I wasn't going to write about Walter Cronkite even once, much less twice, I really wasn't. I figured - correctly - that the coverage of the man upon the occasion of his death would be positive, unquestioning and tinged with adoration, but then the Media decided they couldn't let such an occasion go without using it as they have on numerous other occasions to simultaneously deny the existence of Left Wing media bias, then admit to its existence but rationalize whether or not it made any difference. So it goes with so many Left Wing Premises; most are inherently contradictory, but it's not like anybody is calling them on it. And Walter Cronkite not only lived these Premises, he was the progenitor.
This story has three acts: 1) The Usual Suspects portray Cronkite as a towering pre-eminence during his career; 2) they emphasize his so-called integrity in reporting; 3) they use the reports of his post-broadcasting career Leftie radicalism as proof-positive of the aforementioned integrity.
On the first point, to read the tributes to Walter Cronkite, you would think that America didn't watch anybody else in the 60s and 70s when it came to the evening news. OffHisMeds actually had his belly-full of Cronkite as far back as the late 60s, given his blatant advocacy of all Democrat initiatives and the intentions of all Democrats, particularly people like John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. There was never a Big Government program Walter didn't like, and his sycophancy for anything to do with the space program was legendary.
And while Cronkite was the most popular of Anchors during most of his tenure, there were definitely others, including Huntley/Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, and later Jim Reynolds. After about 1970, OffHisMeds resolutely sought out these alternatives to Uncle Walter for the rest of his career, largely because Cronkite's habit of promoting his advocacy for Big Government was not emulated by Huntley, Brinkley, Smith et al, and thus, their greater appeal to viewers of a more discriminating sort.
Not that I boycotted him entirely. As was the case with his ideological successors - people like Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Brian Williams - I would, in fact, check out Cronkite every once in a while, just to see if he was still the unashamed cheerleader of the Left that I perceived him to be, and Cronkite would never disappoint.
Cronkite worked his bias into his reporting in many subtle ways, while still maintaining the mien of the impartial reporter: what stories got told was the most obvious means; which facts were given emphasis, and which were not; who was interviewed, and who was not.
Cronkite was a big Rooter for the Great Society, an ironic development inasmuch as he stabbed it's author, Lyndon Johnson in the back over Viet Nam. His starry-eyed advocacy for all the worst ideas ever to come out of NASA resulted in our abandonment of Space Exploration and the past 40 years of failure. True to his Big Government-loving roots, when somebody suggested launching a skyscraper into low Earth orbit as the next grand objective for NASA, Walter thought that was just a dandy idea, and the Space Shuttle was born. That is when I knew for certain he was a Big Government Obamite. Who else could conceive to launch a building into space, when a simple ship would do?
Cronkite was universally proclaimed to be unbiased in his coverage, but that was more a product of the age he worked in than evidence of any journalistic integrity. The fact that we knew little of Cronkite's off-camera Liberal advocacy during his broadcast years is a direct result of the prevailing Media ethos of the day regarding prominent men: the reporting of indiscretions out of the official spotlight was censored, pure and simple. The same ethos that allowed John F. Kennedy to plow through Hollywood starlets and mob-connected hookers by the dozen was the ethos that allowed the Media to ignore Cronkite's sundry engagements with - and advocacy of - all the Far Left causes he so treasured.
Dan Rather could only dream being granted that same lack of adult supervision. He might still be a lion of the airwaves instead of the creepy conspiracy theorist he's become, broadcasting out of a closet somewhere in America, his audience numbered in the low three digits, bound and determined to locate "Kenneth" and once and for all unravel his cryptic comments about "the frequency".
After his retirement in the early 80s, old Walter "came out" in a big way, supporting every Looney Lefty cause, embracing every Democrat and defaming every Conservative. He tried his damndest to discredit Ronald Reagan, the best president of the 20th century, and his support of Jimmy Carter was legendary. And through it all, he gave the same phony argument as Dan Rather and every other Agenda Broadcaster that his reportage was unbiased.
Once Walter came out, people of course leapt to his defense. Yes, they said, Walter may have been liberal, even ultra liberal, even Uber-liberal, but - and this is important - he never let it affect his objectivity. How many frigging times must we hear that from Liberals to explain the reasons why they are allowed to inflict their views on America, all whilst claiming some mythical impartiality? Call a Spade a Spade, I says.
One last anecdote: the story is told in various ways of his opinion of the man who replaced him, the hapless Dan Rather. From Cronkite's retirement until the occasion of his death, most of America was ambiguous about the fact that Cronkite had been forced into retirement, much less that Dan Rather had replaced him. This clearly drove Cronkite crazy, and OffHisMeds believes he had a point. When it came to newsreading, Rather clearly couldn't hold Cronkite's jockstrap. And yet, the Public greeted his departure with a collective yawn, then got about their daily lives, dealing with the Stagflation that was ruining their lives that was caused by the Democrats that Cronkite had spent his life fluffing up.
Cronkite was pissed, and he never got over it. So pissed, he flogged Rather for the rest of his life, accosting complete strangers and using sundry venues to criticize Rather to anybody who would listen. The most public of these critiques was mere days after Rather was himself forced into retirement in 2005, as mean a thing as one professional could do to another. But here we see Cronkite unfiltered: petty, vindictive, and not surprisingly, conducting himself upon the occasion of being forced out of the anchor chair exactly like Dan Rather, the man who replaced him.
It is all irrelevant now, of course. With any luck, Walter Cronkite stepped briskly into the Great Beyond, Gaia's door just barely missing his backside on the way out, a grateful nation - apparently with the exception of OffHisMeds and a handful of others - dabbing a single tear from their eye.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
The Trade Deficit And Republican Stupidity
There was an interesting article in the papers Friday about South Korea fining Qualcomm - an American company and the largest maker of cell phone chips in the world - $208 million for competing too effectively in South Korea. Seems Qualcomm was doing such nefarious things as offering rebates to cellphone makers who purchased larger quantities of their product. If like me you think it's weird to punish a manufacturer for incenting their customers to buy more of their stuff, it's important to understand that this is SOP not only in South Korea, but with most of our other trading partners as well. The EU (Europian Union), for example, fines Microsoft and Intel hundreds of millions per year for doing their jobs too well, thus frustrating the development of French - or at the very least Euro - alternatives to their Operating Systems and Microprocessor monopolies. European and South Korean monopolies, meanwhile, are unscathed.
As you might suspect, Qualcomm has a competitor in South Korea named Samsung. Why is this remarkable? Because until recently, Samsung - the largest manufacturer of cell phones in the world - got most of their chips from Qualcomm, and even declared Qualcomm "Best Supplier of the Year" in 2003. Then, Samsung got into the mobile phone chip business, reverse-engineering Qualcomm technology to get their start. Now Samsung produces state of the art 4G chips, and is busily eliminating Qualcomm as a supplier. So, scratch Samsung as a customer for Qualcomm products. Qualcomm's dire situation is not unlike American cell phone manufacturer Motorola, both of whom have been blocked from South Korea's markets, have lost market share, and are at risk of going out of business. Both are also competitors of Samsung.
If this sounds like Mercantilism, it's because it is. Mercantilism, of course, is the practice of a nation imposing laws and trade regulations that explicitly encourage their manufacturing sector and exports while blocking exports from competing nations. As a practice, it stinks to high heavens if you're from a nation that does not practice Mercantilism, because it leaves your manufacturing sector - and eventually your national security - prey to foreigners who wish you harm.
When it comes to mercantilist trade practices, you should know that OffHisMeds starts smelling that stink the minute he reads an article on trade with the words "South Korea" in it. Pound for pound, South Korea is arguably the biggest and most bloated tic on the backside of America, simultaneously blocking most exports from America while exploiting our open trade practices to destroy American manufacturers. Just ask Democrat Congressman John Dingle if he's had any luck in his now generational effort to get the Koreans to buy any automobile parts from the U.S. He's been at it since the early 80s.
Meanwhile, fifty five years after the Korean War, they're still living off our military, 30,000 strong on the Korean peninsula, a bulwark against the starving masses in North Korea lest they manage to scrape together enough carbohydrates to drag themselves to the 38th parallel so as to die by the hundreds of thousands at the tip of American bayonets, from American bullets, or under American bombs. Meanwhile South Koreans will be sipping tea, eating Kimchi and dreaming up their next anti-American boondoggle, "safe in the rear with the gear" as our fighting men like to say of those too chicken - or lazy - to fight.
