Update III: Who's Hiring? (Switzerland)

Affirmative Action, Canada, Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, Healthcare, Inflation, Labor, Regulation

GOVERNMENT IS. “The government will have to hire some 600,000 people during the four years of President Obama’s term. That would bump up the current workforce by a third,” reports MSNBC.

The New York Times informs that, “While the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs, according to a report issued Thursday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.”

It then adds a stupendously silly afterthought:

“Government jobs are always more stable than private sector jobs during downturns, but their ability to weather the current deep recession startled Donald J. Boyd, the senior fellow at the institute who wrote the report.”

[SNIP]

Government jobs come into being by political fiat, not by market forces or necessity. Political will is what sustains them; it is state force that accounts for their stability and longevity. This is why these jobs, so to speak, “write” their own conditions of employment.

Government jobs have another signal characteristic:

“Government job creation schemes are predicated on government taxing, borrowing or inflating the money supply—activities that reduce capital available to the private sector. Such programs are politically popular because they are visible. However, for every job ‘created’ by government, an unidentifiable job will be destroyed in the private sector.”

It’s a zero-sum game: The parasite is sucking the lifeblood of the host. The larger he gets, the weaker the host grows.

The growth of government, of course, means that many more leaches will be implementing onerous rules and regulations that make it even harder for the struggling private economy to recover.

Still, the Times is perplexed at “the disparity between the public and private sector job market.”

Update I: “CANADA’S private sector added 49,200 workers in August, the first time they have hired more than fired since September,” reports the AP.

Of greater interest is the fact that, “while the U.S. has seen 81 banks fail in 2009 alone, Canada has not experienced the failure of any major financial institution. There has been no crippling mortgage meltdown or banking crisis north of the border, where the financial sector is dominated by five large banks.”

Update II (Sept. 5): MILTON FRIEDMAN (Via Roy B.) on the fallacy of government as an agent of wealth creation and on needing production—goods and services—not spending:

Update III (Sept. Eighth): SWITZERLAND HAS “knocked the United States off the position as the world’s most competitive economy” (via Reuters & Drudge).

The U.S. as the world’s largest economy lost last year’s strong lead, slipping to number two for the first time since the introduction of the index in its current form in 2004.

The study also factors in a survey among business leaders, assessing for example the government’s efficiency or the flexibility of the labor market. …

The WEF applauded Switzerland for its capacity to innovate, sophisticated business culture, effective public services, excellent infrastructure and well-functioning goods markets.

If to go by the report, the depression is some kind of swine flu, which randomly infects some, but not other, banks. However, American banks were leveraged like no other financial institutions in the world. (I’m not including Zimbabwe’s banks, although maybe I should, given how close the US is to Tanzania with respect to the soundness of its banks: “In the assessment of banks’ soundness, the Alpine country still ranked 44th. U.S. banks fell to 108 — right behind Tanzania — and British banks to 126 in the ranking, now topped by Canada’s banks.”)

US banks were also uniquely subject to state-mandated affirmative-action lending: a “State-mandated spoils system for minorities.”

Wait until the insurance industry collapses because of an Obama decree against “discrimination” based on health status. This is the very definition of insurance. Remove the costs of risk taking and you remove the incentives to avoid risks. Doesn’t Dipstick associate this incentive structure with his oft-repeated objective: inculcating healthy habits in the population? Moreover, unless the industry can charge premiums based on risk, it becomes a non-profit. Remove profit from the insurance equation, and the industry will be on its way to croaking.

Update III: A Jeremiah-Wright Repeat Performance (Jones Gone)

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Socialism

Spare me a repeat performance of the Jeremiah Wright farce, only with Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, substituting for the Obamas’ preacher; and surfacing in YouTube clips while delivering Wright-like jeremiads lambasting white men and Western civilization, as every liberal lunatic and wimpish WASP pretends Obamby hardly knew the jejune Jones.

Can we skip this? Can this country’s anointed cognoscenti at least pretend to be familiar with the concept of a learning curve?

To quote ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper:

Van Jones,

“[a] top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into “evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”

Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called “Truther” movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. A source said Jones did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

It’s one thing to have voted for Obama; it’s quite another to walk around in a daze pretending the man has no relationship to the entourage of crazies that has been catapulted to power with him.

Incidentally, I am less perturbed by Jones’ affinity with 9/11 conspirators than with the vertiginous ignorance of economics that accompanies his green faith. The man’s mandate is to do serious damage.
Just as Obama intended.

Here’s a prophetic prediction (NOT): There are many Van Jones’ in the Obama administration. You’ll meet them in the fullness of time. Quit feigning surprise when they crawl out from their dank corners.

Update I (Sept.4): I TOLD YOU SO. The predictable LiveLeak and YouTube clips are surfacing showcasing this apparent anomaly in the Obama administration: a black man who is every bit as cynical and smug as Jeremiah Wright, and like him is consumed by savage rage and envy. But like Obama’s confidant and reverend of 20 years, Van Jones is somehow treated atomistically. Conservatives too are positing only whether he has a future; will he be fired, and what kind of vetting did he undergo. It is manifestly obvious to these pundits that Obama could not possibly have approved of such a man.

Once again, “The Real Slim Shady” slithers away successfully.

