Category Archives: Economy

Updated: Absolut Anti-Americanism Vs. Patriotism

America, Colonialism, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Israel, libertarianism, Socialism

Speaking of a hatred of America (see previous post): Let me say this: I’ve observed that the usual libertarian offenders sided with the Reconquista ad campaign of Swedish vodka maker Absolut.

They have my absolute contempt.

Such people are intent on never showing that they stick up for flesh-and-blood human beings—but can love only deracinated abstractions. Ideas and issues before individuals.

The invasion of the Southwest—or “Reconquista” in the parlance of La Raza libertarians’ —is wreaking havoc on a part of the world that was built-up beautifully by Americans, not Mexicans.

To shelter me and protect me, I’d trust a “red state fascist” any time over a libertarian Absolutist.

Speaking of patriots, I’ve just finished Pat Buchanan’s latest book. It goes without saying that I take issue with economic protectionisms. But about Pat there can be no quibble: he is an absolute patriot.

The other good news to emerge from Day of Reckoning is that Pat is rather complimentary about Israel. In fact, it’s as though he read my “Nature of the Jewish State” column about Israeli nationhood. These ideas are reiterated toward the end of Pat’s book. It was indeed a bonus for me to see a sea change in his appreciation of Israel’s existential challenges.

Update (April 16): For an evisceration of the welfare-state “argumentation” La Raza libertarians put forth see “The Work Open Borden Libertarians Won’t Do,” and other essays in the Immigration Archive.

As to our reader’s contention that “self-sufficient people don’t choose socialism”: Really? If people can get back from the taxpayer more than they earn, they do indeed choose socialism. John C. Calhoun, in “A Disquisition on Government,” warned of this eventuality quite some time back too.

Update 2: Axis Of Economic Idiocy

Barack Obama, Economy, Elections 2008, Free Markets, Individual Rights, John McCain, Socialism

Here’s an excerpt from my WorldNetDaily column, which WND has titled “Axis Of Economic Idiocy.” It leads the Commentary Section:

“Obama is an ass with ears when it comes to the economy. The same goes for Clinton. So Sen. McCain did not help himself (or us) by being charmingly self-deprecating about his understanding of the economy. He has allowed Obama and Clinton, infinitely more asinine than he, to assert their superiority…”

“Where Kemp-McCain economics meet Obama-Clinton ‘freakonomics’ is in the unnatural and un-American idea that the government is entitled to a portion of your income; that it has a lien on your life and on what you acquire in the course of sustaining that life…”

Be it Hillary, Hussein or McCain—they all agree that it is up to the all-knowing central planner to determine how much of your life ought to be theirs…

“While McCain will, at least, put in place an economic incentive structure more conducive to prosperity, the other two intend to penalize prudent, productive economic activity. … As another killer collectivist put it, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need…”

Discuss.

Update 1 (March 29): Topic: B. Hussein Obama.

The propriety police has been patrolling our humble blog, and have found me wanting for having fun with Obama’s second name.

So why did I originate—and use now on two occasions—the “Hillary, Hussein McCain Axis of Evil” appellation?

For one, because it sounds good (humor alert for the grim reader). This writer is a sucker for the sound of words. The rhyme is irresistible. Writing is a bit of a craft. I know I’m a throwback in this respect.

More material: I’ve made a substantial case against the man in “Obama’s Racial Ramrodding” for WND and in “The Ethnic Particularism of Barack Obama” for Jewcy (that last sentence has good cadence too, wouldn’t you say?). Once I rested my case against BHO, it was time to play. Let a girl have some fun. I would hope my readers would be bored silly if I did not give them occasion to laugh.

I’m afraid this is not the place for anemic, prissy writing.

Obama is the media’s messiah; Hillary their punching bag; McCain their pet “maverick.” Me you can trust to pick apart this unholy trinity. They’ve all been subject to forceful comment here and here. In “Mitt’s Gone, Bill’s Back,” I exposed McCain as an extension of the neoconservatives. I wrote:

Thanks to the malign McCain, it looked as though the neoconservative whey was finally separating from the conservative curd. What was to remain was not the best concoction, but it promised to be a far cry from the previous accursed ideological amalgam. I had hoped that, in the dust-up between conservatives and neocon-dominated establishment Republicans, McCain would serve as the curdling bacteria. I was wrong.

