Will You Bet On Your Opinion?

Will $100 Shut People Up?
02/06/09 - Crime & Federalism by Mike

[edited] When people state a stupid opinion or false fact, I no longer argue. I say, "OK - I'll bet you $100 that you are wrong."

People never take the bet. What's up with that? It's amazing how something as small as $100 can test a person's convictions. Amazingly, if you will not put $100 on the line, why should I believe you? People want me to change my mind based on their assertions; yet their assertions aren't even worth $100 to them!

How about people who demand that the government provide a stimulus to the economy. Perhaps Paul Krugman will say, "I'll wager $10,000 with any of my critics that if x-stimulus occurs, y-economic effect will follow."

Why aren't these economists making huge bets? They are rather confident in their opinions. They should go win that money! If they are embarrassed by greed, they can set up a charity as the beneficiary of the wager.

If someone wants to spend billions or trillions of taxpayer dollars, but won't offer up a few thousand of their own, then what should we think of him?

We Don't Have Free Markets

Regulation of Financial Markets
02/05/09 - Cafehayek.com by Russell Roberts

If we had an “unregulated free market”:

• The banks that made stupid investment decisions would have gone bankrupt and be under new management.
• The investment rating agencies that rated subprime loans as “AAA” would be disgraced, bankrupt and out of business -- no one on earth would deal with them any longer
• No one could force bankers to make risky loans, as is currently done by the Community Reinvestment Act, lawsuits from ACORN, and the Justice Department.
• No central bank would be in charge of the entire money supply.
• - to make credit available at too-low interest rates.
• - to create a permanent inflation that made housing jump in "value".
• - to encourage risk by being a lender of last resort.
• - to condone and support an over-leveraged banking system, where reserves are only 4% of loans outstanding, inviting constant instability.
• No Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or FHA could direct trillions of dollars into unaffordable housing construction.
• The government could not borrow $1 trillion for handouts to political interest groups.
• The few elements of remaining capitalism would not struggle under thousands of pages of rules and regulations, and dozens of government agencies.
• The little guy would not have to contribute his funds to a government that saves the incompetent and the dishonest from the consequences of their own actions.

We don’t have an unregulated free market; we have an out-of-control government intent on looting us blind.

Leftist Arguments: A or B

Leftist Dual Models
02/05/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love [edited, restated]

The Left has different arguments for different purposes.

Tobacco Taxes:

A: It is right to tax tobacco companies.

Tobacco use is the fault of evil tobacco companies, and smokers are their hapless victims. (1) Tobacco is highly physically addictive. People are largely powerless to stop smoking. (2) Marketing makes smoking so desirable that it subverts the choice not to smoke.

So, the companies are rightly paying billions (to state governments, not smokers) in compensation and are forced to stop brainwashing people with advertisements.

B: It is right to tax smokers.

Individuals freely choose to do something destructive to themselves and others. They can stop anytime they wish. Taxing them helps the smoker by inducing him to quit, and it compensates society for the harm that smokers choose to inflict on the community.

Social Security (SS) and Payroll Taxes:

A: Government payments to the retired are proper repayment of what was contributed.

SS represents a solid “investment” for workers. The compulsory payments are “contributions”, the same term used for private pension payments. Workers will reliably receive a higher rate of return than they can with private plans, because the government guarantees payouts. A worker will get back every dime he puts into Social Security plus interest. SS payouts are fair because they depend on how much a person contributes over his working life. SS is simply a compulsory government pension system whose benefits go to contributors.

B: Workers should get tax refunds based on their SS taxes.

SS is a regressive "tax" system that forces workers to carry the burden of supporting the elderly and disabled while getting nothing in return. The worker’s contribution to SS should be considered part of the general taxes he pays. These are not “contributions”, they are regressive taxes.

The analysis:

The only constant in these dual-model arguments is in who benefits. For tobacco, leftists get money to pay for votes and to increase the public’s dependency on government.

The SS arguments demand lower contributions and greater payouts, using contradictory statements.

Leftists choose which model to advance at any given time depending on how it benefits them, the politicians, and the particular political groups they identify with.

