-grubbing whore?" I mean, those are questions, right? "Have I ever been good to my dying sister or am I just now pretending to be?" Quote from the movie "Departed"

"The student activists are the comprachicos' most successful products: they went obediently along every step of the way, never challenging the basic premises inculcated in the Progressive nursery schools. They act in packs, with the will of the pack as their only guide. The scramble for power among their pack leaders and among different packs does not make them question their premises: they are incapable of questioning anything...

Their hysterical screaming still carries a touch of pouting astonishment at a world that does not respond to an absolute such as: "I want it". The three-year-old whim-worshiper becomes the twenty-year-old thug." Ayn Rand, "Return of the Primitive"

As is customary, liberal activists, people who often proclaim their own independent thought and mind, as well as courage to question authority appear to be nothing more than beggars, who want to be taken care of. Why should the working Americans take care of them? Well, I am glad you asked, since this young fella has all the reasoning worked out in detail. Nice dogie, he wants a bone. Which reminded me of an old quote: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock."

Mind you though, that not every one of those Occupistas are ignorant bums. Apparently, there are some very educated people among them. Here is one such diamond among the scum:
 

"Tracy Blevins, 41-year-old Manhattan resident, has a doctorate in biomedical science but lost her job as an adjunct professor at Touro College this spring. She's since been getting by on odd jobs; most recently, she acted as a cross-country driver for $2,000."

I honestly say that this info got me very interested, since someone with a PhD in biomedical science should have done much better than this. After all, biomed is not like "womyn's studies", there are jobs in the real world for those folks. So, I've looked a bit more and here is what I found on this Tracy Blevins....
 
Here is same Tracy Blevins in 2002, described as somewhat more than just a simple PhD in biomed. Here it goes:
 

"The first one I notice is a blond wearing almost nothing and holding a sign saying "Pot Whore" (the links are from her sign, I take no responsibility). Around her are several individuals who haven't bathed or washed their clothes or combed their hair in weeks, many of them are smoking, and appear to have been doing so constantly for the last 50 years. Everybody has a pamphlet (green party, free Palestine, animal rights..the whole shootin' match). Just to complete the party atmosphere, an odd looking fellow in a suit and suspenders is carrying a sign saying "corporate America feeds our children" and "meat-eating Republicans thank Nader for electing Bush".

Dr.Blevins responds to this post with a few corrections of her own, mostly protesting the author's claim that she had a pass. Apparently, Dr.Blevins' was doing her "second full week of performances of my one woman show on Wall Street." So, what else Pot Whore Dr.Blevins had to say? Well, back in 2002 she had a 10 point program for the NYC - an easy way to the world nirvana. Dr.Pot Whore, take it from here:
 
1. No Pot Arrests
2. 200 FREE Gifts
3. Teachers Fly Free
4. Family Nudist Colony NYC
5. Graffiti the Subway
6. Parks for the People
7. Red Light District
8. FREE Medicine
9. Geezer Disco
and
10. Let’s LIVE at the World Trade Center


 
All in all, this woman is clearly certifiable - and I am a bit surprised that the AP forgot to explain to its readers that Pot Whore Dr.Blevins is a nutcase.

And speaking of nutcases - it's quite amazing (although, not so much if you try to find out about the history of these movements) that the Occupistas managed to excite both the Nazis and the Communists. Apparently, both movements love them dearly.

I will let the Nazis say their first word (after all, they started the war):

As I have so often in the past spoke on - the White Working Class - is going PAST, the BOILING POINT, and is quickly reaching ULTIMATE EXPLOSION! THEY want ANSWERS! THEY want RESULTS! All of which this evil corrupt, decadent JUDEO-CAPITALIST SYSTEM is incapable of giving them. WHY? Because its BOUGHT and SOLD to the CORPORATE ELITISTS who are fast turning America into a "South American" style - THIRD WORLD WAGE-SLAVE STATE - ( complete with MILLIONS of BROWN illegal aliens willing to ACCEPT YOUR JOB for LOW WAGES and NO BENEFITS ) where, currently 3% of the population CONTROL 85% of the nation’s WEALTH! And the "GREAT DIVIDE" is GROWING each and every year that passes.


