Please. Someone tell me. Am I losing my mind, or did our President just propose a 53 billion dollar federal downpayment on new bullet trains to financial oblivion? Clearly Obama and his ilk must honestly believe that we're all playing some kind of game with play money. Trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and we're going to build the new George Jetson Orient Express? How could this lefty locomotive leviathan end up being anything else but Amtrak on steroids? Subsidies and yet more subsidies. You don't have to be Edgar Cayce to forsee the thousands of environmental lawsuits, a whole new federal department of Choochanomics, cataclysmic cost over-runs, and endless delays. Maybe we should commission a dozen or so feasability studies to research if government is even capable of building anything of this magnitude? Could they even get through their own labyrinth of city, state, county and federal permits, environmental impact studies, union strikes and death and injury lawsuits ? Hell, we can't even rebuild Ground Zero in a decade. Bullet trains could take 100 years! But then again, maybe that's the whole idea. Bullet trains are just like government; they'll devour money at even greater speeds than ever before, create prevailing wage, politically correct jobs for new age John Henry's for untold decades, and never have to justify their existence on any pragmatic, fiduciary level, and of course provide unparalleled myriads of photo-ops for politicians nationwide. Government's become nothing more than a jobs program floating upon an influential minority's collective, delusionary, futuristic vision. At least Disneyland was built with private capital. If we can't cope with any of our real day to day problems, at least we can dream! Fiscal conservatives just aren't 'young at heart'.
I think the left's romantic obsession with trains mirrors their subsurface yearnings for a totally planned economy, a compulsory society where the 'trains run on time'. (Could Denzel Washington's new runaway train movie, Unstoppable, be a serendipitous, national subliminal metaphor for the runaway train as the American experiment gone out of control?) But it will take more than 30 years of Denzel's cinematic rail-yards practical experience, ingenuity and individual heroism to stop this latest 21st century socio-politico-enviromento-cultural bullet train to oblivion. It will require the leadership of a superhero of mythical proportions. Who was it again that was 'more powerful than a locomotive?'*
*Even if we find our Superman or Superwoman wasn't it green kryptonite that could kill them? Hope theyve saved some of Reagan and Thatcher's DNA for the first successful human clone. That's what I'd call a bonofide Sputnik moment.
George Will writing in Newsweek, Feb. 27:
Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency's importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind. . . .
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives' passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans' individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was "Workers of the world unite!" or "Power to the people!" Now it is less resonant: "All aboard!"
M.D.T.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Monday, November 22, 2010
Clobamitons
It’s curious and hopeful that the voters of a Democratically dominated Washington State recently voted down a state millionaire’s surtax this election; a tax publicly supported by none other than Bill Gates Jr. and Sr. and Warren Buffet, the world’s most notorious billionaires. If one had to choose the single defining ideological tenet of the modern left’s Clintonian/Obamanistan, (Clobamitan?) worldview, it would have to be… tax the rich; the puerile belief that the nation can punitively tax the well-to-do without greater adverse economic consequence; that taking money from those who save and invest and giving it to those who empty their checking account weekly actually has a more stimulating effect on the economy than leaving it in the hands of those who know how to make it in the first place.
