Borders? What borders?

News item: The U.S. hasn’t decided whether to attack Islamic State targets inside Syria and won’t ask President Bashar al-Assad for permission if it does, a White House spokesman said. Bloomberg

If we can't respect borders, our own borders will never be respected. #Consequences.

Chart of the Day #28

The greatest irony is that the President is railing against inequality as one of the most important problems of the day, despite the fact that his policies are squeezing the middle class and causing the Fed – with the President’s encouragement – to engage in the radical monetary policy, which is exacerbating inequality. This simple truth cannot be repeated often enough.  -- Paul Singer

The strategy of this administration is to replace the middle class with a new majority comprised of $15/hr slaves.

H/T Zerohedge.com

Symbolic and Enduring

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”Gene Wolfe, Shadow and Claw

It's not hard to understand the nature of the Benghazi controversy, once you observe it is the perfect representation of a number of important things:

1. A microcosm of the current administration's foreign policy.
2. A compelling example of state department incompetence
3. An indictment of the security procedures we have unwittingly relied on.
4. The lengths to which the administration would go to make it look benign, when in fact it shows that much is wrong with the system.
5. The fact that people died does not seem to merit a response.

The sum of these factors is symbolic, and is a concise telling of the story of this administration. It is now becoming iconic, a kind of shorthand for this administration. The term Benghazi describes this government over the last 5 years. Think: Benghazi scheme, like Ponzi scheme for it's crystallization of a complex idea. It's not that Benghazi is everything, it's that everything is Benghazi, or at least that's the most useful way to describe it.

Most everyone knows what a Rube Goldberg is. It's because the class of contraption is iconic. Rube didn't do every device in the genre, and Benghazi isn't every administration foulup, but it's the best way to get the idea across. This is arguably why we hear a lot about Benghazi, because the same stuff keeps happening; at the IRS, at the VA, at the department of Health and Human Services. "Look, there goes another Benghazi." Nixon had a third-rate burglary on his hands. This is Benghazi.

The term Benghazi sounds like it is overused, and some parties are fatigued, or rendered downright cranky by it; they think of it a one note symphony. In reality, it's the dominant chord in this administration's score, and we notice it most because of the dissonance.

Look for a lot of such icons out of this administration. We are being NSA'd. We are sustaining Holder after Holder. It's another Carney-ism. But somehow, I think the one that endures is that we are well and truly Benghazi-d.

The Culture of Deceit

Sometimes I'm not sure how to take O'Keefe. Exposing liberal hypocrisy is a little like exposing a tornado as a major source of wind. To the tornado, that's the whole point, and to the rest of us, it's kind of obvious.

The liberals believe that the ends completely justify the means, and they won't condemn their own, whether it be over voter fraud, judicial activism, or a the culture of deceit.

---

From: Severian 

No surprises here…

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2014/05/20/James-O-Keefe-Dupes-Hollywood-With-Fake-Anti-Fracking-Film

A non-fight

What persons on all three sides of the gay marriage issue are missing:

1. The federal government has no standing to govern contracts between individuals. 
2. The state government has no standing other than enforcement of legal contracts. 
3. Two people can enter in any contract they wish.
4. There should be no legal distinction between a marriage and a legal contract of the same kind.

Therefore, persons who exercise their legal rights to enter into a contract can do so whenever and however they wish. If they call it a marriage, that's archaic, but not controversial. Nobody should care. This is a non-fight, and should go away. 

Chart of the Day #27

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.  -- Ludwig von Mises

Economists and the New Numbers Racket

At one time I thought about being an economist. It seemed like a good path with much fertile ground for doing useful work. There is a definite need for economic characteristics and forecasting. The basic principles were simple to understand, and a talent for pattern recognition and curve fitting could be put to good use. Where it seemed to fall apart is in three key areas:

One, economic modelling can be swamped by economic policy making, such that distortions introduced by external factors would render any model or forecast unusable and misleading. 

Two, an economic model demands assumptions which depend on people doing everything they do in a predictable manner, and over an indefinite period of time. While all of us can be sure the sun will rise tomorrow, we can't be sure our brother-in-law will pick us up at the airport at 9:30. So, any forecast is doomed to failure on the human action front anyway.

Three, since economics involves money, there is incentive on the parts of many to distort the numbers further to gain a financial or political advantage. This makes economics akin to associating with thieves. Thieves with calculators, using flawed models, and applying gross misapplications of data.

As most of you know, I returned to product development instead. When you design something that doesn't depend on your brother-in-law, it can also be done without sleeping with the enemy.

