Wizer Oneliner #24

No, Not "angry voters": angry citizens...and determined voters.

These Boots are Made for Stepping In It.

And with iPods and iPads; and Xboxes and PlayStations -- none of which I know how to work -- information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. So all of this is not only putting pressure on you; it's putting new pressure on our country and on our democracy. -- Barry H. Obama

So, information is distracting? I do imagine that it distracts people from disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, breads and circuses.

Reason.com's blog, Hit and Run has it well scoped:

• Taken together, the message here is clear, clever, and wrong. The boom in opinionated, interconnected media is a challenge to our very democracy (it isn't). News needs to be hermetically sealed from opinion (it doesn't). The primary purpose of media consumption should be empowerment (if there was a primary purpose for media consumption, I sure as hell wouldn't trust a president to identify it). And the most dangerous purveyor of untruths is the 24/7 echo chamber (I for one am much more exercised about taxpayer-financed lies backed by lethal government force).

It seems like there are only two places we find this administrations boots: Either on our necks or in Barry's mouth.

Happy Trails Helen Thomas

We won't really know what will happen until it happens. Helen Thomas

When you're in the news business, you always expect the unexpected.-- Helen Thomas

Even Napoleon had his Watergate. Yogi Berra

I don't suppose Helen thought it would end this way. After all, she said a lot more hateful things than this to and about countries, presidents, and citizens over the years. Maybe because she delivered her latest hateful comment with a laugh. Her arrogance was more subtle when she delivered it deadpan. It's pretty appropriate for her to go out that way: every press secretary since Pierre Salinger had their laugh at her silly questions. Here's one from the late Tony Snow.

Sometimes stoneage reporters are kept around way too long. They eventually make a fool of themselves. Daniel Schorr, Dan Rather, Helen Thomas. She wasn't particularly original, intelligent, or fair with her questions, and the world was tired of her act many years ago. Sometimes we just have to dismiss our icons in an unflattering way. This one's for you, Helen.

Let Nanny get that

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

Aaron Everitt posted this article on Mises.org, outlining the false sense of security we get because the government pretends to be an overarching protector of our safety.

• Coal miners go to work with an artificially bolstered confidence simply because there is a Mine Safety Administration monitoring their situation. Deep-sea oil workers have misguided confidence in their equipment because the derrick they are on recently won an award for safety from the federal government.

and

• Instead of spending time on adapting their product to the desires of consumers, homebuilders are busy adapting their homes to the code. Innovation is the victim. Most homebuilders don't have the staff to introduce innovative plans while also ensuring that they keep up with code.

I certainly agree with this. We now simply buy baby cribs with confidence because the government is "on the job" making sure they are safe. Well, meeting government standards and building safe products are two different things, and we should never confuse them.

I've read where air bags and seat belts an baby seats and anti-shatter glass, and a number of other things that came ostensibly out of government mandates have increased the likelihood of risky driving. Why not? The message is the government is keeping us safe. We no longer have to do it for ourselves.

Tune in next year when people stop worrying about their health because Harry Reid is going to give them a free kidney anyway Or buy all the sub-prime debt you want because government is here to bail you out.

I don't know what ever happened to personal responsibility, but it no longer seems to be the least bit necessary in order to function in this society. All we have to do is vote for a president who will fill our drug coverage donut holes, not leave a child behind, heal our planet, and spread the wealth.

If you ask me, it's far more risky to farm out any of your personal safety choices to government, than to watch for yourself, because at the end of the day, there's very little difference between Nanny and Big Brother.

Political and Correct

"Tea Party Pick Causes Uproar on Civil Rights" -NYTimes headline

Rand Paul should stick to the winning campaign strategy of Bob McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown: keep the attention on fiscal restraint, and stay away from hot-button social issues. Bush 41 speechwriter Mary Kate Cary, USN&WR

These attacks prove one thing for certain: the liberal establishment is desperate to keep leaders like me out of office, and we are sure to hear more wild, dishonest smears during this campaign. -Rand Paul

It is the scourge of "small l" libertarians running for office that there will be detractors from from both the left and right. Sooner or later, one side or the other finds something to demonize and distort.

I do enjoy politicians who reach into history and point out where we went wrong. Many honest politicians do this. The dishonest ones are all served by the status quo, so there won't be many history lessons from their corner. Which is to say that there won't be a lot of senators defending Rand Paul. It's all right. These senators are an endangered species themselves.

The statement Rand Paul made was boilerplate libertarian thinking that the government has no right to put their boots on the throats of private businesses . Whether it's a drug store diner or British British Petroleum, the idea is 100% correct.