But could it be in Washington state that the Clobamitons are finally actually making the connection that if you want someone to hire you it might be prudent not to raise their taxes? That they, the well heeled, might just take it personally that they have been singled out to pay more, as if they had somehow cheated or done something wrong? Could it be that they, the 1% that pay 40% of the nation’s taxes*, might just decide to hell with it and leave their state or the country? That they’re sick of the all-pervading populist perception that they somehow didn’t earn or deserve what they’ve created through their extraordinary effort, decision making, risk taking and vision? That they, those ersatz Gatsbians with modest fortunes, might just decide that the amount of money they’ve accumulated is enough and take their ball and go home? Could it be that it makes no practical sense to these Fox News devotees to continue to shoulder immense responsibilities only to keep less of what they’ve earned and to be publicly reviled by the political elites? Or that having more employees to worry about, to provide benefits for and to listen to their problems and excuses and to potentially sue them might not be really worth it just to drive a car that costs twice as much or live in a house that’s twice as big? Could it be these Bristol Palin voters might just think why in the hell should they work harder and longer and take on ever more responsibility and risk just so the extra tax dollars they pay can shore up some public employee’s union pension who retired at 53, send 34 warships to India or fund some new multimillion dollar study on the nondiscriminatory sexual habits of yeast? Could it be? Could it be? Naaagghh! When presented ultimately with the fiscal necessity of potentially giving up their beloved entitlements it will be so much easier to go on believing that the golden geese have metal hearts and that there’s no limit to their avarice, no matter what the social price.**
M.D.T.
*Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.
Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.
Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. The Tax Foundation – Washington D.C.
** The owl of Minerva flies at dusk ( hopefully before the lights go completely out )
But could it be in Washington state that the Clobamitons are finally actually making the connection that if you want someone to hire you it might be prudent not to raise their taxes? That they, the well heeled, might just take it personally that they have been singled out to pay more, as if they had somehow cheated or done something wrong? Could it be that they, the 1% that pay 40% of the nation’s taxes*, might just decide to hell with it and leave their state or the country? That they’re sick of the all-pervading populist perception that they somehow didn’t earn or deserve what they’ve created through their extraordinary effort, decision making, risk taking and vision? That they, those ersatz Gatsbians with modest fortunes, might just decide that the amount of money they’ve accumulated is enough and take their ball and go home? Could it be that it makes no practical sense to these Fox News devotees to continue to shoulder immense responsibilities only to keep less of what they’ve earned and to be publicly reviled by the political elites? Or that having more employees to worry about, to provide benefits for and to listen to their problems and excuses and to potentially sue them might not be really worth it just to drive a car that costs twice as much or live in a house that’s twice as big? Could it be these Bristol Palin voters might just think why in the hell should they work harder and longer and take on ever more responsibility and risk just so the extra tax dollars they pay can shore up some public employee’s union pension who retired at 53, send 34 warships to India or fund some new multimillion dollar study on the nondiscriminatory sexual habits of yeast? Could it be? Could it be? Naaagghh! When presented ultimately with the fiscal necessity of potentially giving up their beloved entitlements it will be so much easier to go on believing that the golden geese have metal hearts and that there’s no limit to their avarice, no matter what the social price.**
M.D.T.
*Newly released data from the IRS clearly debunks the conventional Beltway rhetoric that the "rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.
Indeed, the IRS data shows that in 2007—the most recent data available—the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 40.4 percent of the total income taxes collected by the federal government. This is the highest percentage in modern history. By contrast, the top 1 percent paid 24.8 percent of the income tax burden in 1987, the year following the 1986 tax reform act.
Remarkably, the share of the tax burden borne by the top 1 percent now exceeds the share paid by the bottom 95 percent of taxpayers combined. The Tax Foundation – Washington D.C.
** The owl of Minerva flies at dusk ( hopefully before the lights go completely out )
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Wake Up Maggie
This time historical whimsy might be on our side. Bill Clinton walked serendipitously smack dab into the biggest technological bull market in world history and then retroactively claimed his policies and higher taxes on the rich triggered that economically beneficent time. Now, after two dark Decession years, the economy is poised for a rebound and with the return of the Republicans to power in the House and perhaps the Senate, the stupid party might similarly reap the rewards of that same whimsical historical mistress as the mere fact of their being elected and the predictable resulting modest restraints on spending get credit for the next recovery. The voters might, if we get real lucky, attribute the coming recovery, however anemic, to divided government and realize that, similarly, it was the Republican congress from 1994 'til 2000 juxtaposed with a Democratic president, and the resulting legislative gridlock then, that supplied the lack of magic ingredients for that prosperous period. But, it would clearly be too much to hope for, that the supermajority of voters will ever make the ultimate connection that gridlock is good because government can’t really do anything major to help the economy in the first place and the less they do, the better off economically we all are – that government tinkering and programs really have next to nothing to do with creating overall economic prosperity – that for every good thing they can impose or create, an equal or greater bad thing occurs – that succinctly, the government that governs least governs best.
