I’m reading Samuel Huntington’s, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, 1996. It seemed like an appropriate subject to engage at this time of rapid reorientation of power structures within America. On the strong possibility that any comment I might have on such a grand subject would involve inserting one or both feet in my mouth, I will take my time with this subject. Meanwhile, check out Kissinger’s recent essay, The chance for a new world order.
bailout dreams
For a long time the primary focus of American car makers has been financial services. Cars have been a vehicle (sorry) to get people into a payment schedule or a lease stream. Lease or purchase financing has been the main focus, not cars. They make their money primarily in finance charges, not in automobile gross margins over costs of production.
The market for alternative energy autos driven (sorry) by price, performance, quality, reliability, etc. — all the factors that people consider in acquiring a car — will determine the economic incentives for manufactures to build those vehicles. A bailout will not, cannot, provide those incentives.
There may be a good case to bail out American car makers, but the reasonable expectation that such a bailout will produce a positive evolution in American automobile products is not part of it. [Read more…]
the CRA did it
Bush Discusses Financial Markets
President Bush Discusses Financial Markets and World Economy
Federal Hall National Memorial
New York, New York [Read more…]
Same Quality at 1/10th Cost
Oct 31, 2008
Sundays at the Goodman household tend to include the New York Times crossword puzzle, the Dallas Cowboys football game….and (not to be missed)….an e-mail press release from Health Affairs, describing their latest, most interesting and most newsworthy offerings.
Yet by far the most interesting, informative and valuable article I’ve ever read in Health Affairs didn’t make it into any press release. Nor did it get covered in any of the mainstream health policy media outlets. It was an article about a country with institutions that produce health care quality as good or better than what we have, at a fraction of the cost! It describes how and why this happens and what institutions keep similar innovations from occurring in the United States.
So why the news blackout? Hard to say. As in art, food and sex, perhaps in health policy there’s no way to explain the diversity of human interests.The country is India, where fewer than one in seven people purchase health insurance. Yet two-thirds of Indian households rely on private medical care — a preference that cuts across classes and even extends to rural and paramedic care. Not to put too fine a point on it, but India appears to have the largest free market for medical care found anywhere in the world.
[Read more…]
The Sum of Good Government
“Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
From:
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address
In the Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, March 4, 1801
Elbert County needs JOBS
Open Letter to the BOCC,
Here are the web links for advertising in the WSJ. Please, take out an ad. Invite businesses to set up shop in commissioner district 3 in Elbert County, Colorado. Tell them we don’t need their tax revenue. Tell them we won’t impose onerous regulations on them. Tell them we have a labor force in the western portion of the county that is ready to work for them. Tell them Elbert County wants to work hard for them.
We have land and water in the central portion of the county. We can support industry here.
Please commissioners, a new retail outlet here and there won’t fix our local economy. Americans know how to produce things. Take the shackles off of us and let us have a chance to compete in the global economy.
Lead, or get out of the way.
Wall Street Journal Advertising
Election items
Rhode Island, example of Obama’s tax-business policy: Higher taxes = Fewer jobs
Colorado Springs Gazette Opinion 10/26/08 – The Death of Objectivity
Also, Michael Yon endorses McCain
Greetings,The outcome of the upcoming U.S. elections will have a profound impact on the war. Meanwhile, the day to day fighting continues. If Senator Obama is elected, I expect to spend a great deal of time covering the fighting. Judging by his words, Senator Obama must be watched closely or we might see some terrible decisions. I expect 2009 to be the worst year so far in the Af-Pak war, which has serious potential to eventually become far worse than Iraq ever was. If Senator McCain is elected, I’ll breathe easier in regard to the war.
For a short dispatch, please click, “Are you Connected.”
Very Respectfully,
Michael Yon
Sward & Thomasson vision
“The BOCC needs to recruit small business in the county, veteran-based businesses, and an agricultural-based local farmers’ market. We need to seek grant money from the State of Colorado for developing cellulosic ethanol from indigenous switchgrasses and set up small distillation coop facilities. We need to utilize the dry and windy eastern half of the county to bring in the production of clean electricity via wind and solar technologies. We also need to develop our historical sites within the county, and sponsor a vibrant day tourism industry.”
From:What Patty Sward & Robert Thomasson Will Do To Fix It
Good grief!
A farmer’s market where there are no truck farms. State subsidies and state coops. Power technologies that require state subsidies to be economic. A handful of local historic sites. A vibrant day tourism industry to attract the tourist segment that likes to watch switchgrass grow when they’re not skiing in the mountains. Maybe we can find some descendants of indigenous Americans to claim some land for a casino. Look out Central City, we’re going to need some of your tour buses.
