what if?

100 Years

One hundred years ago today, Milton Friedman, one of the greatest economists ever, was born.  Libertarians and economists alike are heralding this day, as Friedman was a giant in his field.

You may find the photo above to be an odd one to pair with this post.  Allow me to explain.

The lady sitting in the seat to the far right is Friedman's daughter, Jan.  She is an elite bridge player - though in this shot, Jan is doing "Vugraph" - that is, transmitting the play of a major bridge championship through online means so that bridge players around the world can watch in real time.

Jan herself won a prestigious award at our last national tournament.  She has contributed mightily to the advancement of bridge with immense hours of volunteer work, and was given an annual award for her many years of service.

Though Jan and I have never had detailed philosophical discussions, she knows that I am a major fan of her father's.  Occasionally I send her pertinent articles, and when we do discuss him in person, once in a while she gets a tear in her eye.

Jan - my thanks to your father for being an intellectual powerhouse - and - for raising a daughter who is both a wonderful friend and contributor in so many ways to our bridge world.

Race: Then and Now

Nick Gillespie asks that we not whitewash the past - and that, irrespective of your political leanings - we are honest about where we are today.

We live in a better America not simply because virtually no one would voice such vile racist sentiments in public, but because virtually no one even thinks them anymore. And the improvement is not simply in terms of the worst sort of George Wallace-Strom Thurmond-style racism. Across a wide variety of indicators - most notably when it comes to interracial marriages -America has progressed to a much better place than where it was when it was Steinbeck was writing Travels with Charley and Obama's parents were married.

Race still matters in American life, and to the extent that it does, there is still work to be done in terms of improvement. But as Obama's own election and polls show, race clearly is not a deciding factor in presidential politics. Assertions that race is at the heart of - or even a contributing factor to - Obama's rotten poll numbers is blame-shifting of the worst kind. Yet folks ranging from New York magazine's Jonathan Chait to Salon's Joan Walsh to the New York Times' Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd to many others are ready and willing to do so.

And--

If conservative Republicans can't understand that fewer people want to associate with them because they lied when they said they favored a government that did less and spent less, nothing can save the party of Lincoln from eventual receivership. And if liberal Democrats can't fully grasp that voters are turned off not the color of Obama's skin but by the failure of his presidency, they too will continue to see fewer and fewer people marching under their banner.

Millions, Billions....

What's the difference?

Clearly, our president has no clue.

With Mitt Romney on his way to Israel, Barack Obama needed to make a public gesture showing his commitment to the key American ally. Unfortunately, Obama couldn’t quite figure out the difference between “million” and “billion” when it came to the spending he had just authorized with his signature, and ended up incorrectly correcting himself — in a rare televised signing from the Oval Office.

“I’m also very pleased that this week we are going to be able to announce $70 million in additional spending — $70 billion, excuse me, in additional spending for Iron Dome.”

Actually, it was $70 million; $70 billion would be far larger than our total foreign-aid outlays. The Daily Caller dryly notes, “It is unclear why Obama was unfamiliar with the amount of the foreign aid increase.” Unfortunately for those of us who have analyzed Obama’s spending proclivities, it’s entirely clear that he can’t tell the difference between millions and billions.

Let's hope that come November, we are on track to have a president who does know the difference between spending $70 million and $70 billion.  The fiscal health of our nation depends upon it!

 

Anti-Choice

As I have always maintained, outside of abortion, many liberals are about as anti-choice as you can get.

Just had a baby?  Well - if you prefer to bottle feed, you'd better not be in New York.

The nanny state is going after moms.

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.

Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation.

With each bottle a mother requests and receives, she’ll also get a talking-to. Staffers will explain why she should offer the breast instead.

“It’s the patient’s choice,” said Allison Walsh, of Beth Israel Medical Center. “But it’s our job to educate them on the best option.”

Hmmm.  Anyone think that this sounds like bills conservative Republicans wish to pass that demand women have tests and/or lectures about abortion before they can secure one? 

The next time someone on the left starts railing about how conservatives want to make your right to choose more difficult, just let them know that they have plenty of company on their own side.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Want to know why our government needs more and more tax dollars?  Here is but one example among hundreds of thousands why.

In today’s Washington Post, George Will describes what I can only call a real whale of an abusive federal criminal prosecution:

The huge humpback whale whose friendliness precipitated a surreal seven-year — so far — federal hunt for criminality surely did not feel put upon. Nevertheless, our unhinged government, with an obsession like that of Melville’s Ahab, has crippled Nancy Black’s scientific career, cost her more than $100,000 in legal fees — so far — and might sentence her to 20 years in prison. This Kafkaesque burlesque of law enforcement began when someone whistled.