WE - the WHITE WORKING CLASS - have been LIED TO and totally DECIEVED - just the other day, the system APPROVED THREE MORE so-called "Free-Trade" deals. ALL of which mean that MORE JOBS are going to be SENT OVERSEAS - YOUR JOBS! Don't you CARE? Enough to DO SOMETHING?

NOW is the TIME! GET INVOLVED! IT’S YOUR FUTURE THAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT.

YOU can DO - ONE of TWO THINGS - SUBMIT to the uncaring GREED of these CORORATE, WALL STREET THUGS and their SOCK-PUPPETS in GOVERNMENT. OR, - YOU can RESIST! I CHOOSE RESISTANCE for MY FAMILY and MYSELF!

And the American Communist party was equally delighted to see the proles (Is Pot Whore / PHD a bourgeois capitalist pig or a working girl?) rise up. Here is their communique...

The movement is the newest wrinkle in the all-people’s upsurge against the banks and corporations and reflects a new level of class-consciousness.


While there is a wide range of political and ideological trends, there is a consensus against corporate greed, getting money out of politics, taxing the rich and putting people before profits.

A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012.

Of primary importance is linking it with the burgeoning fight for jobs and especially passage of the American Jobs Act.

We can also play a role in offering more advanced programmatic ideas like nationalizing the banks and socialism.

To have a positive impact, the CPUSA and YCL must be a part of the “Occupy” movement, participating at every level and building greater local support for the actions among labor and progressive forces.

Unlike the Nazi scum, the communist scum is a much better speller - and he does not overuse the capital letters. I believe it's partly because he is somewhat better funded than the Nazi scum.

And just for your entertainment you can enjoy watching a liberal activist (who is also a trust fund baby) reduce himself to tears. He does a perfect imitation of Keith Olbermann - so why is he not on the (p)MSNBC?

And what liberal anti-capitalist party can be successful without some antisemitism? It's not cool fighting the corporations and banks if you don't get to attack the Jews. Patricia Mcallister, the self- identified employee of the Los Angeles Unified School District, you can take it from here:

"Zionist Jews who are running these big banks... they need to be run out of this country"

No surprise that the Nazis and the Communists love the Occupistas - they too dislike the Jews and the Zionists, and the banks. Damn! What surprises me a little bit is that a government employee is so cavalier in publicly stating her anti-semitism. Sounds like the LA Unified School District is very tolerant of bigots and racists - which too is not so surprising when one remembers that LA is solidly under the liberal control.

Anyways, some of the folks in the "Occupy Wall Street" movement are not there to ask for more handouts or to kick them Zionist Jews out of US. American Government Public Media will explain it now:

Steve Asher hadn't joined the protests before, but this march brought him out.


Steve Asher: I live in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

Vanek Smith: How did you get here?

Asher: Subway. And I had to count the pennies to make sure I could afford it.

Asher says he's upset that a New York state tax on millionaires is expiring at the end of the year. He lost his job in the non-profit sector last year and has been scraping by on unemployment benefits of $400 a week. That's 400 taxable dollars.

Asher: It is really irritating when I'm struggling, struggling to make that $400 go as far as it can, to hear of a tax cut for a multimillionaire.

Let's do some math - $400 a week - that's $20.857 a year. According to this site, that's more than what a US private with more than 6 years of experience is paid. I wonder why should government handouts in NYS give out more than what we pay the soldier spilling his blood in Afghanistan (or, as Obama would call it - "Overseas Contingency Operation")? I would really want to know the actual reasons for this obscenity.

Of course, not everyone is like little Steve. There are people of principle among the occupistas. Welcome to Anne Wiswell, one of the courageous protesters.

Twenty-three-year old Anne Wiswell has been active in the Occupy Wall Street protests from the start. She says her family's reversal of fortune is why she's here. She was a student at the New School until last year, when her parents told her they couldn't afford pay for her education any more.

Hm. So, that's what happened to her - her parents could not afford to pay for her studies in the "New School". How tragic. What's the "New School", you may ask - why can't we just live with all the old schools, like MIT, Caltech, Columbia? I took some time to learn more about the "New School", and I found that it's quite a place to get your education - of course, you won't find a job with that education, but why talk about little things. Here is what this school says about itself:

The New School is a legendary progressive university comprising schools bound by a common, unusual intent: to prepare and inspire its 10,510 undergraduate and graduate students to bring actual, positive change to the world. From its Greenwich Village campus, The New School launches economists and actors, fashion designers and urban planners, dancers and anthropologists, orchestra conductors, filmmakers, political scientists, organizational experts, jazz musicians, scholars, psychologists, historians, journalists, and above all, world citizens-individuals whose ideas and innovations forge new paths of progress in the arts, design, humanities, public policy, and the social sciences.