The Sad State of the Economics Profession

"Although some will receive a higher minimum wage, many others will simply be thrown under the bus. "

Frank Hollenbeck

Introducing (?) Wizercare

While legislation can stimulate and encourage, the real creative ability which builds up and develops the country, and in general makes human existence more tolerable and life more complete, has to be supplied by the genius of the people themselves. The Government can supply no substitute for enterprise. - Calvin Coolidge

Governments have a tendency not to solve problems, only to rearrange them. - Ronald Reagan

The people who conceived of The Affordable Care Act typically defend it by saying its detractors offer no alternative. My first reaction to that is a better alternative to a government program is almost always "no" government program. But I think the point needs to be amplified, especially now that we know Obamacare is a failed system.

I think it is helpful to examine the whole matter on the basis of the constitution. The constitution, you may have heard reserves almost everything to the states. this it does implicitly in the Articles, and explicitly in the Bill of Rights. There. I had to say that, because it's something they don't teach in school any more.

I have trouble getting past that in the evaluation of a federal program, nevertheless I'm willing to set that aside for the remainder of this discussion. Let's pretend that the constitution does not exist, and address the question: How do you evaluate this health care program vs. the problem it was trying to solve? To examine that, we have to deconstruct a little further.

What might make sense in a free country is that we as a people might delegate certain activities to the federal government. As a free people, we may assess our certain risks, such as risks of organized invasion or of common enemies like disease and pestilence. We might reasonably allow a government to provide these essential services, and to proscribe a fair method to pay for them. So far so good.

Is it necessary to have a government for defense? No, it could be funded by merchants, like it was before the revolutionary war. But is it better to consolidate our defensive resources and deploy them in a more efficient way? Sure! Is the government the best way to do that? Debateable. But I'm going to concede that point too, to get to the end of this.

I usually come down on the side of the value added angle. Does the government provide a useful activity, or is it a net loss in value to the people.

If the idea was to get more people on the insurance rolls, this did not happen. In fact, as Jonah Goldberg points out, the number of people uninsured increased as a direct result of the plan. For this, we need a trillion dollar program?

If the idea was to reduce the overall cost of health care, well, chapters and verses are written on the increased costs medical centers are dealing with:

"The Affordable Care Act is basically insurance reform—eligibility and access—and basically, they are going to pay for that by reducing the reimbursement. It doesn't modernize how we drive to higher quality care," Dr. John Noseworthy said in a "Squawk Box" interview.

If the problem is health care for all, the reduction in doctors and nurses in the system surely makes that goal unachievable in the long run.

So, depending on what the problem was that they were trying to solve, it's clear that the opposite is happening. So, since we are reconstructing the "shouldas" with a blank slate and a beneficial unrestricted government, what could the government conceivably do to help the problems noted.

The solutions are very simple. Not easy, but simple.

1. Reduce regulations on medical care. 
1. Deregulate most medical services, such that service can be provided at low costs. 
2. Revamp certification medical requirements to reduce the cost of medical school. 
2. Tort reform. Limit malpractice benefits.
3. Reduce regulation on medicines, and allow self-prescription for most remedies (penicillin, pain meds, etc..
4. Make medical insurance a private market.
1. Eliminate medical benefits provided by government.
2. Replace with like amount in worker salaries, and have workers contract their own insurance.
5.  Consider giving tax benefits to corporations that eliminate insurance plans, thereby putting health insurance back into a free market.
6. Allow experimental medicines to proceed on the basis of a willing buyer signoff

These steps would reduce the cost of medical care to the point where insurance costs would naturally fall, and more people would seek health insurance. The remainder who are in genuine need can be subsidized at a very small fraction of the cost for the current program.

To proceed the way we are is proof that either our elected officials are incompetent or that they are disingenuous about their intent. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they must be idiots.

Wizer One-Liner # 31

Why should anyone be comforted by the term "bipartisan agreement"?

Can't Raise the Bridge? Just Lower the Water..

What's the best way to ensure that we get a gee-whiz-largest-decline-in recent-history number for weekly jobless claims?

First, you go with seasonal adjustments, which make it possible to over-ride any inconvenient trends. Then, you bump up the number from the previous week so it looks like there's some daylight..

The newspapers helpfully report it as a huge decline. Merry Christmas everyone.

Uh course the numbers aren't all that great, when you see them side by side, but hey, it's the buzz phrase that counts.

In related news, I had the least amount of turkey on record in my Christmas ham dinner yesterday.