Black, 50, a marine biologist who also captains a whale-watching ship, was with some watchers in Monterey Bay in 2005 when a member of her crew whistled at the humpback that had approached her boat, hoping to entice the whale to linger. Back on land, another of her employees called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to ask if the whistling constituted “harassment” of a marine mammal, which is an “environmental crime.” NOAA requested a video of the episode, which Black sent after editing it slightly to highlight the whistling. NOAA found no harassment — but got her indicted for editing the tape, calling this a “material false statement” to federal investigators, which is a felony under the 1863 False Claims Act, intended to punish suppliers defrauding the government during the Civil War.

A year after this bizarre charge — that she lied about the interaction with the humpback that produced no charges — more than a dozen federal agents, led by one from NOAA, raided her home. They removed her scientific photos, business files and computers. Call this a fishing expedition.

She has also been charged with the crime of feeding killer whales when she and two aides were in a dinghy observing them feeding on strips of blubber torn from their prey — a gray whale.

To facilitate photographing the killers’ feeding habits, she cut a hole in one of the floating slabs of blubber and, through the hole, attached a rope to stabilize the slab while a camera on a pole recorded the whales’ underwater eating.

So she is charged with “feeding” killer whales that were already feeding on a gray whale they had killed. She could more plausibly be accused of interfering with the feeding.

Never mind. This pursuit of Black seems to have become a matter of institutional momentum, an agent-driven case. Perhaps NOAA, or the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section, has its version of Victor Hugo’s obsessed Inspector Javert….

To finance her defense she has cashed out her life’s savings, which otherwise might have purchased a bigger boat. The government probably has spent millions.

 

Can you think of better ways to spend millions of tax dollars?  Call me crazy - but - I assuredly can.

His Hands Were Tied

A few days ago, a Greek athlete at the Olympics was barred from competing due to a racist tweet.  Some thought it too severe a punishment; others thought that the Olympics should acknowledge and deal with such behavior.

How then should the International Olympic Committee a request for a minute of silence to honor the 40th anniversary of 11 Israeli athletes who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich games?  One might think that if an athlete was expelled for an off color joke, that surely the murder of 11 human beings would be worthy of one minute of remembrance.

And - if you thought this, you would be wrong.

Why exactly is the IOC opposed to a rather modest attempt to commemorate the victims of terror? According to Ankie Spitzer, the widow of Israeli fencing coach Andre Spitzer, who was murdered by the Palestinian Black September group in 1972, IOC president Jacques Rogge capitulated to the 46-member bloc of Arab and Muslim countries because of the threat of Arab countries to boycott participation in the Games.

IOC president Jacques Rogge responded to Mrs. Spitzer that "his hands were tied."  He said that such an action was "blocked" by the Arab and Muslim group.

Mrs. Spitzer responded with one of the most apt rejoinders ever: 

“No, my husband’s hands were tied, not yours.”

It's reasonable to argue that the Olympics is a place without focus on anything but sports.  It's also reasonable to argue that in the spirit of the Olympics, some politics must be taken into account - like rejecting an athlete who makes racist comments, or in acknowledging that 11 athletes were murdered due to hate and prejudice.

What is not reasonable is to remove an athlete for a tweet - and then fail to remember the eleven lives that were snuffed out by hatred.  Yet -  that is exactly what we have.

 

 

Two Powerful Ads

What can be perhaps the most powerful tool in combatting an opponent?

The truth.

Watch the ads at the end of the HotAir post, then see if you don't agree with me.

Hypocrites of the Highest Order

Do you remember attacks like this on President Obama prior to his "evolving" on gay marriage?

Roseanne Barr is apologizing for a tweet she sent Wednesday attacking Chick-fil-A, as well as customers of the fast food chain.

“anyone who eats S%#@ Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ,” she tweeted, later adding, “off to grab a s%#@ fil-A sandwich on my way to worshipping Christ, supporting Aipac and war in Iran.”

Yeah.  I must have missed them myself.

Suppressing the Vote

Yep; it can happen in my home state, too.

Thank you, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie!  (She said with sarcasm dripping......)

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has changed the Legislature's voter ID amendment title, "Photo identification required for voting, " into the following: "Changes to in-person & absentee voting & voter registration; provisional ballots." Ritchie, who is well read and well spoken, clearly had to go deep into the Orwellian playbook to come up with that one. But what explains this bizarre formulation that obviously seeks to obscure the initiative and confuse the voter? One of the best explanations we've heard is that Ritchie hopes to so confuse the voters that they simply throw up their hands and skip this ballot item altogether. Remember, by law in Minnesota, a nonvote on a constitutional amendment question has the same effect as a "no" vote.