A "legendary progressive university... bound by a common unusual intent... to inspire students to bring actual, positive change to the world". Damn! I wonder how much this shit costs, and I am curious what kind of thinkers this school prepares.  Answering the first question - the school estimates that a Full-Time On-Campus Resident is expected to spend $57,568 a year. And to answer your second question, here is what the "New School" student Anne Wiswell had to say when her parents could not afford her "studies":

It was this massive realization -- "Oh my gosh, I have to support myself. Welcome to the real world."

Damn, girl , I am glad for you. Finally that $57,568 that your parents spent to educate you did something good for you. It's a real world out there, and you need to learn to support yourself. This reminded me of an old Woody Allen's joke: "When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room". So, what did little Annie do when she realized she was now responsible to earn her living? American Government Public Media, gives us the full story:

It was this massive realization -- "Oh my gosh, I have to support myself. Welcome to the real world." I need to get involved with government policy so that I can afford to live in this country and in this city.

Yes, Anne Wiswall, you need to... What?! Demanding for a government handout is not the same as supporting oneself, you idiot - it's quite the opposite, you dumbass. You dried your parents finances, and now you want to do same to the taxpayers? Girl, supporting yourself means earning your living, not running around and screaming "I need a handout, please give it to me".

I will finish my letter with two quotes, which succinctly summarize the Occupy Wall Street movement.If anyone objects to any of these quotes - I suggest you put together at least some explanation on what those Occupistas propose. Right now, they sound like spoiled ignorant children who want to be taken care off. That's not the movement of the working class - that's a mob of parasites and swindlers.

"Man's mind is his basic means of survival - and of self-protection. Reason is the most selfish human faculty: it has to be used in and by a man's own mind and its product - truth - makes him inflexible, instragent, impervious to the power of any pack or any ruler. Deprived of the ability to reason, man becomes a docile, pliant, impotent chunk of clay, to be shaped into any subhuman form and used for the purpose by anyone who wants to bother."  Ayn Rand, "Return of the Primitive"

"One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans - anything except reason." Thomas Sowell, "Dismantling America".

Two articles, a few days apart...

"Rich people are being ‘demonized’ for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears!"

The latest group to claim victim status is the rich. Actually the super-rich, whose wealth ordinarily exempts them from pity. While they are not yet subjected to airport profiling (except for early boarding and club access), they sense that the public is turning subtly against them — otherwise how could President Obama propose raising their taxes? [How many liberals expressed sympathy for Obama - a man who lives richer than super-rich, and who has more security and privileges than any man on the planet?]

 Admirers of the rich, led by pundits and politicians on the right — from Laura Ingraham to Larry Kudlow — have long derided the victimization claims of African Americans, women, gays and the unemployed, but now they’re raising their voices to defend the rich against what they see as an ugly tide of “demonization.”

At a time when poverty is soaring, unemployment hovers grimly above 9 percent and growing numbers of Americans suffer from “food insecurity” — the official euphemism for hunger [actually, this is official euphemism for a situation, when people may not have stocked enough food to sustain themselves for 10 weeks] — this concern may seem a tad esoteric. At a time when executive compensation is reaching dizzying new levels [The article provides no evidence to support this claim - let alone explain why suddenly all rich people are supposed to be executives] and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing as fast as the federal deficit, it may even seem a little perverse. [The more Obama spends, the bigger the gap. Maybe it's not a coincidence?]