Sadly, it may be that government and the deficit are just too damn big now for gridlock to work by itself and it will be necessary to roll back government spending in proportion to GNP for the mojo to escape from the the bottle; a daunting proposition. Government’s effete efforts to stimulate a recovery with Keynsian shovel-ready spending obviously can’t work with debt levels as high as they are. Every borrowed stimulus dollar clumsily spent is a dollar that will not only have to be repaid with more borrowed money but money, more than likely, borrowed at a higher interest rate. We’ll be paying more to refill the hole than it cost to dig the hole. Or to phrase that in Obamaspeak, 'It will cost more to refuel the bus with green gas than it cost to fill it.' Or, ‘You business folk gonna have to ride in the back of the bus now while we drive!’ But then again, they don’t teach at Harvard Law that in the real world the drivers of the economic recovery bus are those that know that a better way is, and has always been, a cheaper way... a more efficient way. Or, in Taylorspeak, 'If you want to drive the big bus daddy, you first better pass driver's ed at a vocational school* that doesn't get any government subsidies, vis a vis, the school of hard knocks, aka, the free market.'
*Where's our Margaret Thatcher? Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you. It's early November and time to send the demos back to school.
M.D.T.
Sadly, it may be that government and the deficit are just too damn big now for gridlock to work by itself and it will be necessary to roll back government spending in proportion to GNP for the mojo to escape from the the bottle; a daunting proposition. Government’s effete efforts to stimulate a recovery with Keynsian shovel-ready spending obviously can’t work with debt levels as high as they are. Every borrowed stimulus dollar clumsily spent is a dollar that will not only have to be repaid with more borrowed money but money, more than likely, borrowed at a higher interest rate. We’ll be paying more to refill the hole than it cost to dig the hole. Or to phrase that in Obamaspeak, 'It will cost more to refuel the bus with green gas than it cost to fill it.' Or, ‘You business folk gonna have to ride in the back of the bus now while we drive!’ But then again, they don’t teach at Harvard Law that in the real world the drivers of the economic recovery bus are those that know that a better way is, and has always been, a cheaper way... a more efficient way. Or, in Taylorspeak, 'If you want to drive the big bus daddy, you first better pass driver's ed at a vocational school* that doesn't get any government subsidies, vis a vis, the school of hard knocks, aka, the free market.'
*Where's our Margaret Thatcher? Wake up Maggie I think I got something to say to you. It's early November and time to send the demos back to school.
M.D.T.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Go Ask Alice
The net result of the present Keynsian stimulus and government bailouts is that instead of the companies, agencies and individuals that made poor economic decisions losing a few trillion, we get those whom rightfully should bear the financial burden cushioned from their just desserts and the economic consequences of their by-in-large self-afflicted fiscal malfeasance spread injudiciously throughout the public at large. **The size and cost of the total loss is magnified by a negative multiplier effect as the ramifications of the borrowed stimulus dollars' unintended consequences ripple through market after market and the total pain is dragged out over many years instead of just a few quarters. (Does anyone anywhere, for even a minute, expect high speed rail to break even or government subsidized battery factories to pay taxes?) Tragically, the vast majority of Americans in 2013 will never make the correlation between a hypothetical 8% unemployment rate instead of 6% or 2.1% GNP growth instead of 3.3% and the government's economic decisions that were made in 2008 and 2009. By then they will, in all likelihood, be blaming it on the new Republican president, the Chinese or the immigrant population.
