Marks Steyn commenting on the “Occupy protesters”, noted that the worst thing about them was that their dreams could only be fulfilled by government. They were stardust, and they were golden and they were powerless to get back to the Garden. So they needed government’s help. And the Garden they wanted a return to was the orchard of their grandparents; this time without the necessity of working as much as their grandparents did.
Indeed, for all their youthful mien, the protesters are as mired in America’s post-war moment as their grandparents: One of their demands is for a trillion dollars in “environmental restoration.” Hey, why not? It’s only a trillion. Beneath the allegedly young idealism are very cobwebbed assumptions about societal permanence. The agitators for “American Autumn” think that such demands are reasonable for no other reason than that they happen to have been born in America, and expectations that no other society in human history has ever expected are just part of their birthright.
The same thing may be happening, only worse, in Saudi Arabia. Ellen Knickmayer, in a Foreign Policy article titled “The Idle Kingdom” observed that Saudi Arabia was a society with a glorious recent past and a non-existent imminent future. Its old were clinging to jobs that had been handed to them back in the Garden while its young faced nothing but an endless desert of unemployment outside the wire.
In the wide stretch of the Middle East bypassed by revolution, Arab spring turned to Arab summer peacefully but not altogether promisingly for the Arab world’s largest-ever surge of young people. In Saudi Arabia, more than half-a-million proud high school and college seniors crossed the stage at graduation ceremonies. The new graduates step into a job market featuring the highest regional youth unemployment rate in the world.
Just when a rising wave of young Saudis is hitting the job market, in a generational surge of tens of millions of new workers expected to subside in the kingdom only around 2050, and just when Arab governments most want youth jobs for the sake of stability, economists are concluding that decades of effort by Gulf governments to get their young into the labor market have fallen short — way short.
One of the problems, according to the FP article, is that the locals were unemployable. Despite government efforts to require firms to hire locals, it was the Indians, Bangladeshis and Filipinos who continued to do “jobs that Saudis won’t do”. “After 40 years of Saudi-ization, Oman-ization, Emirati-zation, they’ve not managed to increase the national share of jobs,” one expert she quoted said.
Jobs are being created in Saudi Arabia; but they’re going to Indians, Pakistanis, and other expat workers, not Saudis. Of the 1.2 million jobs added by the Saudi private sector between 2004 and 2009, only 280,000 went to Saudis, government statistics show.
Part of the problem is that few young Saudis can work at unbelievably intense pace of Third World laborers who, desperate to remain employed, are willing to endure such thirst, fatigue and hardship as would daunt animals. For example, one newspaper noted that some Filipino workers resorted to selling their blood to tide them over between jobs.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. This seemed to be what many jobless and undocumented overseas Filipino workers are experiencing in the Kingdom as they allegedly resort to selling their blood to hospitals just to make ends meet. …
One of them was 30-year old ‘Roy’ (not his real name), from Tondo, Manila. Roy arrived in Saudi Arabia in 2009 to work as a glass cutter. However, after months of working, Roy had not received his salary from his employer, prompting him to run away. Since then, he then became one of the undocumented Filipinos in Saudi Arabia.
Roy told Monterona that he had to sell his blood on a monthly basis just to have money to remit to his family back home. He said having to live as [an illegal] and without a permanent job is difficult.
Faced with the awesome work ethic of men fighting for their existences, Ellen Knickermayer at Foreign Policy asked, ‘how can you compete in the job market with people as desperate as that?’ “Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia on average receive wages that are 3.6 times less than what Saudi workers receive, and have a reputation for accepting long hours and poor conditions.”
“You must work like a machine,” Nada, the would-be teacher in Riyadh, quotes one private school as telling her, offering her a teaching job with 10-hour days and overcrowded classrooms for a very few hundred dollars a month.
The willingness to work like a machine — and the determination to withdraw money from the “blood bank” to fund unemployment is hard to compete against against, especially when locals are no better skilled and perhaps less skilled than the imported workers. But few Saudis would submit to the indignity of going the Dracula route, when like the “Occupy” protesters, there is the belief that government can smooth their way forward. Receiving unemployment benefits is one right they’ve come to expect. The Saudis expected 500,000 responses when they distributed applications for unemployment payments in late 2010. When officials received 3.5 million applications they were shocked.
Ministry of Labor officials told Saudi reporters they expected to find that many of the applications were duplicates, or submitted by people who didn’t understand the rules. …
However, even if almost half the applications are thrown out, says Saudi businessman Essam al-Zamel, it still suggests that Saudi Arabia’s actual overall unemployment rate may be a multiple of the official 10 percent figure. That would mean millions more among Saudi Arabia’s 26 million people would look for work if they thought they had hope of finding any.
“Unemployment will be a real problem year after year, and in three or four years it will be very, very obvious,” Zamel told me.