The fact that most Koreans disrespect our troops is mere salt in the wounds. The fact that America spends some $40 billion yearly (6% of our defense budget) protecting South Korea - much of which is spent in South Korea - is simply more of the same.
Which brings us to Republican stupidity. As mindless free traders, the mantra of my party for two generations has been that Free Trade trumps all, even when your trading partners block your products, subsidize their own, steal your intellectual property and then use it against you to destroy your industries. It's OK for them to let America provide all of their protection, then use the taxes they don't have to spend on defense to perpetuate their trade advantage with the U.S. It's even OK for them to confiscate the profits of American corporations on bogus anti-trust regulation, further lining their pockets at the expense of American industry, American consumers, and ultimately, American taxpayers.
This has been a bi-partisan effort, mind you. Democrats love the status quo because it encourages internationalism, the United Nations and other anti-American institutions devoted to the dilution of American hegemony. And forcing Americans to surrender their wealth so that wealth can be used to destroy America is a logical extension of Democrat policies that encourage Internationalism, most recently expressed by Obama's strategy for Cap and Trade penalties on American corporations, with billions flowing directly into the bank accounts of the world's biggest polluters, including countries like China. China of course, will use that money to further subsidize the cost of exports to America, further destroying our industrial base, and using their dollars to snap up America's stocks, business, property, and what few factories are left.
What sane nation would do these things? What sane nation would so subsidize their own self-destruction? Only one: the United States of America; which brings me back to Stupid Republicans. Unlike Democrats, Republicans are not in thrall to the concept of one world governance as a means to perpetuate their electoral advantage at home, nor do they believe that destroying the dollar will lead to political nirvana, as do Democrats, so it makes no sense for them to encourage policies that lead to our self-destruction.
So why do so many prominent Republicans enable this crap? The simple reason is that none of them - none of them - lives in the real world. This will be a topic OffHisMeds expands on in future posts, but it is irrefutable. Having sung the mantra of "free markets" for so long, all Free Traders have painted themselves into a rhetorical corner which forces them to continue to claim that America benefits as long as markets are open.
Virtually none of them has even contemplated whether or not there is any level of deindustrialization in America that would harm us, nor will they. And yet, America's industrial base has shrunk from over 50% of GDP since the 50's to 10% of GDP today. That means 90% of our economic activity is insurance, government, lawyering, keen financial instruments like Derivatives, Americans selling their houses back and forth to each other and sundry other similar "services". Unfortunately, none of the rest of the world wants these things, which means the trillions of dollars we export in the form of Import purchases come back as investments. This drives up the stock markets, which many brain-dead Republicans look on all too often as an unmitigated good.
Until, of course, a landed gentry of Arab potentates, Russian Mafia and Chinese Warlords own America, with our children as their serfs.
This script has been repeated time and time again. South Korea is not unique in their predatory ways, China is the 6 Trillion pound Mercantilist gorilla, and arguably, even the French and Germans still have a thing or two to teach the world when it comes to ingratitude, opportunism and anti-Americanism. But that doesn't mean we've got to bend over and take it.
Unless of course you're a Free Trader, in which case you probably mistook that cold pressure in your rectal area for, say, another "market correction", and an inevitable consequence of "the business cycle", instead of the world class corn-holing it most surely is.
As you might suspect, Qualcomm has a competitor in South Korea named Samsung. Why is this remarkable? Because until recently, Samsung - the largest manufacturer of cell phones in the world - got most of their chips from Qualcomm, and even declared Qualcomm "Best Supplier of the Year" in 2003. Then, Samsung got into the mobile phone chip business, reverse-engineering Qualcomm technology to get their start. Now Samsung produces state of the art 4G chips, and is busily eliminating Qualcomm as a supplier. So, scratch Samsung as a customer for Qualcomm products. Qualcomm's dire situation is not unlike American cell phone manufacturer Motorola, both of whom have been blocked from South Korea's markets, have lost market share, and are at risk of going out of business. Both are also competitors of Samsung.
If this sounds like Mercantilism, it's because it is. Mercantilism, of course, is the practice of a nation imposing laws and trade regulations that explicitly encourage their manufacturing sector and exports while blocking exports from competing nations. As a practice, it stinks to high heavens if you're from a nation that does not practice Mercantilism, because it leaves your manufacturing sector - and eventually your national security - prey to foreigners who wish you harm.
When it comes to mercantilist trade practices, you should know that OffHisMeds starts smelling that stink the minute he reads an article on trade with the words "South Korea" in it. Pound for pound, South Korea is arguably the biggest and most bloated tic on the backside of America, simultaneously blocking most exports from America while exploiting our open trade practices to destroy American manufacturers. Just ask Democrat Congressman John Dingle if he's had any luck in his now generational effort to get the Koreans to buy any automobile parts from the U.S. He's been at it since the early 80s.
Meanwhile, fifty five years after the Korean War, they're still living off our military, 30,000 strong on the Korean peninsula, a bulwark against the starving masses in North Korea lest they manage to scrape together enough carbohydrates to drag themselves to the 38th parallel so as to die by the hundreds of thousands at the tip of American bayonets, from American bullets, or under American bombs. Meanwhile South Koreans will be sipping tea, eating Kimchi and dreaming up their next anti-American boondoggle, "safe in the rear with the gear" as our fighting men like to say of those too chicken - or lazy - to fight.
The fact that most Koreans disrespect our troops is mere salt in the wounds. The fact that America spends some $40 billion yearly (6% of our defense budget) protecting South Korea - much of which is spent in South Korea - is simply more of the same.
Which brings us to Republican stupidity. As mindless free traders, the mantra of my party for two generations has been that Free Trade trumps all, even when your trading partners block your products, subsidize their own, steal your intellectual property and then use it against you to destroy your industries. It's OK for them to let America provide all of their protection, then use the taxes they don't have to spend on defense to perpetuate their trade advantage with the U.S. It's even OK for them to confiscate the profits of American corporations on bogus anti-trust regulation, further lining their pockets at the expense of American industry, American consumers, and ultimately, American taxpayers.
This has been a bi-partisan effort, mind you. Democrats love the status quo because it encourages internationalism, the United Nations and other anti-American institutions devoted to the dilution of American hegemony. And forcing Americans to surrender their wealth so that wealth can be used to destroy America is a logical extension of Democrat policies that encourage Internationalism, most recently expressed by Obama's strategy for Cap and Trade penalties on American corporations, with billions flowing directly into the bank accounts of the world's biggest polluters, including countries like China. China of course, will use that money to further subsidize the cost of exports to America, further destroying our industrial base, and using their dollars to snap up America's stocks, business, property, and what few factories are left.
What sane nation would do these things? What sane nation would so subsidize their own self-destruction? Only one: the United States of America; which brings me back to Stupid Republicans. Unlike Democrats, Republicans are not in thrall to the concept of one world governance as a means to perpetuate their electoral advantage at home, nor do they believe that destroying the dollar will lead to political nirvana, as do Democrats, so it makes no sense for them to encourage policies that lead to our self-destruction.
So why do so many prominent Republicans enable this crap? The simple reason is that none of them - none of them - lives in the real world. This will be a topic OffHisMeds expands on in future posts, but it is irrefutable. Having sung the mantra of "free markets" for so long, all Free Traders have painted themselves into a rhetorical corner which forces them to continue to claim that America benefits as long as markets are open.
Virtually none of them has even contemplated whether or not there is any level of deindustrialization in America that would harm us, nor will they. And yet, America's industrial base has shrunk from over 50% of GDP since the 50's to 10% of GDP today. That means 90% of our economic activity is insurance, government, lawyering, keen financial instruments like Derivatives, Americans selling their houses back and forth to each other and sundry other similar "services". Unfortunately, none of the rest of the world wants these things, which means the trillions of dollars we export in the form of Import purchases come back as investments. This drives up the stock markets, which many brain-dead Republicans look on all too often as an unmitigated good.
Until, of course, a landed gentry of Arab potentates, Russian Mafia and Chinese Warlords own America, with our children as their serfs.
This script has been repeated time and time again. South Korea is not unique in their predatory ways, China is the 6 Trillion pound Mercantilist gorilla, and arguably, even the French and Germans still have a thing or two to teach the world when it comes to ingratitude, opportunism and anti-Americanism. But that doesn't mean we've got to bend over and take it.