Democratic Trickle-Down Economics

Democrats Try Trickle-Down Economics
Growing government won't stimulate the real economy.
02/05/09 - Online.WSJ.com by Carl Rove

[edited] As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama attacked "trickle down economics" as "bankrupt" and an "old, discredited" philosophy that "didn't work." He was wrong. Even worse, he and congressional Democrats are embracing a Democratic version of trickle-down economics that won't work.

The House-passed "stimulus" bill, H.R. 1, is deeply flawed, assuming that spending $1 trillion to grow government will trickle down to help people who lost jobs. The Democrats' spending is horribly mismatched with industries that have suffered job loss.

Democrats want to spend $88 billion to increase the federal share of Medicaid. What American will be hired by a small business, factory, retail shop, hotel, restaurant or service company because of this spending? The answer is very few.

In H.R. 1, there's $41 billion set aside for school districts, $1.5 billion for university research grants, $2 billion for Energy Department labs, and $3 billion for the National Science Foundation. Yet education is one of the few sectors that added jobs last year.

There's also $4 billion for health programs like obesity control and smoking cessation, $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health, $462 million for the Centers for Disease Control, and $900 million for pandemic flu preparations. Health care also added jobs last year.

White House adviser Larry Summers argued that any stimulus must be "targeted, timely and temporary." This bill does the opposite. Mr. Obama pledged to "scour our federal budget, line by line, and make meaningful cuts." His cuts are unspecific and fanciful, while Congress's spending will be real and record-setting.

Discretionary domestic spending will have nearly doubled by the time Mr. Obama stops dithering and starts scouring.

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Worst Talking Point Ever
11/06/09 - The Atlantic by Megan McArdle

McArdle: If this is the best the Democrats can come up with, they are in deep, deep trouble.

From Politico: Members fear their jobs are next.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio): Speaker Pelosi is trying to force her members to vote for a bill that the American people have soundly rejected.

Democrats counter that their agenda has kick-started a recovery on Wall Street, even if it hasn't trickled down to the job market yet, and that Republicans are putting at risk what Democrats have begun.

Che Guevara's Message

Tune in, Turn on, Get Shot
02/04/09 - AmericanThinker by Humberto Fontova

[edited] Woe to those youths "who stayed up late at night and thus reported late to work at government forced-labor." Guevara wrote "Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. Those who chose their own path" (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as worthless "lumpen" and "delinquents." In his famous speech he vowed "to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!"

Normally it's one .45 slug that shatters the skull. Eyewitnesses say Tony required POW! POW! POW! -- three. The executioner's hands were shaking pretty badly. They finally managed. Che Guevara, the man Time magazine placed among the "heroes and icons of the Century", had another notch in his gun. Another enemy dispatched, bound and gagged as usual.

Castro and Che were in their mid-30s when they murdered Tony. According to the authoritative "Black Book of Communism" their firing squads riddled another 14,000 bound and gagged freedom-fighters. Many (perhaps most) of their murder victims were boys in their late-teens and early 20s. Some were younger.

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The Real Che Guevara
02/17/09 - Samizdata by Sol Terra

The real Guevara was a reckless bourgeois adrenaline-junkie seeking a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. But this fanatic's vehicle of 'liberation' was Stalinism, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, murderer of well over 20 million of his own people.

As one of Castro's top lieutenants, Che helped steer Cuba's revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara choreographed the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing even fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and shot one himself with no due process.

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Killer Chic
Hollywood's Sick Love Affair With Che Guevara
03/2009 - Reason.TV

A video (8:30) about Che Guevara's influence in Hollywood. There are comments by people who have lived in Cuba under Castro, and in China under Mao.

[edited] Gisele Bundchen wears him on the runway, Johnny Depp wears him around his neck, and Benicio Del Toro becomes him in "Che", the new, highly acclaimed, two-part epic film from Steven Soderbergh. Ernesto "Che" Guevara is the revolutionary who helped found communist Cuba. He is the celebrity that celebrities adore. Be it Madonna, Rage Against the Machine, or Jay-Z, musicians really dig Che.

This baffles Cuban jazz legend Paquito D’Rivera. “Che hated artists, so how is it possible that artists still today support the image of Che Guevara?” It turns out the rebellious icon that emblazons countless T-shirts actually enforced aesthetic and political conformity. D’Rivera explains that Che and other Cuban authorities sought to ban rock n roll and jazz.