When a democrat says something like this, he is allowed to pass over the "Bridge of Death". A republican is cast into the gorge. But a libertarian is besieged from both sides, and the true kernel of the idea is buried in the false outrage.

Rand Paul's candidacy is different. It may be the change everybody voted for in 2008 (and is still waiting for). I'm not sure; but so far I agree with everything Rand Paul is charged with saying. Most voters don't understand nuanced policy, but this is evidence that Rand Paul does, and that's exactly the type of politician we need in the US Senate now.

Paul's observations were consistent with the idea that government intervention is limited by the constitution, as it should be. It makes him different from almost all the other Senators, and it's a difference we could certainly benefit from.

I am reasonably sure the voters of Kentucky are smart enough to understand that. As for the media, The New York Times, and US News and World Report should not try to cover nuanced politics. They wind up looking as shallow and biased as they want people to think of Dr. Paul.

School's Out

Barry Obama has been doing the college circuit lately. I've been to one of his commencement addresses. Most recently, he shows up at Hampton University. There, he espoused the notion that all people should be given (or words to that effect) a college education. This sounds like a sweet sentiment until you realize that if everybody has a degree, a degree will be nothing special. This outcome is very consistent with the other tenets of socialism, forced "equal outcome", the punishment of real success, etc.. The bonus for Barry is that if this happens, the costs of education will go up, as the demand rises. His teacher's union constituency will get larger and happier.

Meanwhile, there's no proof that college educations are all that helpful in finding one's productive way through life. Some college educations are a complete waste of time. It would be prudent to take a closer look at the value of a college education before conscripting a large number of kids to the paper chase. The US actually needs high productivity, and that may be better achieved by putting people to work as soon as possible.

Putting people to work as soon as possible is hard to do when they must make $7.50/ hour. Most kids aren't worth $7.50/hour. Four years worth of college may not even help. Lower the minimum wage to $4.00 for high school students, so they'll have a chance to learn how to be productive. By the time they are 21, they will have several marketable skills, and can actually deliver $15 worth of work every hour, raising their standard of living, and able to start a family.

Schools should be preserved for those who wish to learn. Why should everyone be forced or even encouraged to go to school indefinitely? It makes professional students out of average people, postponing their entry into the real world, and taking up valuable instructor time.

Whether We Like it or Not

"It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them" -- Barry H. Obama

Dear Barry,

You said a mouthful. I realize there isn't much you like about America; but there's a lot of things we Americans do like, and one of them is the fact that we are a dominant military superpower. A lot of your friends don't particularly like the fact that we are the greatest civilization this world has seen. It's true. But we've learned that the people you hang around with are friends of our enemies. Whether YOU like it or not, there are some things about this country that are worth saving.

Like it or not, We have a Constitution.
Like it or not, it contains ONLY negative liberties.
Like it or not, it requires of the government very few services (one of which is a capable military)

Like it or not, this IS America, the country you happen to be president of, and it would help if you'd show us that you like it just a little bit.

Now, as to the bulk of your remarks, the United States of America does not "get pulled in to" these conflicts. Either there is a national interest requiring our participation, or there is not. And at the moment, I'm very nervous that you and your team of socio-meddlers don't know the difference.

Government 2.0

What Washington needs is adult supervision.
--Barry H. Obama

We can't change the way Washington works unless we first change how Congress works.
--Barry H. Obama

Most people who serve in Washington have been trained either as lawyers or as political operatives – professions that tend to place a premium on winning arguments rather than solving problems.
--Barry H. Obama

For a guy who railed against Washington through the whole campaign, Barry O sure fits in well with that bunch, doesn't he? One of the most remarkable things about him is not that he's usually wrong. It's that he is wrong on every issue. Every One. He's against freedom, property rights, family values, the economy. Pick any topic, and he's sure to be on the wrong side of it. Try it. What's his position? It's likely as not a bizarre freedom-sapping notion about what the government "must do", instead of recognition of it's restrictions.

You'd think a president who was merely incompetent would get it right half the time. George Bush got it right half the time. Why can't Obama?

One theory is that he gets it wrong because he simply does not believe in America. He has little regard or concern about true human nature, and flails around with non-natural policies. It is remarkable that a majority of congress follows him down this path. A second theory has it that Obama has a Cloward and Piven death wish for this society. Either way, we all lose.

