February 28, 2013
Otequay of the Ayday
"There are many fine people who are concerned with the environment. Indeed, we all should be. But the movement known as environmentalism is not only a false religion, it is one that allows human sacrifice."
I would be more impressed had this passed the lips of an A-list Hollywood celeb - Darryl Hannah is clearly more than one could hope for, being too far gone into the mist - but it is still a good quote from a good article by fellow traveler Dennis Prager.
Methinks my blog brother might enjoy Walter Russell Mead today.
The epidemic of power outages and "rolling blackouts" which nearly shut down California in the early 2000s may be returning. Back then, the culprits were unscrupulous energy providers like Enron and a poorly-thought out process of deregulation. This time, renewable energy would be to blame, as the state has pushed to increase the use of solar and wind energy without ensuring that there is enough traditional power generation to keep the grid stable on cloudy, windless days.Posted by: jk at February 28, 2013 2:37 PM
Yep. See related post above.
This Central Planning business is just so complicated! How can anybody know everything about every industry? Why can't we just find a way to have experts in every field make every decision based on all of the factors, taken into account at once and evaluated to arrive at the best course of action? And to make sure they do their jobs well and act wisely we could even make their paychecks depend on getting it right!
But I digress. Clearly there is no such utopian system on earth.
Posted by: johngalt at February 28, 2013 3:25 PMSeptember 18, 2012
Locavoracious!
I haven't posted in "Dirty Hippies" for a while. I don't know how popular this is where y'all are, but this is a big deal in Boulder. My Boulder-based Facebook contingent is heavily invested.
I'll not have the gumption to share this story with any of them, but this AEI piece is right in there with Penn & Teller's incredible "Organic Food" episode of Bullshit.
Where does one start with the moronic concept of locavorism? Basically: discarding the myriad health, lifestyle, and economic benefits of Ricardian comparative advantage to genuflect at the altar of eating low-mileage grits.
Thankfully, Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu do the work I will not -- take the arguments seriously enough to debunk them. It's an awesome collection, and I will find it here the next time I need it.
Choir preaching: Locavores or Loco-vores?
*smugvoice*"Live simply, so that others may simply live."*/smugvoice*
The ants came marching two-by-two hurrah, hurrah...
Posted by: johngalt at September 19, 2012 1:01 AMThanks, very fine and educational article. See, my mistake was thinking the locavore crowd actually believed in "the affordable and abundant food" they promise. It turns out that their main point is to feel good about themselves.
It is much more efficient to just look in the mirror every morning and state, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" Then go get some eggs trucked in from a factory farm.
Posted by: Ellis Wyatt at September 19, 2012 1:12 PMI suspect "marginal cost" is a couple standard deviations above the mean locavore logic, but it struck me that the actual, marginal energy expenditure to bring a bag of delicious, fresh summertime Chilean fruit here is likely far less than the fuel required to drive their Subaru Outback and all of its bumper stickers round trip to the Farmer's Market.
I'm fond of the last paragraph, but it is a complete lie. The locavores I know are extremely intelligent. I think, down deep that is what really frightens me.
Posted by: jk at September 19, 2012 2:05 PMIntelligence and rationality are not necessarily highly correlated.
Posted by: dagny at September 19, 2012 2:56 PMI'm a Ricardo-vore.
Posted by: Jk at September 19, 2012 10:11 PMRicardovores (I don't care for the hyphen) use reason to exploit their comparative advantage and uncoerced trade to feed themselves from the world's bounty. They enjoy diversity in taste, supply, and seasonality.
And they require a small percentage of their output to consumption, allowing them to pursue other endeavors. Explain the terms "disposal income" and "vintage guitars" to a sustenance farmer.
June 7, 2012
Beyond Magical Unicorn Farts
That is where the American environmental extremist group Sierra Club must intend to take American energy consumers.
On Monday I wrote about the use of natural gas as a political alternative to more prevalent and less costly coal as a source of electric power. That effort is supported by Sierra Club in their "Beyond Coal" campaign. But they aren't waiting for Phase I of Operation Nineteenth Century to be completed before launching Phase II: "Beyond Natural Gas." (Not "natural" enough?) Sierra's strategic coordination leaves much room for improvement.
Natural gas drillers exploit government loopholes, ignore decades-old environmental protections, and disregard the health of entire communities. "Fracking," a violent process that dislodges gas deposits from shale rock formations is known to contaminate drinking water, pollute the air, and cause earthquakes. If drillers can’t extract natural gas without destroying landscapes and endangering the health of families, then we should not drill for natural gas. [Emphasis mine.]
After the requisite "what do you mean 'we' Kemosabe" the next thing I notice is how this message is designed to appeal to the feeler-perceiver contingent of the public but offers no evidence for the thinker-judgers among us. Fear, uncertainty and doubt anyone? Showing a glass of drinking water doctored with contaminants so expertly as to make Don Draper proud, the campaign against the hydraulic fracturing process seems to revolve mostly around the shorthand name for the method containing letters "F" and "K".
Blogger Jay F. Marks explains that Sierra Club took millions in donations from natural gas corporations for the purpose of bashing coal, but new Sierra Club director Michael Brune opened a new chapter in the war on reliable and affordable energy.
The Sierra Club once had a cozy relationship with the natural gas industry, taking more than $25 million in contributions from Chesapeake Energy Corp. and its subsidiaries to fund the fight against coal.Brune ended that relationship when he took over as the environmental group’s director in March 2010. He said the club originally worked with Chesapeake because staff and volunteers concluded natural gas might be a viable alternative to coal in electricity generation, but some local chapters developed increasing concerns about gas production.
Let's fast forward, shall we?
Incoming Sierra Club executive director Barnaby Owleton said today that building and maintaining thousands of acres of monstrously large industrial machines to convert wind to electricity is a thorougly discredited process and a clear danger to migratory birds across the nation. "Extinction of multiple species is not just a possibility, but a certainty, if we don't act immediately to move Beyond Wind."One or two election cycles later...
Woody Weederstein, in his first official statement as new Sierra Club director, slammed the solar electric energy industry for the consequences imposed upon the areas of our planet that are permanently and unavoidably shaded by solar power conversion panels. "In the name of all that is green" he said, "we as Americans have no moral choice but to move Beyond Solar."
And after they succeed in eliminating energy produced by magical unicorn farts the only remaining strategy to "save the planet" will be energy efficiency, which is just another name for rationing. I have a better idea: Hey Sierra Club - Frack off.
April 24, 2012
Happy #@#&ing Earth Day
From Gateway Pundit: Green Activists Completely Trash Park on Earth Day
Hat tip: Fox Nation, via Drudge
UPDATE: KA's comment made me think of the "Keep America Beautiful" PSA from my youth. That was the beginning of the environmental movement and it seems we can see where it has ended up. Although, if you read to the end of the UPDATE link you will find it is probably all Coors' fault.
Watermelons. Green only on the outside.
The word that keeps coming to my mind about this tribe is "feral."
Posted by: Keith Arnold at April 24, 2012 8:17 PMMarch 14, 2012
JG agrees with Boulder DA
Like myself, Boulder's [Democrat] District Attorney Stan Garnett doesn't understand why the Obama Justice Department is so tough on the medical marijuana business. After all, aren't Democrats and weed activists fellow travelers? And, perhaps because I had dinner with the man 12 days ago (well, actually, different tables in the same Boulder burger joint) I agree verbatim with General Garnett on this sentence from his letter to United States Attorney John Walsh:
"The people of Boulder County do not need Washington, D.C., or the federal government dictating ..." WAIT! Stop right there.But he continued, "how far dispensaries should be from schools or other fine points of local land use law," Garnett wrote.
I don't think Garnett helped his effort by suggesting what the US Attorney's priorities should be, but that probably won't be what makes or breaks the G-Men's "prosecutorial discretion."
In the "things that make you say, hmmm" department: The article also says that Boulder has an estimated 12 dispensaries within 1000 feet of a school.
I think it is part of the First Lady's initiative to make schoolchildren walk more.
Flippancy aside, yaay DA Garnett for asserting our rights -- maybe he'll join The Filburn Society. (Do follow that link if you have not seen it!)
Posted by: jk at March 14, 2012 4:23 PMIt’s wonderful to see the Boulder DA standing up to the Feds on what really is a 10th Amendment issue.
It’s too bad that he and other Democrats (and some Republicans), don't apply this principal consistently on all of the issues that the Federal Government should not be meddling in.
February 22, 2012
"FakeGate"
That's the name given by Chicago's Heartland Institute to the attempted smear through forgery by global warming activist Peter Gleick. Heartland's official response, in part:
"An additional document Gleick represented as coming from The Heartland Institute, a forged memo purporting to set out our strategies on global warming, has been extensively cited by newspapers and in news releases and articles posted on Web sites and blogs around the world. It has caused major and permanent damage to the reputations of The Heartland Institute and many of the scientists, policy experts, and organizations we work with."A mere apology is not enough to undo the damage.