The problem for the anti-ID group is that even in this solidly blue state, voter ID is a very popular concept. It is highly likely to pass because it's so intuitive. People get it. Virtually any activity of consequence in this society requires an ID. Perhaps the only exception is voting. Partisans went to great lengths to explain away vouched votes (try explaining vouched voting to out-of-state friends and relatives) and same-day registration and 1,000 felons voting in the last national election. But the voters don't buy it.

And the fact of the matter is, once these votes are cast -- valid or not -- they cannot be retrieved. You can't un-ring that bell.

The irony of course is that influencing people not to vote on this item is a form of voter suppression. So Ritchie, who claims to fear voter ID because it suppresses the vote, has apparently attempted to suppress the vote on that question in order to avoid future voter suppression. (Is there an echo in here?)

The tertiary irony is that the voters most likely to be confused by the language, those who are less informed, are the very voters Ritchie would argue he is trying to protect from the Voter ID amendment in the first place. So according to this theory, the Orwellian title is an attempt to suppress the vote of the very voters claimed to be the likely victims of voter suppression, because if unsuppressed these voters may unwittingly vote to suppress their own vote.

 

Free Speech

Column of the Day

My thanks to Ed Morrissey of HotAir for alerting me to this superb column by Glenn Greenwald.

It’s always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It’s much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent. But having Mayors and other officials punish businesses for the political and social views of their executives — regardless of what those views are — is as pure a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as it gets, and beyond that, is genuinely dangerous.

If you support what Emanuel is doing here, then you should be equally supportive of a Mayor in Texas or a Governor in Idaho who blocks businesses from opening if they are run by those who support same-sex marriage — or who oppose American wars, or who support reproductive rights, or who favor single-payer health care, or which donates to LGBT groups and Planned Parenthood, on the ground that such views are offensive to Christian or conservative residents. You can’t cheer when political officials punish the expression of views you dislike and then expect to be taken seriously when you wrap yourself in the banner of free speech in order to protest state punishment of views you like and share. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

As always, the solution to noxious ideas like the ones from this chicken CEO are to rebut them, not use state power to suppress them. The virtue of gay equality has become increasingly recognized in the U.S. because people have been persuaded of its merits, not because state officials, acting like Inquisitors, forced people to accept it by punishing them for their refusal. Perhaps Rahm Emanuel is motivated by beneficent ends, or maybe he’s motivated by political considerations and a love of his own power, but either way, abusing his power to punish views he dislikes is at least as offensive as — and definitely more dangerous than — the targeted views themselves.

Perfectly stated.

Your Right to Vote

Do you think it ought to be extended to Nippet and The Bud - plus "I see dead people"?

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's campaign is asking Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation into voter-registration forms that are being sent to Virginia residents and addressed to deceased relatives, children, family pets and others ineligible to vote.

If my candidate were Obama, I'd want all the budgies and corpses I knew to have an opportunity to vote, too.

 

Buyer's Remorse

Jews traditionally vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.  Will the percentages be similar in the upcoming presidential election?

A Republican group backed by the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is starting a new effort in battleground states to win over Jewish voters who could be persuaded to turn away from President Obama and support Mitt Romney.

The advertising campaign features a testimonial from Michael Goldstein, 48, a community college administrator from New Jersey, who said he enthusiastically supported Mr. Obama’s candidacy but became disillusioned by his administration. A lifelong Democrat, he said he was planning to support Mr. Romney by casting his first vote for a Republican in a presidential race.

“I was enamored with Obama,” Mr. Goldstein said in an interview. “I thought he was sharp, intelligent and brought a new sense of wonder to politics. The fact that we were helping elect the first African-American president of the United States made me very proud, but I don’t believe anything he says anymore. I go more by his actions than by what he says.”

I imagine that I am far more fiscally conservative than Mr. Goldstein.  Nevertheless, when President Obama was elected, I too hoped for the best.  I hoped that the man was bright, would bring hope and reconciliation to warring factions... and although I would never vote for anyone based upon race, I did hope that this historical moment would be a positive in many ways for our racial progress.

Let's simply say my disappointment has been deep and profound.

 

I May Have to Turn in My Life Master Card

Bill Gates and I played in a national team game Saturday and Sunday.  Our teams faced one another both days - and Bill's team beat mine each time!

No wonder Bill is smiling....... :(

Private Versus Public

Apologies for being Missing in Action for some time here.

I've been in Philadelphia the past week for an international bridge tournament.  And - I will not be returning home until July 23rd.  Between playing bridge, taking photographs and reporting on the action, checking in on the folks and doing some real estate here and there - the blog takes a hit.

Still, I do try to read a little bit to stay up on things.  This column caught my eye.

