Archives for 2010
IREA hypocrisy
We received the IREA monthly newsletter and it begins by lauding the principle of regulated monopolies for public utilities, and then goes on to dispute many of the public policy regulations being applied to electric utilities in Colorado. While I agree with the economic conclusions IREA makes about alternative energies, it is disingenuous to praise the regulatory state on the one hand, but turn around and condemn it when the regulations go against them. IREA uses the phrase “government manipulations of the electric utility industry” as a pejorative shortly after lavishing praise on the government for “granting exclusive territory” licenses. What the government gives the government can take away, and complaining about it now after enjoying years of monopoly privilege seems just pathetic.
April 30th
Jane Norton For Colorado
Sign a Petition to place Jane Norton
on the Republican Primary Ballot at
Pioneer Home Medical Supply
5357 Highway 86, just east of Elizabeth.
“South Park” is hilarious, right?
The veiled threats against the Comedy Central show’s creators should be taken very seriously. Islamists seek to replace the rule of law with that of commanding right and forbidding wrong.
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
‘South Park” is hilarious, right? Not any more.
Last week, Zachary Adam Chesser—a 20-year-old Muslim convert who now goes by the name Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee—posted a warning on the Web site RevolutionMuslim.com following the 200th episode of the show on Comedy Central. The episode, which trotted out many celebrities the show has previously satirized, also “featured” the Prophet Muhammad: He was heard once from within a U-Haul truck and a second time from inside a bear costume.
For this apparent blasphemy, Mr. Amrikee warned that co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone “will probably end up” like Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, readers will remember, was the Dutch filmmaker who was brutally murdered in 2004 on the streets of Amsterdam. He was killed for producing “Submission,” a film that criticized the subordinate role of women in Islam, with me.
There has been some debate about whether Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker should view the Web posting as a direct threat. Here’s Mr. Amrikee’s perspective: “It’s not a threat, but it really is a likely outcome,” he told Foxnews.com. “They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.” He’s also published the home and office addresses of Messrs. Stone and Parker, as well as images of Van Gogh’s body.
According to First Amendment experts, technically speaking this posting does not constitute a threat. And general opinion seems to be that even if this posting was intended as a threat, Mr. Amrikee and his ilk are merely fringe extremists who are disgruntled with U.S. foreign policy; their “outrage” merits little attention.
This raises the question: How much harm can an Islamist fringe group do in a free society? The answer is a lot.
Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim first thought to have been a minor character in radical circles, killed Theo van Gogh. Only during the investigation did it emerge that he was the ringleader of the Hofstad Group, a terrorist organization that was being monitored by the Dutch Secret Service.
The story was very similar in the case of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The cartoons, drawn by Kurt Westergaard, were published in September 2005 to little notice but exploded five months later into an international drama complete with riots and flag-burnings. The man behind this campaign of outrage was an Egyptian-born radical imam named Ahmed Abu-Laban.
Prior to this conflagration, Mr. Abu-Laban was seen as a marginal figure. Yet his campaign ended up costing Denmark businesses an estimated $170 million in the spring of 2006. And this doesn’t include the cost of rebuilding destroyed property and protecting the cartoonists.
So how worried should the creators of “South Park” be about the “marginal figures” who now threaten them? Very. In essence, Mr. Amrikee’s posting is an informal fatwa. Here’s how it works:
There is a basic principle in Islamic scripture—unknown to most not-so-observant Muslims and most non-Muslims—called “commanding right and forbidding wrong.” It obligates Muslim males to police behavior seen to be wrong and personally deal out the appropriate punishment as stated in scripture. In its mildest form, devout people give friendly advice to abstain from wrongdoing. Less mild is the practice whereby Afghan men feel empowered to beat women who are not veiled.