Unless of course you're a Free Trader, in which case you probably mistook that cold pressure in your rectal area for, say, another "market correction", and an inevitable consequence of "the business cycle", instead of the world class corn-holing it most surely is.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Walter Cronkite Without The Sugar Coating
It started with the tributes following his death, I guess. The endless encomia on what a great man Walter Cronkite was: his towering presence; his integrity; and my favorite, the slogan "the most trusted man in America".
It all got to be a bit much.
The most laughable myth is that his reportage was unbiased. Cronkite's coverage reeked of bias. OffHisMeds well remembers his effort to disarm America during the Viet Nam war by misportraying the Tet Offensive - in which North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong were decisively defeated in an attack upon the South - as a disastrous military defeat for the United States. To revisit his treatment of the Tet Offensive is to read words that never would have come out of the mouth of an uber-partisan Dan Rather, and this in the golden age of so-called unbiased reporting.
In reviewing Cronkite's words and deeds during the Viet Nam War, one also appreciates that he wrote the manual on Media activism, and gave birth to the notion that the "Fifth Estate" - through their advocacy - was a legitimate arm of government, regardless of the fact that nobody voted for them to be so. If Media activism was the disease, Walter Cronkite was Patient Zero, blithely infecting the many others that were to come, and always in the service of radical Lefty beliefs.
But back to cases, and specifically the Viet Nam War. Cronkite's misrepresentations during the conflict were numerous:
- With the Tet Offensive, Cronkite declared defeat in 1968, a mere two and a half years after America's commitment of combat troops to Viet Nam. He openly advocated for "terms" and explicitly stated that the terms negotiated should not be those of a victorious United States. It's amazing to think that, Cronkite's prognostications notwithstanding, South Viet Nam managed to hang in there another five years. It's equally amazing that anybody - journalist or politician - could so blatantly advocate for surrender.
- He misportrayed the South Vietnamese as hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, and worse than North Viet Nam. With the hindsight of fifty years, but that America had a client state now with anywhere near the backbone that South Vietnam showed back in the 60s and 70s.
- He worked to discredit the "domino theory" of communism over-running Southeast Asia, absent a presence by the United States, a theory that would become reality with the fall of South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and other countries, culminating in the slaughter of millions and the banishment of millions more.
- Cronkite made little mention of the fact that North Viet Nam was a Soviet client state, and that their aggressions against the South would have been impossible without the massive militarization of that country by the Communists. Cronkite was also silent on the culpability of the Soviets in prolonging the conflict. It is strange that he should have so many words of criticism for the United States in the conflict, but none for the Evil Empire.
- Cronkite gave credence to the myth that America routinely exaggerated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualties. This was one of the means by which the Left devastated the credibility of our military and forced our withdrawal from the war.
- Most damning of all, Cronkite rationalized not only the disastrous "limited war" strategy imposed by Democrats, wherein the U.S. and South Vietnam were damned to a perpetual holding action, but the "escalation" theory then so popular with Liberals, wherein any conflict with a Soviet puppet that did not have an outcome pleasing to the Soviets might ultimately escalate into nuclear war. Hear him in his own words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdOb_183d1o
The fact that the whole Liberal appeasement movement - which Cronkite supported - was philosophically attuned to accept Communism's bona fides at face value while simultaneously glossing over Communism's many atrocities, gave legitimacy for far too long a period of time to a movement that - while finally being relegated to the dustbin of history by Ronald Reagan in 1991 - hung in there at least thirty years longer than it needed to, thanks in part to people like Walter Cronkite.
Cronkite had no problem perpetuating the notion of a moral equivalency of Communism and American-style Democracy. His comments pre and post his journalistic career reflect a modest but creepy sympathy not just with Communism, but Soviet Communism, and his actions while he was a reporter and news reader reflected that. He fanned the flames of the anti-war movement and ultimately, his war agenda was indistinguishable from Jane Fonda's, minus her unfortunate photo op mounting a North Vietnamese Triple A, and his ability to make even the most unreasonable words sound reasonable.
In the end, Walter Cronkite was a Lefty, reflexively critical of American Exceptionalism, and a believer in a One World Order that compromised American hegemony. He was also an anti-anti communist, and a perhaps not-so-unwitting enabler of communism. In that, he had a long and distinguished list of predecessors, including I.F. Stone and Walter Duranty, albeit that they were both on the Soviet payroll, and he was not.
Walter Cronkite was many things, including a distinguished reporter and an anchor whose rhetorical skills and delivery were unmatched in the history of television news. What he most decidedly was not, however, was a man capable of separating his political beliefs from his journalism. He not only did it, he reveled in it.
It all got to be a bit much.
The most laughable myth is that his reportage was unbiased. Cronkite's coverage reeked of bias. OffHisMeds well remembers his effort to disarm America during the Viet Nam war by misportraying the Tet Offensive - in which North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong were decisively defeated in an attack upon the South - as a disastrous military defeat for the United States. To revisit his treatment of the Tet Offensive is to read words that never would have come out of the mouth of an uber-partisan Dan Rather, and this in the golden age of so-called unbiased reporting.
In reviewing Cronkite's words and deeds during the Viet Nam War, one also appreciates that he wrote the manual on Media activism, and gave birth to the notion that the "Fifth Estate" - through their advocacy - was a legitimate arm of government, regardless of the fact that nobody voted for them to be so. If Media activism was the disease, Walter Cronkite was Patient Zero, blithely infecting the many others that were to come, and always in the service of radical Lefty beliefs.
But back to cases, and specifically the Viet Nam War. Cronkite's misrepresentations during the conflict were numerous:
- With the Tet Offensive, Cronkite declared defeat in 1968, a mere two and a half years after America's commitment of combat troops to Viet Nam. He openly advocated for "terms" and explicitly stated that the terms negotiated should not be those of a victorious United States. It's amazing to think that, Cronkite's prognostications notwithstanding, South Viet Nam managed to hang in there another five years. It's equally amazing that anybody - journalist or politician - could so blatantly advocate for surrender.
- He misportrayed the South Vietnamese as hopelessly corrupt and ineffective, and worse than North Viet Nam. With the hindsight of fifty years, but that America had a client state now with anywhere near the backbone that South Vietnam showed back in the 60s and 70s.
- He worked to discredit the "domino theory" of communism over-running Southeast Asia, absent a presence by the United States, a theory that would become reality with the fall of South Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos and other countries, culminating in the slaughter of millions and the banishment of millions more.
- Cronkite made little mention of the fact that North Viet Nam was a Soviet client state, and that their aggressions against the South would have been impossible without the massive militarization of that country by the Communists. Cronkite was also silent on the culpability of the Soviets in prolonging the conflict. It is strange that he should have so many words of criticism for the United States in the conflict, but none for the Evil Empire.
- Cronkite gave credence to the myth that America routinely exaggerated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualties. This was one of the means by which the Left devastated the credibility of our military and forced our withdrawal from the war.
- Most damning of all, Cronkite rationalized not only the disastrous "limited war" strategy imposed by Democrats, wherein the U.S. and South Vietnam were damned to a perpetual holding action, but the "escalation" theory then so popular with Liberals, wherein any conflict with a Soviet puppet that did not have an outcome pleasing to the Soviets might ultimately escalate into nuclear war. Hear him in his own words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdOb_183d1o
The fact that the whole Liberal appeasement movement - which Cronkite supported - was philosophically attuned to accept Communism's bona fides at face value while simultaneously glossing over Communism's many atrocities, gave legitimacy for far too long a period of time to a movement that - while finally being relegated to the dustbin of history by Ronald Reagan in 1991 - hung in there at least thirty years longer than it needed to, thanks in part to people like Walter Cronkite.
Cronkite had no problem perpetuating the notion of a moral equivalency of Communism and American-style Democracy. His comments pre and post his journalistic career reflect a modest but creepy sympathy not just with Communism, but Soviet Communism, and his actions while he was a reporter and news reader reflected that. He fanned the flames of the anti-war movement and ultimately, his war agenda was indistinguishable from Jane Fonda's, minus her unfortunate photo op mounting a North Vietnamese Triple A, and his ability to make even the most unreasonable words sound reasonable.
In the end, Walter Cronkite was a Lefty, reflexively critical of American Exceptionalism, and a believer in a One World Order that compromised American hegemony. He was also an anti-anti communist, and a perhaps not-so-unwitting enabler of communism. In that, he had a long and distinguished list of predecessors, including I.F. Stone and Walter Duranty, albeit that they were both on the Soviet payroll, and he was not.