The American Dream hasn’t been flushed down the toilet, just slowly bled and borrowed to death by an insulated minority that would protect us from ourselves at no consequence to themselves. And they dare to call themselves compassionate! How can there be any genuinely altruistic action where there is no self-sacrifice? Now, if the public sector would voluntarily take a 10% pay cut, retire at 65 like the rest of us and accept the same fringe benefit plans as the average private sector employee to voluntarily assist in the spurring of a real economic recovery, now that would be compassionate. But the public sector making sacrifices for the private sector?* An oxymoron. It's positively twisted that economically 98% of the sacrifice is made within the private sector but it is they who are excoriated as being greedy and selfish. Or did I miss somewhere the headlines about hundreds of thousands of government workers being laid off? So how did those who make the largest economic contributions and sacrifice to society get morally flip-flopped with the least productive? Go ask Alice. I think she'll know.
* The majority of them see their entire professional lives as one big sacrifice...
**When California goes bankrupt, the Golden State’s woes will be nationalized and shared with the nation at large. As with everything from mortgages to credit cards, so it goes for states: the feckless must have their pathologies rewarded and the prudent get stuck with the tab. Mark Stein
M.D.T.
The American Dream hasn’t been flushed down the toilet, just slowly bled and borrowed to death by an insulated minority that would protect us from ourselves at no consequence to themselves. And they dare to call themselves compassionate! How can there be any genuinely altruistic action where there is no self-sacrifice? Now, if the public sector would voluntarily take a 10% pay cut, retire at 65 like the rest of us and accept the same fringe benefit plans as the average private sector employee to voluntarily assist in the spurring of a real economic recovery, now that would be compassionate. But the public sector making sacrifices for the private sector?* An oxymoron. It's positively twisted that economically 98% of the sacrifice is made within the private sector but it is they who are excoriated as being greedy and selfish. Or did I miss somewhere the headlines about hundreds of thousands of government workers being laid off? So how did those who make the largest economic contributions and sacrifice to society get morally flip-flopped with the least productive? Go ask Alice. I think she'll know.
* The majority of them see their entire professional lives as one big sacrifice...
**When California goes bankrupt, the Golden State’s woes will be nationalized and shared with the nation at large. As with everything from mortgages to credit cards, so it goes for states: the feckless must have their pathologies rewarded and the prudent get stuck with the tab. Mark Stein
M.D.T.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Ass Whupper in Chief
Clearly Obama’s latest 'kick ass' comment reflects a deeply ingrained sentiment that business is always cutting corners to make a buck - that without the punitive hand of government's stiff regulations and fines, business would run amok endangering lives en masse. Far left Democrats like Obama think that the pockets of the private sector are infinitely deep and there's no limit to what discipline can be inflicted upon them. They’ll always be there to fleece and humiliate. The Golden Goose is immortal. ‘Kicking ass’ is a childish way of dealing with that which they, the liberal elite, can make no constructive contribution to. Hell we don't know how to drill oil, make cars, develop drugs, treat sick people; we don’t really fix anything... but we do know how to punish those productive members of society that try and don't meet our penumbrious utopian standards. If one child gets sick a year in the whole country from some flavored fruit punch confectioneer, the answer’s always more regulation and a generous portion from a fresh can of 'Whoop Ass'. We really ought to thank Obama for finally openly verbally distilling the primary function of government down into a crude colloquialism that is easy for everyone to understand. Guess that makes the President Ass Whupper in Chief!
The discipline of the marketplace is and has always been a proven effective ‘ass-whupper’ and the financial losses, legal ramifications and potentially bankrupting effects of malfeasance are more than adequate in maintaining a commercial moral order. Additional government threats and the introduction of individual criminality can potentially have severely deleterious effects on the necessary incentives required to maintain a healthy private sector.
