I'm... Still... Depressed, folks...
Here... read this... then think about what you've just read.
To those who believe in "rational" Man... good luck with that. History is replete with group insanity. For instance... Nongquawuse.
I'm curious... home many of you were previously aware of the story of the "communal experiment" run by the original Jamestown colonists?
How many of you were previously familiar with the story of the Xhosa Cattle Killings and resultant man-made famine?
Folks... if you weren't aware of the history I've touched upon here... well... why not? Seriously... ask yourselves... how is it that you never learned about the economic history of the Jamestown settlement if this is indeed the case.
On the other hand, if you were aware of the history... you're one step ahead of even our children who are taught about it. How so? Because after having done a quick google search for "Jamestown Famine" (using a variety of search terms) I discovered that the history I was taught... the history I learned through decades of independent reading... is fast being revised. today
Yep. As I've pointed out time and again, absent a firm underlying knowledge base, the internet can serve as a "reeducation" tool just as easily as a true fact-based educational resource. It all depends of the search rankings... it all depends upon how diligent the googler is...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
How'bout "The Gerat Leap Forward." I can't imagine any of my regulars aren't familiar - at least in broad terms - with the term and the central fact that Mao's collectivist policies caused a massive famine (accompanied by - or perhaps in tandem with) and wave of government terror which eventually took the lives of an estimated 45 million people over a roughly four year period.
Follow the link provided above. Read the NYT piece from 2010. Note the author's emphasis on government secrecy in China... government revisionist history... the ignorance of the common people...
Folks... the U.S. - even America 2012 - ain't China. The American People aren't the Xhosa. The Jamestown settlement story is... history. Yep... all true!
But what's the common denominator...? How do the dots connect...? What's any of this have to do with my continued post-election depression - particularly two days before Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite days of the year...?
I suppose I'm simply laying out the broad vista of history - world and American - which make up my dots and thus serve to depress me.
People do stupid things all the time! Collectively...!!! Sometimes it's a minority which brings a society to its knees... but often it's a majority decision to go down the wrong road... to make the wrong choices... to make disastrous decisions...
(*BITING MY LOWER LIP*)
America is going down the wrong path, my friends. Each day I provide the evidence via my newsbites and stand-alone posts. Unfortunately... there's plenty of good reasons why I'm still depressed two weeks after the 2012 Election.
8 comments:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57552225-38/senate-bill-rewrite-lets-feds-read-your-e-mail-without-warrants/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
A Senate proposal touted as "protecting" Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to "law enforcement concerns." A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.
* ...WHICH SEEKS TO AUTHORIZE WARRANTLESS ACCESS TO AMERICANS' EMAILS...
* IS THIS YOUR AMERICA? IT'S NOT MINE.
Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies - including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission - to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant.
* LISTEN... "PUBLIC" POSTS ARE ONE THING... THEY'RE PUBLIC! BUT EMAILS...???
* AGAIN, FOLKS... IS THIS REALLY YOUR AMERICA? IT'S NOT THE CONSTITUTION'S AMERICA. IT'S NOT THE RULE OF LAW'S AMERICA. IT'S NOT MY AMERICA.
It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.
James Baker, the associate deputy attorney general, has publicly warned that requiring a warrant to obtain stored e-mail could have an "adverse impact" on criminal investigations.
* AND CERTAIN OF YOU POOH-POOH MY INSISTENCE THAT AMERICA IS NO LONGER A CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC WITH A CONSTITUTIONAL RULE OF LAW IN EFFECT.
(*SIGH*)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/democrats-push-to-redeploy-obamas-voter-database/2012/11/20/d14793a4-2e83-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html
If you voted this election season, President Obama almost certainly has a file on you.
His vast campaign database includes information on voters’ magazine subscriptions, car registrations, housing values and hunting licenses, along with scores estimating how likely they were to cast ballots for his reelection.
And though the election is over, Obama’s database is just getting started.
* DOES THIS SOUND GOOD TO YOU, FOLKS...? SUBSTITUTE BUSH... SUBSTITUTE REPUBLICAN FOR DEMOCRAT... DOES THIS CONCEPT SOUND GOOD TO YOU?
* IT DOESN'T SOUND GOOD TO ME.
Democrats are now pressing to expand and redeploy the most sophisticated voter list in American political history, beginning with next year’s gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and extending to campaigns for years to come.
* AND REPUBLICANS WOULD LIKE TO EMULATE THEM.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
The database consists of voting records and political donation histories bolstered by vast amounts of personal but publicly available consumer data, say campaign officials and others familiar with the operation, which was capable of recording hundreds of fields for each voter.