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AIG Exec Digs Che Guevara?
03/18/09 - American Thinker by Humberto Fontova

The article shows an executive from the bailed-out insurance company AIG, wearing a Che t-shirt at a social event. It talks about how the Cuban people have become poor under Castro despite massive aid from the Soviet Union.

The following quote is from Fontova's new book "Exposing the Real Che Guevara".

[edited] After a hard day at the office signing execution warrants, Che Guevara repaired to his new domicile in Tarara, 15 miles outside Havana and on a pristine beachfront. Today, that beach is reserved exclusively for tourists and Communist party members.

The "austere idealist" Che hadn't done too badly for himself in this real estate transaction, known in non-revolutionary societies as theft.

Cuban journalist Antonio Llano Montes writes:

[edited] The house was among the most luxurious in Cuba. Until a few weeks prior, it belonged to Cuba's most successful building contractor. The mansion had a boat dock, a huge swimming pool, seven bathrooms, a sauna, a massage salon and several television sets.

One TV had been specially designed in the U.S., had a screen ten feet wide, and was operated by remote control (in 1959). This was thought to be the only TV of its kind in Latin America.

The garden had a veritable jungle of imported plants, a pool with waterfall, ponds filled with exotic tropical fish, and several bird houses filled with parrots and other exotic birds. The habitation was something out of "A Thousand and One Nights".

The Benefits of Health Savings Accounts

Knockin' Wood: The Benefits of Health Savings Accounts - HSA's
02/03/09 - InsureBlog by Henry Stern

The Urban Institute doesn't like free market solutions to health care and insurance issues, so they decided to pick on the one product that is the most useful in reducing costs and insuring more people: consumer driven health care plans and HSA's. In reality:

• HSA's are attractive to people of all incomes.
• Those who need usual health care services benefit from these plans, which avoid costly "extras".
• High deductible HSA plans have lower premiums than expensive plans with lower initial co-pays. Since the plans have higher deductibles, it seems more likely that those with more health problems (up to a point, of course) will be more likely to make it through underwriting.
• 6+ million Americans are enrolled in HSA-eligible health plans. Their popularity is growing. Patients determine how much of their money to spend today, or save for tomorrow, for health-care expenses. HSAs allow patients to make prudent decisions for themselves.

Macroeconomics is Astrology, Not Science

Macroeconomics 'Experts' Apply Astrology, Not Science
01/30/09 - RealClearMarkets by Frank J. Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University.

[edited] The inability of macroeconomic theories (about an entire economy) to make accurate predictions means that those economists do not know what they are talking about. Our leaders are being advised by macroeconomists, and they haven’t got a clue where they are leading us. Their actions may lead us out of the current recession, or they may lead us into a depression as bad as the Great Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt is often given credit for experimenting with the economy in a scientific manner. He did nothing of the sort.

Any experiment involving human beings has to be a controlled experiment, as in medicine. Half the patients are given the new medicines and the other half, the controls, either the old medicine, or a placebo. Then, and only then, can one tell if the medicine actually improves the condition over doing nothing (the placebo), or is making matters worse.

In contrast, today’s economic advisors to the President, like Roosevelt, propose to apply their economic medicine to the entire economy. This is astrology, not science. The professors of economics have no true, experimentally confirmed knowledge of macroeconomics.

The widely touted macroeconomic “experts” are no experts at all.

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Why Spending Stimulus Plans Fail
Articles about Stimulus

Interrogation, Torture, and Rendition

The Necessity of Torture
02/02/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Shannon Love
About the use of threats in interrogation from WWII to the present.

[edited] Obama has decided to keep rendition and the torture it implies as part of U.S. covert operations. Threatening to torture spies and illegal combatants is a necessary tool.

The US Army in WWII interrogated uniformed German soldiers i.e. legal combatants completely covered by the Geneva convention. The History Channel reported about the most successful technique. Many of the interrogators were Jews who escaped Germany and Eastern Europe in the 30’s and who spoke many languages in genuine accents. The Russian speaking members dressed in Soviet uniforms and told the German captives that they would be turned over to the Russians unless they talked. The Germans knew full well that death by torture awaited them at the hands of the Russians, and talked.

The American interrogators were bluffing. If a German didn’t talk they just transferred him so he couldn’t give the game away. Without the horror of Stalin’s Soviet Union hanging over their heads, the Germans had no reason to speak. The information that the Americans extracted form the German soldiers saved Allied lives.