"In his statement, Gleick claims he committed this crime because he believed The Heartland Institute was preventing a "rational debate" from taking place over global warming. This is unbelievable. Heartland has repeatedly asked for real debate on this important topic. Gleick himself was specifically invited to attend a Heartland event to debate global warming just days before he stole the documents. He turned down the invitation.
Thanks for breaking ground on this. This is either a huge story or a huge story as to why it is not.
Megan McArdle was the first I saw to expose the faked docs, and she is still on fire. Here, Insty links to her and several other good posts/articles.
January 24, 2012
Keystone XL Pipeline Economic Impact is "Settled"
As luck would have it, President Obama actually saved US and Canadian energy companies billions of wasted dollars by using the power of the regulatory state to stop construction of their "disastrous" tar sands pipeline. How do I know this? Al Gore says so.
"The analysis from the final EIS, noted above, indicates that denying the permit at this time is unlikely to have a substantial impact on U.S. employment, economic activity, trade, energy security, or foreign policy over the longer term." Source: Climate ProgressThis is an important win not only for the thousands of activists who risked arrest—and for the hundreds who went to jail--but for all of us who want to try and role [sic] back the effects of the climate crisis, not magnify them.
And who could doubt the objective fiscal evaluations of Climate Progress?
January 18, 2012
Occupy: Mission Accomplished!
I'm considering instigating a Facebook fight. I haven't really started one in a long while, and Megan McArdle's piece on New York would be an excellent foundation.
Shorter McArdle: You won! Income equality is waaay down in New York.
After a disappointing year, the big banks are pulling back on their bonus pools. A lot. This is going to be hard on bankers whose salaries are usually a very small part of their overall compensation--and yes, yes, before you drag out the world's smallest violin, let me agree that they have no entitlement to anything more. Nonetheless, people tend to build their life around their expected salaries, and in New York, this choice is particularly important. You not only acquire a large mortgage that's often difficult to unload quickly (closings in New York take months at minimum, longer if it's a co-op), but also things like enormous school fees, higher food costs, and so forth.
So, those fat, greedy bankers have finally got what's coming to them. And they won't have money to spend on, um, schools and restaurants and museums and tips and taxes and things.
Income equality is on its way to Gotham. Woot!
Could the creatives pay the bills if Wall Street stopped? New York's bills are very hefty; about one in three people in the city (and one in five in the state) are on Medicaid, with the city paying half of that; the MTA has an operating budget of over $11 billion a year; and the city's annual pension bill runs about $7 billion. New York's generous social services are what nearly bankrupted the city in the 1970s, until they finally found an industry that would just pay hefty taxes instead of moving south and west.Raising that money from the creatives means, among other things, raising money from the less affluent--people who are less able to shrug off a tax increase as the cost of living in the Big Apple. Creatives may also be a bit more mobile than folks who needed--until the last decade, anyway--proximity to a trading floor.
I recall Ms. McArdle has her detractors around ThreeSources. But, Facebook friends, this is an Obama supporter whose mentor is Professor Austan Goolsbee, President Obama's economic architect. And it's in The Atlantic, not AEI's American or the WSJ Ed Page or FOX News.
Income equality suddenly looks less like Steinbeck and more like Mad Max.
January 8, 2012
Your vision or mine?
The idea for this contrast of visions came to me yesterday, when I searched for a suitable cartoon to highjack and found an excellent cartoon in its own right from the Sarasota Chronicle by way of the (Montana) Missoulian. Being Broncos Playoff Sunday and having chores to do before the game I almost didn't post it, thinking it deserved a good writeup accompaniment. JK's Motor City Madness segue's well: New Orleans says, "Leave us alone" while Detroit still moans, "Take care of us."
Better (perhaps even more accurate) titles for the signs would have been:
"We can do it" vs. "You have to do it for us"
"We can do it" vs. "Do it for us." I like it.
So much talk about TEA Party "extremism." A simple contrast here can be devastatingly effective.
Posted by: johngalt at January 11, 2012 1:45 AMDecember 8, 2011
Gov. Christie on #OWS
When a HOSS encounters Dirty Hippies:
Once the room quieted and the protesters were locked outside, Christie resumed speaking and offered his thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement.
"Here's the way I feel about it: They represent an anger in our country that Barack Obama has caused," he said, drawing cheers from the crowd. "He's a typical cynical Chicago... politician who runs for office and promises everything and then comes to office and disappoints, and so their anger is rooted not in me or Mitt Romney, their anger is rooted in the fact that they believed in this hope and change garbage."
Christie called them disillusioned and said he "feels bad" for them.
"Now they are angry but they're not mature enough to know they should be angry with themselves," he said.
We should recognize that the big man was there to support Governor Romney. Just sayin'
November 29, 2011
Giants Walked the Earth
What Milton Friedman might say to the Occupy movement Two awesome clips at Mankiw's site.
November 17, 2011
Parent-Free Zone
When this occupy business first broke I commented, "Anyone in this picture look like a parent?" This photo doubles down on the theme. [Unattributed lead story pic at Drudge.]
You'll need to define "parent." If you mean "a person who has randomly spawned," odds are good; if you mean "responsible, loving caregiver," the Vegas line on that changes.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at November 17, 2011 11:35 AMHad the same thought, ka, but I am glad I left it to your deft voicing skills.
Posted by: jk at November 17, 2011 12:19 PMI'm here to please. By the way, the college educations that these slackers borrows all that money for doesn't seem to be working; the guy in the sweatshirt in front of the herd misspelled "tool."
Or "fool." Take your pick, I guess.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at November 17, 2011 12:24 PMStool?
Seriously though, I meant "parent" not fornicator.
Posted by: johngalt at November 17, 2011 10:48 PMCase in point: Occu-Mom!
http://www.jammiewf.com/2011/runaway-occu-mom-locked-up-during-ows-temper-tantrum/
Posted by: Keith Arnold at November 18, 2011 1:34 PMYes we can!
Defecate on cop cars.
Always worth mentioning that Professor and prog heartthrob Elizabeth Warren is the "intellectual leader" of this movement.
Posted by: jk at November 17, 2011 10:40 AMNovember 15, 2011
Quote of the Day
As I wrote back in September, my generation seems not [to] realize that civil disobedience entails opposing an unjust law by breaking it. In doing so, the protester benefits his cause by taking the punishment to call attention to its injustice and gain sympathy. Civil disobedience does not mean, as Team OWS and many others of my generation believe, that you can do whatever you want as long as you are sufficiently self-righteous about it. -- Matthew Knee
Excellent!
Posted by: Terri at November 15, 2011 11:38 AMHA! That's exactly what it means, if a court says so.
Posted by: johngalt at November 15, 2011 3:25 PMNovember 11, 2011
Lord of the Flies Comes to Salt Lake
The Salt Lake City Police Department said officers responded at 3:27 a.m. to a fight involving as many as 30 people. A 43-year-old man who said he was in charge of crowd control for the protest claimed that Jesse Jaramillo, 31, hit him on the head with a board during the fight.Jaramillo was arrested for aggravated assault along with several others arrested for public intoxication and alcohol violations, the police said. He was among four people booked into jail, the statement said.
"That was kind of my alarm clock," said Seth Neily, 31, a spokesman for the Occupy SLC movement and a part-time worker for the local International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees union.
John Hinderaker at Powerline points out "If you have ever wondered what would happen in a society consisting entirely of liberals, the Occupier movement is providing the answer: devolution"
Hat-tip: Insty for both.
Another thing I've been meaning to blog about: here's a look at the society we would become if these collectivists had their way.
No houses: because there's no prosperity, nobody can afford anything beyond tents. Everyone's too busy "protesting" instead of trying to find jobs.
No sense of private property: in New York, they're living in a privately owned park that's open to the public. Per the agreement with the city, the park owners have no authority to kick out the protestors. They can't even get them to move, just a third at a time, for a goddamn cleaning. Meanwhile the "protestors" are robbing each other when the predators aren't raping and groping.
A belief in Santa Claus: food is being provided for free, and just how long will that last? Collectivists can't conceive that there's a chain of economic production where things just don't happen by themselves. They can't. There's a reason it's called Say's Law, because there's no getting around it.
The difference between the 1930s, when my dad spent his teen years, and today is that in the 1930s, most people walked all day trying to find a job. Most didn't sit on their asses hoping to be given something. There's no such courage today.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at November 13, 2011 2:57 PMNovember 9, 2011
Quote of the Day
Adding to the Occupation's "Flea Party" reputation is the news of an infestation of head and body lice at Occupy Portland. The parasites have parasites. -- Robert Tracinski
November 8, 2011
The Virtueocracy
It is not news to ThreeSourcers that the #occupywallstreet protesters are blaming the wrong folks. But, Ms. Margaret Wente, in the Toronto Globe and Mail catches something I have missed in months of Hippie Watching.