Unemployment was rising like water in the bilge of the Titanic. But what happens when the Saudi Arabian stash is gone and even the men from Tondo have no blood left to sell? No one wants to think about what that means, especially in societies that have been relying on “a stash”, on a design margin, on a golden-egg laying goose to meet current expenses. Societies which spend more than they produce eventually acquire a huge debt, which is further fueled by demands to borrow more so that the accustomed standard of living in the Garden can be sustained.
When borrowing doesn’t work any more then the search starts for people who can be shaken down, in the name of fairness, until that doesn’t work either. Pittsburgh Live describes the depression among the Democratic faithful.
Minutes stretched on awkwardly after U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis spoke to local Democrats. Yet that was less uncomfortable than one man’s attempt to break the silence.
“Let’s go Obama!” he shouted, clapping loudly. No response….
Signs of discontent are seen even among blacks.
State Sen. Tim Solobay found the lack of enthusiasm at last week’s event “weird.” He wondered if Democrats here see Obama as far less moderate than themselves, “plus there is this perception that no one can get along in Washington.” …
A battle is raging for Democrats’ souls, Rozell believes: “The moderate wing seems without direction, other than its argument that the party needs to do what is necessary to win election.”
That “the moderate wing seems without direction, other than … to do what is necessary to win election” is a sign that large sections of the Party have lost faith in the “stash” model. In Mark Steyn’s phraseology some Democrats may be coming to the conclusion that Grandpa’s world is gone. Steyn might have added Dad’s protest world is gone too.
“Occupy” protesters with their face paint, Guy Fawkes masks, chants and signs look curiously dated, even primitive. In some sense they resemble devotees dancing before a temple hoping to arouse the gods within. As Mike Stopa, a Harvard nanophysicist Harvard wrote on the MetroWest Daily News even the “Occupy” protests aren’t about production; they are about consumption: the consumption of therapy to be exact. “Deep in the human heart there is a persistent need to emote.”
How else to explain the throngs of protesters who are even now pouring out in cities across America, erecting tent cities and sleeping day after day on the hard ground (OK, maybe on uncomfortably firm air mattresses), demanding social justice, free college education and higher credit scores? And how else to explain the popularity of the viral video starring the newest Siren of the Left, Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Senate against Scott Brown, wherein she makes an impassioned plea for, well, more roads. Oh, and more teachers. And more police to protect us. …
Anyway, we will be seeing more of Warren and more of the protesters. And many will be stirred by their fiery emoting; even if the target is none too clear. Many of us, on the other hand, (in particular the parents among us) will recognize the compulsive, unfocused emoting by another name: a temper tantrum.
But as the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri put it, things never turn out quite the way we plan and even the Occupy temper tantrums begin to say something the child never intended. “We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.”
What fulfillment did the dream achieve and what is the route forward now? Well this way to the blood bank folks, step right up. Step right up.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
So, the KSA stash is running thin. Saudi et al money was not spent to create water wealth (a doable thing) but instead real estate holdings in the West and Bank Accounts in Switzerland.
Fatalistic Islam offers no hope, no guidance, nothing.
The Bible, old and new, remains the greatest instruction manual ever. No anthropocentric contrivance has every stood so long or so well.
The fracking revolution is hastening the end of the KSA.
To paraphrase an old Arab saying, when we are not fighting outsiders, we fight each other.
The video looks like a slow day at Sproul Plaza (Cal Berkeley) back in the early ‘Seventies. The more that things change, the more that they remain the same.
..I’ve been to a lot of demonstrations and they always have drums. If they aren’t real ones, these jerks will use pots and pans, or beat on bells. What is it about percussion that enthrals the left ?
Part of the problem is that not many Saudis can work at unbelievably intense pace of Third World works, who desperate to remain employed, are almost as impervious to thirst, fatigue and hardship as animals.
Having some work done on a house, couple of Hispanic guys (subcontractors or employees, I’m not sure) show up in a loaded-up full size pickup, work plan in hands. I ask them how long? “Two hours”, they say. For what I’m being charged, I’d expect it to take a little longer, frankly, but if they can get it done that fast, fine. And they do. If I did it myself, or even with an assistant, I’m sure it would take days. Assuming I didn’t lose a finger in the doing.
Compare this to the pace at Megabank, where I was given five months to do basically five days work, and on the other hand decisions were made in five seconds that should have taken five hours, at least, to consider. OTOH most of the staff there *is* third world, white-collar third world, and this is their preferred mode of operation.
The moral of this story is not that I’m slow and Megabank is slower, but that some specialization is a win for everyone, btw.
But in regard to the Saudis, my impression is they still all aspire to be sheiks, doing nothing. In America, very few people have that as goals. We may want to be rock stars or generals, but still, DOING something. Even my third world pals at Megabank like to *pretend* they are doing something, though they are very indiscriminate as to what, and even less so on the when.
So this whole report about the “Saudi job market” is one big oxymoron, as far as I’m concerned. They are trying to bring US universities to their land, too, and – given what we’ve seen of Saudi students in the US, that too boggles the mind. I suppose they can educate the Phillipino and Indian students in Riyadh instead of Stanford.
