Attention!
California citizens:
Be advised that you can now sleep safely in your government-provided containment units. The valiant forces of the Los Angeles Police Department, with assistance from the FDA and the CDC, verily smote the perfidious criminal conspirators, whose dastardly manufacturing and production of raw goat milk without the glorious golden ticket/permit so threatened the vitality of the Californian Ministry of Tranquility.
About two weeks ago, I posted a video I discovered via Breitbart TV, that was both hilarious and disturbing. In that video, James O’Keefe and another member of Project Veritas posed as two Russian drug smugglers applying for Medicaid in Ohio.
This video is the second installment of that series. In this version, a member of Project Veritas poses as a member of the Irish Republican Army. Of course, the South Carolinian civil servant was more than happy to help him apply for Medicaid.
Only in America.
We have entered an era of relentless creation and destruction that is shifting power in every form away from established elites, devolving it into smaller and smaller cores. This shift has been in motion in the West at least since the time of the printing press. Our Republic was an early product this great devolution of power.
But with radical advances in technology over just the past two generations this power shift has accelerated exponentially. On the whole this is a good thing. Human labor has become the most valuable commodity on Earth while the old elites who once hoarded power and the benefits it brought are seeing their influence weaken. But like any good thing it brings some dangers in its wake. As the pressure builds globally on the staid old institutions of politics, this wave of transformation is beginning to threaten the very existence of government as we know it.
Our economy has already been transformed by the new normal of constant, radical change. Look at what’s happened over just the past few years to the music industry, video stores, even Internet Age businesses like dial-up ISP’s. Entire industries, not just companies, have been born and obsolesced just over the course of my own professional career.
Government by its very nature is slower than business to adapt, and the pressure is mounting. Individuals have more power than they have ever possessed before. Our culture and economy have become far too dynamic for anyone to hope to control. Government hasn’t become obsolete, but in its current design it lacks the flexibility to do its job.
Look at what has happened to Somalia and Afghanistan. Other weak governments like Haiti and Congo have practically ceased to function. Strategically critical nations like Pakistan and Iraq are teetering on the brink of chaos. Even in stable, established, Old Europe, Belgium has gone over a year without an elected authority. The long trend toward devolution is beginning to topple some dominoes.
The Paul Boys might stand up and cheer at the trend toward weaker government, but a sudden, disorderly transition away from the past will be good for no one. Seeing Lycos rise to a $5.4bn company and disappear in less than a decade may be interesting. But government is a bit more important to civilization than a search engine. If it faces the same fate we will all pay dearly. Continue reading
Now that the House “approved a budget agreement intended to head off a potential government default” 269 to 161, and that the Senate will likely pass the bill tomorrow, the crisis has ended exactly how the bond market predicted it would: no default.
The next obvious question is whether the deal is a good or a bad one. Continue reading
Below is an interesting chart from The Economist that compares America’s current anemic economic recovery from the 2007-09 recession with those of the 1973-75, 1981-82, and the 1990-91 recessions.
Source: The Economist
The bottom line is that the current recovery is lagging both in terms of GDP and employment.
This past Friday, President Obama announced new corporate average fuel economy or CAFE standards that would require the average vehicle sold in the United States to provide 54.5 miles per gallon. The White House estimates the program will save consumers $1.7 trillion in fuel costs by 2025.
Projections on the policy’s actual benefits are mixed. The Michigan-based Center for Automotive Research claims the more efficient cars would cost $10,000 more, thereby overwhelming the $8,000 savings on fuel the new designs would save over a vehicle’s useful life. The Boston Consulting Group estimates a much lower added cost of $2,000, which would save consumers a net $6,000.
Conservative ideologues will likely bemoan the new fuel standards as an outright assault on free market capitalism. That said, there are two reasons why more pragmatic conservatives should support this measure: Continue reading
I’m getting a sense of deja vu reading Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s comments on whether or not military servicemembers will receive their paychecks in the event that Congress cannot reach a deal to raise the country’s debt ceiling by Tuesday.
As I wrote back in April, the nations’ soldiers, sailors, and airmen are:
“[P]utting their lives in danger on a daily basis and the President is not going to move heaven and earth to pay them? This is not only an ill-advised action, but also it is stupid.”
Hats off to the financial institutions including USAA that have announced they will be offering active duty servicemembers who bank with them a waiver of certain late fees and a temporary paycheck advance so that servicemembers will not be forced to turn to high-interest payday loan places.
Today, I discovered an interesting test on The Economist website. The website, testyourvocab.com, is hosting a serious research project to measure how many words the average English speaker knows.
You can take the test here.
Given that the English language has 171,476 words in current use, my result of 26,300 words was pretty embarrassing. Furthermore, my vocabulary is below average for someone who had my verbal SAT score.
Anyway, I am curious to see how others fare on this test.
Enjoy!
The New York Times just reported that Turkey’s top military commanders resigned en masse today.
This development is a negative one for NATO, Turkey, and the broader Middle East.
Historically, the Turkish military has been the sole guarantor of stability in Turkey since the rise of Atatürkism following the Ottoman Empire’s fall. Atatürkism was primarily responsible for the emergence of a more secular society in Turkey, and helped reduce the more pernicious elements of radical Islam in that country.
The resignations followed a year in which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government arrested more than 40 generals, roughly one tenth of the senior command.
This is an extremely negative development as NATO’s second-largest military is now leaderless, and Turkey is left with a government that commentators have long suspected had a strong Islamist agenda.
So much for peace in the Middle East.
A left-leaning blogger at Poison Your Mind has suggested that the GOP is insane from top to bottom. I do not disagree that many Republicans have behaved rather irrationally in recent years. That said, the Democratic Party has its fair share of those who are both lacking in intelligence and rationality.
Exhibit A is Nancy Pelosi.
Below, I have compiled a collection of her “greatest hits.” Continue reading
Ross Douthat Charles Krauthammer
Reflections of a Rational Republican 