These people make up the Occupier generation. They aspire to join the virtueocracy -- the class of people who expect to find self-fulfillment (and a comfortable living) in non-profit or government work, by saving the planet, rescuing the poor and regulating the rest of us. They are what the social critic Christopher Lasch called the "new class" of "therapeutic cops in the new bureaucracy."
The whole column is superbly awesome and awesomely superb. Many, me included, have focused on the liberal arts and humanities degrees versus more lucrative majors in engineering and business. The better bifurcation is those who would actually join or start a company that did something and those that want to distribute grant money for the U.N.
Occupy McDonalds!
Ari Armstrong compares and contrasts:
November 7, 2011
Better Late than Never
Reason's Matt Welch sees the disconnect between the Libertarian uprising the #occupywallstreet crowd promised and the reality of demanding debt forgiveness.
As of this writing, the Occupy Wall Street movement appears to have legs. I am generally happy to see public displays of disaffection with a governing elite that has inflicted so much bad economic policy on the rest of us, even more so when the protesters lean toward the political party that currently occupies the White House. (Many Tea Partiers I've talked to express personal regret that they didn't get their start opposing George W. Bush.) But I will reserve my enthusiasm until the moment that protesters stop bashing capitalism and start confronting the incoherence of opposing bailouts for everybody but themselves.
See, they're educable!
Quote of the Day
Daniel, a tall, red-bearded, white twenty-something--one of the six leaders of the teach-in--said that the NYC-GA needed to be completely defunded because those with "no stake" in the Occupy Wall Street movement shouldn't have a say in how the money was spent. When I asked him whether everybody in the 99% had a stake in the movement, he said that only those occupying or working in Zuccotti Park did. I pointed out that since the General Assembly took place in Zuccotti Park, everybody who participated was an occupier. He responded with a long rant about how Zuccotti Park is filled with "tourists," "free-loaders" and "crackheads" and suggested a solution that the even NYPD has not yet attempted: Daniel said that he'd like to take a fire-hose and clear out the entire encampment, adding hopefully that only the "real" activists would come back. -- Fritz TuckerYeah, just how are we going to spend that $500,000 we've amassed? Hat-tip: Ed Morrissey via Insty. Morrissey adds a great bon mot: "[T]he Occupy Wall Street organization looked like a child from a marriage between Animal Farm and Animal House"
I HAVE THE CONCH!
Heh.
"This reaction shouldn't surprise anyone. It is reasonable to expect any undemocratic organization to be co-opted eventually by a vocal minority or charismatic individual." - author, Fritz Tucker
Strike the word "undemocratic" and I'll second that.
Posted by: johngalt at November 7, 2011 2:57 PMNovember 6, 2011
She Can't be Serious
Can she?
Related: Hippie chicks strip for free. (I can't believe I'm pushing Charisma Carpenter off the front page for this.) As a public service: Charisma Carpenter link. Come to think of it, maybe we'll just include that with every "Occupy" post. Sort of an ... innoculation.
Oh, my.
Not to beat on a theme too badly, but I'm certain the HTG&L Studies sign is a joke. Had she really obtained such a degree, there would be an apostrophe in studie's.
November 5, 2011
Happy Guy Fawkes Day
Just 'cause the #OWS crowd is sullying the good name of terrorist Guy Fawkes does not mean we can't party!
Remember, remember
The Fifth of November,
T'was gunpowder treason and plot!
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Eminent Domain Abuse at #OccupyWallStreet
Preparing a snarky post about how I did not recall segregation by gender at Tea Parties to prevent rape, I found a verdant pasture of blog fodder in this NY Post article. Really, a fellah could throw a (suction cup) dart at the screen and document whatever documentation of idiocy it hit.
But if I were aiming, I'd go for the woman who is pissed because they took her spot to put up the safe tent.
One woman was also against the structure, saying the protesters who put it up took her tent down without notice to make room.
"I'm pissed! I pretty much just got evicted," fumed Angelina Isfreed, 32, after returning to find her tent taken down. "I won't be staying there."
Kelo v. New London, hon, it's all for the greater societal good...
If memory serves, 'Lord of the Flies' zipped right past this stage of societal evolution on it's way to the warring tribes phase, but a more thorough treatment of the subject would have included it.
Let me coin a new term of humorous approval: iHeh.
Posted by: johngalt at November 5, 2011 1:54 PMAnd I hope Iowa's Steve Deace doesn't find out you've referred to a female that you aren't already intimate with as "hon" lest he accuse you of being compromised in your private life.
Deace, an influential conservative figure in the state, declined to say whether he had the women's consent before going public with the allegations [of "inappropriate and awkward" behavior toward women by Herman Cain], but added, "As a staff we are very tight and we are very close and we share everything with one another.""To bring up any further evidence or to add any more specifics really puts the burden on our staff and not really where the burden of proof for the American people belongs which is with the guy running for President of the United States," Deace said.
More directly, "Cain is guilty until he proves himself innocent." Nice. And what comment led to all the hubbub?
"Darling, do you mind doctoring my tea for me?"Posted by: johngalt at November 6, 2011 10:22 AM
It would be importune of me to provide detail on the exact nature of my relationship with Ms. Isfreed...
The existence of this blog will certainly keep my political ambitions at bay. "And on November 6, the candidate said..."
November 4, 2011
Sod Off, Swampy
Tim Blair's equivalent of our "Dirty Hippies" category has this gem from 2005, and Professor Reynolds finds it germane to our current context. Oy!
When 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange yesterday, they had planned the operation in great detail.What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.
"We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,"? one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. "I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view."?
Faith restored.
Villifying the "Occupy"-ers
Bloggers and editorialists around the country seem to be trying to discredit the "Occupy" movement by publicizing certain bad or illegal acts by individuals within its ranks. The Tacoma News Tribune, for example, writes:
Seattle has been occupied. Tacoma has been occupied. Good heavens, even Puyallup has been occupied. [Uh, that's "pew-AL-up" for all you southeasterners.]If nothing else, Occupy Wall Street is a triumph of branding. Any collection of individuals with gripes about the status quo can call itself an “Occupy,” lay claim to some public space and instantly be anointed part of the international phenomenon begun by a group of enterprising protesters in Manhattan.
A mass protest of some kind was inevitable in the current pit of economic distress and widespread joblessness. There are legions of exceedingly unhappy people out there. To its credit, Occupy Wall Street has emphasized nonviolence; eruptions of public rage in years past have often degenerated into arson and angry mobs.
Arson? No, not the Occupiers. Well, maybe a few little trash fires in Oakland. Or a puny $10 million condo fire in Fort Collins, Colorado. Kids will be kids!
How can you denigrate "a business owner and war veteran?"
Posted by: jk at November 4, 2011 4:51 PMI sense you are as skeptical of those claims as I.
Posted by: johngalt at November 5, 2011 1:55 PMNovember 3, 2011
#OccupyLordOfTheFlies
No violence in Oakland. As they trash a Whole Foods store, some are offended:
Hat-tip (and more backstory) Jim Treacher
November 2, 2011
On #OWS
I have found some surprisingly well reasoned debate on Facebook (no, really) regarding the #occupywallstreet protests. A normally non-political musician buddy has decided that he supports them. Sick of the banks, he is, and he and his lovely bride credit them with BofA's reversal on debit card fees. A couple of his friends whom I don't know have respectfully challenged me. So much, that I apologized and retracted my having called the protesters "smelly hippies."
A problem is that discerning the protesters' intent is like nailing Jello® to the wall. If I don't like their anti-capitalism, they are not anti-capitalist. Repeat as needed. If I don't appreciate "X" they are not really "X," that's just how they have been labeled.
Reason's Matt Welch does us all a service finding a "New Declaration of Independence" online and challenging it.
The Only Thing Missing From "The New Declaration of Independence": Any Sense That Adults Are Responsible for Their Choices
[..]
I don't recall anything like the promises so cruelly unkept in Salon's list. I do remember my father warning me that an engineering degree would be much more useful in the workplace than English, to which I uttered a phrase available to 18-year-olds everywhere: Thanks, Dad; not your call. Ditto for the legions of well-meaning adults urging me to finish my undergraduate degree, to sign up for the Selective Service, and even (when I finally attained a decent living in the second half of my 30s) to pay a mortgage instead of paying rent. One of the best perks about being a grown-up is that you get to make your own choices, and to own the results, good and ill.
Which is why phrases like "wage slaves," "inescapable debt," and "force" "force" "force" leave me feeling like a brother from another planet. Adult human beings have agency, the ability (even responsibility!) to run their own cost/benefit analyses and choose accordingly. You could go to a state school (or community college) instead of an over-inflated prestige mill. You could pay for a 10-year-old car in cash, instead of a new one on installments. You could try to make it in Minneapolis before living the dream in Williamsburg. You could stare into the face of a no-money-down, adjustable rate 30-year mortgage at the tail end of a housing-price run-up and conclude "Maybe that one's not for me." You could even choose to turn down a bad if high-paying job when you're living below the poverty line. If we indeed live in a "candid world," let us state bluntly that offloading 100% of the blame for your own mountain of debt on a group of Greedy McBanksters who "forced" you to "play by the rules" is more than a little pathetic.