I know the Saudi youth are revolting, and not everyone there is in the royal family, and yet – I still have no picture of what could even possibly work there. Peace with Israel would probably be the first, second, and third way to improve their society.
But – actually reading your link – it’s also a matter of economics.:
The prevalence of cheap foreign labor has driven down wages overall — the average foreign worker in Saudi Arabia receives $266 a month, but even Saudi workers average only $966.
Same problem as here in the US in re India and China.
Structural.
–
For the US occupiers – the grievances are valid, but anyone there has already rejected the democrats, the republicans, and the tea party. And so many are the usual suspects and outright communists and nutjobs, I’m unable to take any of it seriously.
“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfills the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.”
That is very beautiful. And I have found it very true for myself.
(but does it apply to the Saudis at all?)
Was it John Lennon or Ashleigh Brilliant who said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”? Internet says Lennon. OK.
Here’s an AB for Obambus: “Sometimes I need what only you can provide – your absence.”
The change came when we shifted our respect from those who created value to those who steal it and dole it out to others. That, in essence, is the problem with the world today, and it is not confined to the nations that are collectively referred to as the “West.” That is the model of those who welcome the idea of world government.
Unconstrained predators eventually eat up all the prey, and then they starve to death. As I have said before, the current Ruling Class has achieved the status of bureaucratic sclerosis. The extent of their programming renders them incapable of understanding their own ignorance and incompetence. They cannot even imagine that either description could apply to them. They see themselves as “the Best and Brightest” and no amount of evidence to the contrary will ever disabuse them of that notion. Evidence and results mean nothing. Faith in one’s inherent superiority trumps all.
But they are the dinosaurs, headed for extinction. Who and what shall replace them?
“Occupy” protesters with their face paint, Guy Fawkes masks, chants and signs look curiously dated, even primitive. In some sense they resemble devotees dancing before a temple hoping to arouse the gods within. As Mike Stopa, a Harvard nanophysicist Harvard wrote on the MetroWest Daily News even the “Occupy” protests aren’t about production; they are about consumption: the consumption of therapy to be exact. “Deep in the human heart there is a persistent need to emote.”
The kabukimono of the anarchist class makes for interesting street drama, but Breitbart at BigGovernment has a couple of also interesting tidbits about who is tied into the “staging” of the aimless, meandering waves.
No jobs, no hope, no cash (not Steve, Bob and Johnny) stirs the millenial’s pot (or bakes it in a brownie)…but, it doesn’t answer any relevant question. Or even ask one.
As for the Saudi’s and the comparison to the millenials, the common ground seems to be a riff off of Groucho Marx…”I wouldn’t take any job that I was qualified to do, or be a member of any club that would have me as a member”.
It also reminds me of the “grandfather’s axe” or Ship of Theseus. If Saudi jobs all go to Pakistani’s are they really Saudi jobs? If American jobs all go to others overseas and illegals here…are they really American jobs?
“Here are the jobs we have currently”
“I would never stoop to taking that job”
“Then you will be unemployed, we don’t have anything else”
“Then, I will protest the lack of jobs”
“There are jobs, you just won’t take them”
“Then, I will protest the lack of jobs I want”
“What jobs do you want?”
“The ones you don’t have”
“Who else in the world has those jobs and is giving them to someone like you?”
“Nobody, that’s why we are protesting them too”
“So, nobody in the world has jobs you want and you don’t want the jobs anyone has?”
“Right, we only want jobs we want”
“When you are done protesting, where will you find those jobs?”
“Protesting is the job we want, if we stop protesting, the jobs we want would cease to exist”
“So, the job you want is protesting the lack of jobs you want?”
“Right. Occupy… means to take up space”
“Well, any job worth doing, is worth doing well”
Most consumption is, in the strictest sense, unnecessary and based on emotions triggered by propaganda=advertising. Liberals are by nature consumptive. Liberals are rent-seekers. Liberals are deductive. Liberals emote.
Much production is likewise unnecessary, but all of it is at least rational in that it seeks a profit and that part which is innovative moves civilization forward. Conservatives are by nature productive. Conservatives are rent-resisters. Conservatives are inductive. Conservatives reason.
These assertions are supported by comparison of any Tea Party rally with any OWS squat-in.
Wretchard has been hitting on many themes lately that all conflate into Cate Blanchett’s powerful opening words to the movie version of the Fellowship of the Ring: the world is changing.
We are seeing economic and technological shifts on a global scale, at a pace that is unimaginable even to us, let alone as compared to such shifts in the past. And because of it all, the rifts opening up across societies are sharp and severe.
The thing is, such shifts in the past have always led to war. Gird your loins…
I would just like to say for the record that the odd smattering of people at the Occupy protests with Guy Fawkes masks on are *not* Anonymous. They’re posers. The conversations within chan culture these days, even if bitter and disgusted at the same things the Occupy people are, seems to be dismissive of these chickenspit protests. A lot of anons find them funny and are poking vicious fun at them.