But even beyond the taxes-and-deficits debate, in which wealthy Americans have been routinely characterized as yacht owners and corporate-jet fliers, the rich have indeed suffered a few blows to their self-esteem. Last year’s film “The Social Network” was unflattering to exemplars of both new and old wealth, and now two new television series are being hyped by some in the media as incitements to class warfare. In “2 Broke Girls,” a couple of young women struggle to survive — not as runway models or high-maintenance housewives but, shockingly enough, as waitresses. And Time magazine titillatingly describes ABC’s “Revenge,” set in the Hamptons, as “a target-rich environment of polo players and stock traders” in which a young woman stalks the singularly overprivileged people who, years earlier, ruined her father. No less a social commentator than “Revenge” star Madeleine Stowe has observed that “we’re dealing in a particular time right now in American history where I think the average American is going to want to see a takedown of the rich.” [In the 1930ies, an average German also wanted to see a takedown of the Jews - after all, Jews were responsible for the defeat of their country during WWI - or so the uneducated brainwashed idiots thought. The story repeats itself - now suddenly we are supposed to think that all rich people are evil.] 

You would never guess from all the talk of demonization that the rich enjoy perhaps the strongest PR machine on the planet, far beyond their entourages of agents, publicists and assorted image-makers. The mainstream media, for example, are not owned by collectives of busboys and taxi drivers, and even the “liberal” outlets among them are not pitched toward the impecunious. They may snicker when the occasional hedge fund manager is brought to justice, but they’ve been equally snarky about populist actions against the rich, such as the ongoing occupation of Wall Street, which is newsworthy if only for the levels of brutality it’s elicited from the NYPD. Or did you know that the Transportation Security Administration just won union representation this summer? Probably not, because that’s “labor news,” which has been all but supplanted by “business news.” [It would be interesting to compare who has a better PR - American blacks or rich. After all - when was the last time you've seen a report in the mainstream media that would equate all blacks with criminals, evil-doers and try to take them down?]

The article continues in the same fashion, on, and on and on, quoting a few stupid rich folks and somehow using these examples to prove that all rich people are evil. Well, let's compare this article with another article, published just a few days later...


Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Created Personal Computer, iPad, iPod, iPhone

Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56....
 
Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak, marketed what was considered the world's first personal computer, the Apple II...


Industry watchers called him a master innovator -- perhaps on a par with Thomas Edison -- changing the worlds of computing, recorded music and communications...


The highlights of Jobs's career trajectory are well-known: a prodigy who dropped out of Reed College in Oregon and, at 21, started Apple with Wozniak in his parents' garage. He was a multimillionaire by 25, appeared on the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was ousted at Apple at age 30, in 1984.

In the years that followed, he went into other businesses, founding NeXT computers and, in 1986, buying the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd., which became Pixar Animation Studios.

He was described as an exacting and sometimes fearsome leader, ordering up and rejecting multiple versions of new products until the final version was just right. He said the design and aesthetics of a device were as important as the hardware and software inside.

In 1996, Apple, which had struggled without Jobs, brought him back by buying NeXT. He became CEO in 1997 and put the company on a remarkable upward path.

By 2001 the commercial music industry was on its knees because digital recordings, copied and shared online for free, made it unnecessary for millions of people to buy compact discs.

Jobs took advantage with the iPod -- essentially a pocket-sized computer hard drive with elegantly simple controls and a set of white earbuds so that one could listen to the hours of music one saved on it. He set up the iTunes online music store, and persuaded major recording labels to sell songs for 99 cents each. No longer did people have to go out and buy a CD if they liked one song from it. They bought a digital file and stored it in their iPod.

In 2007, he transformed the cell phone. Apple's iPhone, with its iconic touch screen, was a handheld computer, music player, messaging device, digital wallet and -- almost incidentally -- cell phone. Major competitors, such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, struggled after it appeared.

By 2010, Apple's new iPad began to cannibalize its original business, the personal computer. The iPad was a sleek tablet computer with a touch screen and almost no physical buttons. It could be used for almost anything software designers could conceive, from watching movies to taking pictures to leafing through a virtual book.

I fully realize that appealing to the liberal common sense is a worthless exercise. It's like reminding a Nazi that a Jew has saved his child's life. But still - I want every leftie who reads this post, every time when he rails against the evil rich folks - to imagine the face of Steve Jobs, and the great things he achieved in his life. He is the rich white male that you are demonizing - and when people like him are gone - your world will come to an end. The only reason why you live a nice house with electricity, drive a car to your work and watch TV is because of people like him. When you defeat the Steve Jobs of this world - you will bring death and destruction to this planet.

Pass this bill now?