Reason, I will remind, has been more sympathetic to the protesters than most of the sources I frequent. Outta the park on this one, Mr. Welch. Outta the park.
November 1, 2011
Quote of the Day
Read the whole thing. And then ask yourself why is it again that The New Yorker is known for smart, insightful writing. -- Nick Gillespie, less than impressed with Hendrik Hertzberg's comparison of #OWS and TEA
October 31, 2011
Word of the Day
Investor's Editorial:
Yet the American Federation of Teachers has "fully endorsed" the Occupy protest and is calling for the rehiring of 1,000 laid-off teachers, presumably to include McAllister."We need to listen to what the individuals camped out in Liberty Plaza for Occupy Wall Street -- and those marching in the streets from Boston to Denver to Los Angeles -- have to say," declared AFT President Randi Weingarten in a statement issued after McAllister made her speech.
Fox News has reported that the fraud-plagued community-organizing group Acorn has partially recrudesced as something called New York Communities for Change, a group aligned with teachers.
The Acorn group collected funds for what it claimed was an American Federation of Teachers fundraiser to replace dangerous lightbulbs in schools. The money, according to Fox, went to Occupy protests instead.
Yes, poetic indeed.
I'm still working on my three sentences containing 'recrudesced' that I may permanently add the word to my vocabulary.
Posted by: johngalt at October 31, 2011 4:58 PMOctober 30, 2011
Heh
Awesome.
Posted by: jk at October 30, 2011 3:23 PMI saw the color-coded fret bars on that instrument he's holding, and on a hunch, went searching in Google; lo and behold, that's not even a real guitar, but that annoying toy from the game "Guitar Hero," that ubiquitous product of capitalism and mass-marketing.
As are the trendy cargo pants and the posh Ozark Trail dome tent. Sure paints the OWS types as spoiled, overindulged slackers. THAT kind of attention to detail is doubly awesome.
Posted by: Keith Arnold at October 31, 2011 11:50 AMI dressed as this guy for Halloween today, sans the guitar. I memorized the song lyric but never got to use it. I settled for, We're going to Occupy Boulder City Council tonight, who's in?" and "Where's the free food?"
Posted by: johngalt at October 31, 2011 2:33 PMI dress like that every day...
Posted by: jk at October 31, 2011 5:51 PMYeah, I was in Boulder. Nobody thought it was a costume. Heh.
Posted by: johngalt at October 31, 2011 6:03 PMOctober 29, 2011
Occupy Wall Street Shrugs
Robert Tracinski has additional analysis of events such as in the New York Post story JK posted last weekend. In a TIA Daily email he explains how Occupy Wall Street Shrugged.
Over at Occupy Boston, a protester complains, "It's turning into us against them. They come in here and they're looking at it as a way of getting a free meal and a place to crash, which is totally fine, but they don't bring anything to the table at all." Another report concludes with a similar sentiment."We have compassion toward everyone. However, we have certain rules and guidelines," said Lauren Digioia, 26, a member of the sanitation committee. "If you're going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back," Digioia said. "There's a lot of takers here and they feel entitled."These people had better watch out. If they start thinking that like this, pretty soon they might find themselves at a Tea Party rally.
"Our" food? What did they do to earn it? Who is it who really feels "entitled?"
Then he refrains a tale he dubs The Spaghetti Bolognese Incident.
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a "counter" revolution yesterday—because they're angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for "professional homeless" people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other Spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti Bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep's-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
To show they mean business, the kitchen staff refused to serve any food for two hours yesterday in order to meet with organizers to air their grievances, sources said.
Behind the hypocrisy, there are real lessons to be learned: lessons about the relationship between productive people and freeloaders. About the need for police to protect decent people from criminals. About how con-men and the power-lusters always take over utopian schemes for their own benefit. About the taxing power and unaccountability of central authorities.
The spaghetti Bolognese incident sums it up. The workers who provide the goods everyone else lives off of are going on strike to protest against their exploitation by freeloaders. Has anyone else noticed that this is the basic plot premise of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Yet that is the story line they are unintentionally acting out. Call it Occupy Wall Street Shrugged.
Clean and Attractive Hippies
"I am going to leave College w/so much loans, all because eduction is the first thing to be cut. I AM THE 99%"So much loans, so little eduction. Don Surber takes some whacks at the 99.
October 26, 2011
Peter Schiff Represents the 1%
Represents them pretty well, actually:
October 24, 2011
A Cause I Could Support
Talk about burying the lead -- the WSJ Story on "Love under the Tarps" (hey, I can't read Mises all day!) closes with an interesting detail:
The unnamed donor [of the massive prophylactic stash] did not express solidarity with the movement's economic message."He was concerned with overpopulation," Barnwell said. "I thought he meant in the park, but I guess he meant in the world. He said, "'Just make sure people aren't breeding.'"
Possibly a Malthusian but possibly well intentioned concerned for the gene pool -- bravo!
October 23, 2011
Dirty Hippies
Ivey Starnes, paging Ms. Ivey Starnes.
Screw the Fed, audit Occupy Finance!
And what's up with the fundraiser who "kept $650 [of $2000 in collected donations] for my group?" Does he think his effort somehow entitles him to a special dispensation? Filthy capitalist!
Posted by: johngalt at October 23, 2011 2:52 PMBureauccupy Wall Street.
I'm laughing, sorry.
I'm starting to think this is just another reality show being filmed on the sly.
Posted by: Douglas Fletcher at October 24, 2011 1:02 AMPerspective
Occupy Denver yesterday ~1000
Zombie crawl ~12,000
99% of what, exactly?
Heh - 99% of the state's student loan defaulters.
Q- What's the difference between zombies and Occupy protesters?
A- Zombies have lives to return to after the party.
Posted by: johngalt at October 23, 2011 2:45 PMBureauccupy Wall Street
Posted by: Lisa M at October 23, 2011 5:38 PMOctober 22, 2011
Alec Baldwin Making Sense
Hat-tip: Taranto
Hope! Change! Is Alec Baldwin "Anarchied Enough, Already?"
Did you notice how, when someone speaks calmly and rationally in opposition to their demand, they were left more or less speechless? I enjoyed watching the eyes of the young man holding the microphone. When Baldwin said, "I think most people want change in this country, but they don't want the country to go down the tubes; they don't want the country to become England" his eyes lowered in apparent reflection and contemplation. It almost seems like, he's listening.
Posted by: johngalt at October 22, 2011 1:50 PMOctober 21, 2011
If you can read this without laughing...
New York Magazine: The Organizers vs. the Organized in Zuccotti ParkIf I started excerpting, kids...
October 18, 2011
Warren Buffet's Wife?
Are You Smarter Than a Wall Street Occupier?
Hint: yes
Hat-tip: @bdomenech
Does a wild hippie sh_t in the park?
Posted by: johngalt at October 18, 2011 10:54 PMMost know there is not a lot of love lost between me and my home town, but the sprinklers in Denver's Civic Center Park mysteriously went off at 2AM on a 26° night in October.
Well, done Mayor Hancock! Bravo!
Posted by: jk at October 19, 2011 11:14 AMProperty Rights II
They're not only educated -- some are proving themselves educable.
I had my Mac stolen -- that was like $5,500. Every night, something else is gone. Last night, our entire [kitchen] budget for the day was stolen, so the first thing I had to do was . . . get the message out to our supporters that we needed food!"
Crafty cat burglars sneaked into the makeshift kitchen at Zuccotti Park overnight and swiped as much as $2,500 in donated greenbacks from right under the noses of volunteers who'd fallen asleep after a long day whipping up meals for the hundreds of hungry protesters, the volunteers said.
[...]
Security volunteer Harry Wyman, 22, of Brooklyn was furious about the thievery -- and vowed to get tough with the predatory perps.
"I'm not getting paid, but I'm not gonna stand for it. Why people got to come here and do stupid stuff? All it does is make people not wanna come here anymore," Wyman fumed.
Coundown to "Lord of the Flies" T minus 70:00:00...
So, all these protestors whose signs say that can't find jobs and can't pay back all their student loans... have $5,500 Macs and camcorders and stuff they can afford to buy and object to seeing redistributed to others in greater need?
Are we seeing an ironic moment - or just a bunch of slackers whose mommies and daddies give 'way too much allowance to?
Or, both?
Posted by: Keith Arnold at October 18, 2011 3:36 PMIrony? What's that?
Posted by: jk at October 18, 2011 3:43 PMJK, it's what you do to your shirt before you head off to a job interview. Which is why this crowd is unfamiliar with it.
Posted by: Boulder Refugee at October 18, 2011 4:34 PMOctober 17, 2011
Property Rights
Classic!
Hat-tip: Professor N. Gregory Mankiw
"That's not fair - You have it, and I need it. I'm sure there's enough to go around."
Posted by: johngalt at October 17, 2011 8:01 PMBefore you know it, these guys will be taking up residence in caves to safeguard their "stuff."