When Anonymous mobilizes, trust me — you will know. This ain’t it.
There is a STRUCTURAL problem.
They are somehow getting foreign labor to take jobs at $266/month.
This forces the rate even for a Saudi worker down to $966/month.
Maybe it costs $1200/month to live modestly.
For simplicity, and because it is mostly true, consider that these are all candidate rates of pay for the very same job.
The problem is there are NO jobs on which to build a stable, domestic society.
None.
That, is a problem.
… and it is quickly becoming the same problem all over the world, in the US, in Italy – even inside of China, where they have the same kind of surplus of university graduates that we have here. It is already a fait accompli regarding STEM workers in the US, and that alone may be enough to collapse our entire economy and our entire society.
I’d be happy to see this discussed by any major political forces, Occupiers, Tea Party, Democrats, or Republicans. But it’s just too – shocking – for anybody to take seriously in a major public forum. Everyone thinks it’s their own local story, or they are being greedy, or they should just work a little harder, or it’s just capitalism at work, … but the numbers are harsh, and placing blame does not in itself change the numbers.
But when Democrats express sympathy with the Occupiers “because of the unemployment numbers”, they do have hold of a little something. The elephant’s tail, perhaps.
–
Just pulled a book off the stack, “A World Lit Only By Fire”, The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, William Manchester, 1992. Dramatis Personae include Luther and Erasmus, and Magellan. The papal establishment had become an obscenity, the combination of Luther from outside and Erasmus from inside were enough to foster change. Magellan did more than talk, he proved that the medieval myths were not all true, that change was possible.
I’ve thought that politically at least we’ve been in a New Dark Ages since the 1990s. Perhaps … what we need now is best modelled as a New Renaissance.
Yet, it was not like a light just went on and suddenly Europe had a stable peace and prosperity. In fact, except for the New World itself and the New World’s help, it’s hard to see that Europe would ever, or even has ever, had both peace and prosperity even post-Renaissance.
Which is Manchester’s point about Magellan, it takes some DOING. And the Do-ers don’t always make it. Of course, that’s hardly a new story. Well, perhaps such is life.
–
JiP @ 8: Cate Blanchett’s powerful opening words to the movie version of the Fellowship of the Ring: the world is changing.
Galadriel’s words in the movie, Treebeard’s to Galadriel in the book, and of course they are Tolkien’s words in any case, but yes, I agree.
My daughter who has very limited communication sometimes tantrums. And when she does what she says may have little to do with what she feels. She chooses words she has heard or that have worked in the past. Safe words so to speak. However the trick is to find out what the problem really is. It may be simple, a toothache, or complex – a beloved boy schoolmate moved away.
Might relate. Might not. I can very much sympathize with an adolescent that views the world with fear. I have a lot of fear myself.
1. michael hoskins: The Bible, old and new, remains the greatest instruction manual ever. No anthropocentric contrivance has every stood so long or so well.
Really? Have you ever read it?
Jesus requires his followers to renounce their all private property before following him:
Luke 14:33 Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
The Early Church, in fact, was purely Marxist:
Acts 2:44-45 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.
Even the Old Testament commanded interest-free loans (no usury) for the poor:
Deuteronomy 15:7-8 If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.
It may be the case, therefore, that no other anthropocentric contrivance has ever stood so long or so well because it has never even been tried.
I won’t speak to the work ethic of the Saudis, but should they really have to compete with desperate Filipinos? Should the kids in Zucotti Park? Should *I*? Apparently the answer is yes. But no matter who you are, almost, or what you do, there is somebody in China or India who will do it for a fraction. Why get a degree in computer science when they will hire somebody in India or higher an Indian and get him a visa? Capital accrues benefits to its owners, obviously, but the idea is it provides benefits to others, as well, in terms of jobs.
I don’t care for the politics of the Occupy kids, but if there were even crummy jobs available they would probably be working at them. No one is telling me to eat cake.
Much of Saudi life runs on expatriate workers, who come in many shapes and sizes. At the upper end are the gringos — those with American, British, German and similar passports. These guys do the things like run hospitals, factories, technical facilities, etc. Under them are the second tier — the lesser second world passports, who are the middle management and techs. Then there are the Great Unwashed: the Bangladeshis, Indians, Filipinos and a motely of other nationalities. There are millions of these workers in the Kingdom.
You get paid according to the color of your passport. I just visited with a New Zealand family one whom had returned from Saudi Arabia. And they told their story. She was a skilled nurse but got paid much more than an equivalent nurse who was Filipino, having the gringo passport. The expats tend to take the money and go. But people like the Filipinos are desperate to stay on and many have been there for decades.
