Category Archives: Democracy

Update III: Haiti's Hurting, What's New? (Rotting Roadblocks)

Crime, Democracy, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Taxation, The West

Haiti is forever convulsed by political or natural disasters. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, where four out of five people live in poverty and more than half in abject poverty (NYT), was struck by a massive, magnitude-7.0 earthquake, on Tuesday afternoon.

The rescuers, spokespersons, geological surveyors and geophysicists; the missionaries, medicine- and military men and women; the aid-deliverers—most are Westerners. Western countries prop up their Third-World creations. That’s how it is.

In the aftermath of the Asian tsunami, the gravest danger was an epidemic; the greatest danger in the wake of the Haiti disaster is a crime wave worse than before.

The Big O is promising to devote—and divert—all the resources he has no right to toward the rescue effort in Haiti.

I say “YES TO US AID, NO TO USAID”:

Americans are the most generous people on earth. “The extent and the depth of charitable giving” in the US is such that “the average donation in the U.S. is three-and-a-half times more than in Canada.” As a percentage of their aggregate income, Americans give more to charity than citizens of any other country. BO will go ahead and “pledge” a puny few hundred million to Haiti on behalf of a people that gave $241 billion to charity in 2003.

American largess makes the United States Agency for International Development, and other the compassionate pickpockets, as unnecessary as it is unethical.

Update I (Jan. 14): Since Haitians are now refugees and candidates for Minute-Maid immigration, it takes an immigration hawk to highlight the following: Haitians, by and large, speak Creole. Their faith is more Black Magic than Roman Catholic. Thoroughly schooled in violence, Haitians are, at the same time, utterly uneducated, although not in the ways of the world – they’ve been ravaged by AIDS-HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Update II: “The liberal West honestly believes that bad leaders are what shackle backward peoples.” In this context, how often have you heard that Haiti is what it is because of bad leadership; a deficit in democracy, on and on? Lo: a veteran disaster relief specialist told CNN that the current “serious crime problem” was less of an issue under Papa Doc’s “nasty dictatorship,” when “lots of people were killed. But infrastructure and services worked better then than they do now.”

“It was safer to use public transport then than it was last year, certainly in terms of crime,” he said. “Over the last 10, 15, 20 years, the gangs and the drug culture have taken hold of Haiti …”

Is it possible that a dictatorship—preferably a benevolent one, but never-the-less an authoritarian regime—might work better in certain cultures than a tyranny of the majority? Perish the thought.

Update III: Barbarism. “ANGRY Haitians set up roadblocks with corpses in Port-au-Prince to protest at the delay in emergency aid reaching them after a devastating earthquake.” Shaul Schwarz, a photographer for TIME magazine, is understanding:

“It’s getting ugly out there, people are fed up with getting no help.” [news.com.au]

Update IV: Joe Arpaio, Patriot

Constitution, Democracy, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Nationhood, Reason

Judging by the way the muck-media treat Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, you’d think he was breaking the law, or something. Arpaio uses “minor misdemeanors to catch dope dealers, seize drugs, DUIs,” then inquires about the perp’s immigration status and enforces immigration laws on the streets.

HORRORS!

In response to these so-called controversial “crime sweeps,” the 77-year-old sheriff hero must contend with outsiders—“activists” who rush to the scene (you didn’t think they had jobs!) to snap him in action, as he goes about protecting the people of his country, who, incidentally, continue to re-elect him.

Yes, the Moron Media remain mum about that pesky thing called democracy. When practiced on a local level, democracy is at its purest and fairest. Correction: that is the only form democracy should take. “Democracy must be confined to a ‘small spot’ (like Athens).”

In any event, Kris W. Kobach, one of the most brilliant constitutional immigration legal minds allowed occasionally on the fool’s lantern, confirms that “state police, exercising state law authority only, [can] make arrests for violations of federal law.”

In follows from “states’ status as sovereign entities,” that “[t]hey are sovereign governments possessing all residual powers not abridged or superseded by the U.S. Constitution. The source of the state governments’ power is entirely independent of the U.S. Constitution.”

the enumerated powers doctrine that constrains the powers of the federal government does not so constrain the powers of the states. Rather, the states possess what are known as “police powers,” which need not be specifically enumerated. Police powers are “an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort, and general welfare of the people

Wait a sec, didn’t I say something similar in “Aliens In Their Hometown”?