* LISTEN... FOLKS... I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE ANSWER IS. PUBLIC DATA IS PUBLIC DATA! BUT THAT SAID... NONE OF THIS SOUNDS POSITIVE TO ME. DOES IT SOUND POSITIVE TO ANY OF YOU...?
* LISTEN... FOLKS... JUST THROWING THIS ONE OUT FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION...
(*SHRUG*)
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/11/20/more-americans-will-use-food-stamps-for-thanksgiving-this-year-than-ever-before
More Americans will use food stamps to buy their Thanksgiving dinner this year than ever before, according to a new report from the nonprofit government watchdog group The Sunlight Foundation.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP.*)
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, average participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamp program, has increased 70% since 2007.
This Thanksgiving, 42.2 million Americans will be on food stamps, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)
The cost of the SNAP program last year reached $72 billion, the highest to date, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333695/uncooked-goose-thomas-sowell
Many people think of labor unions as organizations to benefit workers, and think of employers who are opposed to unions as just people who don’t want to pay their employees more money. But some employers have made it a point to pay their employees more than the union wages, just to keep them from joining a union.
Why would they do that, if it is just a question of not wanting to pay union wages?
The Twinkies bankruptcy is a classic example of costs created by labor unions that are not confined to paychecks.
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks.
* ONE... MORE... TIME...
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks.
Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks.
And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.
* ONE... MORE... TIME...
The work rules imposed in union contracts required the company that makes Twinkies, which also makes Wonder Bread, to deliver these two products to stores in separate trucks.
Moreover, truck drivers were not allowed to load either of these products into their trucks.
And the people who did load Twinkies into trucks were not allowed to load Wonder Bread, and vice versa.
All of this was obviously intended to create more jobs for the unions’ members. But the needless additional costs that these make-work rules created ended up driving the company into bankruptcy, which may cost 18,500 jobs.
* AT LEAST PARTLY, FOLKS... NO DOUBT AT LEAST PARTLY...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The old-time legendary labor leader John L. Lewis called so many strikes in the coal mines that many people switched to using oil instead, because they couldn’t depend on coal deliveries. A professor of labor economics at the University of Chicago called John L. Lewis “the world’s greatest oil salesman.” There is no question that Lewis’s United Mine Workers union raised the pay and other benefits for coal miners. But the higher costs of producing coal not only led many consumers to switch to oil, these costs also led coal companies to substitute machinery for labor, reducing the number of miners.
* RULE ONE: UNIONS PRIORITIZE EXISTING WORKERS AND RETIREES (SOMETIMES EVEN RETIREES OVER EXISTING WORKERS!) OF COURSE THEY'D LOVE TO HAVE MORE DUES PAYING NEW MEMBERS... BUT THIS WANT COMES IN A FAR DISTANT SECOND PLACE TO WORKING FOR EXISTING WORKERS - EVEN IF THIS MEANS NEW WORKERS WON'T BE HIRED.
By the 1960s, many coal-mining towns were almost ghost towns. But few people connected the dots back to the glory years of John L. Lewis. The United Mine Workers Union did not kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, but it created a situation where fewer of those golden eggs reached the miners.
* AND FEWER NEW MINERS EVER GOT ON BOARD IN THE FIRST PLACE AND THUS NEVER RECEIVED THEIR OWN GOLDEN EGGS.
It was much the same story in the automobile industry and the steel industry, where large pensions and costly work rules drove up the prices of finished products and drove down the number of jobs. There is a reason why there was a major decline in the proportion of private-sector employees who joined unions. It was not just the number of union workers who ended up losing their jobs. Other workers saw the handwriting on the wall and refused to join unions.
* YEP. A PONZI SCHEME REQUIRES EVER INCREASING NUMBERS OF NEW DUPES TO JOIN... AND IF ALREADY EXISTING LABOR COSTS FOR UNION WORKERS ARE TOO HIGH... WELL... THE WHO PYRAMID SCHEME WILL SOON COLLAPSE.
There is also a reason why labor unions are flourishing among people who work for government. No matter how much these public-sector unions drive up costs, government agencies do not go out of business. They simply go back to the taxpayers for more money.
* EXACTLY...
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Consumers in the private sector have the option of buying products and services from competing, non-union companies - from Toyota instead of General Motors, for example, though it’s interesting to note that most Toyotas sold in America are made in America.
Consumers of other products can buy things made in non-union factories overseas.