Come on people!!! This stuff is beyond pathetic.
acorn
poverty of the left
“Our water resources are under siege. The Master Plan is being made irrelevant by BOCC policy moves. No prospects, no jobs, no leadership. Elbert County Republicans have risen to the occasion by coming out with three uninspired candidates with no detailed platform to solve our problems.”
Lets look at this lament.
Water resources are under siege by who? The Left who want to regulate water resources in Elbert County.
The Master Plan is advisory and when the BOCC moves to clarify this fact in county regulations, who complains? The Left.
Who have stonewalled and fought all economic development in Elbert County for as long as anyone can remember? The Left.
Who thinks they can plan and design the best solutions for Elbert County? The Left.
We need candidates who will shrink government, reduce and remove regulations, and prevent government from impeding the private sector in doing what it does best – capitalism.
To the Left, capitalism is the “C” word, never to be uttered in polite company. Candidates who do not exhibit signs of totalitarian tendencies are “uninspired.”
The Left got exactly what they fought for – a stagnant local economy that is hardest on the middle class (the poor don’t stand a chance here.)
Elbert County must move beyond the Left’s failed country-in-county utopia and embrace a prosperous future. We’ve reached a dead end with the Left’s empty visions. It’s time to admit that mistake and dump the Left’s failed ideology with all the prejudice it deserves.
The fatal conceit of liberals and environmentalists
“[L]iberal economics fail for precisely the same reason that liberal environmentalism fails–they are both defined by the politics of limits.” [Read more…]
Help Wanted
Conclusion:
Elbert County workers are at a significant competitive disadvantage in finding local work compared to workers in neighboring counties. County Commissioners should do everything possible to bring jobs of any and all kinds to Elbert County.
Marginal solutions promoted by Democrat commissioner candidates such as farmers markets and tourist shops, even if they succeed where previous attempts have failed, won’t begin to solve this problem. Elbert County needs thousands of new jobs, not a few token offerings to the “smart growth” gods.
Data Sources:
Democrat growth vision stagnant
More West Elbert County Sun politics from 8/28/08:
“Thomasson added that what is needed are “a lot of small ideas that are achievable. In bringing jobs to the area, it is going to be five to 10 new ones at a time that are compatible with what we have here, not bringing in a GM-sized industry.”
“Patty Sward…added that her goal is to ensure smart growth[.]”
A patient lying on her death bed does not need an aspirin and a gaggle of government planners sucking up all of the oxygen in the room with empty platitudes. She needs serious medicine and air to breath.
Elbert County does not need jobs that are compatible with economic stagnation and poverty. Elbert County needs real industry, real manufacturing, and real capitalized enterprises that produce substantial profits. Elbert County needs a relaxed regulatory climate to encourage those economic engines with the freedom to start and grow. “Smart growth” will keep us quaint, rural, struggling to make ends meet, dependent on government handouts, purchasing our goods in Douglas County, and exporting our children to Douglas County for education.
smart growth is neither
Claire Levy – Urban sprawl drives up the cost of living
Smart Growth: Retarding the Quality of Life
Americans have moved to the suburbs:
The air is cleaner, but road expansion has lagged behind population growth:
A strong anti-suburban movement has developed.
The anti-sprawl movement suggests so-called “smart growth:”
The anti-sprawl diagnosis is flawed:
- Urbanization does not threaten agricultural land:
- Most suburban growth is not from the cities:
- “Walkable” cities are an illusion:
- Open space is expanding more rapidly than urbanization:
Smart growth would intensify the very problems it is supposed to solve.
- Smart growth increases traffic intensity:
- Smart growth increases air pollution intensity:
- Smart growth reduces housing affordability:
From Social Engineering to Freedom:.
- Sufficient road capacity should be provided to accommodate growth:
- People should be allowed to live and work where and how they like:
4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2008
Once again, the Demographia survey leads inevitably to one clear conclusion: the affordability of housing is overwhelmingly a function of just one thing, the extent to which governments place artificial restrictions on the supply of residential land.
Myth No. 1: Smart Growth is good.