Walter Cronkite was many things, including a distinguished reporter and an anchor whose rhetorical skills and delivery were unmatched in the history of television news. What he most decidedly was not, however, was a man capable of separating his political beliefs from his journalism. He not only did it, he reveled in it.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Property Tax Racket - Part II
It was good to see in the Saturday Houston Chronicle Editorial "Tax Protesters" a faint word of sympathy for Harris County homeowners besieged by those elected to serve us. Hopefully, it will be the first of many. That said, the Chronicle and most other media have been mostly silent on four key points: 1) nobody has challenged Harris County on whether they were entitled to the extraordinary tax revenues brought on by the real estate boom; 2) there's been little said about the out-of-control spending enabled by the taxing binge; 3) little has been reported on how the assessment strategy of HCAD created the artificially high housing prices that led to the current mess; and 4) nothing has been said about the biggest scandal of all: the blatant dishonesty of HCAD's taxing and appeals process.
- First, where does it necessarily follow that a housing boom and skyrocketing home values should allow Harris County - or any other tax assessing authority - to reap a windfall at the expense of their citizens? Aren't tax policies supposed to be driven by legitimate needs? Isn't the natural consequence of inflated tax revenues to unnecessarily grow the size of government?
- The tax windfall fueled the Spending that followed. In 2001, Harris County's population was 3.4 million. In 2009, it's just over 4 million, an increase of about 20%. In that same period, Harris County spending has grown from $790 million to $1.32 billion. That's an increase of 68%. What additional services is Harris County providing that would justify a spending rate more than triple our population growth rate?
- Which brings us to HCAD's role in inflating home values. They mention in the editorial that "under state law, valuations for residences cannot be increased by more than 10 percent annually". I would question whether a 10% yearly increase is justifiable under any circumstances, but look what HCAD did with that law, routinely imposing increases well in excess of the rate of inflation, and generally at or near the 10% maximum. Since appraisers and Banks use the Tax Authority's valuations as one of the key benchmarks in determining a house's market value - and homeowners enthusiastically borrowed against these inflated values - the rate increases were legitimized and the Housing Bubble was born, as well as the inevitable collapse. Was HCAD oblivious of the consequences of artificially inflating home values?
- Next, we need to talk about the 600 lb. gorilla in Harris County's living room: the processes for tax assessment and protest. HCAD's assessment policies are fundamentally dishonest for one simple reason: if you filed a protest in the past ten years, there was a 95% likelihood that HCAD would lower your rates. Doesn't that mean that they were intentionally overcharging homeowners in the first place? Since when is the worth of your home based on whether you make the effort to defend yourself from HCAD? Aren't markets supposed to do that?
- Finally, the Appeals process itself is punitive, forcing homeowners to take time off from work and spend many hours putting together elaborate documentation of comparative home values and other information in order to make their case. In other words, HCAD literally forces Homeowners to do the job that we are already paying them to do. As to the process itself, the homeowner is guilty until proven innocent, the Appraisers mostly stonewall and try to wear you down, and the Appeals Board tries to intimidate you and rush you out the door. Have any of them - most notably HCAD chief Jim Robinson - experienced even a twinge of doubt about these practices? Have any of them entertained - even for a moment - the notion that they might be overcharging homeowners?
This is the very opposite of Public Service. HCAD - and Harris County - have a lot to answer for, as do politicians at the local, state and federal levels. The time is long past for this type of behavior to be criminalized. Would that it shall be.
- First, where does it necessarily follow that a housing boom and skyrocketing home values should allow Harris County - or any other tax assessing authority - to reap a windfall at the expense of their citizens? Aren't tax policies supposed to be driven by legitimate needs? Isn't the natural consequence of inflated tax revenues to unnecessarily grow the size of government?
- The tax windfall fueled the Spending that followed. In 2001, Harris County's population was 3.4 million. In 2009, it's just over 4 million, an increase of about 20%. In that same period, Harris County spending has grown from $790 million to $1.32 billion. That's an increase of 68%. What additional services is Harris County providing that would justify a spending rate more than triple our population growth rate?
- Which brings us to HCAD's role in inflating home values. They mention in the editorial that "under state law, valuations for residences cannot be increased by more than 10 percent annually". I would question whether a 10% yearly increase is justifiable under any circumstances, but look what HCAD did with that law, routinely imposing increases well in excess of the rate of inflation, and generally at or near the 10% maximum. Since appraisers and Banks use the Tax Authority's valuations as one of the key benchmarks in determining a house's market value - and homeowners enthusiastically borrowed against these inflated values - the rate increases were legitimized and the Housing Bubble was born, as well as the inevitable collapse. Was HCAD oblivious of the consequences of artificially inflating home values?
- Next, we need to talk about the 600 lb. gorilla in Harris County's living room: the processes for tax assessment and protest. HCAD's assessment policies are fundamentally dishonest for one simple reason: if you filed a protest in the past ten years, there was a 95% likelihood that HCAD would lower your rates. Doesn't that mean that they were intentionally overcharging homeowners in the first place? Since when is the worth of your home based on whether you make the effort to defend yourself from HCAD? Aren't markets supposed to do that?
- Finally, the Appeals process itself is punitive, forcing homeowners to take time off from work and spend many hours putting together elaborate documentation of comparative home values and other information in order to make their case. In other words, HCAD literally forces Homeowners to do the job that we are already paying them to do. As to the process itself, the homeowner is guilty until proven innocent, the Appraisers mostly stonewall and try to wear you down, and the Appeals Board tries to intimidate you and rush you out the door. Have any of them - most notably HCAD chief Jim Robinson - experienced even a twinge of doubt about these practices? Have any of them entertained - even for a moment - the notion that they might be overcharging homeowners?
This is the very opposite of Public Service. HCAD - and Harris County - have a lot to answer for, as do politicians at the local, state and federal levels. The time is long past for this type of behavior to be criminalized. Would that it shall be.
Friday, July 17, 2009
The Property Tax Racket
Yet further evidence that Public Servants exist only to "serve" themselves. The Houston Chronicle article "Tax protests soaring....." was interesting reading for a number of reasons, most notably that HCAD (Harris County Appraisal District) not only continued their decade-long abuse of homeowners, but portrayed themselves as the good guys and taxpayers as bad guys.
Chief Appraiser Jim Robinson brags about HCAD's generosity to us taxpayers, claiming that “Nearly 41 percent of the residences we reduced the value of; we didn't change about 41 percent; and we increased about 18 percent.” His bad grammar aside, it's amazing that in the third consecutive year of the Real Estate bust, he should be so proud of offering no decrease to 41% of us Schlubs, while jacking up values for another 18%. Unspoken is that HCAD offered far less to the 41% that did get a decrease than what they deserved.
Robinson then summed up the problem as he sees it, stating simply that "People do not like paying taxes". That's Government-speak for "taxpayers are simple souls who look out only for themselves, and do not realize how lucky they are to have discriminating Public Servants like myself to guide them". Perhaps Robinson should pay more attention to the data if he hopes to have a more nuanced perspective. The article documents that tax protests have tripled since 1999 to 353,000 through mid-June of 2009 alone. The duration and the 200% increase pretty much correspond with Harris County's millenial tax orgy. Not that he doesn't have company; his pals in local, state and federal government have pretty much kept pace.
Given his exceptional regard for himself, do you suppose Robinson give even a moment's thought to the possibility that HCAD has assessed too much? And while he's pondering that one, I wonder if Robinson has given any thought to the millions HCAD squanders defending themselves against the tax protestors? Assuming that HCAD receives no additional protests this year and that each protest takes at least 1/2 hour to process (including the time of the clerks, appraisers and appeals board members that must touch it), that's at least 175 thousand man-hours of work for HCAD employees.
And let's not forget that opposite HCAD are 353,000 homeowners, spending on average 8 hours to investigate and document their claims, file the protest and make the trip(s) to the HCAD office as necessary. I'm erring on the side of caution here. My own tax protests take about 16 man-hours, so I simply cut that figure in half. That's 2.8 million man-hours of lost productivity.
Multiply those figures by 75, and you've got an idea of the waste nationwide, with thousands of make-work jobs for people battling to confiscate more and more of the Taxpayer's dwindling wealth while bureaucrats spend like drunken sailors, and Taxpayer's fighting a losing battle to prevent it. Stop me when this sounds like America's relationship with the IRS.