Her hospital was actually officered by gringos; their NCOs were the second tiers and their peons were from the Great Unwashed. Every now and again there would be an inspection and unknown Saudis would show up, people who were supposed to be running the hospital, and pretend they were in charge. Then the inspection ended and the Saudis departed and left things to the real crew.
So the Saudis have problems at all levels. They aren’t as skilled as the gringos, or even as good as the second tier. And they may not even be as skilled as the Great Unwashed, who through job experience, have learned a trick or two. Moreover, the Great Unwashed are willing to endure hair-raising hardship to cling to their jobs.
I remember sitting in a Army tent around 1981 reading the WSJ that the major weapons manufactures wanted the US Gov to ‘guarantee’ a major weapons package for the Saudi’s. For the first time, then, the Saudi’s weren’t paying cash. And since the national books were closed to outsiders, no one would loan them the money.
As for Saudi’s, and Arabs in general, google up the UN Arab Development report. ( from memory ), Arabs count 600 million souls, from Morocco to Iraq, 2)ish ‘nations’. Average per person per day income. One dollar. Half or more of the population illiterate. Not one world class university. Not one world class manufactured good, or service. Less than a few hundred books translated into Arabic in a year. All the nations GDP combined, less than Finland. Half of nations not reporting any social/economic stats at all. The other half, the ‘more modern half’, suspect.
Way, way less flexible, educated, imaginative than Europe, or the US, and unable to compete against China and Asia making or supplying labor.
Nothing but oil.
I wonder how many OWS people you would have left after you subtracted the ones living on trust funds, the ones that are being paid to protest, the ones just scamming the protest protest “sponsers” for food, drugs, sex, and money, the mentally ill, and the near terminally stupid. “Breathe in, Breathe out,..”?
I was reading about some OWS chick’s wail that they wouldn’t arrest her group when they trespassed. I wondered if she really wanted to be a martyr for the cause or was she looking for three hots and a cot and no necessity to think for a while?
I was looking at a photograph showing some young fools with scarves over their faces and thinking, “Oh yeah, that will protect you identity in the 21st Century.” They wouldn’t even have to track you these days. The equipment could just image your face right through that cotton, then they’d photoshop you and say at the trial, “What face covering are you talking about.”
I’ve been reading about the owners of food carts, and small businessmen with shops complaining to the local elected Democrats about the OWS crowd hurting their businesses and getting blown off. So It is possible that some will go visit some bars in the local China town and make other arrangements to clear access and keep them from trashing their toilets. The precise application of sharp umbrella staves and sharpened bicycle spokes can be a great motivator.
Of course these days the shortened shish ka bob skewers have been found sticking in kidneys. Just no pride in tradition anymore.
I went down to the local Occupy protest yesterday. There was a good turnout, and it was a mixed group of different ages. Yes, it was mostly left of center, full of anger at corporate greed, and simple solutions like taxing the rich. There were plenty of lefty types trying to glom onto the protest. One lady got up and spoke against Marcellus Shale drilling. I fail to see what that has to do with Wall street, but I am sure it made sense to her.
Both the Occupy and Tea party share in the idea that something terrible has happened. One comes from left of center, the other from the right. The messages are basic, simple and hopeful, and full of the last turnings nostrums.
From the Tea Party we hear that if only we got rid of ObamaCare, cut government spending and got rid of government regulations then all would be well.
From the Occupiers we hear that if only we taxed the rich and gave the poor and middle classes free healthcare and college education then all would be well with the world.
They both are using old memes, but underneath it I think that both groups have the frightening suspicion that these old solutions just won’t work. The something terrible has already happened, and it happened over the last decades not just recently. The cake’s been mixed up and put in the oven, and we can no longer tinker with the recipe.
We had a 30 year credit bubble. The bust is happening, and it will only get worse. None of the solutions proffered by each side will work. They didn’t before and they won’t now. We are going to go bust, both individually, and as a nation. Our standard of living, built as it was on ever increasing debt, will fall. The question now remains, how do we respond? With anger and blame? With violence and revolution? Or do we pick up the pieces and try to fashion something that works, if imperfectly and holds together, if tenuously?
I don’t know the answer. I do see that people just want to argue past each other, the Tea Partiers (who I tend to agree with) in their corner, and the Occupiers in the other. The Tea Partiers have their pat explanation for the 2008 meltdown, that it was the CRA and the big bad gov’t that forced the poor little banks to make bad loans. They fail to recognize or protest against the rampant fraud and abuse that took place in Wall street. The Occupiers rant against corporate greed and fail to recognize that the government allowed and encouraged and promoted that greed.
Whose responsible, the government or the private sector? It is a false dichotomy. It’s like asking who started the fire: the guy who poured the gasoline or the guy who lit the match?
We will not come up with any solutions if we don’t understand that basic fact.