And taking measures to secure it while they're away...
And defending their caves and their "stuff" using clubs...
And using their "stuff" to attract a mate...
Posted by: johngalt at October 17, 2011 8:04 PMBut the ultimate caption to this photo [Context: At the "Occupy Wall Street" protest demanding the "equal" sharing of wealth, no matter what its origin.] is an installment of Atlas Shrugged QOTD.
There wasn't a man voting for it who didn't think that under a setup of this kind he'd muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn't a man rich and smart enough but that he didn't think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his better's wealth and brain. But while he was thinking that he'd get unearned benefits from the men above, he forgot about the men below who'd get unearned benefits, too. He forgot about all his inferiors who'd rush to drain him just as he hoped to drain his superiors. The worker who liked the idea that his need entitled him to a limousine like his boss's, forgot that every bum and beggar on earth would come howling that their need entitled them to an icebox like his own. That was our real motive when we voted - that was the truth of it - but we didn't like to think it, so the less we liked it, the louder we yelled about our love for the common good.Posted by: johngalt at October 18, 2011 2:48 PM
October 14, 2011
Someone put the snack in the refrigerator!
Taranto links to a NYTimes piece on the great chow available for the dirty hippies anti-property-rights protesters of #occupywallstreet. Being Taranto, he jokes that our First Lady may disapprove of the man who gained five pounds since he arrived.
Following the link, I noted that food for the gallant 99% just shows up:
Tom Hintze, 24, was volunteering in Zuccotti Park last week. "Just now there was a big UPS delivery," he said. "We don’t know where it comes from. It just appears, and we eat it."
It put me in mind of my favorite part of one of my favorite recent books: David Mamet's "The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture." He tells of a time that his daughter had befriended a young heiress her age, and she was visiting:
The two were discussing their various bedtimes. And the heiress said that every evening, at ten o'clock, she went to the small refrigerator in her room, and took out her usual snack: fresh berries and organic yogurt dripped with honey.My daughter asked, "Who puts it there?" The heiress paused for a while and said "...I don't know."
Mamet comes back a couple times and says "Who puts the snack in the refrigerator? Someone does."
Perhaps the best part is the credulity of the young lady who has never thought of this question before. Who puts the snack in the refrigerator?
Isn't this one of the things for which Elizabeth Warren took credit? "Nobody gets to be an heiress on her own. She eats the honey-dripped organic yogurt that the rest of us prepared for her and delivered to her boudoire."
Posted by: johngalt at October 14, 2011 10:06 PMOctober 13, 2011
Quote of the Day
Still, OWS' defenders correctly say it represents progressivism's spirit and intellect. Because it embraces spontaneity and deplores elitism, it eschews deliberation and leadership. Hence its agenda, beyond eliminating one of the seven deadly sins (avarice), is opaque. Its meta-theory is, however, clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.-- George WillHat-tip: Blog brother hb, via email.
October 12, 2011
Quote of the Day
Just look at all those unemployed and heavily-indebted #Occupy protesters. I didn’t notice any Petroleum Engineering graduates among them. -- Glenn Reynolds
Dear Dirty Hippies for Paul:
October 12, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
Zuccotti Park
New York, NY USA
Dear Dirty Hippies and Ron Paul supporters:
Not all of you, just the supporters of Rep. Ron Paul who have joined forcers with the #occupywallstreet movement. I see "End the Fed" signs during news coverage and I have read about your presence in Reason and CATO.
I fear you have made a mistake in your choice of solidarity. You have found those who share your temperament and emotions, rather than those who share your ideas, philosophy and values. Why does Doctor Paul want to end the Fed? Because he considers it an assault on property rights. He makes an eloquent and substantive case that to devalue the currency is to steal the loss in value to currency holders. I don't agree with every facet, but it is a serious argument and well worthy of discussion.
Hans Hermann-Hoppe says of Ludwig von Mises: "Mises condensed the definition of liberalism into a single term: private property" and I surmise that Paul considers this both a foundation of our liberty and cornerstone of his philosophy.
Your newfound friends at the protests share your distrust of government, bailouts, too-big-too-fail banks, and Corporatism in general. But they do not share your belief in property rights. Quite the contrary, their demands seem to center on loan forgiveness. Ordinary Americans borrowed money in a legal market with all protections of contract law for housing or education, and have now decided that the lenders have zero right to the contracted repayment.
This turns Ron Paul's beliefs on their head. He worries about 2 or 3% annual theft of the value to a saver's cash holdings -- your fellow travelers advocate a 100% immediate theft of the property of legitimate debt and bond holders. They are not your friends.
Leave them. Go home. Take a shower.
, evoL
Johnny
Five stars. The best synopsis of the whole Occupy Movement I have yet read, heard or pondered.
And also the best Elevator Talk, evah - while also using the 'Dirty Hippies' tag! I am so jealous in my awe.
Posted by: johngalt at October 12, 2011 3:15 PMThank you for the kind words.
Posted by: jk at October 12, 2011 4:37 PMIncredibly well said jk. I read a quote from the ancient orator Isocrates the other day that made me think of you and jg: "Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress."
Posted by: gd at October 12, 2011 5:12 PMOctober 11, 2011
AWESOMENESS
UPDATE: Extra double awesome, they put up mine.
A little blurry but yes, awesome.
Posted by: johngalt at October 11, 2011 7:31 PM"When do we want it? Now!"
The leftist media copes with the TEA Party by finding the handful of whacked out nutjobs in their ranks and making examples of them. But with the Occupy protesters [could anyone have thought of a more appropriate name than they've given themselves?] one wonders if any of them are NOT whacked out nutjobs.
Weekly Standard's Matt Lebash gives a hilarious eyewitness report from Wall Street.
They seem to know they’re a spectacle, since they stand in front of a cardboard sign that reads “Pictures for change or a dollar.” Meaning the passing fanny-packing tourist hordes or smirking financial sector barbarians can get their snaps taken with Spooky and Newport as if they were mascots at Disney’s new Protester World Experience.
And more truth than humor...
Many Wall Streeters inarguably were ethically challenged plunderers, doing their fair share to help turn the American Dream into a waking nightmare (along with profligate government spenders, promiscuous lending institutions, and gluttonous consumers who were all too happy to buy high six- and seven-figure homes on five-figure salaries, slopping at the trough of easy credit and no-doc loans). But in the Great Rewrite that has followed the Great Recession, it has now become fashionable to blame Wall Street for everything from your dog getting hit by a car to your wife getting cellulite on her thighs.
There's more hippie-loathing goodness at the link if you haven't had your fill. Like "What do we want? (We're not gonna tell!)"
My brother shares a Krugman column on Facebook.
Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police -- confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.
You mean when they picked up trash? Posted by: jk at October 11, 2011 4:21 PM
The Labash piece is indeed great (miss the Galley Slaves Blog still). I'll add an excerpt, though you are right that you'd never really stop:
Between all the Tweeting and blogging and livestreaming, it almost feels like you’re missing something if you’re actually here.Posted by: jk at October 11, 2011 4:45 PM
Greenwald is Right
Stopped clocked, twice a day, Glenn Greenwald...let's say every once in a while.
But he is correct that the Democrats will find it difficult to co-opt #OccupyWallStreet.
Given these facts, does the Center for American Progress really believe that the protest movement named OccupyWallStreet was begun -- and that people are being arrested and pepper-sprayed and ready to endure harsh winters -- in order to devote themselves to ensuring that these people remain in power? Does CAP and the DCCC really believe that most of the protesters are motivated -- or can be motivated -- to turn themselves into a get-out-the-vote machine for Obama’s re-election and the empowerment of Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party?
Tweet of the Day
Hat-tip: Jim Geraghty
Stolen from @DrewMTips, but I'll add an original thought: Ev'ybody says they will clear out when the weather turns cold. I would think that might keep the stench down a little.
Umm, that's the dirty hippies, not the Rangers fans... Me like Rangers fans.
Posted by: jk at October 11, 2011 2:00 PMOctober 10, 2011
Dirty Hippies
I had my moment of open mindedness about the #OccupyWallStreet mob civil unrest. That was Saturday, and it lasted a good part of the day.
Now, I am back to grumpy old straight uptight white guy mode:
But as the protest ground on for a 23rd day, it was evident that there were challenges.
Zuccotti Park smelled like an open sewer -- with people urinating and defecating in public.
And some couples have taken advantage of the free condoms distributed by organizers to do the nasty in full view of other protesters.
"It kinda makes me think of what Woodstock must have been like," said one protester, Sarah, 19 from the Upper West Side."I haven’t hooked up with any guys ... but one of my friends did have sex in a tarp with a guy last night."
The free chow offered to protesters was boosting the crowd.
"People say they are here for the cause, but the real reason is the free food," quipped Cameron, 26, of Jersey City."On my third day, they had smoked salmon with cream cheese. You know how much smoked salmon is a pound? Sixteen dollars. I eat better here than I do with my parents!"