As you may recall, president Obama recently demanded Congress to pass his "jobs bill" (in order to avoid any confusion, I will call if "Stimulus 2"). According to Obama, this bill will on one side spend about 450 billion dollars to stimulate the economy, and yet is fully paid for through tax increases and spending cuts. In his speech, Obama sounded convinced that the US economic is in dire straits [I love "Dire Straits"] and Congress must drop everything it is doing and "pass the bill". Here is the exact quote: "It [Stimulus 2] will provide a jolt to an economy that has stalled, and give companies confidence that if they invest and hire, there will be customers for their products and services. You should pass this jobs plan [Stimulus 2] right away.”


I say - "Amen, Brother". The GOP must announce that all of next week will be devoted exclusively to reading Obama's Stimulus bill and line-by-line discussion thereof. The White House is kindly asked to submit the bill (which must be passed "right now") on Monday, September 12, 2011, before lunch time. Any and all activity in Congress (House and Senate) not associated with Stimulus 2 is stopped for the next week, due to the urgent request of the president to pass his Stimulus 2 bill.

In the unlikely event that Obama's Stimulus 2 bill cannot be located by the end of this week, the House and the Senate will jointly send a letter of reprimand to president Obama for being such a narcissistic douche bag.

P.S. In all seriousness, we all know that there is no "jobs bill which is fully paid for", and as we all know, "CBO cannot score a speech". Obama behaves as an affirmative action student who wants professor to check his final exam right now and give him a solid A+++  - and he did not even bother to submit it. This is disgraceful. Obama deserves to be smacked by Congress. That's the only way to teach him manners.

P.P.S. Imagine that for the whole week, one congressman after another gets in front of TV and silently stands there for 10 minutes.
"What's he doing?"
"He is reading Obama's jobs bill."
"But I cannot hear anything."
"Well, that's cause there is not jobs bill, but I am glad GOP is trying to pass it anyways."

Obama and the Democrats have to ... make government work", Part 2

I don't think a single week goes by without some left-wing journalist/activist/economist making a heart-felt appeal to increase the government spending. And as is customary, one of the reasons given for such an increase is the need to rebuild our infrastructure - roads, bridges, sewers and the like. Even our president is asking for money to "rebuild the infrastructure". According to laprogressive, "He [Obama] says he wants an “infrastructure bank” that would borrow money from private capital markets to pay private contractors to rebuild our nations roads, bridges, airports, and everything else that’s falling apart." One strange thing though - Obama just spent 900 billion dollars on stimulus, which was also sold as a project to fix our bridges and roads - "the biggest government infrastructure investment since the interstate highway system was launched in the 1950s". And the folks on my second most favourite blog, Alexandria, got in the game and demanded more government spending for roads, bridges - well, you know the rest. Of course, building new roads is a major government spending (4 million miles of roads, 600,000 highway bridges, 117,000 miles of rail, 11,000 miles of transit lines, 19,000 airports, 300 ports won't come cheap), and the liberals require tax increases.

Let's look at this issue from a historic perspective. In 2010, the federal government spent 92 billion dollars on transportation, while the total government (federal, state and local) transportation bill was 271 billion dollars. As a matter of perspective, the federal spending in 2010 was 3,456 billion dollars, and the total government spending was 5,799 billion dollars. In other words, out of every dollar that Obama spent in 2010, only 2.7 cents went for transportation. For all levels of the US government, the number was only slightly higher - 4.67 cents on the dollar. In short, the spending on roads, bridges, airports and "everything else that has to do with transportation" is a minor portion of the budget - practically a rounding error. So, every time when a liberal tells you that he needs more of your money to fix the roads - show him this statistics.

Now, while the transportation costs are a minor blip compared to the entire government spending, these are far from being small if you put them in historical perspective. Here is a singular point of reference - the launch of Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower presidency. During the first 5 years of the project (1956-1960), the federal government built 10,000 miles of highway. It was far from an easy task, according to this government publication:

High standards were adopted for the interstate highway system. Access to all interstates was to be fully controlled. There would be no intersections or traffic signals. All traffic and railroad crossings would be grade separated, requiring the construction of more than 55,000 bridges. Interstates were to be divided and have at least four wide traffic lanes (two in each direction) and adequate shoulders. Curves were to be engineered for safe negotiation at high speed, while grades were to be moderated, eliminating blind hills. Rest areas were to be conveniently spaced. Each interstate was to be designed to handle traffic loads expected 20 years after completion.