Wretchard #14:
In the college in the early 1970′s I knew a couple of engineering students from Egypt. Their family had fled to the US after a change in leadership made them persona non grata. One Thanksgiving I remarked that it was a uniquely American holiday. They replied that they celebrated Thanksgiving in Egypt. I was stunned and asked them how that could be. They said that the Americans ran so many things in Egypt that when they took off work for Thanksgiving that everyone else pretty much had to take a holiday as well. Some no doubt would call this cultural imperialism, but I suspect the locals did not need much encouragement.
The National Review sent someone out to interview the occupy protesters. They talked to one kid who said that corporations pay about 25 cents for every dollar paid for by private individuals. They asked if he knew that in fact the US had the highest corporate tax rate in the world; he did not. Asked where he got his info he replied “Online.”
The kid also said he wanted someone to pay his tuition. They asked why; he said because he had a right to ask for it. Asked why he thought that he replied, “Because I want it and I have a right to want it.”
This brings to mind the Farenhype 911 video. They interviewed two female protest marchers who said, “If a dictator provdies free education, then I like that dictator. If a dictator provides free health care, then I like that dictator.”
They want a dictator. What did that Rudyard Kipling SF story say?
“If they call for the holy peoples’ will, order the guns and kill.”
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Martin Luther King Memorial, at which President Obama and Al Sharpton recently stood, was Made in China.
Maybe somebody in Occupy thought up the justification of the “global icon” but as to doing … well as damsel mouse in Mighty Mouse sang:
10. Josh: They are somehow getting foreign labor to take jobs at $266/month.
My galpal’s nephew in Manila is making PHP 400 per day, works on air-conditioning systems. That’s $228 a month, after graduating college. Everyone else makes about half that, except for her other nephew, who teaches English in China when they aren’t having a spasm over the Spratley Islands. He makes closer to $600 a month. So for the average Filipino OFW, $266 a month is a huge step up. If war comes between Saudi Arabia and Iran, all those hard-working foreign workers will flee, including the doctors, nurses, and air-conditioning system fixers, and you’ll have a kingdom of 20 million helpless spoiled brats “Left Behind” wandering among the smoking ruins. I’m sure their course of studies in Q’u'r’a'n memorization will come in handy.
I haven’t known many Sauds except for the story of the sheiks and their profligate spending on mansions, expensive cars, prostitutes and drug use here in California. I did however work with one when I was a dishwasher in high school. Yeah, I always did the jobs that Americans wont do when I was young. The Saud that I knew was a cook and he was something of a playboy. Lived in a highrise in Hermosa Beach and was supposed to be going to UCLA and maintaining passing grades. Apparently he was living a lie while the living was good. Razi Dean or as my black compatriot called him, Razadin. He was always arguing with the chef who was also a black guy. I moved on and lost contact with the crew. I think Razi though had his comeuppance long before that. Don’t entirely remember.
Which brings me to the topic of jobs that Americans won’t do. That is the problem. Like TBTF, mostly BS. I worked from the very bottom of the bottom. One summer hacking several tons of weeds out of a deep canyon with an idiot stick then shlepping it up the steep slopes and tossing it on the top of a large slat side truck. The business owner would leave me there with the parked truck and some tools while he wandered around doing other things. I weeded, nearly singlehandedly the backyard of Parnelli Jones and painted his fence line down to the bottom of the canyon he lived on. Later the guy I was working for, a close friend of my brothers, Kevin Butler, would run his business into the ground having had an overwhelming coke habit. Later he made history when his cockatoo was the key to solving his murder. Did weeding, painting, had a paper route, did gardening, walked the beans with a hoe, sold Fuller Brush door to door, and was a licensed car salesman, all before turning 19 years of age.
Young people’s parents do not think that it is OK for little baby poopy drawers to get a low paying job when they should be focusing their talentless sights on higher education to become a rocket surgeon. I noticed that these same little gems would give you attitude with service when you asked for something with your meal at the restaurant like silverware or maybe some salt and pepper should they stoop to get a job. Give you this “I am not your slave BS” and you got to wonder where they learned it from and it would appear that they learned it from their parents and their teachers. They should offer “free” education that requires you to work menial tasks in between classes and studying. It would soak up the freeloaders and eschew the foreign invaders not to mention serve as an object lesson of “this is why you study” which is motivating beyond all other means.
I am not sure what to say about Saudi Arabia except that I think they still practice slavery there like they have for centuries. What is laughable is they come to the US along with other Arabs and demand special rights because they are “minorities” and the US guvmint is proud to give it to them for they are their brother’s keeper if only to sell off their birthright to the lowest bidder.
19. wretchard—
That statue is awful!! I can’t imagine who the backers are but it looks like something out of the old Soviet Union or North Korea. And I imagine the Chinese would like it, at least their apparatchiks. But who chose that to honor an American?
Maybe it’s just the angle of the photo in the Wall Street Journal, but Martin Luther King looks sort of Chinese in the sculpture, like a portly version of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.
I just look at the silver lining that every dollar used for Saudi welfare payments is another dollar than Pakistan doesn’t get to fund madrassas
WRT KSA… The Magic Kingdom…
The Royals pick up the cost of health care for the natives.