By publicizing the supposed sins of Messrs. Stone and Parker, Mr. Amrikee undoubtedly believes he is fulfilling his duty to command right and forbid wrong. His message is not just an opinion. It will appeal to like-minded individuals who, even though they are a minority, are a large and random enough group to carry out the divine punishment. The best illustration of this was demonstrated by the Somali man who broke into Mr. Westergaard’s home in January carrying an axe and a knife.
Any Muslim, male or female, who knows about the “offense” may decide to perform the duty of killing those who insult the prophet. So what can be done to help Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone?
The first step is for them to consult with experts on how to stay safe. Even though living with protection, as I do now in Washington, D.C., curtails some of your freedom, it is better than risking the worst.
Much depends on how far the U.S. government is prepared to contribute to their protection. According to the Danish government, protecting Mr. Westergaard costs the taxpayers $3.9 million, excluding technical operating equipment. That’s a tall order at a time of intense fiscal pressure.
One way of reducing the cost is to organize a solidarity campaign. The entertainment business, especially Hollywood, is one of the wealthiest and most powerful industries in the world. Following the example of Jon Stewart, who used the first segment of his April 22 show to defend “South Park,” producers, actors, writers, musicians and other entertainers could lead such an effort.
Another idea is to do stories of Muhammad where his image is shown as much as possible. These stories do not have to be negative or insulting, they just need to spread the risk. The aim is to confront hypersensitive Muslims with more targets than they can possibly contend with.
Another important advantage of such a campaign is to accustom Muslims to the kind of treatment that the followers of other religions have long been used to. After the “South Park” episode in question there was no threatening response from Buddhists, Christians and Jews—to say nothing of Tom Cruise and Barbra Streisand fans—all of whom had far more reason to be offended than Muslims.
Islamists seek to replace the rule of law with that of commanding right and forbidding wrong. With over a billion and a half people calling Muhammad their moral guide, it is imperative that we examine the consequences of his guidance, starting with the notion that those who depict his image or criticize his teachings should be punished.
In “South Park,” this tyrannical rule is cleverly needled when Tom Cruise asks the question: How come Muhammad is the only celebrity protected from ridicule? Now we know why.
change back
a controlling mentality
The mental state held by planners of state-run economies is a comprehensive view in which all economic actions coordinate with the state. All transactions originate, terminate and are regulated by the state. One sees evidence of this approach in China in that everything built by man for domestic use or consumption, regardless of where you find it, looks the same. From houses to factories to buildings to roads and conveyances, including everything that goes into all of those things, the parts pretty much look the same. The newer houses all face the same direction. The newer roads all run the same grid. The hand of central government planning and control is visible everywhere you look. With so much inertia built up in such a system, only a fool would expect them to change.
This government-centric mentality permeates the current discussion on Yuan revaluation with respect to the dollar. Interestingly, views from both the China state press and the U.S. press seem to assume the rules of a state-run economy. Now, you would expect that view in China, but in the U.S. too? The thinking goes something like, if the Yuan revalues higher against the dollar, Chinese goods will be more expensive to the U.S., the U.S. will as a consequence buy fewer of them, and will instead increase production of those same goods at home.
I doubt things are that cut and dried. On the U.S. side of the Pacific, market pricing still operates in many areas of the non-health care economy. The market will seek a lowest price for a given product and if the Yuan exchange rate forces China to raise prices, other low-cost manufacturers from other places will gladly jump in to provide those products at competitive prices. The reason? They know a market exists for those products at a historically known price.
So, the czarist Obama administration will quickly discover that Yuan revaluation will not have the stimulative effect on U.S. manufacturing they seek. And, as believers in state-run economics, they will subsequently propose wage and price controls for the rest of the U.S. economy because, they will reason, keeping prices high will mean there’s more money at the margin for manufacturers, and this will induce domestic manufacturers to make those products. Wage and price controls will, of course, have the opposite effect and further depress the U.S. economy, however, the czars will simply find something else to blame before moving on to their next foreseeable failure–which will probably involve severe curtailment of private free-market constitutional choices people will be making by then to avoid expensive state-controlled products.