I've collected the information on the cost of this project during these 5 years, and the total federal transportation spending from 1956 to 1960 was 110 billion dollars (in 2010 dollars) - which is only slightly above the federal transportation spending for 2010 alone (92 billion dollars). In fact, in 2009, the federal government spend another 107.2 billion dollars for the transportation improvement. If one includes the fact that technology advanced considerably during the last half a century, it remains remarkable that president Obama was able to spend so much money on "roads and bridges", enough money to build 20,000 miles of the interstate highway - and yet deliver so little. For all intents and purposes I could not even find any publication which would tell us how many thousands of miles of highway the federal government built in 2009 or 2010 - and I strongly suspect that the actual number is probably measured in hundreds of miles, if even that.

In order to illustrate the absurdity of the current situation (and to demonstrate how difficult it would be for the Democrats to make the federal government work), let me show a comparison between two projects, 80 years apart.

Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is an architectural marvel, and one of the most striking attractions in New York City. The building itself was constructed during the Great Depression and is a living monument to that era and the city it so proudly illuminates... For 40 years after it was constructed, it held the record for being the largest skyscraper in the world. The building has starred in over 90 movies, and it remains one of New York City's most popular tourist attractions.

 At the time it was built, the Empire State Building was the center of a competition between Walter Chrysler, of the Chrysler Corporation, and John Raskob, creator of General Motors. The competition, appropriately enough, was to see who could build the highest building first... In the year 1929, Mr. Raskob set about this task with a group of very well known investors...

The excavation for the project began on January 22, 1930 and took only one year and 45 days to complete, or 7 million hours. The masonry for the structure was completed on May 1, 1931, significantly ahead of schedule. On that date, President Herbert Hoover pressed a button in Washington, D.C. to officially open the building by turning on the Empire State Building's lights.  

The total cost to construct the skyscraper was $40,948,000, including the cost of the land. The building alone was constructed with a little over $24,000,000.

According to this site, in 2010 dollars, the total cost of the Empire State building is 500,000,000 dollars (in my calculation, it's closer to 590,000,000 dollars, but I digress). So, on one side we have an "architectural marvel",  "one of the most striking attractions in New York City", which is 1,050 feet above ground with 102 floors and 6,500 windows. What have we got on the other side?


Columbia River Interstate Bridge

The Interstate Bridge (also Columbia River Interstate Bridge, I-5 Bridge, Portland-Vancouver Interstate Bridge, Vancouver-Portland Bridge) is a pair of nearly identical steel vertical-lift, through-truss bridges that carry Interstate 5 traffic over the Columbia River between Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, in the United States...

The bridge is frequently a bottleneck which impacts both traffic on the freeway, as well as on the river. The Oregon and Washington state departments of transportation are jointly studying how to replace the bridge. Initially, the estimated cost for a replacement bridge was around $2 billion, but that number has climbed steadily to around $4.2 billion.

On one side, this bridge is no "Empire State Building", not even close. The Oregon architects also don't need to buy the land in Manhattan to build a architectural marvel. And yet, note that the estimated cost of replacement is nearly 8 times the cost of the Empire State Building. But that's not all - there is more.... According to the official site:

1. How much have we spent on the project [rebuilding the Columbia River Interstate Bridge], what do we get from it, and where did the money come from?

Since 2005 the project has spent a total of $127 million. It has been funded about equally by Washington and Oregon, with additional contributions from the federal government. The current phase of the project is wrapping up this year. Since 2005, the funds have been spent on engineering, project management, transit planning, public involvement and communications (required by the federal NEPA process), and environmental studies, including preparation of a Draft and Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The majority of the money spent to date in all project areas supports the current project design, including the bridge type.

After spending 6 years deliberating on how to replace the Interstate Bridge (3 times longer than it took to build the Empire State Building - from a concept drawn on napkin to the actual building open for customers) and spending 127 million dollars (more than 20% of the total cost of the Empire State Building project), the governments of Oregon and Washington still could not decide on what they wanted to build. According to another official site,

The Columbia River Crossing project team is currently refining designs for each of the project’s components based on public and local partner agency input.

In case you are wondering, the governors of both states, Oregon and Washington are hard-core liberals.
 
So tell me, dear leader, what are the chances that Barack Obama and the Democrats will answer Joan Walsh's plea to make the government work? Don't answer all at once, comrades...