No doubt, I do find it highly significant and symbolic that a man with the name Hussein may well ascend to the highest office in the US. More disturbing to me is that man’s radical worldview, embraced by virtue of affiliating with a highly political, Afrocentric church for two decades; Obama is not coming clean about his Black-Liberation theology leanings.

Am I someone who believes America has very distinct roots and that those are on the wane? Indeed. Is Obama an antithesis to the authentic America I occasionally catch a glimpse of? I believe so.

Finally, lighten up. Or please take the inquisition elsewhere.

Now what was I saying about B. Hussein Obama?

Update 2 (March 31): I must agree with Patrick about McCain’s language, at least: McCain knows and uses valid terms such as the “unintended consequences of government intervention,” etc. As I said in my column, he is infinitely more familiar with economics than the other two asses with ears.

Incidentally, planned economies are not a branch of economics, as far as I’m concerned, but a branch of statecraft.
There is only one kind of economics, and that is the kind that comports with the laws of nature: the free market.
The free market includes and subsumes the right to enter into voluntary, communistic arrangements!

Updated: Unintended Consequence of Enforcing Ethanol

Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government

Bad things happen when production is driven by ignorant special interests (the gangreens) in cahoots with government, instead of the free market.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported tonight that food shortages were already being felt in Europe because one of the biggest wheat growers in the world, the USA, was incentivizing its farmer to grow corn for ethanol instead of the wheat staple. The prices of food have been rising steadily as a result of this ill-fated intervention.

Oil is efficient. “It requires only a narrow hole in the earth,” explains the WSJ, “and is extracted as a highly concentrated form of energy”—it “is up to 1,000 times more efficient than solar energy, which requires large panels collecting a less-concentrated form of energy known as the midday sun. But even solar power is roughly 10 times as efficient as biomass-derived fuels like ethanol.”

The other eco-awful consequence of mandating via legislation the incremental replacement of oil with “absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol” is a “giant slurping sound, as Midwest water supplies are siphoned off to slake Big Ethanol”:

“[O]ne gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O.”

“Writing in Science magazine, Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracklen estimate that in order to replace just 10% of gasoline and diesel consumption, the U.S. would need to convert a full 43% of its cropland to ethanol production. The alternative approach—clearing wilderness—would mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than simply sticking with gasoline, because the CO2-munching trees cut down to make way for King Ethanol absorb more emissions than ethanol saves.”

“Slowly but surely, these problems are beginning to alert public opinion to the huge costs of force-feeding corn ethanol as an energy savior.”

Update (March 26): About the sentiments expressed in the Comments Section whereby more expensive, unviable energy sources are favored: I understand that this is not a policy prescription but a personal preference, rooted in perceived morality. Good intentions, and all that stuff. I would argue, however, that this too is misguided.

Look, noble sentiments notwithstanding, inefficient energy sources pollute more and waste resources. Drilling for oil, if I am not mistaken, is the second most efficient, cheapest—and hence cleanest—source of energy. Nuclear is the first. Think of the totality of the production process (minus the eco-idiots’ romantic catchphrases). If you expend fewer resources on bringing a fuel to market, then the process is also CLEANER.

Canadian Loony NOT on Life-Support

Canada, Economy

Bill O’Reilly will not like this, but the Canadian economy, tied as it is at the hip to ours, is doing just fine. Their loony is not on life-support like our dollar. No banks have gone under there—not yet.

This may mystify American teletwits (and their viewers). That’s because they try to present the recession as a function of market failure unmoored from the political class’s pillaging. It’s the housing market, the morons exclaim. Or Barack Obama’s white grandma.

Canada’s banks, I believe, are less promiscuous about increasing the money supply. Because its central bank is not as lenient about allowing the commercial banks to pyramid checkbook money on top of their own reserves, it’s my understanding they’ll be doing much less feel-good lending than our whorish paper peddlers.

Correct me if I’m wrong about that. I’m not, however, wrong about the Canadian economy, which is, so far, humming along.