what if?

Goldilocks Government

Some people who read my blog have the false belief that I am totally against government.  Not at all.  I recognize many beneficial services and protections of freedom that a good government can provide to its people.

Nevertheless, holding this belief does not mean that the more government, the better.

Richard Rahn, an economist at Cato, explains what he views to be the golden mean of "just right" levels of government.

We’ve found the Golden Mean of Government. According to 1998 testimony to Congress, it’s a total amount of government cost that consumes roughly 17.5% of GDP, presumably efficiently. The bad news? The last time we had a government that ate only 17.5% of GDP was … 1965. So where are we at today? Er … 40% of GDP, for all levels of government. Hong Kong has a right-sized government, while we’re a lot closer to France than Hong Kong.

Mitchell notes that “government today is far too big, and it’s hurting growth.

Has Rahn captured the "Goldilocks Level" of government?  I do not know.  I only know that I agree there is a point at which too much government is counterproductive to what most citizens would favor.

Demeaning Atrocity

No matter what your political beliefs, we should all be careful with our accusations.  Let's not demean history.

The Holocaust was a total eclipse of humanity. It was not about going to the back of the line or eating in a different part of the restaurant or being escorted to the border without recourse. The Holocaust had one purpose: the total annihilation and extinction of a race.

The Holocaust was the story of ordinary Germans: students, doctors, men and women of culture, who were not demented, who listened to Bach and Beethoven, who loved their families, who were not diagnosed as psychopaths, but who, nonetheless for six years, rounded up men, women and children and escorted them to the gas chambers.

As the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, wrote in his confession before he was tried and executed in Poland: "Up to this point, it was not clear to me, nor to Eichmann, how the killing of the expected masses was to be done — perhaps by gas, but how and what kind of gas. I was always horrified of death by firing squads, especially when I thought of the large numbers of women and children who would have to be killed. Now I was at ease, we were all saved from these blood baths and the victims would be spared until the last moment.... I also watched how some women, who suspected or knew what was happening, even with the fear of death all over their faces, still managed enough strength to play with their children and talk to them lovingly. Once, a woman with four children, all holding each other by the hand to help the smallest ones, passed by me. She stepped very close to me and whispered, pointing to her four children, 'How can you murder these beautiful, darling children? Don't you have any heart?'"

That was the Holocaust. It is not the BP oil disaster, it is not healthcare, it is not Arizona law, it is not the attack ads of Meg Whitman, it is not abortion, and it is not even horrific violations of civil rights.

The enormity of the crimes of the Holocaust was such that if you were to try to call out 2,000 of the names every day of the 6 million who perished, it would take more than eight years to complete the task. That's what a holocaust is.

Serenity

Bill Wilson's gospel - and mine, too.

In the business of changing lives, the straight path is rarely the best one. A.A. illustrates that even in an age of scientific advance, it is still ancient insights into human nature that work best. Wilson built a remarkable organization on a nighttime spiritual epiphany.

Do You Think The Media Would Ignore This

If it were a Republican advisor who made all these statements?

"You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk," he said. "And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble."

He cited the writings of Bill Jones -- author of the book "Is God a White Racist?" -- as proof that white people cannot be trusted. "Bill said, 'They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They'll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin', cause you not a brother to them.' "

Wright referred to Italians as "Mamma Luigi" and "pizzeria." He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks "not by benign neglect but by malignant intent."

He said Ethiopian Jews are despised by white Jews: "And now the Knesset [Israeli parliament] is meeting with European Jews, voting on whether or not these African Jews can get into [Israel]."

The civil-rights movement, Wright said, was never about racial equality: "It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do." Martin Luther King, he said, was misguided for advocating nonviolence among his people, "born in the oven of America."

"We probably have more African-Americans who've been brainwashed than we have South Africans who've been brainwashed," he said, and seemed to allude to President Obama twice: "Unfortunately, I got in trouble with a fella for saying this . . . All your commentaries are written by oppressors." At the mention of Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan -- whom Obama disavowed during the campaign -- black leaders "go cuttin' and duckin'," he said.

Yeah.  I didn't think so, either.

 

What Have We Done?

Some of you may be happy with the president we elected and the values of this administration.  If you watch this interview, however, rest assured that I am not among those who are pleased.

Be Careful What You Wish For

No, I haven't given up blogging.  It only seems that way.