There is are income taxes, sales taxes, import tariffs, or fuel taxes.
There are no taxes of any kind as you would expect. Instead, the kingdom is entirely supported by oil export revenue –which is entirely owned and controlled by the monarch.
Beyond that, it is the custom within the Magic Kingdom that employers pay for employee’s food — apparently at all times.
This is why the great unwashed can get by on so little money.
And there is a caste system: Saudis are absolutely not expected to do ANY menial labor — nor get dirty, either.
That’s why their construction sites are overflowing with aliens. Which is where the bin Laden family fortune came to be: the old man was able to tap into the Royal capital improvements largesse as the top Royal contractor. As in the above described hospital, he did no work. He just Schindler’d his way to an over-ride for work done by 1st World engineering outfits.
——
For all of OPEC they’ve got the South African mining problem. What used to be the world’s largest producer of gold is now back in fourth place — and falling. China, Canada, America have all exceeded her.
OPEC has already lost Indonesia. Further departures are inevitable. Ecuador is on the bubble.
—-
WRT Libya: the Greenline undersea connection to Italy has been restored. The results are felt in the trading pits.
WRT Egypt: her national liquidity is in free fall. Unless KSA provides free oil the Egyptian Army isn’t going anywhere.
I can see them leaning on Libya for energy. Under the reign of the Duck of Death no deals could be struck.
you cannot pay people such low wages especially when the royals are raking big money from oil. Those low salaries are criminal. Put a zero at the end and then we can talk and avoid future issues.
10. Josh
I’ve thought that politically at least we’ve been in a New Dark Ages since the 1990s. Perhaps … what we need now is best modelled as a New Renaissance.
Hard saying what our time is. My Father considered the Social Peak of the present society to be about 1880 to 1900. The economic peak was probably ending about the late 1920′s but may have been interrupted till after WWII and then over at the end of the 1960′s. The technological peak was hard to see. Best seen when looking back.
Of course the people living in the old Dark ages weren’t going around beginning discussions…
Since we live in the Dark Ages, you just have to expect things to be as they are.
I spent some time in Riyadh 6-7 years ago. Amazing how poorly they treated some very able and educated Palestinians (brother Arabs – so they say) working there. On one of my tours I lived with one of those families for a few weeks. It was clear who was “of the (royal) family” and not. And how heavily the Sharia rules weighed upon the educated women.
Back then I thought we were moving along a path toward more transient incorporations of intellect – similar to movie studio productions – where a number of small expert companies (if not singletons) come together at various times under a contracting envelope to create a finished good. I thought that the internet would enable this model across more and more business segments leveraging talent world-wide, and this would allow the women in these miserable situations to escape. Have seen flashes of this (including in this enslaved community), but no revolution in business affairs yet.
Perhaps a world-wide recession and a need to escape / avoid fiat money will accelerate this move to further disaggregation of business rather than hinder. Maybe some form of an electronic bartering mechanism – trading obligations / favors / gifts – that sidesteps the taxman – though I’ve seen some discussion in California of taxing “labor for self” – i.e. currently if you’re handy with tools you can renovate your own kitchen and not pay the various taxes a contractor would (income, disability, unemployment, social security, medicare, business-operations-tax, etc.). Call it $1000 of the $5000 of a contractor’s labor bill who had done the same work (and often 2x this). California legislators are considering various mechanisms for getting what they consider to be “their $1,000″ (be it home renovation, gardening or raising chickens). Sigh.
Waiting for that big silver bird. Isn’t there an old Chinese saying about when the ground shakes, even those in the top of the tree know fear.
A society that imports undocumented third world workers to do the jobs their own unemployed and unemployable won’t do, very soon become members of the Third World themselves. And that includes the United States. I spoke to a recent graduate of a prestigious university, and asked why his PhD in Persons of Color Minority Studies did not qualify him for a minimum wage job.
Well firstly, yes it does, he said
I’m qualified for sure
It’s just that jobs beneath me
Would be such a freakin’ bore
How many Phds you think
Would not have great regrets
In taking jobs just for the sake
Of paying off their debts
The jobs I’m offered quite insult
My intellect and worth
They’d have me working next to
Folks from anywhere on Earth
Don’t work, I said, how will you keep
The lifestyle that you had
Well, that’s an easy one, he said
I’ll live with mom and dad
Kurt Schlichter compares the Occupy critters with their generational contemporaries in the military:
“Even as the protesters count down the number of days of their ‘occupation’ of downtown parks and sidewalks, on Oct. 7 our troops marked the 10th anniversary of war on battlefields where their next step could make them triple amputees.
But the troops would not complain to the cameras even if there were any left in the war zones documenting their struggles. They aren’t whiners. They may be the same general age as the Occupy Wall Street gang, but they occupy a very different, less frivolous world.