Reminds me so much of the Party rallies I attended last year. I'm over-freakin-whelmed with nostalgia.
There's the name of the next Lady Gaga hit: "Sex in a Tarp With a Guy Last Night"
Posted by: johngalt at October 11, 2011 3:01 PMQuote of the Day
In short, every single need, want or desire of their lives has been supplied every step of the way by Big Corporations. Were it not for Big corporations they would have had to have heard about the protest from smoke signals from fires lit by flints and burning wood cut with stone axes. They would be dressed in animal skins and would have walked barefooted on dirt paths to get to NYC. They would be doing their business behind trees and wiping with their bare hands. At night they‘d be snuggled up under a homespun blanket made from the fleece of their own sheep. -- Rick Parker, commenting on the picture below
Down With Wall Street!
From mises.org Facebook page, they could not attribute...
Not to mention "SHOES BY NIKE" and "SANITATION BY KOHLER."
P.S. Anyone in this picture look like a parent?
Posted by: johngalt at October 10, 2011 3:25 PMJK,
I think this is the one you should post on facebook for your lefty friends. It goes a long way to showing how ridiculous it is to demonize, "corporations." All corporations, much like Occupy protests are made up of PEOPLE. Some good, some bad, some greedy, some generous. However, at least the corporations are people working together to accomplish something.
Posted by: dagny at October 11, 2011 4:08 PMOctober 7, 2011
QOTD Deux
Well, what's sort of fascinating about the Occupy Wall Street/Tea Party comparison is how much overlap there is between their complaints. Scrape off the 31 different kinds of Marxist mold growing on the surface of the 99 Percenters, hose off the stench of urine, bong water, and failure, and you'll find a complaint that many Tea Partiers can appreciate: disgust at corporate bailouts, crony capitalism, and economic mismanagement. -- Jonah Golberg G-File (subscribe)
October 5, 2011
All Hail Harsanyi
He's pretty good with an "Occupy Wall Street: a Manifesto."
First, we are imbued with as many inalienable rights as a few thousand college kids and a gaggle of borderline celebrities can concoct, among them a guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment and immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness--even if that debt was acquired taking on a mortgage with a 4.1 percent interest rate and no money down, which, we admit, is a pretty sweet deal in historical context...
October 4, 2011
FREE HAT!
We're the last blog to not write about the #occupyWallStreet protests. And I have not used the "Dirty Hippies" category in some time.
So please accept this link to blog friend Terri's FREE CHALK!
Heh - a movement in search of a goal.
Reminds me of a story my dad likes to tell about college protesters in the late sixties on the DU campus. He asked a young man wearing a sandwich board sign what he meant with his slogan. "It's not my sign," he replied. Repeated inquiries met with the same response. It's not the message, it's the marchin'.
Posted by: johngalt at October 4, 2011 6:36 PMI enjoyed this yesterday. A very serious minded and rational young lefty exposes the idiocy of the marchers.
Posted by: jk at October 4, 2011 7:05 PM"The government is fully privatized." Brilliant!
Posted by: johngalt at October 5, 2011 3:13 PMWatched the whole thing. Good stuff, keepin' it real with whiny entitlement kids. You could tell they were hearing ideas that never cross lips on their college campii. "Most educated and least employed" indeed.
Posted by: johngalt at October 5, 2011 3:20 PMJuly 4, 2011
Dirty Hippies run the FDA
Last week JK wrote about the FDA's anti-prosperity ruling on the clinical use of Avastin to treat breast cancer. Two days later, American Spectator's Robert M. Goldberg wrote in FDA Decision Dooms Cancer Patients some background on the individuals at FDA who were responsible.
Goozner -- who has no medical background -- was appointed to an FDA advisory committee on pharmaceutical science. Two senior Public Citizen operatives, Peter Lurie and Larry Sasich, now set policy for the FDA. Fran Visco, the head of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, applauded the FDA decision after lobbying for it over the past year. Visco, a Democrat, is also on Experts Advisory Panel for the Universal Health Insurance Program at the New America Foundation, a left-wing think tank supporting Obamacare. The NBBC also supported the administration's decision not to cover mammograms for women under 50 though many breast cancers grow faster and earlier in African-American women.
Goldberg goes on to predict that Medicare and some other health plans will try to stop paying for Avastin, but he also makes this prediction:
To these groups, the FDA decision was a triumph. But their effort to manipulate the FDA will backfire. The EMA and every major group of cancer providers support Avastin's use. Cancer patients moblilized spontaneously to keep Avastin's label. They will take on the anti-innovation establishment and the FDA with greater intensity and vigor.
Related: Medicare Won't Drop Avastin for Breast Cancer
June 30, 2011
Clinton on Taxes
Bill Clinton on raising taxes:
"When I passed my budget in 1993, they routinely said it would bring on a terrible recession, [that] it was the end of capitalism as we knew it," he said. "And we had the best eight years in our history. But they just kept saying it. You've got to give them credit. The evidence doesn't deter them. ... It's an ideological conviction. So, I don't know that it can be resolved until there's some break in the action."
Here is how causation works on the left. X happens. Y happens. Therefore X causes Y. Nothing happened between the 1993 budget and 2000 that could have had any effect on the economy. Don't tried to persuade them otherwise, they can't be deterred by facts.
And of course, there is no ideology on the left. The Democrats are practical individuals who wouldn't dare give speeches railing against corporate jets to score political points.
Woooah, doggies! And that's my favorite modern Democrat.
Posted by: jk at June 30, 2011 2:23 PMIn an entire page on this subject, the sole suggestion of anything other than the Clinton Tax Hike being responsible for the federal windfall was this:
An equally if not more powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and rising salaries.
But we have to admit how weak an argument is, "Just imagine how much more the economy could have grown without Clinton's tax increase!"
And using hb's formula, X was the tax rate increase and Y was the economic boom. It seems so incredibly simple when oversimplified in this way.
We're almost left with nothing but, "No, it was the late night Oval Office Oral Exams that caused the boom, not tax rate hikes."
Posted by: johngalt at June 30, 2011 4:33 PMClinton pulled what Dan Quayle called "a Clinton." (During his 1992 debate, that's what DQ called a lie.) I call it "a Paul Krugman."
The plain fact is that the economy didn't take off until the later 1990s, a combination of the tech boom and, oh dear, tax cuts that Republicans pushed for.
Clinton, and Republicans for that matter, did absolutely nothing to get a budget surplus. As I've pointed out before, it was because tax receipts were increasing faster than federal spending. Nor were tax cuts responsible for the return to deficits. Bush pushed for tax cuts, as we well know, and both Republicans and Democrats kept increasing spending at the same rate.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at June 30, 2011 10:56 PMGood synopsis PE. Too bad the world doesn't read Three Sources.
"Republicans and Democrats kept increasing spending" [during the GWB administration] because nobody wanted to repeat the 'mistake' of "tax receipts increasing faster than federal spending" [during the second Clinton term] ever again.
Posted by: johngalt at June 30, 2011 11:35 PMWell ne'er escape Rubinomics: the idea that the '93 tax hike created prosperity and not the later cap gains cut. Sigh.
Mister fair and balanced, however, will point out that:
-- President Clinton was good on spending, though he had a head start cutting defense after the USSR imploded;
-- President Clinton was GREAT on trade until Seattle '99' MVN and a fast track to WTO for China was a great boon for both of us;
-- Welfare reform (again, a promise kept by force from a GOP Congress) was a substantial down payment on a non-Socialist future.
Art Laffer boasts that he voted for Clinton twice. While that is two more times than I did, comparing him to the current crop makes him look like Cleveland.
March 15, 2011
Growth Skepticism
While JK reads how to Make Peace With the Planet I am reminded of the strange dichotomy whereby "Progressives" oppose prosperity. For most of my life I took as a fact of nature that human prosperity is a necessary component of a happier and more rewarding life. For a long time it never seemed necessary to defend that idea, as it must certainly be universal held.
In Let it Grow, Daniel Ben Ami explains that the anti-growth agenda of Progressives is not merely a yearning for ecological preservation or social equality, but a reflexive response to what they viewed as the death of social progress.
Finally, and probably most important, is the demise of believing in social progress. For a long time, economic growth was closely linked to the more general idea of progress, including scientific and cultural advances. A more prosperous society was also seen as having the potential to be more humane. But as social pessimism has gripped America, the vision of the progressive potential of economic growth has also diminished.
What caused this social pessimism on the left?
This social pessimism has emerged over several decades. Its roots can be seen in the counterculture of the 1960s when the political Left, traditionally the most ardent supporters of social change, began to embrace green ideas. Rather than consider humans capable of reshaping nature for their own benefit, the outlook switched to one obsessed with natural limits.The downbeat attitude was further reinforced with the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. It was widely understood that this represented the death of socialism's traditional conceptions. Less commonly appreciated was the general acceptance that no form of improved society is possible. The "end of history" proclaimed at the time was really the end, at least for the time being, of the idea of progress.