Take this to the bank: Arpaio is a patriot. And read Prof. Kobach’s entire analysis.

Update I: To the libertines who cannot abide the idea of a drug dealer on the corner of the street of a poor neighborhood (like Nancy Pelsoi, libertines live away from the madding crowds) being stopped for any reason: try picturing a Venn Diagram, if you’re vaguely inclined to reason. The overlap between dealers, drunk drivers (scroll down for sacrificial lambs), and other evil-doers and illegality is quite fantastic.

By selecting for these life-style choices I’ll call them—I don’t wish to offend libertines—Arpaio seems to stop the right people each and every time. Want proof that the old, common-sensical bugger has nailed it? Arpaio stands accused of rational profiling, a badge of honor; when in fact, all he has done is select (apparently representatively) for assorted petty, and non-petty, crime.

Update II: Another reminder to the pansy libertines who galvanize the argument from Hitler when their panties get in a knot: In a free society, rooted in private property rights, land owners along the border would have likely formed militias to repel trespassers from their land or neighborhoods. The local patrol, whether under private property, or in the founder’s republic of blessed memory, would work very much as Arpaio works it—and certainly not as the typical effete of the libertarian left posits.

In a free society based on absolute private-property rights, the natural tendency of men—a tendency that is most conducive to peace—is to live among their own, but to trade with any and all. In such a society, commercial property owners will tend to be far more inclusive than residential property owners. As libertarian theorist Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes, owners of retail establishments, like hotels and restaurants, “have every economic incentive not to discriminate unfairly against strangers because this would lead to reduced profits or losses.” Still, they will have to consider the impact of culturally exotic behavior on “local domestic sales,” and will impose codes of conduct on guests.
Seeking low-wage employees, employers would also be partial to foreigners but, absent the protectionist state, the employer would be accountable to the community, and would be wary of the strife and lowered productivity caused by a multiethnic and multi-linguistic workforce. All the more so when a foreign workforce moves into residential areas.
In short, reasons Hoppe, in a natural order—absent government—there will be plenty of “interregional trade and travel,” but little mingling in residential areas. Just as people tend to marry along cultural and racial lines, so they maintain rather homogeneous residential neighborhoods. This is how the chips fall in a highly regulated society, so much more so in a free society, based on absolute property rights. Is this contemptible? To the left-libertarian open-border purist it is—else why would he be lending ideological support to the state’s efforts to upset any semblance of a natural order and to shape society in politically pleasing ways?

[From “LOVE-IN AT THE BORDERS”]

Update III (Jan. 5): The Constitution delegated to localities a lot of discretion in determining the way they want to live. The 14th tampered with that discretion. Still, like it or not, law enforcement is a local function and the only legitimate duty of government.

I note that our esteemed reader Myron has opted for the liberal, high-pitched strategy: accuse a man who resides in the community he protects of things he has not done or aspired to do, in the hope that something sticks; and so that the lodestar of leftism is obeyed: complete license all the time. “Oh, my G-d! Someone has stopped someone else from doing exactly what he likes on street corners, even though no one was hurt!”

It’s early for me to be fully compos mentis, but an analogy for MP’s rant about Arpaio’s alleged trespasses is to lump every mild mannered man who ever spoke unkindly to his wife with OJ Simpson, on a continuum of wife abuse. The bailiwick of lefty feminists. Moreover—and conveniently—in the process of trying to get something to stick, drug dealing was omitted in favor of accusing Arpaio of going after lone tokers.

Still, I always appreciate heated opposition to what I put forward.

Update IV: WHERE WERE HIS ROCKS? How dare this border patrolman defend himself! I’m appalled. Israelis are expected to retaliate with rocks when they’re assaulted with same, why was this U.S. Border Patrol agent in southern Arizona unprepared to rock it?

To the good news: “the agent and his dog encountered [and illegal alien] in the area of ‘D’ Hill just outside of Douglas. The man assaulted the agent with rocks and the agent shot back.”