A mountain of obligations and projects has been slurping up all my time.  Nevertheless, I try to keep at least somewhat on top of events.  And - this one in particular caught my eye. 

Back!

Yes, I know I have been missing in action.  Saturday, I went to Chicago to photograph and watch the "team trials" for the United States.  This event selects the bridge team that will represent the United States in international competition.  Although it is difficult to try to photograph bridge players who are only concerned with how their team is doing, rather than posing nicely for yours truly, I loved doing this project.

Nevertheless, with all the photography work and editing, horrible computer connections in the hotel, real estate projects and more - to say my free time has been limited is a serious understatement.

I'm now home, and still have loads and loads of work.  Nevertheless, I am working my way through all the various projects.

One of those projects is cleaning up the emails.  (I'm sure you all know just how fun this is!)  While doing so, I learned about this new website.  A longtime friend and fellow grad student from the U of MN in the philosophy department has set it up.  Do check it out, please!  And - good luck with your new blog, John!

"Absolutely Safe"?

The only thing that I know which is "absolutely safe" is to bet that you won't live forever.

The notion that you could have an activity like drilling for oil deep in the ocean and assert that it is "absolutely safe" is either the pronouncement of an idiot or an naive idealist - or a politician.  Bingo.

There was one particularly striking moment in President Obama's widely panned Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. About midway through his talk, Obama acknowledged that he had approved new offshore drilling a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion on April 20. But Obama said he had done so only "under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe."

Absolutely safe? Even before the Gulf spill, few defenders of offshore drilling would go that far. And when the president announced his drilling plan, on March 31, he said it was "not a decision that I've made lightly" and that he and his advisers had "looked at [it] closely for more than a year." Surely he was told of the possible risks.

"If you can find anything that's absolutely safe, I sure want to find out about it," says Robert Bea, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. "There is no engineering system that I am aware of that has zero likelihood of failure."

"We can never be absolutely safe," adds Ken Arnold, an independent consultant to the oil and gas industry. "The only way you can be absolutely certain of being absolutely safe is to shut down all production and all drilling from offshore today."

That's certainly not the way experts talk about the issue. When discussing projects like offshore exploration, engineers often use the phrases "PF," which stands for probability of failure, and "CF," which stands for consequences of failure. The Deepwater Horizon disaster was a classic low-probability, high-consequence event. Even with good safety procedures, strange combinations of human error, mechanical failure and sheer bad luck can combine to cause a devastating accident. "There has been a constant improvement in safety, but you can never say that a very low probability but very high consequence event is impossible," says Ken Arnold. "You can never say that."

Here's Looking at You, Kid

Fabulous photos of bugs,this week at Pioneer Woman.
 

November Can't Come Soon Enough For Me

This is your administration on the Gulf disaster.

And yes; I know they can't all be voted out in November.  But a good chunk of 'em would be significant progress.

WARNING!

So funny, you could injure yourself laughing.

Party Hearty!

What has our president been doing since the disaster in the Gulf?

This video pretty well sums it up.

No Good Options

As a small child living in Skokie, a town with more Holocaust survivors than anywhere else in the United States, I remember the fear that simply the thought of the Holocaust engendered in me.  Where could the Jews have run?  If I had been in Europe, it seemed that digging a hole in the earth and hiding there would have been the only possible recourse.

Yet it seemed to me that the enormity of what happened, the gigantic evil of it all, taught the world how incredibly wrong that kind of anti-semitism and hate was.  When people said "Never again" - I thought to myself, "Yes; never again will something like this happen."

How wrong I was.

Staying Power

Seventy-two years of marriage!?  Cutie and Pop-Pop's story of love and commitment is rare in today's dump-it-don't-fix-it world.

Of course, my own folks are a mere decade behind :)

Was Einstein Bright?

Many years ago, I needed a birthday present for someone close to me.  The someone was quite wealthy, and had an extraordinary interest in physics.  Anything I could afford to purchase seemed so insignificant; this was a man who didn't have enormous material wants.  Yet, whatever he did want, he could - and would - purchase for himself.

Finally, I hit upon it.  I would contact Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, and set up dinner for the two of them!

I actually was able to contact Feynman by phone and chat with him.  But alas; dinner he couldn't do.  Feynman did agree, however, to call my friend on his birthday and deliver birthday congratulations along with a chat.  I do believe it was one of the finest presents my friend ever received.