But government agencies are monopolies. You cannot get your Social Security checks from anywhere except the Social Security Administration or your driver’s license from anywhere but the DMV.
Is it surprising that government employees have seen their pay go up, even during the downturn, and their pensions rise to levels undreamed of in the private sector?
* THREE-PARTER (Part 1 of 3)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323551004578119151344157858.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Vindication is overrated, especially in a losing cause, so it brings no satisfaction to have predicted that the Federal Housing Administration would sooner or later threaten taxpayers.
That day has arrived.
Safely past the election, the feds announced Friday that the FHA's liabilities exceed its assets by at least $16.3 billion - and the gap could reach $93.7 billion in the worst case.
* I BELIEVE I NEWSBITED THIS... (*SHRUG*)... I KNOW... NO ONE CARES...
Yet it's worth recalling that when we warned about FHA's troubles in September 2009, we got an accounting lecture from HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and a letter from FHA Commissioner at the time, David Stevens, that we were "just plain wrong."
* I'M PRETTY SURE I NEWSBITED ABOUT THAT TOO...
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE*)
He added that, "I can say undoubtedly that the FHA fund is playing a key role in the housing recovery and poses no immediate risk to the American taxpayer."
Taxpayers will "undoubtedly" be pleased to know that the threat wasn't "immediate" but arrived a mere three years later.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)
Can taxpayers claw back the salaries of Messrs. Donovan and Stevens the way Congress has tried to do with those of financial CEOs? The Administration is trying to spin the FHA's troubles as one more result of the housing bust, which is true but disingenuous. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went belly up in 2008 because of the housing boom and bust. At the time, the FHA was in relatively good shape because it had played a minor role during the housing mania.
The FHA got into trouble because it deliberately expanded in 2007-2009 even as the market was crashing.
As Mr. Donovan likes to say, the FHA was steered to play "an important counter-cyclical role in the housing market." The point was to ramp up FHA's loan-guarantee business to prop up housing prices as much as possible during the bust.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
While this helped the Obama Administration politically, it arguably prolonged the "recovery" by failing to let prices find a bottom.
* IN ENGLISH: IT WAS ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS. THERE WAS NO REAL RECOVERY - NOR SHOULD THERE HAVE BEEN. THE HOUSING MARKET IS STILL OVER-VALUED. THAT WASN'T GOOD IN 2007... AND IT'S NOT GOOD NOW.
Meanwhile, FHA's "boom" put taxpayers on the hook for tens of billions worth of dubious loans made at the most dubious time.
Those are the loans now going bust.
* AND NO ONE IS BEING ARRESTED. NO ONE IS EVEN BEING FIRED. GOD HELP US...
The ugly math: 25.82% of FHA's 2007 loans, 24.88% of its 2008 loans, and 12.18% of its 2009 loans were seriously delinquent as of June 30.
(*JUST THROWING MY HANDS UP*)
The American Enterprise Institute's Ed Pinto, who also predicted the FHA debacle, estimates that 17.3% of all FHA loans were delinquent as of September 30. That's about one in six loans.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Most businesses would look at these losses and flee such a market. But the FHA, which responds to political rather than market incentives, has literally tried to make it up on volume. In recent years, the FHA has expanded to insure higher-quality loans that by law were supposed to be the preserve of private lenders.
While fewer of these loans are delinquent, the greater lending has caused the FHA's capital ratio to shrink below its 2% minimum mandated by law. In 2009, the agency had $685 billion insurance in force and a capital reserve of 0.53%. Today it has $1.1 trillion in force and capital reserves are a negative 1.44%.
(*SNORT*)
* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP...
The FHA says its risk models were broken, it was too optimistic about housing prices, and it didn't expect low interest rates to persist.
(*RUEFUL GUFFAW*)
* BALD... FACED... LIES...
(*SHRUG*)
If there's another recession, taxpayers are looking at a Fannie Mae-level bath.
The FHA is another case study in how government programs sold with the best intentions are inevitably corrupted. FHA was founded in 1934 to help lower- to middle-income and first-time home buyers obtain a mortgage, but its mission expanded over the years as the housing lobby sought to channel ever more taxpayer-guaranteed money into housing. When the agency opened, its minimum down payment was a prudent 20%. In the 1960s, that number fell to 10%, and now it's 3.5%.
The other issue is accountability. As government program after government program fails, no one takes responsibility. Fannie and Freddie hit taxpayers for $138 billion, the Post Office loses $15.9 billion, and now the FHA is insolvent. We weren't kidding about those salary clawbacks.
* I... WANT... THOSE... RESPONSIBLE... DEAD.
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