The ubiquitous assault on business prevalent in our present sociopolitical climate, I fear, succeeds in significantly reducing the prestige and social allure for those seeking a successful business career thereby possibly deflecting the entrance of many talented and ambitious citizens from lifestyles dedicated to economic innovation. In a word, it could create a private sector brain drain. The lure of higher compensation in many cases might not be sufficient to overcome the psychological fear of being branded as a social pariah. Success and happiness for most people is the combination of earned personal wealth with the earned admiration and respect of one’s fellows. The dominance of ubiquitous leftist anti-business sentiment may at this point have unfortunately succeeded in making too many of America’s most significantly required business careers morally repugnant. “I’d like to introduce you to my son Marvin. He’s a very successful oil driller. I don’t know where we went wrong. We really tried to direct him into a more meaningful vocation like urban planning or the environmental sciences but, in truth, he always did like picking the wings off flies.”
In short, I fear we’ve finally arrived historically at a point where the most attractive career option for the vast majority of the best and the brightest is working for the government. Looking at the lifestyles and retirements of the bulk of our federal and state employees it’s, unfortunately getting pretty hard to argue against - plus you'll never get your chicken-shit non-presidential ass whupped....
M.D.T.
The discipline of the marketplace is and has always been a proven effective ‘ass-whupper’ and the financial losses, legal ramifications and potentially bankrupting effects of malfeasance are more than adequate in maintaining a commercial moral order. Additional government threats and the introduction of individual criminality can potentially have severely deleterious effects on the necessary incentives required to maintain a healthy private sector.
The ubiquitous assault on business prevalent in our present sociopolitical climate, I fear, succeeds in significantly reducing the prestige and social allure for those seeking a successful business career thereby possibly deflecting the entrance of many talented and ambitious citizens from lifestyles dedicated to economic innovation. In a word, it could create a private sector brain drain. The lure of higher compensation in many cases might not be sufficient to overcome the psychological fear of being branded as a social pariah. Success and happiness for most people is the combination of earned personal wealth with the earned admiration and respect of one’s fellows. The dominance of ubiquitous leftist anti-business sentiment may at this point have unfortunately succeeded in making too many of America’s most significantly required business careers morally repugnant. “I’d like to introduce you to my son Marvin. He’s a very successful oil driller. I don’t know where we went wrong. We really tried to direct him into a more meaningful vocation like urban planning or the environmental sciences but, in truth, he always did like picking the wings off flies.”
In short, I fear we’ve finally arrived historically at a point where the most attractive career option for the vast majority of the best and the brightest is working for the government. Looking at the lifestyles and retirements of the bulk of our federal and state employees it’s, unfortunately getting pretty hard to argue against - plus you'll never get your chicken-shit non-presidential ass whupped....
M.D.T.
Friday, April 16, 2010
2D or Not 2D
History sometimes coalesces around a few serendipitous events that momentarily converge to divulge a deeper social meaning. And so we witness today upon our national stage the spontaneous juxtaposition of the micro with the macro - the portentous with the inane. Can it be purely coincidental that Obamacare, legalized pot and the revival of big screen 3D pictures pop their Orwellian heads through our Spenglerian door collectively at just this precise moment in history? Maleficently imbued within this seemingly unrelated trio we could very well be witnessing a newly minted triumvirate for mass social control. Marijuana has clearly become the Soma* drug of modern America, lifting spirits and minds away from the arduous reality of the daily grind while simultaneously softening the wills and self-direction of its habitual users. At long last, Saint Alice B Toklas be praised, it looks like we’re going to finally have legalized pot in California, in all likelihood releasing a tide of similar legislation across the country as the billions of deperately needed tax dollars begin to flow into the coffers of our most profligate and fiscally irresponsible legislatures. But really, doesn’t it seems oddly convenient that the incipient smell of our nation’s first state sanctioned cannabis wafts woefully just as millions of Americans are propping cheap 3-D glasses on their soon to be collectively stoned and health-subsidized noses escaping into the fantasy world of Avatar ( Beam me up James C. to enviro-nirvana ), Alice in Wonderland ( Isn’t there a hookah smoking caterpillar in there somewhere? ) and Clash of the Titans ( Who needs God, let alone Gods )? Let's get 'em all stoned and send them off to see the latest politically correct Hollywood flaptrap!