Of course, Harris County could have prevented all of this by assessing property values fairly, but they're not about fairness; they're about perpetuating the government gravy train endlessly. If you think I'm exaggerating, merely contemplate that Harris County reduces the assessment of at least 90% of all protestors every year. Isn't that proof enough that they consciously overcharge homeowners?
As homeowner Pauline Steffen was quoted in the Chronicle article: "It's a racket. It's getting to where they are going to tax people right out of their homes". Racket indeed. There is increasingly little to distinguish many of our public servants from Organized Crime, except that Criminals don't insult your intelligence by telling you all the good they're doing for you, much less belittle you for complaining while they steal all your money.
Chief Appraiser Jim Robinson brags about HCAD's generosity to us taxpayers, claiming that “Nearly 41 percent of the residences we reduced the value of; we didn't change about 41 percent; and we increased about 18 percent.” His bad grammar aside, it's amazing that in the third consecutive year of the Real Estate bust, he should be so proud of offering no decrease to 41% of us Schlubs, while jacking up values for another 18%. Unspoken is that HCAD offered far less to the 41% that did get a decrease than what they deserved.
Robinson then summed up the problem as he sees it, stating simply that "People do not like paying taxes". That's Government-speak for "taxpayers are simple souls who look out only for themselves, and do not realize how lucky they are to have discriminating Public Servants like myself to guide them". Perhaps Robinson should pay more attention to the data if he hopes to have a more nuanced perspective. The article documents that tax protests have tripled since 1999 to 353,000 through mid-June of 2009 alone. The duration and the 200% increase pretty much correspond with Harris County's millenial tax orgy. Not that he doesn't have company; his pals in local, state and federal government have pretty much kept pace.
Given his exceptional regard for himself, do you suppose Robinson give even a moment's thought to the possibility that HCAD has assessed too much? And while he's pondering that one, I wonder if Robinson has given any thought to the millions HCAD squanders defending themselves against the tax protestors? Assuming that HCAD receives no additional protests this year and that each protest takes at least 1/2 hour to process (including the time of the clerks, appraisers and appeals board members that must touch it), that's at least 175 thousand man-hours of work for HCAD employees.
And let's not forget that opposite HCAD are 353,000 homeowners, spending on average 8 hours to investigate and document their claims, file the protest and make the trip(s) to the HCAD office as necessary. I'm erring on the side of caution here. My own tax protests take about 16 man-hours, so I simply cut that figure in half. That's 2.8 million man-hours of lost productivity.
Multiply those figures by 75, and you've got an idea of the waste nationwide, with thousands of make-work jobs for people battling to confiscate more and more of the Taxpayer's dwindling wealth while bureaucrats spend like drunken sailors, and Taxpayer's fighting a losing battle to prevent it. Stop me when this sounds like America's relationship with the IRS.
Of course, Harris County could have prevented all of this by assessing property values fairly, but they're not about fairness; they're about perpetuating the government gravy train endlessly. If you think I'm exaggerating, merely contemplate that Harris County reduces the assessment of at least 90% of all protestors every year. Isn't that proof enough that they consciously overcharge homeowners?
As homeowner Pauline Steffen was quoted in the Chronicle article: "It's a racket. It's getting to where they are going to tax people right out of their homes". Racket indeed. There is increasingly little to distinguish many of our public servants from Organized Crime, except that Criminals don't insult your intelligence by telling you all the good they're doing for you, much less belittle you for complaining while they steal all your money.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Conservative Droogies
What is up with the Conservative Establishment? From trashing Sarah Palin to the relentless drumbeat for a "bigger tent" to the daily admonitions to abandon our principles or risk political suicide, Establishment Republicans seem intent on trashing fellow Republicans, thus abandoning their principles and committing political suicide. Unfortunately, they also seem intent on taking us with them, and sadly, the once-reliable National Review appears to be joining the chorus. From their July 20th issue:
The saga of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinian mistress displayed two of America’s least attractive traits — preening and prurience. We unequivocally denounce hypocritical horndog politicians (are there pictures?). Sanford’s affair involved him in dereliction of his executive duties. He added an Argentinian leg to a South American business trip, which was sleazy, and he was AWOL from his state for almost a week. His aides thought, or pretended to think, that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Suppose there had been a hurricane back home, or a terrorist attack? Happily he is term-limited, and there will be no call for him to visit Iowa.
How could a sane conservative read this drivel and not be dismayed? NR managed to cover every talking point - real or imagined - used by the Left to flog Republicans out of polite society and into political irrelevance on matters relating to character. The landscape is littered with such Republican casualties, most recently Sanford, John Ensign, and Sarah Palin, in no small part due to their Republican counterparts choosing to buy into a partisan Democrat narrative.
And talk about rhetorical overkill! NR regurgitated every known Democrat cliché and created a few of their own, including "preening and prurience" "hypocritical horndog politician", "sleazy", "AWOL", and my personal favorite: "dereliction of duty". I particularly enjoyed this passage: "Suppose there had been a hurricane back home, or a terrorist attack?". I guess - per this line of thinking - that Sanford would be invaluable in the event of either, heroically donning his flight suit and choppering flood victims to safety, or strapping on the body armor and mobilizing South Carolina's Special Forces for a terrorist counterattack.
Heaven forbid that the state of South Carolina should be without governance - however temporarily - to prevent such occurrences, but if this is a valid complaint, do you suppose NR could manage to rouse themselves to criticize Democrat politicians who do on a regular basis what Sanford did for a long weekend?
In any event, they could stand to lighten up on the moralizing, and work a little harder to stand athwart The Media Attack Dogs, yelling "stop", or at the very least, make an effort to explain how private conduct does not necessarily reflect on public performance. Democrats and their supporters would do no less, and thus do not experience the self-mutilation which Republicans so regularly indulge.
And if you appreciate irony, check out my blog at:
http://offhismeds.blogspot.com/2009/06/beware-morality-police.html
You'll be surprised how much more of an impact turncoat Kathleen Parker has apparently had on National Review than National Review has had on Kathleen Parker.
Or perhaps she wrote the piece in question.
The saga of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford and his Argentinian mistress displayed two of America’s least attractive traits — preening and prurience. We unequivocally denounce hypocritical horndog politicians (are there pictures?). Sanford’s affair involved him in dereliction of his executive duties. He added an Argentinian leg to a South American business trip, which was sleazy, and he was AWOL from his state for almost a week. His aides thought, or pretended to think, that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Suppose there had been a hurricane back home, or a terrorist attack? Happily he is term-limited, and there will be no call for him to visit Iowa.
How could a sane conservative read this drivel and not be dismayed? NR managed to cover every talking point - real or imagined - used by the Left to flog Republicans out of polite society and into political irrelevance on matters relating to character. The landscape is littered with such Republican casualties, most recently Sanford, John Ensign, and Sarah Palin, in no small part due to their Republican counterparts choosing to buy into a partisan Democrat narrative.
And talk about rhetorical overkill! NR regurgitated every known Democrat cliché and created a few of their own, including "preening and prurience" "hypocritical horndog politician", "sleazy", "AWOL", and my personal favorite: "dereliction of duty". I particularly enjoyed this passage: "Suppose there had been a hurricane back home, or a terrorist attack?". I guess - per this line of thinking - that Sanford would be invaluable in the event of either, heroically donning his flight suit and choppering flood victims to safety, or strapping on the body armor and mobilizing South Carolina's Special Forces for a terrorist counterattack.
Heaven forbid that the state of South Carolina should be without governance - however temporarily - to prevent such occurrences, but if this is a valid complaint, do you suppose NR could manage to rouse themselves to criticize Democrat politicians who do on a regular basis what Sanford did for a long weekend?
In any event, they could stand to lighten up on the moralizing, and work a little harder to stand athwart The Media Attack Dogs, yelling "stop", or at the very least, make an effort to explain how private conduct does not necessarily reflect on public performance. Democrats and their supporters would do no less, and thus do not experience the self-mutilation which Republicans so regularly indulge.
And if you appreciate irony, check out my blog at:
http://offhismeds.blogspot.com/2009/06/beware-morality-police.html
You'll be surprised how much more of an impact turncoat Kathleen Parker has apparently had on National Review than National Review has had on Kathleen Parker.