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The “Extraordinary Rendition” Program
02/02/09 - ChicagoBoyz by Lexington Green

An interview with Michael Scheuer of the CIA. He helped to develop the system of renditions the CIA used for terrorists, first developed in 1995 under President Clinton.

A rendition is capturing a terrorist, then sending him to his home country or a third country for imprisonment. The legal rules followed are surprising.

[edited] Scheuer:First, we wanted to identify the members and contacts of al-Qaida and put them in jail. Those in fact who had either taken part in an attack on the United States or who were possibly planning an attack. Second, papers and electronics were to be confiscated.

It is being claimed in the media that we had apprehended and hauled off people on the basis of some suspicions, in order to interrogate them. But that isn't right.

If it was possible to interrogate, we considered that icing on the cake. We just wanted the man and his documents. We knew from experience that aggressive interrogations bordering on torture don't work

President Clinton, his security advisor Sandy Berger, and his terrorism advisor Richard Clarke tasked the CIA in Fall 1995 with destroying al-Qaida. We asked the President: What should we do with the people we’ve apprehended? Clinton: That’s your concern. The CIA objected: We aren’t prison guards. We were again told that we should solve the problem somehow. So we developed a procedure, and I was a member of this task force. We concentrated on al-Qaida members who were wanted in their home countries or who had been convicted there in absentia.

We had to present a huge amount of incriminating evidence to a group of lawyers before arresting anyone. There were lawyers everywhere. In the CIA, in the Justice Department, in the National Security Council.

We developed our list of targets under their supervision. Then we had to catch the person in a country that was prepared to cooperate with us. Finally, the person had to come from a country that was prepared to take him back. A terribly cumbersome process for a very limited group of targets.

ZEIT: Why did countries want to cooperate with you on their own territory? Couldn’t they have dealt with it themselves?

Scheuer: They believed that only America was threatened, and that they would themselves only become targets of terror if they arrested suspects publicly.

Hansen's Claims About Global Warming Embarrassed NASA

Hansen Embarrassed NASA
02/01/09 - PowerLineBlog by John Hinderaker

James Hansen of NASA is a leader in espousing the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). He has public credibility because of his NASA affiliation. His boss at NASA was John Theon, who has recently retired, and has announced his view that AGW is not supported by evidence.

Theon writes:

[edited] As Chief of several NASA Hq. Programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research.

James Hansen was never muzzled, even though he violated NASA's official position, that NASA did not know enough to forecast climate change or mankind's effect on it. He embarrassed NASA by his claims of global warming in his 1988 testimony before Congress.

I believe that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system, because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit.

Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. They don't explain what they have modified in the observations or how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done.

Thus, there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy.

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam

The Fraud of Anthropogenic Global Warming

The Greatest Fraud in History?
01/30/09 - PajamasMedia by James Lewis

[edited] The credibility of science may never recover from the Global Warming scare. Credibility has to be earned, and once it’s squandered may never be recovered. Far too many scientists have knowingly colluded in an historic fraud, one that would put Bernie Madoff to shame. We are seeing political larceny here on a planetary scale. Why should scientists who have gambled their own reputations on this fakery ever be trusted again?

I’m not a climatologist. Like most scientists I rarely judge what others do in their fields. And yet it’s been flamingly obvious for years now, that the hypothesis of human-caused global warming violates all the basic rules and safeguards that protect the integrity of normal, healthy science. That’s why AGW (anthropogenic global warming) looks like a massive fraud, the biggest fraud ever in the history of science.

Mr. Lewis discusses a number of things that real scientists NEVER do. These are all things that promotors of global warming are doing loudly and repeatedly. It is politics or religion, but not science. Here is one point (it is worth reading the rest):

Bad data has been very widespread in global warming theories. Judging by past performance, it may still be endemic. Thermometers are placed in hot areas in the cities, and the data is shamelessly generalized to the whole world. The infamous “hockey stick” temperature diagram has been exposed. James Hansen has brought NASA to its lowest point ever by repeatedly endorsing false data.

In any healthy field of science, that disastrous empirical record would have discredited the hypothesis. But while the data seems to crash periodically, the models don’t change in their catastrophism.

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Global Warming Caused by Humans is a Scam