Just as one America was going to the moon and inventing bioengineered crops and ever cheaper sources of energy, the other America viewed the death of the Soviet Union as the end of hope for a just society. For them, the vision of technological achievement no longer had any application. And if man can't even perfect his own social order, what business has he trying to perfect any other aspect of life on Earth?
In response I say, check your premises. What if socialism really isn't the perfect social order?
Both Mises and Postrel discuss a yearning for a utopia that never existed. Before capitalism, everything was swell.
Umm, yeah, if you don't mind freezing in the dark, dying at 42, devoting most of your time to sustenance...
February 26, 2011
"Sustainable" Energy Unsustainable
Live by the subsidy - die by the subsidy.
More than 200 supporters of solar energy rallied on the west steps of the state Capitol this afternoon to protest Xcel Energy's decision to cut incentives for solar system installations.
Had this been a "Teabaggers" rally the narrative would have been "Nearly 200 opponents of the Obama Administration rallied ..." But I digress.
"It has created a lot of fear in the industry. My job is on the line," said Gary Gantzer, a Boulder resident and installer for Namaste Solar who was at the rally with his two young children.About 5,300 people work in the solar installation industry, and insiders estimate half those jobs could be at risk if the Public Utilities Commission lets the proposal stand.
So what you're saying is, those jobs might never have existed in the first place had those subsidies not been given. Given by whom, you may ask. Ratepayers.
A 2 percent charge on utility bills supports the program and other efforts to promote renewable energy development.
How much subsidy, you may ask.
Since 2006, the program has provided $274 million in incentives for 9,346 installations on homes and small businesses.
9,346 incentives over a 5-year period is about 1,870 subsidies per year. And the average cost of each subsidy: $29,317.
Just for fun - Number of years the average solar subsidy could pay the electric bill of an average American home? 306 (and 5 months.)
Mike Rosen took on this subject in his third hour today. His first impression was the same as mine - Subsidies created those jobs in the first place!
He also did a good job exposing how this is average rate payers helping solar proponents put expensive power systems on their homes at little or no cost to themselves.
And many callers defended the program on the basis that "fossil fuels have huge subsidies too." Yet not a single one of them could give an example of said subsidies. To paraphrase multiple callers - "I just read that they're there, and they're numerous, and they're huge." (No word whether it was from an authoritaritive source, like the internets.)
Posted by: johngalt at February 28, 2011 3:00 PMHere is an example of subsidies.
Please comment to let me know if this resource is acceptable to you.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf
Posted by: JC at March 4, 2011 1:35 PM"Just for fun - Number of years the average solar subsidy could pay the electric bill of an average American home? ...306 [years] (and 5 months.)"
Just for MORE fun:
Estimated number of people on the planet = 6.9 billion
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
Estimated global subsidies for oil in 2008 = 312 billion
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2010/11/23/global-fossil-fuel-and-renewable-subsidies/
Estimated U.S. Energy Subsidies (tax expenditures (TE)) = 6.74 billion (subtracting TE subsidies for ALL renewables)
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/subsidy2/pdf/execsum.pdf
Hold that thought - this is for U.S. subsidies alone
How many years could these U.S. subsidies power a single, average American home if every person on the planet had an average American home? Well? How many?
Thought experiment: What kind of impact would there be on global energy markets if every person on the planet had an "average American home"? (frightening)
Subsidizing Big Oil:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/vehicle_impacts/cars_pickups_and_suvs/subsidizing-big-oil.html
You asked if the DOE site was an acceptable source. To be fair, I was still thinking about it -- I place moderate faith in gub'mint statistics and the DOE is toward the bottom.
Then you link to far more partisan sources.
We don't agree on much around here, but I suspect all ThreeSourcers would agree that neither oil, ethanol, nor unicorn farts should be subsidized. Let them all compete in the free market.
However, what many opponents call subsidies are simply standard features in the tax code. I'd love to clean up the tax code, but in the meantime, the only way a large company can exist in the US is to take advantage of all the loopholes.
GE and Whirlpool use these to pay pretty much zero taxes, but because they're making Energy Star appliances -- and grease the right palms -- they get less flack than the big bad oil companies.
Real subsidies need to go bye-bye, no arguments 'round here. But do you think they just happened last week? You want to subsidize "green" energy? In decades, that will be what's keeping us from transitioning to something better.
Thank you for bringing the debate here from Facebook JC. When my online time is limited it will go to this page before any other.
If you have a point to make other than villification of American prosperity then you'll have to spell it out for me. That's a lot of info there.
But I think you may have mistaken the fun I poked at callers having no clue how government subsidizes oil for my personal approval of said subsidies, or denial that they exist. I want them ALL killed. All corporate welfare, whether for conventional, productive energy or for alternative, wishful energy companies - zeroed. We can argue about research later but I think we should agree on the corporate subsidy point. (Caveat: Namaste Solar and other small, local businesses fall under the heading of "corporation.")
It took until recently for me to realize it but when a Republican politician says he is for "all of the above" on energy policy he isn't just saying he is pro-drilling. Unless he says otherwise you must assume he is "pro-subsidy" for "all of the above." And if this can be verified, OFF WITH HIS HEAD! (Electorally, of course.)
Posted by: johngalt at March 5, 2011 11:23 AMDecember 20, 2010
Hybrid Chic
Q- What do you get if you build a car with two motors (a gasoline-electric "hybrid") and let the driver use both of them at the same time?
A- Honda's new CR-Z "sport hybrid."
So market forces can even conquer the hair-shirt principle of the eco-mobile. Young buyers value "green" cars but still care what they look like when cruisin' Main Street. No surprise there. How long until the modifier "hybrid" is as non-descript as "GT?"
Worth mentioning: Honda's commercial (bottom right corner of linked page) for the new kid-rod, which implies that fire and ice can coexist. "Complete opposites, in complete harmony."
March 27, 2010
It's...
Oh boy! It's freeze in the &^%&^ing dark day!
Let There Be LightLike my celebration of Earth Hour last year, this year I will again demonstrate my "awareness" of the global warming hoax by making sure that my house is visible from space. At 8:30 this evening, every light in my house will be ablaze for one hour.
Celebrate civilization. Celebrate humanity. Turn on all your lights at 8:30 tonight.
Usually I can let people be stupid if it does not affect me (good capacity for a libertarian). This drives me up the wall! Lights will be a-blazin' at the little grass condo shack.
Hat-tip: blog friend LisaM
Take a look at our blog's banner image if you think darkness is an expression of virtue. Is there much light in North Korea? Cuba? 8th district of California?
They didn't call them the 'dark ages' because everyone "came together to make a bold statement" about the evils of science, industry and individualism.
Posted by: johngalt at March 27, 2010 2:26 PMI'm thinking next time somebody complains about global warming, I'm gonna say "Yeah, it was sooo much better when all those people in India and China were starving -- but how do we get them to do it again?"
Posted by: jk at March 28, 2010 11:17 AMSeptember 9, 2009
"Don't break things up in the name of progress..."
President Obama is scheduled to lecture congress this evening. First, let's watch Sgt. Joe Friday and Bill Gannon lecture him.
"Show me how to get rid of the unlimited capacity for human beings to make themselves believe that they're somehow right and justified in stealing from somebody."
Circa 1950?
Oh, and Happy 09/09/09. (It doesn't deserve its own post, but just so's everyone knows we noticed...)
June 26, 2009
"Balanced" and "sensible" climate change bill passes House
That's the spin thrown on the bill by President Obama yesterday. Surely it was far from either of those qualities at the time, but prior to passage another 300 pages were shoe-horned in ... at 3 am this morning! [What in the hell is the fixation that Washington politicians have with that time of day?] Minority Leader Boehner said the obvious:
And here are a few floor quotes:
Rep. Geoff Davis, a Republican from Kentucky, said the cap-and-trade bill represented the "economic colonization of the heartland" by New York and California.Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) called the bill a “scam” that would do nothing but satisfy “the twisted desires of radical environmentalists.”
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) called it a “massive transfer of wealth” from the United States to foreign countries.Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio countered that, without the bill, the United States would remain energy-dependent on people who want to “fly planes into our buildings.”
I'd hoped to insert a bulleted list of ways that this bill is a colonoscopy for America but then I realized, Who the hell knows what it does... it jumped from 1200 pages to 1500 overnight!
But it's far from law yet. Next stop: the Senate.
(Note that as the lions share of H.R. 2454 was written by the environmental lobby this post qualifies for the coveted "dirty hippies" category.)
And kudos to JK for naming the 8 RINOs who voted for this treasonous piece of crap. Just four of them switching sides would have spiked it.
That jagoff Kirk wants to run for Obama's former Senate seat.
Good luck with that.
Posted by: AlexC at June 26, 2009 11:33 PMOf the 44 Democrats voting no, one is from Colorado and four are from PA. I'll tell you what - my respect for John Salazar (CO-3) just grew three sizes larger.
Posted by: johngalt at June 27, 2009 10:06 AMWell done, Mister Leader!