Update II: THE REAL STORY is this, courtesy of Byron York:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

Update III (Sept. 6): JONES FALLS ON HIS SWORD so that Obamby may retain his porcelainized image. My Way News:

“President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.”

Update II: Warning: Postal Worker Coming to A Clinic Near You (The Race Rot)

Affirmative Action, Debt, Economy, Film, Political Correctness, Race, Regulation, Socialism, The State

This week’s column, “Warning: Postal Worker Coming to A Clinic Near You,” is too lyrical for my liking. Nevertheless, if I’ve learned anything as a writer, it is the power of a personal story.

So do read about the latest incident in “a seven-year saga” at my local branch of the United States Postal Service.

The incident “was no more than a sadistic display of power, honed in a state monopoly, where captive ‘customers’ are pinned down like butterflies by ‘service providers.’ The discretion left to such petty tyrants is wide—fear of being fired minimal, if non-existent.”

“Just you wait until a postal worker of this caliber, subject to the same disincentives, is in charge of determining whether to schedule your emergency CAT Scan (or maybe not). You don’t wish to set that cat among the poor pigeons. These will be the very beasts rising out of the sea of statism unleashed by a government-controlled healthcare system.”

To get a glimpse of President Camacho’s post office, read “Warning: Postal Worker Coming to A Clinic Near You,” now up on WND.COM, and on Taki’s Magazine every weekend.

Update I (Sept. 4): Presumably, everyone who reads this blog has watched “Idiocracy.” It’s compulsory. I mention in “Warning: Postal Worker Coming to A Clinic Near You,” that the dialogue with “sour-Asian-lady-who-speaks-in-tongues” and “rude-African-American-guy” was precisely the kind of dialogue Joe Bauers, the protagonist in Mike Judge’s superb satire “Idiocracy,” had conducted with the “‘tarded” doctor character. Here’s a snippet (make sure to click on the sound clips for full effect):

Doctor (Justin Long): “Hey, how’s it hang, ese?”
Doctor: “Well, don’t wanna sound like a d-ck or nothin’, but, uh, it says on your chart that you’re bleeped up. Uh, you talk like a fag, and your sh-t’s all retarded. What I do is just like, like, you know… like, you know what I mean? Like– (chuckles)”
Joe: “No, I’m serious here.”
Doctor: “Don’t worry, scrot. Now, there are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded.” She’s a pilot now.
Joe: “I need for you to be serious for a second here, okay? I need help.”
Doctor: “There’s that fag talk we talked about.”

Update II (Sept. 5): THE RACE ROT. Before I address Mr. Davis’ fabulous letter, hereunder, which also rejects the “bigot” epithet another reader attached to me, check the column on Taki’s Magazine, where Richard Spencer, the young, hip (and dashing) editor posted a picture of the “‘tard” doc, screaming when he discovers Joe is an “unscannable.” I can’t get enough of “Idiocracy.”

Back to the cast in the column. “Sour-Asian-lady-who-speaks-in-tongues”: Yes, too many native Americans speak bad English, but not all speak in tongues. Ignoring her “heritage” would have made the column forced, artificial and phony.

Next: “Who ya gonna call? Ghost Busters!” Indeed, who did I call on to rescue me from the Asian service clerk? The African-American gentleman. At least I thought he was one. I asked sourpuss to call him because he had struck me on a previous session in the “coven” as standing head-and-shoulders above the rest in his pleasant, professional demeanor (and he was certainly buff). He turned out to be a “‘tard.”

Had I been concerned with race—or even prone to thinking in such terms—I would have mentioned that the “feral female PO devotee” who accosted me on my way out was white. Or that the sweet young woman who took the initiative and rescued me was Hispanic.

I did neither. When you tell a story, some facts contribute to the narrative; others don’t. If anything, shying away from these descriptions rings false and racist. I wrote spontaneously. I was plotting neither a PC or an un-PC piece.

I’m an individualist. However, I have also said the following in this interview with Dr. David Yeagley:

“Broad statements about aggregate group characteristics, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decision in their daily lives as to where to invest scarce and precious resources—to wit, one’s life and property—based on probabilities and generalities.”

So while I treat each and every person on his merit, I do not shy away from speaking openly about demographic data.

I once lamented that, “We used to be able to joke about stereotypes without shrieking, ‘racism, Anti-Semitism,’ ‘Occidentalism,’ ‘Orientalism,’ ‘Eurocentrism,’ and that, “There is some truth to them.”

Long Live Jack Kevorkian

America, Fascism, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Religion, The State

IN HIS OWN WORDS. Jack Kevorkian is a free man. And that makes him better than most: “The law can only stop a person from exercising a right”;”You cannot transgress a natural right”; “Religion puts your mind in a straitjacket”; “Maybe Michael Jackson craved [anesthetics] so much, the doctor administered them to keep him quiet. The patient got what he wanted”; “America is not the country you think it is. How free are you? You are as free as the law lets you be, and America is the greatest law factory in the world“; “We have a lot of traits of fascism in this country; Ayn Rand predicted it”; “Are we done as a country? We’re done as a free country, yes”; “Most people are enslaved sheep. They cry to the government, ‘Do something for me.'”
Bar one, I agree with all the aforementioned. Jack Kevorkian may be ideologically confused, but he is free and fiercely courageous.