This reminds me of the iconic scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Challenged to a duel by a scimitar-wielding enemy, Indiana Jones draws a pistol and dispatches the swordsman without further ado.

The 'Democratization Of Credit': Is It Over?

Affirmative Action, Business, Debt, Democracy, Federal Reserve Bank

WSJ: “The democratization of credit began decades ago. Federal legislation in the late 1970s required banks to avoid discriminatory lending and meet the needs of local communities, spawning a wave of home buying and entrepreneurship in lower-income neighborhoods. The rate of homeownership in families with incomes in the bottom two-fifths rose to nearly 49% by 2001 from below 44% in 1989, according to Fed data analyzed by Mr. Mann at Columbia.”

[This is not what that ignoramus Michael Moore claims. The sad thing about the man’s propaganda is that nobody among the so-called conservative MSM can refute it with reference to First Principles.]

“But the financial crisis and recession have reversed … the ‘democratization of credit,’ forcing a tough adjustment on both low-income families and the businesses that serve them.”

‘We saw an extension of credit to a much deeper socioeconomic level, and they got access to the same credit instruments as middle-class and mainstream Americans,’ says Ronald Mann, a Columbia University law professor. Now, ‘it will be harder for families at the bottom of the income ladder to get credit cards,’ he says.

The financial crisis has forced lenders to be especially cautious with the riskiest borrowers, a category that low-income families often fall into because their debt tends to be higher relative to income and assets. The ratio of credit-card debt to income is 50% higher for the lowest two-fifths of Americans by income than for the top two-fifths, Federal Reserve data show.”

[SNIP]

The following aside is beside the point, but my guess is that if a multiple regression analysis were conducted, IQ would be the underlying variable that would stubbornly crop up to account for this alarming, yet ostensibly unintuitive, ratio of debt to income in low-income individuals.

IN ANY CASE, do you agree that the democratization of credit is on the wane? I find that a dubious statement. The latest legislation described has not eliminated the imperative to lend to risky entities and individuals, so much as it has created, as ever, unintended consequences. These contingencies have, so far, caused banks to twist like pretzels in order to find legal ways around eliminating risky borrowers.

The ‘Democratization Of Credit’: Is It Over?

Affirmative Action, Business, Debt, Democracy, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank

WSJ: “The democratization of credit began decades ago. Federal legislation in the late 1970s required banks to avoid discriminatory lending and meet the needs of local communities, spawning a wave of home buying and entrepreneurship in lower-income neighborhoods. The rate of homeownership in families with incomes in the bottom two-fifths rose to nearly 49% by 2001 from below 44% in 1989, according to Fed data analyzed by Mr. Mann at Columbia.”

[This is not what that ignoramus Michael Moore claims. The sad thing about the man’s propaganda is that nobody among the so-called conservative MSM can refute it with reference to First Principles.]

“But the financial crisis and recession have reversed … the ‘democratization of credit,’ forcing a tough adjustment on both low-income families and the businesses that serve them.”

‘We saw an extension of credit to a much deeper socioeconomic level, and they got access to the same credit instruments as middle-class and mainstream Americans,’ says Ronald Mann, a Columbia University law professor. Now, ‘it will be harder for families at the bottom of the income ladder to get credit cards,’ he says.

The financial crisis has forced lenders to be especially cautious with the riskiest borrowers, a category that low-income families often fall into because their debt tends to be higher relative to income and assets. The ratio of credit-card debt to income is 50% higher for the lowest two-fifths of Americans by income than for the top two-fifths, Federal Reserve data show.”

[SNIP]

The following aside is beside the point, but my guess is that if a multiple regression analysis were conducted, IQ would be the underlying variable that would stubbornly crop up to account for this alarming, yet ostensibly unintuitive, ratio of debt to income in low-income individuals.

IN ANY CASE, do you agree that the democratization of credit is on the wane? I find that a dubious statement. The latest legislation described has not eliminated the imperative to lend to risky entities and individuals, so much as it has created, as ever, unintended consequences. These contingencies have, so far, caused banks to twist like pretzels in order to find legal ways around eliminating risky borrowers.