And with that introduction,an excellent post from Powerline about who really is bright - and why.

The Bottomless Nut Bowl

If you are an optimist about the limitless possibilities of man, then you should like this article.

The phrase diminishing returns is such a cliché that few people give it much thought. Picking out the pecans from a bowl of salted nuts gives diminishing returns: The pieces of pecan in the bowl get rarer and smaller. The fingers keep finding almonds, hazelnuts, cashews, or even—God forbid—Brazil nuts. Gradually the bowl, like a moribund gold mine, ceases to yield decent returns of pecan.

Now imagine a bowl of nuts that has the opposite character. The more pecans you take, the larger and more numerous they grow. That is the human experience for the last 100,000 years. The global nut bowl has yielded ever more pecans.

To explain the modern global economy’s bottomless nut bowl, you must explain where the perpetual innovation machine and its increasing returns came from. They were not planned, directed, or ordered. They emerged, evolved, bottom up, from specialization and exchange. The accelerated exchange of ideas and people made possible by technology fueled the accelerating growth of wealth that has characterized the last century. Politicians, capitalists, and officials are flotsam bobbing upriver on the tide of invention.

When You Vote Next November

Please think about stories like this one.

Last fall, Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved her district office into the new federal building in San Francisco. The move quadrupled the rent she pays, and her new $18,736 monthly bill is almost double the next-highest rental paid by a Member of the House.

A database assembled by the Sunlight Foundation in cooperation with Roll Call provides new insight into Congressional spending on district office rents. Not surprisingly, Members from large urban districts with the highest property values are paying the most for district office rental, particularly New York–area Members. …

The next highest monthly office rent belongs to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D), who occupies an office in a federal building in Manhattan’s trendy SoHo neighborhood for just under $10,600. Rep. José Serrano (D) paid $10,350 a month last year for an office in the Bronx, but he recently moved into a new building where the first month’s rent was only $9,583, his spokesman said Friday.

Why did Pelosi make the move to new digs at all?  She had been in her original offices for almost 20 years, and her spokesperson claimed to Roll Call that she needed more space as Speaker of the House.  Perhaps, but at four times the previous rent?  San Francisco commercial space costs money, but it doesn’t usually run twice as expensive as Manhattan.

Do you really want a Speak of the House that makes decisions like this?  Do you really want yourself, your children and your grandchildren to be responsible for the hideous spending that our current government is choosing?

If not, then please try something else next time you are choosing your representation.  Truly, our futures depend upon it.

Never Say Die

If you are a worry wart (as I often am) and sometimes despair of solutions, then this column is for you.

Some Real Money

To some, half a billion dollars (the amount by which we subsidize public broadcasting) may be some real money.

If you want to see real money, however, think about what it may cost to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.

“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry.

Whatever the fix, the money spent will not be recovered, said Alex Pollock, a former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago who is now a fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute.

“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, Fannie and Freddie will cost a lot of money,” Pollock said. “The money is already lost. There’s an attempt to try to avert your eyes.”

Gulp.

A Drop in the Bucket

In the grand scheme of things, cutting spending for public broadcasting - about $420 million - is a drop in the bucket.  Yet, not only is it correct that on principle, our government should no longer subsidize this.  Eventually, a drop here and a drop there add up to some real money.

Cable television wasn’t around until the late 1940s, so by 1967 there weren’t many cable channels for people to choose from. When Johnson established the CPB, he wanted these telecommunications services to be available to all Americans. Today, there is an estimated 114.9 million households with televisions — about 99 percent of U.S. households. There is no longer a need for taxpayer-subsidized public broadcasting.

“I think in this current environment in the United States the original intent behind public broadcasting is no longer relevant,” says ALG President Bill Wilson. “Public broadcasting was originally enacted when there were three network television channels and limited access to news and information. Today there is literally hundreds of cable channels, thousands of blogs and Internet sites from any number of credible entities.”

In essence, taxpayers are paying for a luxury. It isn’t right for the single mother who is working two jobs and can barely make ends meet for her family to be forced to pay for something this unnecessary.

“This is a total luxury,” Wilson says. “It is a luxury in the sense that this is not something people can’t get other places. Clearly there isn’t enough of a market for it because if there were, it wouldn’t need government taxpayer money just to pay its salaries and pay its overhead.”

Just like every other channel on television and radio, if people value the programming, it will continue.  As it should be....