Or perhaps she wrote the piece in question.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Wall Street Greed, Courtesy Of Democrats
Articles in the Monday papers about Goldman Sachs have affirmed what some of us have known for some time now: Wall Street is a subsidiary of the Democrat Party, and the "regulatory reform" and "executive pay reform" rhetoric of the Obama Administration is yet another Red Herring. As Goldman Sachs' experience demonstrates, not only is it not reform, it's the exact opposite of reform. On steroids.
The latest case in point is the announcement that Goldman Sachs has allocated $18 billion in yearly compensation for its 28,000 employees ($600,000 per employee), while earning only $1.66 billion in first quarter profits. Meanwhile, Goldman's stock is still down 40% from its 2007 high.
Adding insult to injury is that the bulk of the compensation will go to upper management and brokers, who account for less than 30% of the 28,000 employees. There's something seriously wrong with a system that allows a tiny elite to siphon away most of the wealth, leaving scraps for investors, shareholders, workers - and dare I say - taxpayers.
Is there any clearer example of Wall Street greed than this? And yet, President Obama is silent.
For all of his tough talk during the presidential campaign, it appears that President Obama has decided - like President Bush - to "look the other way" while the Money Changers plunder the system and enrich themselves unjustly. In fact, he's gone Bush at least two better, by explicitly underwriting 100% of Goldman's risk with taxpayer dollars, and forcing other brokerages into bankruptcy to clear the field in what had previously been a competitive market.
If you "follow the money", you see the clear and not-so-surprising practice of large Brokerage firms giving the bulk of their money to Democrats, just as they have for decades. Goldman Sachs was the poster child for this largely unreported upon phenonmenon, giving the lion's share of their presidential campaign contributions last cycle to Obama, totalling just under $1 million. Some quick math reveals that their "contribution" works out to a measly thirty five cents per Goldman employee. Not a bad "investment" for Goldman Sachs, if somewhat of an embarrassment for the Obama Administration, since a single Broker could have paid the whole thing and not felt more than a twinge.
The thing is, if the Democrats are going to sell us out, could they at least not do it so cheaply? Folks might start getting the wrong impression.
The latest case in point is the announcement that Goldman Sachs has allocated $18 billion in yearly compensation for its 28,000 employees ($600,000 per employee), while earning only $1.66 billion in first quarter profits. Meanwhile, Goldman's stock is still down 40% from its 2007 high.
Adding insult to injury is that the bulk of the compensation will go to upper management and brokers, who account for less than 30% of the 28,000 employees. There's something seriously wrong with a system that allows a tiny elite to siphon away most of the wealth, leaving scraps for investors, shareholders, workers - and dare I say - taxpayers.
Is there any clearer example of Wall Street greed than this? And yet, President Obama is silent.
For all of his tough talk during the presidential campaign, it appears that President Obama has decided - like President Bush - to "look the other way" while the Money Changers plunder the system and enrich themselves unjustly. In fact, he's gone Bush at least two better, by explicitly underwriting 100% of Goldman's risk with taxpayer dollars, and forcing other brokerages into bankruptcy to clear the field in what had previously been a competitive market.
If you "follow the money", you see the clear and not-so-surprising practice of large Brokerage firms giving the bulk of their money to Democrats, just as they have for decades. Goldman Sachs was the poster child for this largely unreported upon phenonmenon, giving the lion's share of their presidential campaign contributions last cycle to Obama, totalling just under $1 million. Some quick math reveals that their "contribution" works out to a measly thirty five cents per Goldman employee. Not a bad "investment" for Goldman Sachs, if somewhat of an embarrassment for the Obama Administration, since a single Broker could have paid the whole thing and not felt more than a twinge.
The thing is, if the Democrats are going to sell us out, could they at least not do it so cheaply? Folks might start getting the wrong impression.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Man vs. Raccoon, Part IV
In my last post, I explained my failed attempts to draw Rocky Raccoon in with sliced fruits of various types, so the menu last night was going to be a delectable fish, accompanied by honey glazed carrots. I carefully laid out the trap, used it to block the cat door (even though Idgit wasn't inside yet) and retired for the night. Idgit, I figured, was on his own; plus, it would be interesting to see if he learned his lesson, having gotten himself trapped the last time.
Well, I got another hit, but not Rocky.
See, when I got up this morning and checked the cage, it was empty. Then I cut through the house to turn on the front sprinklers, finished making my coffee and ended up coming back out to the garage five minutes later.
Idgit, having learned his lesson last week, sensibly avoided the cage this morning. Fraidy (pictured above) did not. When I came out, she was disconsolate, but not so much so that she didn't manage to eat the fish and lick most of the honey off the carrots. My upside is that - them both having been caught in the trap - I will now leave the cat door unblocked so as to allow them to come and go at night, on the theory that they've both learned their lesson. So, it seems that this has become primarily an interesting study in Cat psychology, and only secondarily an exercise in actually catching a Raccoon.
As to Fraidy, she's a stitch when she gets in situations like this, as she takes any and all slights personally. Some times the indignities are real, such as her getting caught in the cage this morning. Other times, it's a product of her paranoia, monomania and lack of self-esteem, such as her discontent when Sharon and I don't scratch her ass the entire time that she's eating.
As to capturing Rocky, I'm making progress, after a fashion. It seems he's got a regular route he traces through the neighborhood, only hitting our house every two or three days (so many cat doors, so little time), so I'll put the cage out again tonight with fish, honey glazed carrots, ham, marshmallows and slice fruit; in other words, an antipasto in the classic meaning of the word.
Well, I got another hit, but not Rocky.
See, when I got up this morning and checked the cage, it was empty. Then I cut through the house to turn on the front sprinklers, finished making my coffee and ended up coming back out to the garage five minutes later.
Idgit, having learned his lesson last week, sensibly avoided the cage this morning. Fraidy (pictured above) did not. When I came out, she was disconsolate, but not so much so that she didn't manage to eat the fish and lick most of the honey off the carrots. My upside is that - them both having been caught in the trap - I will now leave the cat door unblocked so as to allow them to come and go at night, on the theory that they've both learned their lesson. So, it seems that this has become primarily an interesting study in Cat psychology, and only secondarily an exercise in actually catching a Raccoon.
As to Fraidy, she's a stitch when she gets in situations like this, as she takes any and all slights personally. Some times the indignities are real, such as her getting caught in the cage this morning. Other times, it's a product of her paranoia, monomania and lack of self-esteem, such as her discontent when Sharon and I don't scratch her ass the entire time that she's eating.
As to capturing Rocky, I'm making progress, after a fashion. It seems he's got a regular route he traces through the neighborhood, only hitting our house every two or three days (so many cat doors, so little time), so I'll put the cage out again tonight with fish, honey glazed carrots, ham, marshmallows and slice fruit; in other words, an antipasto in the classic meaning of the word.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Man vs. Raccoon, Part III
Well, no sign of Rocky the Raccoon in the past week, so we thought we were rid of him; then, blam, he makes an appearance Sunday night, eating all of the Cats' food and sliming up their water. I swear, he must bathe in the water bowl, it looks so grimy, but then, they do have those opposable thumbs, so I'm assuming hand washing is an option after a midnight snack. In the department of Small Ironies, Sharon had put Idgie's de-wormer meds in his food bowl before bedtime, which Idg promptly ignored. All the cat food was gone in the morning, so in addition to getting fed, watered, sheltered, and for all I know, laid, Rocky is now getting health care from the Smith household.
It can't be too much longer before he gets an allowance.
Now, previous readers of these blogs have chastised me for using cat food to catch a Raccoon, claiming that they prefer fresh fruit, veggies, meat and similar things; and while I don't doubt that this is true, it's interesting to note that Rocky likes simple cat food just fine when it's in our garage, but not at all when it's in the trap I've laid for him.
So, a couple nights ago, I tried some apple slices. No luck. Last night I rebaited the trap with fresh Pear slices. Both nights I sequestered the cats in the garage with a fan, and used the trap to block the Cat Door. Not even a nibble. Tonight, I shall attempt a more sumptuous selection of foods that are more pleasing to the Raccoon palate. To prepare myself, I Googled "Raccoon Bait", and the internet yielded the following menu of Rocky's favorites:
-Fish, fresh or canned
-Honey or sugar covered vegetables
-Smoked fish
-Watermelon
-Sweet corn
-Cooked fatty meat
-Crisp bacon
-Marshmallows!