In reality, it’s not. Portland and San Jose, the two top “Smart Growth” cities in the U.S., have more unaffordable housing, higher job losses, higher urban unemployment and greater congestion, with much higher confiscatory tax and fee levels, than before they adopted their “Smart Growth” policies. Yet their leaders proclaim “success” from their policies. Hypocrisy has become the norm – lies and deceitfulness their standard operating procedure for government. Only their union employees and congestion management consultants are profiting – and the bankruptcy attorneys.
minority control
90% of Elbert County citizens who work commute to a job outside of Elbert County.
Average commute times in Elbert County are double the state-wide average.
In an economy where fuel is prohibitively expensive, we must bring jobs to Elbert County. The interests of the 10% of Elbert County citizens who do not have to commute should not control the public planning agenda to keep the rest of Elbert County impoverished by commuting time and expense.
“Managed growth compatible with a rural life style” is a tyranny by a small minority.
Sources:
an empty set
“Vote for the person who you think is creative enough to solve the dilemmas that have unfolded in Elbert County in the recent past.”
That pretty much rules out everyone Mr. Thomasson. Even if you reduced the problem set to the domain of government originally intended by the Founders, not a man alive could be smart enough to solve that set of problems. In the present, where government has expanded its control into myriads of areas of our lives it cannot possibly understand let alone resolve, the proposition is even more absurd. Any candidate sufficiently delusional to believe in the myth that one person could possess such capacity should be allowed nowhere near a controlling office.
A commissioner should be elected not for what they promise they will do, but for what they promise they won’t do. Here are some examples:
- I promise to not support tax increases.
- I promise to not grow government.
- I promise to not increase regulations on the private sector through planning and zoning.
- I promise to not impede economic growth in the private sector.
We have enough 1) taxation, 2) government, and 3) regulation, and not enough 4) economic activity. What are the odds that there is an inverse correlation between the first three and the last one? I’d say bet on it.
The prescription for the success of Elbert County is a simple one. Limit government, expand the private sector. It is the philosophy that built this country. It works. People know what is in their own best interest. All they need is the freedom to act on that knowledge. Government does not, and cannot know, what is in each of our own best interests. Life is tough enough without having to carry the dead weight of an oppressive bureaucracy on our backs.
The visions of the left are attractive and alluring, but they’ve never become reality anywhere they have been tried. Moreover, the more power vested in the state in the various social experiments of the past several hundred years, the worse the outcomes have been. This is not an arguable or close call. Mountains of evidence of human misery caused by leftism exist. The death toll runs in the 100’s of millions. There’s just no point in going down that road any further.
our money pit
Elbert County’s largest employer is Government.
——————————————————————————————————–
- It can spend only what it first collects from taxpayers.
- It does not add any net positive value to the county.
- It does not make a profit.
- It controls and regulates who may engage in true profit-making enterprises in the county.
- It controls and regulates who may live where and how in the county.
- Elbert County’s largest employer would not exist without the coercive power of the state to prop it up.
- The direct cost of Elbert County’s largest employer is the tax cost to citizens.
- The indirect cost of Elbert County’s largest employer is an “opportunity cost” – the value of profit (wealth) that would have been added to the county if the people and resources consumed by Elbert County would have been engaged in private enterprise.
Elbert County citizens have been brainwashed into believing that this losing enterprise is their best hope for a better future. Not only is it not, it is physically impossible for it to ever be so.
IBD: vote on drilling
This month, an IBD/TIPP Poll of 920 adults found that by more than 3-to-1 Americans believe gas prices to be a bigger problem than global warming. A broad-based 64% of respondents favor offshore drilling, and 65% want oil shale development in the Western states.A Rasmussen survey in June found 67% of voters in favor of drilling off the coasts of California, Florida and other states, and 64% believing gas prices would drop as a result. A Zogby poll last month found that 74% want offshore drilling in U.S. waters.This is a potential political gusher, if only Republicans would fully tap into it. Bush has the opportunity to do so before this hot, cash-guzzling summer ends. Like Truman, he can use his constitutional authority to call this negligent Congress back once it embarks on its long August recess to campaign for re-election.In so doing, he can demand that instead of nonsolutions like its failed attempt to release more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve [SPR], Congress carry out the will of the vast majority of Americans by passing laws that authorize drilling.
The French Revolution
When you least expect it, the most interesting revelations surface. I was discussing some fundamental differences between my positions and positions of the left with some Democrats yesterday. As usually happens in these situations, they grew increasingly impatient with me as I defended my position from compromise. As we parted, they made a reference to their firmly held belief that the French Revolution was the logical outcome of Laissez Faire capitalism. They all held this conclusion as if it were fact, and they tossed off questions to this assumption as they departed as absurd. [Read more…]