At the rate they’re going, the czarist Obama administration will probably drop the wage and price control turd in the punchbowl sometime around next Christmas. Full totalitarian economic controls? Maybe another couple years.
You know, the propaganda campaigns for this sort of thing have all been done before, so the signposts really stick out if you’re at all looking for them. But, in addition to the injustice, murder and mayhem that leftward totalitarian fascist shifts generally entail, you’d think that being so damn unoriginal would bother these great progressive thinkers. The corruption of power is indeed a powerful drug.
mornin’
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In a recent speech, the president of Hillsdale College, Dr. Larry Arnn, said that many of the people leading the country today have not “read the books and thought the thoughts” that the Founders considered necessary to lead the America republic, and as a result they say and write imbecilic things. Dr. Arnn is an intellectual man of letters. The informed sensibility that emanates from him seems almost involuntary, an indicator of his virtuosity in classical liberal subjects. He makes an old man feel like a young student again. Anyway, in this speech linked above, no time or words go by without deep importance and mental efficiency. No opportunity to educate is spared.
As would-be statesmen, the leadership of the Republican Party need to study Dr. Arnn closely. While I commend the organizational results achieved by Republicans in Elbert County, and while efforts to defeat leftist politicians must remain a central focus for a freedom loving people, the political process must be about more than musical chairs. Values and philosophies animate this endeavor. The failure of the 2010 Elbert County Republican County Assembly to produce any political resolutions is a serious flaw. No one spoke up from the floor to put a shared value or matter of political importance on the table for public discussion and debate.
On the one hand, the conduct of the assembly was orderly, amicable and efficient. On the other hand, without resolutions or floor contributions, the assembly lacked soul. A body cannot survive without a soul.
2010 ECR County Assembly
The County Assembly will begin seating delegates from precinct caucuses in about 45 minutes. The room is set–the volunteers have done a nice job, candidates are present and have met with the party chairman, all systems are ready. See twitter.com/broimp for tweets on sequence of events and vote outcomes. I tried to get pics of all candidates. See below. As for video, most of the speeches were very short and not overly substantive. Therefore I plan to publish video coverage only for segments that contain candidates not previously covered by this blog, and for a couple of extraordinary moments. [Read more…]
springtime
Shariah and Islam
2010 ERC County Assembly
Republican County Assembly, Saturday, April 10, 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Kiowa Middle School Gym.
The Elbert County Republican Central Committee Bylaws, Article II. Purpose, Section 2. Primary Purpose, “Recognizing the fundamental principals of the Republican Party…..the primary purpose of this organization shall be……to encourage all citizens to participate in the democratic process and in all phases of government; and to facilitate the free flow of ideas as they relate to the election process and all phases of government.”
Note: You must be officially recognized by the assembly to publicly address the county assembly. This is not a public forum, however, to my knowledge there have never been any restrictions against the public observing the proceedings. Any members of the public attending for the purpose of observation should exercise care to in no way interfere with the conduct of the delegates and the business of the assembly.