I think tonight we shall start with a delightful fish medley, followed by some honey covered vegetables and some sweet corn. It's time to roll out the big guns. We shall hold the marshmallows in reserve, though, as I refuse to serve him an entire meal, including dessert, without actually catching him.
Given history-to-date, I'm not holding out much hope for success. This is one discriminating Raccoon, and maybe it's just me, but I think this whole transaction is taking a trajectory much more to Rocky's liking than mine. See, the sequence of events was supposed to be: set cage, capture Raccoon, transport Raccoon to another place. It was not supposed to be: set cage, Coon avoids cage, Coon continues to eat cat food, Man names the Coon, Man provide him medicines, Man diversifies Coon's diet.
The Raccoon has won all the battles, but not, so far, the war. If, however by the next time I post, the garage contains a pet bed with the name Rocky stenciled on the side, then you will know that he's won.
It can't be too much longer before he gets an allowance.
Now, previous readers of these blogs have chastised me for using cat food to catch a Raccoon, claiming that they prefer fresh fruit, veggies, meat and similar things; and while I don't doubt that this is true, it's interesting to note that Rocky likes simple cat food just fine when it's in our garage, but not at all when it's in the trap I've laid for him.
So, a couple nights ago, I tried some apple slices. No luck. Last night I rebaited the trap with fresh Pear slices. Both nights I sequestered the cats in the garage with a fan, and used the trap to block the Cat Door. Not even a nibble. Tonight, I shall attempt a more sumptuous selection of foods that are more pleasing to the Raccoon palate. To prepare myself, I Googled "Raccoon Bait", and the internet yielded the following menu of Rocky's favorites:
-Fish, fresh or canned
-Honey or sugar covered vegetables
-Smoked fish
-Watermelon
-Sweet corn
-Cooked fatty meat
-Crisp bacon
-Marshmallows!
I think tonight we shall start with a delightful fish medley, followed by some honey covered vegetables and some sweet corn. It's time to roll out the big guns. We shall hold the marshmallows in reserve, though, as I refuse to serve him an entire meal, including dessert, without actually catching him.
Given history-to-date, I'm not holding out much hope for success. This is one discriminating Raccoon, and maybe it's just me, but I think this whole transaction is taking a trajectory much more to Rocky's liking than mine. See, the sequence of events was supposed to be: set cage, capture Raccoon, transport Raccoon to another place. It was not supposed to be: set cage, Coon avoids cage, Coon continues to eat cat food, Man names the Coon, Man provide him medicines, Man diversifies Coon's diet.
The Raccoon has won all the battles, but not, so far, the war. If, however by the next time I post, the garage contains a pet bed with the name Rocky stenciled on the side, then you will know that he's won.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Even Conservatives Get The Health Care Debate Wrong
This past Sunday, conservative columnist George F. Will faulted not only the government for our health care woes, but consumers and capitalism as well ("Medical dilemma: we want 2009 care at 1960 prices"). In my opinion, consumers and capitalists - much less conservatives - could do with less "advocates" such as George F. Will. Check it out:
http://tinyurl.com/lxxfyh
He gets a little bit of the argument right, pointing out that some of our current inflation in Health Care is due to aging Baby Boomers, however, he greatly overstates the extent to which Boomers have contributed to the problem. And his main contention is completely off the mark when he claims that "we want 2009 care at 1960 prices". Will points out that in 1960, Health Care was "5% of GDP as opposed to 18% now". He then goes on to justify most of the higher percentage outlay by referring to the wonderful new technology that exists, using 1960 era automobiles in comparison to their 2009 counterparts to make his argument.
Will gets it exactly wrong on several fronts:
1) In comparing a car from 1960 to a car produced today, Will concludes that modern cars cost relatively more because they have "GPS, satellite radio, antilock brakes, power steering, power windows and air conditioning". That's incorrect and misleading for several reasons: a) power steering, power windows and air conditioning all existed in 1960, just as is the case today, and all cost more, just like today; b) GPS and satellite radio - unavailable in 1960 - are extras that cost more on a 2009 car. Anti-lock brakes is the single technology he mentioned that is standard on all autos today and unavailable in 1960.
2) Will maintains that technological improvements automatically cost more; they don't. In fact, if Capitalism is allowed to work, they cost less, so his comparison of technologies from two different eras entirely misses the point. Yes, modern cars have better features; so does modern medicine. So do modern Televisions, which cost less than 1/4th what they cost in 1960, whilst delivering gigantic screens and unheard of picture quality and sound. So do modern telephones, providing a computer, GPS and worldwide calling in the palm of your hand. So do modern computers, too expensive for citizens of that era, while today, a person of the most humble means can purchase for $299 a computer that is more powerful than any that existed in 1960, including both color and sound.
And would it be unkind of me to further unravel Mr. Will's argument by pointing out that virtually all of the technologies that he praises in modern cars, including GPS, satellite radio, antilock brakes - as well as several he did not mention like electronic fuel management systems, safety systems, internal diagnostics, etc. - are explicitly dependent on the dirt cheap computers I cited earlier?
3) Will ignores the beneficial effects of Capitalism in making the nation wealthier and "growing" the overall wealth of the nation, and gives no heed to the notion that Health Care spending ought not necessarily to increase as a percentage of GDP. Think about it: why must Health Care have increased as a percentage of GDP? If we as a nation are six times wealthier than we were in 1960 but have only doubled in population, why should the percentage of GDP spent on health care have to change at all? And - dare I say it - if we experience enough market-driven low-cost technological improvement, might we contemplate the percentage of GDP devoted to Health Care to actually be reduced? Just like it is with TVs, phone service and computers?
Will never addresses the argument from this perspective, nor for that matter do most Conservatives, yet that is exactly what they should be doing.
5) The sum of Will's article would have us believe that any industry that improves itself through technology (or any other means, for that matter) is entitled to a larger piece of the economic pie. This is nonsense for the simple reason that there is only now - and ever has been - 100% of the pie to spread around. If Health Care goes from 5% of GDP in 1960 to 18% of GDP today, that's 13% less of GDP available to spend on everything else, including food, education, recreation, and - coincidentally - automobiles.
6) He also fails to address that Health Care as a percentage of GDP grew only one percentage point from 1960 to 1970. The reason this is important is that after 1970, Health Care costs skyrocketed, directly after the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. This is where Will's argument comes completely off its wheels. Even he acknowledges that Baby Boomers have only of late started to impact the cost of Health Care. So how does he explain the obscene explosion in Health Care costs from 5% of a 500 Billion dollar economy in 1960 to 18% of a 14 Trillion dollar economy today? If there were no Baby Boomers putting artificial pressure on Health Care spending for the past 40 years, exactly what was?
There was no government intervention via Medicare and Medicaid prior to the late 60s, and thus, no inflation; after Medicare and Medicaid, there was. Not coincidentally, the totality of Public Sector spending (including all forms of government, government-mandated insurance and Health Care expenditures) grew from less than 20% of GDP in 1960 to over 50% of GDP today, and that doesn't even begin to include the unfunded mandates for Government pensions, Medicare and Social Security that are in place today, which ensure that the percentage will go ever higher.
Eureka! Could we have accidentally hit on the reason Health Care has increased as a percentage of GDP ? Could it be profligate government spending and government programs that are responsible for the economy tanking? You can't continually siphon an ever-greater percentage of wealth from the Private Sector without killing the economy for the simple reason that you have confiscated the money consumers and businesses would otherwise have used to sustain the economy.
More to the point, with his narrow focus on "causes", Will doesn't even entertain the prospect. That's no big surprise. Scratch a denizen of the Beltway, and you will find a person whose perspective is informed solely by the Beltway, their ability to reason clouded by the absorption of too much received Washington opinion, and too little of the reality of Heartland America. Mr. Will is no different from his brethren, and brothers, you are not his brethren. Trust me when I say that the Commentariat in Washington - Republican and Democrat - don't even know we exist. Middle America is as real to them than as Middle Earth, and their endless arguments are an abstract exercise whose only purpose is to allow them to demo their forensic skills, scratch each other's backs and validate their sense of self-worth, all while accomplishing absolutely nothing.