I tend to give up before trying on my representation, but Colorado's two freshman Democrat Senators could well feel a little heat on this issue.
To take up an Instapundit riff, having the next Tea Party outside of Senator Udall's or Bennett's office might be a better blow for freedom than a photo-op outside the Capitol.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 11:50 AMIf Mark Udall might face heat on this issue in 2010 he doesn't seem to feel it at the moment. One of the stories I read yesterday said a few senators were working the halls of congress twisting arms for a yes vote. Mark Udall (D-CO) was the one mentioned by name.
I'm in for a TEA (Taking Energy Away) party at one of Markey's offices. Instead of pitchforks we'll carry empty gas cans. (Shall we try to organize something for next week?)
Posted by: johngalt at June 27, 2009 3:27 PMI'm thinking we'd have better luck with Bennett, but that it would be a good exercise to scare Senator Udall. He is used to catering to CO-2 collectivists and a reminder that Boulder is not the whole state, dude, might be a good lesson.
They're pushing on Twitter for GOP defectors (great Twitter tag #capandtr8tors) to change their vote as you suggest with Markey. Is that realistic? I cannot imagine that the same effort would not be better directed at the Senate, but I am open to discussion.
Posted by: jk at June 27, 2009 6:29 PMBest quote:
“I look forward to spending the next 100 years trying to fix this legislation,” said California Republican Brian Bilbray.
Posted by: HB at June 27, 2009 10:15 PMApril 1, 2009
Tea Party Plan
So, ThreeSources Colorado Wing group presence at the tea party? Loveland? Denver?
galt clan - YES. (Denver)
Posted by: johngalt at April 2, 2009 12:38 PMFebruary 24, 2009
Corporate Water
We haven't had a "Dirty Hippies" post in a while (and a younger me may have personally starred in the last one). But it is time. Oh baby it is time. Gawker has a nine-minute video of the ridiculous NYU food court takeover.
Painful as it is, you have to watch it coast-to-coast, both to absorb the full inanity and to catch the end where they inventory their possessions (sorry, AC, no "PCs" in the group) to protect them from confiscation.
HT: Insty, who links to other reactions.
October 26, 2008
Weather Underground: Kill the "die hard capitalists"
From LGF: Bill Ayers' Terrorist Group Discussed Genocide of Americans (includes video)
Quoting Larry Grathwohl, an FBI informant and member of the Weather Underground, in a 1982 documentary on the group:
"I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.And they were dead serious."
I wonder if McPalin's last week of TV ads will include anything from this list. Though I suspect it may require pictures of Obama and Ayers building pipe bombs together to get through to some people.
Hat tip: Blog brother Cyrano
Population planning, from abortion to forced sterilization, has always been part of the liberal/collectivist agenda.
"In order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate three hundred and fifty thousand people per day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it." No one batted an eye when Jacques Cousteau said this completely contemptuous thing.
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at October 26, 2008 2:23 PMFebruary 8, 2008
We Are All in Agreement
The Republican Party may have left me, but I think we can all agree that we do not want these people in the White House....again:
[Note the category.]
Aw, why not? They've been in Chappaqua (not far from me) a while, and it's time they went furniture shopping again...
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at February 11, 2008 12:45 PMOctober 21, 2007
Another Day, Another Debate
Another day, another debate.
But it had this nugget, which NRO's Jim Geraghty calls "the best line of the campaign so far."
"Hillary tried to get a million dollars for the Woodstock museum. I understand it was a major cultural and pharmaceutical event. I couldn't attend. I was tied up at the time."It gets a standing ovation.
F*ck yeah, that's a good line.
I TiVoed the debate so I could flip between the ALCS game seven and the Broncos-Steelers. My recorder has two tuners, and this is the first time in the history of TV that there have been three good things on at once.
It is a great line and Senator McCain's appearance of FOXNews Sunday in the empty debate hall was very good as well.
October 19, 2007
Dirty Hippie
|
Knowing the cover up is always more damaging than the crime, I realize it is time I came out of the closet. As a couple readers know, I was indeed a dirty hippie in my younger days. A college buddy sent this along to me. Yipes!
The location is Socorro, NM, and James Earl Carter was president -- that's all I'm saying at this time. |
I would have turned the fire hoses on you my friend.
Posted by: AlexC at October 19, 2007 7:50 PMBut he's such a happy looking fellow! None of that black armband anarchy bulls**t. Not that I'd have picked him up hitchhiking or anything...
Posted by: johngalt at October 23, 2007 2:42 PMOctober 10, 2007
Electromechanical Spying
When hippies get together you can bet your bong there are going to be drugs on hand.
Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month."I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."
Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously.
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "
When you believe that a neo-con cabal stole an election; plotted the destruction of four planes, three buildings and three thousand of it's own citizens; lied through their teeth to go to war for corporate profits and petroleum products, you too can believe that there is an agency in the US Government that sent flying bugs to spy on you and your birkenstocked hairy legs.
Frankly, I'm shocked I read that in the Washington Post.
I love this myth of repression. The antiwar protestors want to think themselves brave because the government is cracking down so hard on them. That one professor's luggage was delayed by the evil neocon cabal, but has it occurred to anybody that there are no other incidents of dissent stifling?
And doesn't everybody know that a good, solid tinfoil hat is the best repellant for government spy bugs. Geeesh.
July 5, 2007
I See a Thompson-Nugent Ticket
I'm still supporting Hizzoner. But if Fred Thompson were to declare that The Motor City Madman will be his running mate and that their administration would put an end to the hippie scourge once and for all, I would take a long look.
Ted Nugent wrote a guest editorial last week in the Wall Street Journal. It was put on the free site yesterday. Nugent says the "Summer of Love" should be known as "The Summer of Drugs." He mourns the loss, to drugs, of great musicians like Hendrix and Joplin and he details his troubles being straight through his long career.
Forty years ago hordes of stoned, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," which was the calling card of LSD proponent Timothy Leary. Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.
I love Nugent's stance on guns better than I ever actually liked his music. Nor was my youth as clean and perfect as his. But he is in a good position to scold those who want to glorify the 1960s. Nugent salutes the civil rights movement but doesn't want to celebrate too much else.
There is a saying that if you can remember the 1960s, you were not there. I was there and remember the decade in vivid, ugly detail. I remember its toxic underbelly excess because I was caught in the vortex of the music revolution that was sweeping the country, and because my radar was fine-tuned thanks to a clean and sober lifestyle.Death due to drugs and the social carnage heaped upon America by hippies is nothing to celebrate. That is a fool's game, but it is quite apparent some burned-out hippies never learn.
Excellent. I'm a WSJ subscriber but I hadn't seen this.
Ted's acknowledgement that "some burned-out hippies never learn" is timely in the wake of Boulder High School's student seminar condoning, nae, ENCOURAGING, "a cowardly lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music."
I wouldn't say this still "flourishes" in Boulder, Colorado (except perhaps for the soulless rock music) but there are clearly many in positions of authority who want it to.
Posted by: johngalt at July 8, 2007 11:29 AMFebruary 1, 2007
Dirty Hippies
A perfect example of "dirty hippies".
Here are the two knuckleheads that shut down Boston.
Advised not to speak to the media about their "ad campaign." They held a press conference outside of the courthouse.
How much bong water did these guys drink? I'm almost rooting for them to go to jail.
October 21, 2006
Introspection
Sister Toldjah writes about something I've been saying for a while.
- Nothing, absolutely nothing, demonstrates the sheer denial of reality regarding the left more than their reactions to the last three elections they’ve lost: they were “stolen,” “rigged,” etc - can’t possibly be because Democrats have been rejected on the basis of their ideas (or lack thereof), can’t possibly be because a majority of the American people actually embraced Republican ideas, bbbbecause Americans couldn’t possibly be that stupid, could they? What the left can’t or won’t explain though, is that they haven’t just been losing elections since Bush was ELECTED President, they’ve been losing big since 1994 - but during the 1994, 96, and 98 elections we didn’t hear this massive outcry of election rigging - apparently Democrats losing elections in the 90s had nothing to do with Republicans officials acting nefariously throughout the country - and of course had nothing to do with a rejection of Democratic ideas, oh no - but once Bush came along the left finally found someone they could pin their losses on. For the party of “thinkers”, Democrats aren’t big on self-introspection - it’s always someone else’s fault.
October 19, 2006
Raising A Nation of Sissies
What have we come to?
- Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.
Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.
While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.
In 1985, in third grade, I had the stereotypical hippie teacher. This guy voted for Mondale, Carter twice as well as McGovern. We had a fight club, before fight clubs were cool.
Everyday, we'd be out there beating on each other. Eventually the older kids started showing up. Our hippie teacher knew we had a fight club. I remember him telling another teacher, "those boys go out there an roughhouse!" but we were never "shutdown."
We even had a firepole on the playground. More than one kid broke their arm. I'm sure it's gone now.
How times have changed.
I say to Gaylene Heppe, driving is when accidents happen too. Are you walking to school?