UPDATE II: Thomas Jefferson On Debt & Despotism (S & P Simply I.Ding The Corpse)

Constitution, Debt, Founding Fathers, Liberty

In the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, observes Marco Bassani, “the greatest danger came from the possibility of legislators plunging citizens into debt.” Bassani, a professor of history and political theory at the university of Milan, Italy (and a Facebook friend), has written perhaps the best book on “the political theory of Thomas Jefferson.”

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude,” quotes Bassani in Liberty, State & Union. The “fore horse” for oppression and despotism is public debt [which is better relabeled government debt]. “Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression” (p. 106).

If only the high-minded Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, had written the Constitution with crooks in mind.

UPDATE I (April 18): What took them so long? Standard & Poor’s has cut the American credit outlook to negative, reports Bloomberg.com:

“S&P assigned a one-in-three chance it will lower the U.S. rating in the next two years, saying the credit crisis and recession that began in 2008 worsened a deterioration in public finances. Budget differences among Democrats and Republicans remain wide and it may take until after the 2012 elections to get a proposal that addresses the concern, S&P said.”

And that’s not the half of it.

Despite the skewed reporting on the move, even the New York Times recognized that what the following sources say must be included in their report, today:

“The idea that the U.S. public finances are on an unsustainable trajectory is hardly new news,” economists from Capital Economics said in a research note. “Indeed, we warned that the U.S. might be downgraded, or at least put on negative watch, as far back as nearly two years ago.”

What has “You-Can’t Fix Stupid” got to say for himself? He blames partisanship, of course, for the S & P’s belated reality check—but then responds to the economic reality reflected in the S&P’s downgrade with … a wave of his magic political wand:

For their part, administration officials played down the revision while reiterating Washington’s determination to act. Treasury officials “believe S.&P.’s negative outlook underestimates the ability of America’s leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation,” an assistant secretary for financial markets, Mary J. Miller, said in a statement.
President Obama has initiated a bipartisan process that will help make progress on restoring fiscal responsibility, the statement said.
“I think this is fundamentally S.&.P’s making a political judgment,” said Austan Goolsbee, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, in an interview with Bloomberg TV news, pointed out that President Obama in a recent speech had said that there would be actions taken to promote fiscal responsibility. “I don’t think that the S&P’s political judgment is right.”

UPDATE II: I.DING THE CORPSE. The S&P’s “special talent is to arrive at the morgue and predict the demise of the deceased,” writes the Financial Post’s Terence Corcoran.

The United States has already forfeited its role as the economic leader of the world. Under the Obama administration’s program of rising debt, soak-the-rich tax policies, spending expansions and regulatory overkill, America is already establishing itself as a fiscal and economic mediocrity.

TSA Screening Aims To Subdue Citizenry

Fascism, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Terrorism, The State

If there was ever any doubt in your mind that the TSA and its home grown terrorists aim to cow the population into submission, not to protect it, read on:

“Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 ‘behavioral indicators’ that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially ‘high risk’ passengers at the nation’s airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

But one addresses passengers’ attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: ‘Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures.'”

[SNIP]

Remember when a secret Missouri State police report, “entitled ‘The Modern Militia Movement,’ and dated February 20, 2009,” warned about subversives like … me? Apparently, this scribe has the makings of a militia member, and then some. One of the incriminating telltale signs the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) was on the look out for were Ron Paul stickers. (I have one on my car. It reads: “Don’t blame me, I supported Ron Paul.”) Also deemed a sign of subversion was the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag (which has snaked across the front page of this website, where my seditious work is stored, since 2008). Everyone was supposed to keep their eyes peeled for “paraphernalia” associated with the patriot movement.

Now our oppressors have added another sign of insurrection: protesting the roger-and radiate routine at the nation’s airports. This is far more perverse than the aforementioned clues because verbal protests over the violations of individual rights are now equated with sedition.

UPDATED: ‘You Can’t Fix Stupid’

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Government, Intelligence, Political Philosophy, Reason, Socialism, Taxation

The following is from my new, WND column, “You Can’t Fix Stupid”:

“How stupid is President Barack Hussein Obama? Let me count the ways.

Judging from the philosophical pose he struck during Wednesday’s “debt-reduction” address, the president is so stupid as to believe that the “rugged individualism,” “self-reliance,” and “healthy skepticism of too much government”—all qualities he attributed to the American people in that speech — can survive in the shadow of his government.

During his two years in office, Mr. Obama has accrued more debt than any president in American history. Why, in the month of March alone, his souped-up civil servants spent eight times what they collected in tax receipts and revenues.

For every year their honcho has been in office, the Obama officials have devoured over a trillion dollars, and will put Americans in hock to the tune of $1 trillion in interest payments alone, by the end of this decade, if not sooner.

How stupid is our president? So stupid as to believe that the governmental juggernaut over which he presides is what connects us a nation, and ensures that “we … do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.”

How stupid is Obama? So stupid as to believe that America became a great country in 1935, which is when the earliest of the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security entitlements was signed into law. Dummy did, after all, declare yesterday that, “We would not be a great country without [these programs]”? …

… But, as Ron White, that great satirist from the great State of Texas, teaches, ‘You can’t fix stupid.’

‘There is not a pill you can take, not a class you can go to. Stupid is forever.'”

Read the complete column, “You Can’t Fix Stupid,” now on WND.COM.

UPDATE (April 15): An Ivy-League education is increasingly not indicative of intelligence. What with affirmative action, one can hardly assume that Obama’s admission to these institutions bodes well for his IQ. It certainly does nothing of the sort for his wife’s; anyone who has read her graduation thesis will confirm what I’m saying. This effort is written on a high-school level. Obama’s transcripts remain well-concealed. Despite being appointed as an editor for the Harvard Law Review, Obama has never written a serious jouranl article for this publication.

Obama’s easy passage through this country’s finest schools shows just how worthless these once-proud institutions have become, and how worthwhile it is to be a privileged minority. (Or, in the case of Bush, McCain’s mindless daughter, and the likes—to belong to an American political dynasty.)

By the way, I agree that BHO has the cunning of a fox. But that’s a far cry from the brilliance with which he has been credited.

A Pit Of Perverse Incentives

Free Markets, Government, Political Economy, Regulation, Socialism, The State

Any government-controlled system is a pit of perverse incentives. It’s hard to get kinkier than to make failure tantamount to success. If an airplane crashes, in the US, because an air-traffic controller was napping, his bosses have cause to celebrate. Why? Because they will be rewarded with more funds to ostensibly “fix the problem,” and more staff, whether they need it or not. Failure is defined as success in a socialized system.

No wonder the FAA, and Ray LaHood, the US transportation secretary, flailed about aimlessly when a US air traffic controller was caught sleeping “while a medical flight was landing in the state of Nevada, marking the fifth lapse so far this year among controllers at American airports.” They faffed because they have no way of “diagnosing” the problem in an unaccountable system, which is not subject to the controls imposed by private property: an owner furious at the looming loss of contracts, law suits, and bankruptcy.

Show me a company in the private sector (which is not the recipient of government handouts) that is shielded from bankruptcy. An audit would reveal that most government departments, the FAA included, are insolvent, yet the fact that the taxpayer is forced to bankroll them indefinitely with tax dollars, immunizes these systems against all forms of accountability, fiscal and other.

Why do some of you want your doctor operating under the same set of incentives, where the doctor gets off scotfree for the odd slip of the scalpel; the taxpayer (you) pays.