Category Archives: The State

Grunts: Gladiators in the Emperor’s Colosseum

Barack Obama, Bush, Crime, Foreign Policy, Military, The State

America’s military men are losing their minds, penned as they are like gladiators, condemned criminals, slaves and wild animals, in the Colosseum, destined to murder or die for the benefit of the craven Emperor and his comitatus.

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the accused in the massacre of 16 civilians in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, is from Washington state, my state. According to a KiroTV.com, he is 38-years-old and has spent 11 years in the Army. FoxNews provides a better report, telling of a “very mild-mannered” father to children aged 3 and 4.

Bales had been on three tours of duty to Iraq since 2003, military officials say, before being dispatched to Afghanistan, and had lost part of one foot in a “battle-related injury.”

“He wasn’t thrilled about going on another deployment,” said John Henry Browne, a defense attorney from Seattle. “He was told he wasn’t going back, and then he was told he was going.”

UPDATE II (2/26/2017): Napolitano-Koch Connection? (Sixth Sense)

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Old Right, Political Correctness, The State

As you all know, I was no fan of Freedom Watch, which, in my opinion, had that distinct CATO/Beltway, left-libertarian bent. The following item, via LewRockwell.com, seems to lend credence to the Napolitano-Koch connection:

“Last year, [Koch-allied board members] used their shares to place two of their operatives — Kevin Gentry and Nancy Pfotenhauer — on our board against the wishes of every single board member save for David Koch. Last Thursday, they used their shares to force another four new board members on us (the most that their shares would allow at any given meeting); Charles Koch, Ted Olson (hired council for Koch Industries), Preston Marshall (the largest shareholder of Koch Industries save for Charles and David), and Andrew Napolitano (a frequent speaker at Koch-sponsored events). Those four — who had not previously been involved with Cato either financially or organizationally — were likewise opposed by every member of our board save for Gentry, Pfotenhauer, and David Koch. To make room for these Koch operatives, we were forced to remove four long-time, active board members, two of whom were our biggest donors. At this moment, the Kochs now control seven of our 16 board seats, two short of outright control.”

UPDATE I (March 7): My sixth sense doesn’t often fail me. I sensed something fishy about Napolitano. Was he intertwined with the Kochtopus or what? No wonder every women on Freedom Watch was from the (CATO run, as we find out) Independent Women’s Forum.

Read “Cato and the Kochs.”

UPDATE II (2/26/2017): The Rockwell link has disappeared. Fishy? But here is another hyperlink that suggests Andrew Napolitano was being pushed at CATO by lefty moguls, the Koch Brothers.

“Cato and the Kochs” by Will Wilkinson:

It seems clear enough that the Kochs are trying to take over by stacking the board. I have no idea what they’re up to, but judging from their board nominees and appointees, it doesn’t look at all good. On the other hand, the hand-wringing over the new Koch-nominated board members–Ted Olson, Andrew Napolitano, Nancy Pfotenhauer, and Kevin Gentry–strikes me as overwrought. It’s worth noting that David Koch has been on the Cato board for years, the whole time I was employed there and more, and I don’t remember anyone once suggesting he was an ideological or strategic danger to Cato’s mission. But suddenly he’s an existential threat! Cato and Cato’s chairman Bob Levy didn’t seem to have a huge problem with Ted Olson, a Solicitor General under G.W. Bush, when he was at Cato arguing for gay marriage on constitutional grounds. Andrew Napolitano is a stout libertarian who put a ton of Cato guys on Freedom Watch, his recently cancelled show on Fox Business. Cato executive VP David Boaz seems to get along pretty well, ideologically and otherwise, with Napolitano in this recent clip. …

“A stout libertarian” of The Left: That’s Judge Napolitano, at least until recently.

Save the People; Kill the European Superstate

Barack Obama, Debt, EU, Europe, Federalism, Foreign Policy, The State

The following excerpt is from this week’s column, “Save the People; Kill the European Superstate”:

“An honest man,” wrote Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged,” “is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.” Where does this leave the Greeks?

For the second time since 2010, Eurozone finance ministers threw Greece a “financial lifeline,” this time to the tune of $172 billion. The European banks have agreed to write-off more than 50 percent of the money owed by Greece, forgiving a $100 billion in debt.

Still, Athens, like Washington, is corrupt to the core. It continues to spend more than it takes in. Greek labor markets have yet to be liberalized. A high minimum wage impedes hiring. And, by BBC News’s accounting, “a habit of paying a ‘holiday bonus’ equal to one or two months’ extra pay” persists. One need not be a Delphic oracle to divine the next stage in Greece’s unraveling: a downgrading of the country’s credit rating to junk status.

“Austerity,” however, is a euphemism among politicians and their media pack animals for “long term retrenchment and reform” in the public sector. Implicit in their critique of “austerity” is that inflicting pain on the Greek state apparatus will inevitably destroy Greek society.

Au Contraire. State and society should never be conflated.

Try explaining to our president that the bigger the state, the smaller the civil society. …

Read the complete column, “Save the People; Kill the European Superstate.”

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My, My America Has Lots of Unemployed Engineers

Economy, Education, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Outsourcing, Technology, The State

Government has skewed the job market royally. In anticipation of the windfall from Obamacare, an enormous, probably artificial, expansion of the health-care sector is underway. This could explain the fact that biomedical engineers are so sought after; the specialty is among the best career choices for 2012. Computer software engineers are also in demand.

High unemployed and contracting wages in a well-educated population should make it much more viable to do in America engineering work that was previously done offshore.

Alas, there is another state-orchestrated central plan that impedes the employment of “25,000 unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or PhD and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working, but not as engineers.” (The Center for Immigration Studies)

• “In 2010, there were 25,000 unemployed U.S.-born individuals with engineering degrees who have a Master’s or PhD and another 68,000 with advanced degrees not in the labor force. There were also 489,000 U.S.-born individuals with graduate degrees who were working, but not as engineers.

• There are 101,000 U.S.-born individuals with an engineering degree who are unemployed.

• There are an additional 244,000 U.S.-born individuals under age 65 who have a degree in engineering but who are not in the labor market. This means they are not working nor are they looking for work, and are therefore not counted as unemployed.

• In addition to those unemployed and out of the labor force, there are an additional 1.47 million U.S.-born individuals who report they have an engineering degree and have a job, but do not work as engineers.

• Relatively low pay and perhaps a strong bias on the part of some employers to hire foreign workers seems to have pushed many American engineers out their profession.

• There are many different types of engineering degrees. But unemployment, non-work, or working outside of your field is common for Americans with many different types of engineering degrees. (Detailed employment figures for specific types of engineers are provided” at The Center for Immigration Studies.)