Next ECR Breakfast:
4/3/10 ECR Speeches
Candidate Speeches (contested races)
U.S. Congress
Colorado Supreme Court Judge Attrition
- Matt Arnold of Clear The Bench Colorado Part 1, Part 2
Sheriff
- Bob Sexton
- Shayne Heap
- Brian Weiss Part 1, Part 2
- Jack Knous
Commissioner
Assessor
Treasurer
Clerk
Note: Experiences with the caucus system and the county assembly have given ample grounds to regard the caucus system in Elbert County as broken. Hopefully, through video coverage of candidate speeches, the public–not just delegates–will see the relative qualities of the various candidates aspiring to move forward in the electoral process at the county assembly next week, and everyone will have a means to assess the quality of representation the delegates elected at county caucuses provide to Republicans. Of course, we’ll have to see how the horse trading at the county assembly shakes out in order to fully assess delegate performance, but times were such that the process desperately needed transparency, and that’s what motivates this publication. [Read more…]
MSLF Census suggestion
“Little wonder that Americans find the Obama Administration’s Census Bureau’s emphasis on race a little off-putting, perhaps even worrisome. Fortunately, Mark Krikorian provided a possible remedy. Noting the words of Justice Antonin Scalia in the famous Adarand ruling—“In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”—Krikorian suggested answering “Question 9 by checking the last option — ‘Some other race’ — and writing in ‘American’.” He argued, not only is it “a truthful answer” but it is also a way for “ordinary citizens to express their rejection of unconstitutional racial classification schemes.” Until the U.S. Supreme Court issues a final, binding ruling on the subject, that will have to do.” (From Mountain States Legal Foundation)
couple observations
A common theme among all manufacturers we met this trip in China, Malaysia and Thailand is the scarcity of labor. Multiple factors contribute to this situation — increases in the standard of living, more job competition giving workers more job choices, more capitalized production methods requiring more trained labor — over time, factors like these reduce the differential cost of labor between less and more developed countries. Low priced foreign goods to American markets, to the extent price is influenced by cheap labor, will become more expensive through natural economic trends. The currency intervention proposed by the Obama administration to make Asian goods more expensive to Americans by fiat is unnecessary and will only further dislocate real value from monetary value.
Another theme we heard from the Thai and Malay is they do not rely upon governmental solutions to support their private market activities. They see reliance on government by private industry as at best a pointless exercise, and at worst a necessary evil. This differs from the views given by the Chinese state newspapers. Their official propaganda reads more like the New York Times and the Washington Post which see government as the primary initiator of economic activity.
night water
peeps in Bangkok
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commuting in Bangkok
Chinese internet
Social network sites, western google, ability to post to blogs, etc., all available in Kuala Lumpur. Our last couple hours in Guangzhou, China we had no facebook or twitter, and no ability to post to blogs or upload email.
China Daily opinion of March 20-21, 2010 wrote it this way:
Google in wrong game
Chinese netizens did not expect the Google issue to snowball into a political minefield and become a tool in the hands of vested interests abroad to attack China under the pretext of internet freedom.
China’s regulation to censor the content that Google provides to Chinese Internet users has become interpreted as a breach to freedom in the virtual world. In some extreme cases, the vested interests have described the legitimate right of the Chinese government to regulate companies and control pornographic and related content as “spying” on its own people.
The magnitude of this absurdity is beyond comprehension and the motivated attacks, intolerable.
The attacks cannot be justified even if seen from Western perspective. Many countries censor the Internet to protect the interests of innocent users. Also, it goes without saying that a foreign company should abide by the laws and regulations of the country that it is operating and making a profit in.
The Chinese are enjoying unprecedented freedom in the country’s more than 5,000 years of history. All the country’s newly found wealth has been created by the hands of the ordinary Chinese. The country would not have been able to perform an economic miracle if its people were unhappy with their administration and the social and political conditions.
So if the vested interests’ accusation that the Chinese government censors the Internet to spy on its own people does not originate from ignorance then it is a white lie and a malicious attack.
It will not do any good to Google either. And by linking its exit from China with political issues, Google will certainly lose its credibility in a country that has the largest number of netizens.
With the many assorted fallacies in this analysis, I find it not at all persuasive.
game change?
The Obama media blitz to sell government health insurance to the American people, as if “sales” is an appropriate metaphor for coercion at the point of a gun, and as if the sales job ever paused for a moment, only deepens the tragic farce national politics under the left have become. At the moment you thought it couldn’t get any more ridiculous, the propaganda freight train finds a still lower gear to shift into without a breath of hesitation. The nightmare that was the American dream keeps devolving as we try to pinch ourselves awake.
The tea partyers had better have their electoral fun now because, come November, if they do anything other than to join a monolithic block to unseat these batty leftists currently in power, all the building anger against the destructive left will shift to them.