No big surprise: they've all got a righteous medical plan, and couldn't be happier with the status quo.
http://tinyurl.com/lxxfyh
He gets a little bit of the argument right, pointing out that some of our current inflation in Health Care is due to aging Baby Boomers, however, he greatly overstates the extent to which Boomers have contributed to the problem. And his main contention is completely off the mark when he claims that "we want 2009 care at 1960 prices". Will points out that in 1960, Health Care was "5% of GDP as opposed to 18% now". He then goes on to justify most of the higher percentage outlay by referring to the wonderful new technology that exists, using 1960 era automobiles in comparison to their 2009 counterparts to make his argument.
Will gets it exactly wrong on several fronts:
1) In comparing a car from 1960 to a car produced today, Will concludes that modern cars cost relatively more because they have "GPS, satellite radio, antilock brakes, power steering, power windows and air conditioning". That's incorrect and misleading for several reasons: a) power steering, power windows and air conditioning all existed in 1960, just as is the case today, and all cost more, just like today; b) GPS and satellite radio - unavailable in 1960 - are extras that cost more on a 2009 car. Anti-lock brakes is the single technology he mentioned that is standard on all autos today and unavailable in 1960.
2) Will maintains that technological improvements automatically cost more; they don't. In fact, if Capitalism is allowed to work, they cost less, so his comparison of technologies from two different eras entirely misses the point. Yes, modern cars have better features; so does modern medicine. So do modern Televisions, which cost less than 1/4th what they cost in 1960, whilst delivering gigantic screens and unheard of picture quality and sound. So do modern telephones, providing a computer, GPS and worldwide calling in the palm of your hand. So do modern computers, too expensive for citizens of that era, while today, a person of the most humble means can purchase for $299 a computer that is more powerful than any that existed in 1960, including both color and sound.
And would it be unkind of me to further unravel Mr. Will's argument by pointing out that virtually all of the technologies that he praises in modern cars, including GPS, satellite radio, antilock brakes - as well as several he did not mention like electronic fuel management systems, safety systems, internal diagnostics, etc. - are explicitly dependent on the dirt cheap computers I cited earlier?
3) Will ignores the beneficial effects of Capitalism in making the nation wealthier and "growing" the overall wealth of the nation, and gives no heed to the notion that Health Care spending ought not necessarily to increase as a percentage of GDP. Think about it: why must Health Care have increased as a percentage of GDP? If we as a nation are six times wealthier than we were in 1960 but have only doubled in population, why should the percentage of GDP spent on health care have to change at all? And - dare I say it - if we experience enough market-driven low-cost technological improvement, might we contemplate the percentage of GDP devoted to Health Care to actually be reduced? Just like it is with TVs, phone service and computers?
Will never addresses the argument from this perspective, nor for that matter do most Conservatives, yet that is exactly what they should be doing.
5) The sum of Will's article would have us believe that any industry that improves itself through technology (or any other means, for that matter) is entitled to a larger piece of the economic pie. This is nonsense for the simple reason that there is only now - and ever has been - 100% of the pie to spread around. If Health Care goes from 5% of GDP in 1960 to 18% of GDP today, that's 13% less of GDP available to spend on everything else, including food, education, recreation, and - coincidentally - automobiles.
6) He also fails to address that Health Care as a percentage of GDP grew only one percentage point from 1960 to 1970. The reason this is important is that after 1970, Health Care costs skyrocketed, directly after the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. This is where Will's argument comes completely off its wheels. Even he acknowledges that Baby Boomers have only of late started to impact the cost of Health Care. So how does he explain the obscene explosion in Health Care costs from 5% of a 500 Billion dollar economy in 1960 to 18% of a 14 Trillion dollar economy today? If there were no Baby Boomers putting artificial pressure on Health Care spending for the past 40 years, exactly what was?
There was no government intervention via Medicare and Medicaid prior to the late 60s, and thus, no inflation; after Medicare and Medicaid, there was. Not coincidentally, the totality of Public Sector spending (including all forms of government, government-mandated insurance and Health Care expenditures) grew from less than 20% of GDP in 1960 to over 50% of GDP today, and that doesn't even begin to include the unfunded mandates for Government pensions, Medicare and Social Security that are in place today, which ensure that the percentage will go ever higher.
Eureka! Could we have accidentally hit on the reason Health Care has increased as a percentage of GDP ? Could it be profligate government spending and government programs that are responsible for the economy tanking? You can't continually siphon an ever-greater percentage of wealth from the Private Sector without killing the economy for the simple reason that you have confiscated the money consumers and businesses would otherwise have used to sustain the economy.
More to the point, with his narrow focus on "causes", Will doesn't even entertain the prospect. That's no big surprise. Scratch a denizen of the Beltway, and you will find a person whose perspective is informed solely by the Beltway, their ability to reason clouded by the absorption of too much received Washington opinion, and too little of the reality of Heartland America. Mr. Will is no different from his brethren, and brothers, you are not his brethren. Trust me when I say that the Commentariat in Washington - Republican and Democrat - don't even know we exist. Middle America is as real to them than as Middle Earth, and their endless arguments are an abstract exercise whose only purpose is to allow them to demo their forensic skills, scratch each other's backs and validate their sense of self-worth, all while accomplishing absolutely nothing.
No big surprise: they've all got a righteous medical plan, and couldn't be happier with the status quo.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Cap And Trade - Democrats Waterloo?
Cap and Trade energy legislation has just been passed in the House. If it passes the Senate (which is doubtful), this event will mark the beginning of the end for Obama and the Democrats. This bill truly is the worst of everything:
- Submitted and passed within hours, with nobody allowed to read it, much less publicize its more grotesque elements.
- Packed with verbage that has nothing to do with energy but a whole lot to do with abrogating constitutional freedoms.
- Vastly expands the government sector and employment (Democrats) at the expense of the Private Sector (Republicans).
- A Stealth tax that greatly understates the end cost to consumers. It will not cost "hundreds" per year, it will cost thousands per year per family.
My favorite part - and only one of the reasons the Dems passed this in the dark of night - is that they will have resurrected the Kyoto Protocols, which mandated tens of billions per year of Extortion payments to the biggest polluters in the world - and most of the worst friends of democracy - such as China and Russia. We literally pay Polluters to pollute more so they can sell us even more carbon credits, which incents them to pollute evermore so that they can sell us evermore credits. Meanwhile, the worst polluters in the world are exempted from reducing their pollution in any way.
And not only are the Democrats OK with this, they are enthusiastic about it. Is there anything more absurd? We are paying the people who are doing actual damage to the planet to do more damage.
You'll recall that the Senate voted Kyoto down 99-0 during Clinton's administration because that is all the bill was about, there was adequate time to publicize its contents, and the Media was something more than what they are today: a bunch of Fluffers in Obama's Fiscal Porn film. The Stimulus bill was pushed through the same way, as was the takeover of our banks and auto companies, and you have to ask yourself: how much more undemocratic can Democracy get? This is classic Banana Republic behavior.
Makes you wonder how low the Democrats can sink. It also makes you wonder how much longer their supporters can suspend disbelief. The answer is: not too much longer.
- Submitted and passed within hours, with nobody allowed to read it, much less publicize its more grotesque elements.
- Packed with verbage that has nothing to do with energy but a whole lot to do with abrogating constitutional freedoms.
- Vastly expands the government sector and employment (Democrats) at the expense of the Private Sector (Republicans).
- A Stealth tax that greatly understates the end cost to consumers. It will not cost "hundreds" per year, it will cost thousands per year per family.
My favorite part - and only one of the reasons the Dems passed this in the dark of night - is that they will have resurrected the Kyoto Protocols, which mandated tens of billions per year of Extortion payments to the biggest polluters in the world - and most of the worst friends of democracy - such as China and Russia. We literally pay Polluters to pollute more so they can sell us even more carbon credits, which incents them to pollute evermore so that they can sell us evermore credits. Meanwhile, the worst polluters in the world are exempted from reducing their pollution in any way.
And not only are the Democrats OK with this, they are enthusiastic about it. Is there anything more absurd? We are paying the people who are doing actual damage to the planet to do more damage.
You'll recall that the Senate voted Kyoto down 99-0 during Clinton's administration because that is all the bill was about, there was adequate time to publicize its contents, and the Media was something more than what they are today: a bunch of Fluffers in Obama's Fiscal Porn film. The Stimulus bill was pushed through the same way, as was the takeover of our banks and auto companies, and you have to ask yourself: how much more undemocratic can Democracy get? This is classic Banana Republic behavior.
Makes you wonder how low the Democrats can sink. It also makes you wonder how much longer their supporters can suspend disbelief. The answer is: not too much longer.
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