Only when we get someone who gets it right every time can we hope to preserve our freedoms. Those presidents are harder to find than the ones who get it wrong every time. Over the last 20 years we are surely batting less than 50%. If we give up half our freedoms every 4 or 8 years, it won't be long before we have no freedoms left that are worth caring about.

I have concluded that the system does not and can not protect us from the dangers of these periodic forced reductions of life, liberty, and property. It is time to go for government 2.0.

Government 2.0 has two immediate goals. One is to have the states ratify a change to the constitution that requires that all federal money comes from the states. Federal taxes would be eliminated in favor of a tax on the states in proportion to their population. Instead of the federal government spending money regardless of income, the states could decide jointly to rein it in. This will force the federal government back to the proper size, with the real power allocated to the states and to the people. Wayne Root's book "The Conscience of a Libertarian" makes the case for this.

The second thing will be to repeal the commerce clause. The commerce clause is badly abused on a daily basis, is regularly cited as the constitutional basis for everything from health care to high finance; and is the cause of gross misappropriation of government resources. If we repeal the commerce claus, it won't be misconstrued any more.

Yes, Government 2.0. It is time to install the upgrade.

We Have A Constitution

Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy.
-- Ron Paul

Constitutionalism proclaims the desirability of the rule of law as opposed to rule by the arbitrary judgment or mere fiat of public officials. -- David Fellman

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. -- Oaths of Office For Federal Officials

In a prior post, I expressed my disbelief at the reaction of the Speaker of the House to a simple question. I've had a couple of months now to think about this, and to make sense of it in light of, well, the oath of office and the apparent disregard for the document. She's hardly alone. I am sure that very few congressmen can be shown to support the constitution. However, by blatantly discrediting the fundamental rule of law, there is little left to stand on.

Many persons, citizens and politicians alike view the constitution as this quaint historic document, and not the law of the land. Our forefathers sweated over this very thing for many years. History had proven, indeed many times by then, that a nation of men would always become corrupt and despotic. That the only way to avoid that same morass was to make it a nation of laws. That is what is important about the costitution. It is a great document precisely because it lays out that which is necessary to define a great country.

Obama was right to identify it as a collection of negative liberties. It could not, should not, and can not be anything else. What is remarkable is that he, too took the oath of office without so much as a hint of irony, and without any intent of upholding it. He wants it to remain an artifact of the past, and discount the application of its principles and provisions in today's society.

It's not that the constitution of the United States is outdated. If it was, we'd have to write a new one, wouldn't we? The constitution has within it not only the historical record of how this country became great, but also the principles by which we are governed today.

I believe you can name a federal government in 15 pages, which is what the constitution and all its amendments are comprised on. Everything the government must do is listed there. Everything else belongs to the states, or the people.

When you look at it that way, that the owners manual for the US government is only 15 pages, you wonder why so many of our government officials are unaware of its provisions. If they can't read and understand the first 15 pages, no other bill that follows has a chance of being constitutional.

Sometimes It Hits Me

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. -- Thomas Jefferson

Many so-called "Blue Staters" are susceptible to the notions of the global warming alarmists. I had always marveled at the number of people who would buy into the improbable scenarios that are protrayed in works of fiction such as The Day After Tomorrow, Reefer Madness and An Inconvenient Truth.

I enjoy a good eco-scare story. Movies like Damnation Alley were a good way to kill a few on a rainy Sunday. The problem is when government officials' attitudes start reflecting some of the fears put out by these works of overt irrationality.

Most of us have never feared winged monkeys despite watching the Wizard of Oz some 35 times. Why should we fear the world tilting on its axis, Earth running out of oxygen, or whole states totally swamped out by tsunamis.

Then it occurred to me. New Yorkers, not to pick on them, but to give the seminal example, are often at the mercy of their environment. How many remember the plight of New York City residents when the garbage workers went out on strike? Now that is an environmental catastrophe. Garbage could take over your whole life. It would pile up at the doors, and eventually trap you in your apartment building. There is indeed a reason to believe that your environment can affect you in New York.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, there's plenty of room to roam around. Our garbage is well tended to, and there is no obvious environmental or population problem. In fact, bring on the tired, the poor, the wretched refuse; we have room here.

Here, yes in red state country, we observe that the earth is resilient, renewable, and irrepressible. We can handle all the carbon dioxide you want to send our way. Anyone who doesn't think so, should regard the dandelion. The point is, none of us should believe we have nearly as much impact on the environment as the movies would seem to say we do.

There is also a big danger in letting the big city types set any kind of environmental policy. From where they stand, something has to be done. Maybe so, but they should keep the cures to themselves, and let the rest of us live our lives free from their "solutions".