Election Briefs (March 4)

Elections 2008, Political Philosophy

* Stretch out on the Freudian chaise lounge, and free-associate the word “McCain.” The first refrain to come to mind is POW. It’s the same reflex Rudy honed in his interlocutors after 9/11. You could sleep-walk the “Rudy/9/11” refrain. I don’t think I can take 4 years of the McCain mantra. It might be easier to abhor Obama.

* Care to hazard a guess as to the reason for the obsessive calls for candidates who aren’t winning to quit? What is it with the media and other members of the chattering class out there, who cannot tolerate discordant, fractious voices, or competition in government? Words such as “spoiler” should be scorned in this context. Ditto “to unify the party.” The idea that a campaigner should slink away with his tail between his legs so as not to steal votes from the bigger tickets, or sow confusion—that’s contemptible. The greater the political chaos, the greater the chance for real political change. Oh, I get it, the Media-Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex craves consensus. In this way, positions as gate-keepers of permissible opinion are secured.

Update: Media clucked about the need for Hillary to bow out for the reasons enumerated above. What do you know; she won big in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island. The New York Times is still using moribund terminology to describe her gains. Apparently, she is barely keeping her candidacy alive. Let’s wait and see.

Although finality has yet to be reached on the Democratic front, the same consensus-seekers can at least rejoice in Huckabee’s quitting.

Choosing Forms of Slavery

Economy, Taxation

‘No Tax’ then ‘Flat Tax’

Repealing the income tax is the fairest “system” possible. You own yourself, your labor, and the rewards therefrom, lock-stock-and-barrel. But if we have to choose between forms of enslavement, as we indeed do, then the flat tax is the best.

I disagree with the “Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation” for laboring to allay the “fears” of thieving politicians about the decrease in revenues a flat tax rate portends. Let the parasites live within their means.

Still, this information about the global flat tax trend from the CF & P Foundation is important–it relays the degree to which the US will be left in the dust if it doesn’t begin to play economic catch up. (But the band plays on, and the ship of fools keeps featuring the Huckster’s or Neal Boortz’s Fair Tax fatuity.

This from the CF & P Foundation:

“… The number will probably be higher by the time you are reading this, but as this article went to press, 24 nations have adopted some form of single-rate tax regime. These reforms have generated impressive results, including faster growth, more jobs, and increased competitiveness. While politicians generally are most concerned about losing tax revenue, they should not worry. Flat tax systems oftentimes generate higher tax revenues because of more income and better compliance.

The economic consequences of tax reform are positive, but the political implications also are profound. Governments are deciding – in part because labor and capital can cross national borders to escape punitive tax rates – that it no longer makes sense to discriminate against highly-productive taxpayers. Thanks to tax competition, expect the number of flat tax countries to continue to grow.”

US In The Red And Getting Redder

China, Economy

“It’s time we came clean about our economic system. The Chinese are honest about theirs; they call it “socialism with Chinese characteristic.” We call ours free-market capitalism, when in fact it is a Third Way system too: “Socialism with American characteristics.”

The picture of China to emerge from behind those pretty Chinese screens is complex. The embodiment of feng shui it is not. The trend, however, is unmistakable: China is becoming freer, America less free. The devil is in this detail.”

An excerpt from my latest WorldNetDaily.com column, “US In The Red And Getting Redder.”

Update: Charlie Rose was interviewing one of the establishment’s orientalists du jour. The latter referred to something another wise wag once said: India is an open society but the Indians are a closed-minded people; China is a closed society, but the Chinese are an open-minded people. Evidence of the latter is the Chinese’s rush to embrace free-market capitalism and a thoroughly western wired-up life style.

By the way, image if a Westerner dares to play to racial or ethnic type as this good fellow does.

Updated: Foul Tom Friedman

Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Journalism, Media, Neoconservatism, Pseudoscience

Thomas Friedman, the mustachioed crunchy-neocon, can’t go wrong. He was wrong about Iraq, but that didn’t come back to bite him. What’s a little war between friends? He purports to understand free market economics, yet, on the Late Night Show, he complained that not enough capitalists were developing green technologies—the most lucrative potential market there is, says Friedman.
Let’s see: Is this because capitalists are not as smart as Tom Friedman, a statist ponce who pimps for the powers that be? Naturally, Friedman is being holier than thou. Scientists are fiddling with green technologies all the time; industrialists, not so much, since the scientists have yet to find a way to make these technologies commercially viable.
The profit motive, Mr. Friedman, ensures resources are directed to their most efficient use. Technologies that aren’t commercially viable are too expensive; aren’t profitable and are, therefore, invariably wasteful—of the very resources they aim to preserve.
Friedman, who got behind the neoconservative Manifest Destiny, is hungry for a new National Greatness Agenda. I guess exporting democracy didn’t go that well. In the Green Agenda he sees “a new unifying political movement for the 21st century.” Hence his motto: “Green is the new red, white and blue.”
Reincarnation of the Reds” is more like it.
Americans have been fooled by the likes of Friedman, but the British Times Literary Supplement panned his last book—the reviewer had little good to say about Friedman’s reasoning.
As I’ve said, my only consolation is that the gangreens “are worried sick about the planet—genuinely…The Worry Factor may just increase the rate at which this particular invasive species falls off the earth.”
Come to think about it, the ethically challenged Friedman didn’t care much about the casualties of an unjust war; I’m sure he doesn’t lose sleep over alleged global warming.
Friedman’s grammar: he said “more fit,” and “more strong,” when he should have said “fitter and stronger.” And he polluted with a mouthful of cute coinages, such as “global weirding,” and by saying we should have an “earth race” (as opposed to an arms race, supposedly) with China. Puke.

Update (Feb 27): Cooling Trend. From “Daily Tech,” via WorldNetDaily:
“Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.”

Update II: George Reisman, Ph.D, sends along this apropos comment:

“As the ice thickens in the Arctic and in Antarctica and record cold temperatures are recorded practically across the world [SEE BELOW], so too does the ice thin—under the feet of the environmentalists and their global warming crusade. It may almost be time to begin speculating on what will follow global warming as the next great scare.”

George is referring to the appropriately humorous title of Sen. Inhofe’s circular: “Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way.” You can find a good collection of up-to-date articles here on the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.