Mr. Romney's Bain worked so well that it became the model for an entire industry. Mr. Romney helped create Staples, a start-up that worked and created tens of thousands of jobs. Mr. Obama financed Solyndra, which did not work. Neither did Abound Solar. The many Obama alternative-energy ventures play in different market segments, but they struggle for the same reason: They serve political agendas more than customers.

Mr. Romney has attacked Mr. Obama's Solyndra investment in particular, but he hasn't linked it consistently to the President's failed model of government-led investing or contrasted it with the successful culture Mr. Romney built at Bain.

What Bain did is what all successful organizations do: Seek to deliver products and services that are better, faster, cheaper. In some instances that means fewer employees, even if Mr. Obama still can't or won't grasp the concept that we live in a competitive world. How many readers of this editorial have jobs today because the founders of their companies figured out how to spend more money on a slower manufacturing process to create goods of lower quality?

 

The Largest Cost Increase Ever

When will liberals admit that it is this administration and its ever growing gross regulation that is stiffling jobs and growth in our nation?

Indeed.

How Do You Define Insanity?

Like this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chart above shows the breakdown of the current federal inmate population by type of offense, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. There are currently 93,876 Americans serving time in federal prisons for drug crimes, which is by far the No. 1 offense that results in a federal jail sentence (see chart). Drug offenders make up almost half of our federal inmate population, and that help explains why the U.S. retains the status as the World's No.1 Jailer with a prison population of 730 per 100,000 population, more than even any of the world's most notorious and oppressive regimes like Burma (120 per 100,000 population), Cuba (510 per 100,000 population), and Iran (333 per 100,000).

Besides the fact that federal drug prisoners far outnumber any other category of criminal offenders, there is another important characteristic that distinguishes drug offenses from other federal crimes like arson, extortion, robbery, burglary, homicide, and embezzlement - almost all of those other crimes have identifiable victims who have been clearly victimized, e.g. robbed, assaulted, murdered, etc. In contrast, drug offenders were mostly involved in "crimes" that frequently had no identifiable victim, i.e. crimes without a victim, or "victimless crimes." Hopefully, future generations of more enlightened Americans and political leaders will look back on the War on Drugs as a shameful chapter of U.S. history and a blemish on America's long tradition of individual liberty and limited government.

 

The New Elite

Public school teachers.  Yes; really.

Evanston, Illinois is one of the most wildly liberal "progressive" municipalities on the face of the American landscape. It voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. It has no Republican presence to speak of.

It has a political context that is dominated by the teachers' unions and other public employees unions.

It has 114 unionized teachers hauling down $100,000 a year or more -- up from 85 last year. If this is an era of national economic austerity, you'd never know it if you were a unionized Evanston teacher. And 2 of them are gaming the system for more than $200,000 a year.

These teachers are more than 95% Democrat liberal in voting behavior.

Upon retirement they will pull down 80 to 85% of their last paycheck -- with full medical benefits -- for as long as they live.

But Evanston is going broke.

Read the post and see the hard facts for yourself.  And note this, too:

These figures are culled from the IL State Teachers Retirement Fund annual reports, by way of the Family Taxpayers Foundation which was compelled to file suit so that this information would be made transparent for the taxpaying public to see.

Yes, members of the teacher's union are pulling down wages and benefits that a generation ago would be unheard of - but - for the public to find out about this data, a lawsuit had to be filed.

When are we going to say we've had enough and we're not going to take it anymore?

What Does Prejudice Look Like?

This.

Here is a funny thing about the programs for this year’s NAACP national convention.  Amid all the lists of speakers and seminars there’s a full page, full color picture of President Barack Obama, touting him as the speaker at the final plenary session of the convention in downtown Houston. 

There’s only one problem:  The president isn’t coming.

The convention organizers are already talking about their main concerns, from economic opportunity to what critics call “voter suppression” efforts to block African-Americans from voting.  But they’re also pardoning the president for declining their invitation and instead dispatching Vice President Joe Biden, even though Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney plans to speak next week.

“As long as the issues are addressed that I’m concerned about, where he’s addressing them from doesn’t make a big deal to me,” said Stan Jones, a customer dining on a fried catfish lunch. 

His co-worker,  Ferdinand Morrow, agreed and added that Romney probably won’t win any support by showing up here next week.

“Mitt Romney coming to this convention doesn’t mean anything,” Morrow said.  “He’s not going to persuade any black voters.  That is the reality.”

Let's face facts.  The reason that Obama is given a pass and that Romney is dismissed even before he opens his mouth is because Obama is black (well, half of him, at any rate) and Romney is not.

Prejudice is ugly, whatever form it takes.  The NAACP and its members would end up having a far better world for its members if they would at least give every political candidate a fair shake and weigh who they are and what they plan to do.  Irrespective of their race....