And now with Obamacare it won’t be long before we can get Uncle Sam to pick up the tab for our prescription medical marijuana. After all, isn't marijuana abuse a disease like any addiction? How can it be purely accidental all this happening under the stewardship of our first self-admitted President that inhaled? Don’t you think health insurance should be required to cover my Zig-Zag rolling papers and bong pipes? Do you think it's possible that somewhere in that two thousand page health care bill there's a subsidy for Hollywood or 3D movie production? ( Hell, details are still leaking out what's in this thing ) Damn it all, I have a right to get high and see first-run 3-D pictures in Cinemax to relieve my clinical depression caused by my Bush-induced two and half years on unemployment through no fault of my own! I just can’t make up my mind whether I’d ultimately rather get high and live my state subsidized virtual life in the 3-D Pandora or the more visually passe’ 2-D Tolkien Hobbit's Shire?** Maybe I should ask my Facebook friends?
Do pot smokers ever get paranoid that the government they previously feared was going to bust them is now almost encouraging them to get stoned? What a long strange trip it's been.....
*Soma was the mythical drug prognosticated by Aldous Huxley in his famous dystopic novel Brave New World
** Damn I hope Peter Jackson's new Hobbit film is in 3D. That would really help to take my mind off my negative home equity!
M.D.T.
And now with Obamacare it won’t be long before we can get Uncle Sam to pick up the tab for our prescription medical marijuana. After all, isn't marijuana abuse a disease like any addiction? How can it be purely accidental all this happening under the stewardship of our first self-admitted President that inhaled? Don’t you think health insurance should be required to cover my Zig-Zag rolling papers and bong pipes? Do you think it's possible that somewhere in that two thousand page health care bill there's a subsidy for Hollywood or 3D movie production? ( Hell, details are still leaking out what's in this thing ) Damn it all, I have a right to get high and see first-run 3-D pictures in Cinemax to relieve my clinical depression caused by my Bush-induced two and half years on unemployment through no fault of my own! I just can’t make up my mind whether I’d ultimately rather get high and live my state subsidized virtual life in the 3-D Pandora or the more visually passe’ 2-D Tolkien Hobbit's Shire?** Maybe I should ask my Facebook friends?
Do pot smokers ever get paranoid that the government they previously feared was going to bust them is now almost encouraging them to get stoned? What a long strange trip it's been.....
*Soma was the mythical drug prognosticated by Aldous Huxley in his famous dystopic novel Brave New World
** Damn I hope Peter Jackson's new Hobbit film is in 3D. That would really help to take my mind off my negative home equity!
M.D.T.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Zombie Nation
My take on the new 'health reform' bill? It is, literally, the proverbial straw. America's is now bankrupt. It just doesn't know it quite yet. But a good portion of the citizenry suspects it - feels it - viscerally. The country can't possibly shoulder the overwhelming weight of this latest multi-trillion dollar entitlement on top of our already egregiously underfunded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public employee pension plans. Just before the federal bailout of our largest banks last year there was talk amongst the financial community of the danger of creating 'zombie' banks; banks that could never stand on their own feet again; hooked up eternally to the life-sustaining I.V. of government subsidies. Or creating 'zombie' car companies like the once proud GM, now linguistically derided as our 'Government Motors', it's heart, the profit motive, ripped out of it's obese, dying no longer competitive carcass. Tragically, and I truly mean tragically, we, in time I fear are doomed to become, sooner rather than later, a 'zombie' nation, cursed to a kind of living dead status, perpetually failing, overspending and endlessly bailing ourselves out, like only a corrupt government and complicit federal reserve can do with its printing press. The price? Nothing less than the American Dream itself. Feel better now?
The problem with socialism is that sooner or later they run out of other people's money.... Margaret Thatcher
M.D.T.
The problem with socialism is that sooner or later they run out of other people's money.... Margaret Thatcher
M.D.T.
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