On a windy mountaintop in Kunar province, a tired 22-year-old infantryman on patrol rests and shares a swig of warm water with his buddy. In Manhattan, a 22-year-old from Scarsdale shares a bong-load of killer weed with a guy sporting dreadlocks and a Che T-shirt he got at Hot Topic.
Nearby, a young lady whose TA canceled that afternoon’s NYU oppression studies seminar so everyone could head to the protest feverishly types away at a screed about the militaristic inhumanity of American capitalism on her new iPad.
In Afghanistan, a young American soldier with a locked and loaded M4 assures a band of nervous Pashtun mothers that her platoon will make sure the Taliban don’t come and butcher their daughters for the sin of attending school.
Across Zuccotti Park, a self-described human rights activist with a sociology degree from Yale screams ‘Fascist!’ at the weary NYPD cop who told him to move along and stop blocking the street.
At the same time, a world away, a first-generation Mexican-American medic from Fresno who a year ago was graduating high school ignores the impact of AK-47 bullets all around him as he desperately tries to stop the bleeding from the sucking gunshot wound in his platoon sergeant’s chest.”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/10/sunday-reflection-protestors-should-try-occupying-reality-real-change
Ari Tai – Sigh indeed. I haven’t even heard of that one but it goes to the heart of the mentality of the California moonbat politicians. Californians voted for Moonbeam enthusiastically but I would love to know how many illegal aliens voted too and are now pushed to vote by the state and their greedy pawns. It is probably in the hundred of thousands if not the millions. Voter fraud in the Golden State is rampant and state run. There is ample reason to start stretching some necks in this state of corruption that we live in.
WHEN THE OIL MONEY STOPS
I ran into a Saudi prince I know in Wal-Mart the other day, and asked him what he was going to do when the Democrats lost the power to keep us from becoming the number one oil and gas producer in the world again. He smiled and said that that would be the end of Saudi Arabia and the entire oil producing Middle East, but seemed quite unconcerned.
We’ve got our stash, he said and smiled
Investments, bank accounts
The Democrats have seen to it
That we made large amounts
Of money selling oil to you
And others by the way
And with that money then we bought
The stuff we own today
Big buildings in New York we own
Large parts of Europe too
Swiss banks are bulging at the seams
With cash we got from you
Of course we know this will someday
Come to a screeching halt
But we’ll survive, we royals will
Because we own the vault
The people though, I said concerned
Will then be quite bereft
Of work and funds and then they’ll fight
Each other for what’s left
The Middle East will then return
To camel caravans
And people living hand to mouth
Upon the burning sands
Oh them, he shrugged, and turned to go
It’s Allah’s will, perchance
We royals though will wish them well
From villas in south France
Steyn’s point on the cargo cult consumerism inculcated since WWII by the nomenklatura priests of progressivism is very good. The rest of the world was going to rebuild someday. They would soon be able to enter world markets again. Their plants and procedures were going to be modern. Their labor was going to be cheap. So they were going to be competitive. Political leaders here traded efficiency for votes. Now the bills face us. It is beginning to seem that the Progressive model which has dominated US politics for 99 years has failed. Somehow the symbiotic Siamese relationship between corporations and government will have to be at least partially severed. Will the elite managers do a better job in the coming transition to a post-progressive socio-political model than their record suggests? GBUSA
e @ 17: The something terrible has already happened.
Is that meme spreading, do you think, even subconciously? Because I do think it is the case. My consciousness was raised during the 2008 meltdown, talking to a mostly knee-jerk liberal, who except for his tendency to parrot left-wing dogma, was actually very intelligent. There are a few economist and financier Cassandras out there who have been preaching it for years and written off as nuts. According to which, the several bubbles especially since 1991 have kept our party going long past when it should have collapsed. Basically, thanks to the Chinese and others earning US dollars and not repatriating them. Thanks, world, it’s been grand, but at the least, seems to be ratcheting down.
OTOH, domestic energy independence is within our grasp. Just give us a new president and 18 months. It’s astounding. That alone (and Europe and China also fracking) may (a) give us another decade without full collapse, and (b) collapse Saudi Arabia, which will be a Good Thing. Amazing. I almost feel guilty feeling so optimistic about things!
(and if this gives us all time to get up on thorium and desal and a few other things, well, really, in spite of ALL some serious reasons for longer-term optimism!)
Best of all, the single issue of domestic energy development, it occurs to me, should be able to sink Obama and let any Republican win, and hopefully sweep both houses of Congress as well, unless they too try to jump on the frackwagon, but even that would seem to leave Obama behind, he has a record now.
ews @ 27: Hard saying what our time is. My Father considered the Social Peak of the present society to be about 1880 to 1900. The economic peak was probably ending about the late 1920′s but may have been interrupted till after WWII and then over at the end of the 1960′s. The technological peak was hard to see. Best seen when looking back.
Isn’t it clear that we are still climbing the technology peak? This in spite of the H-1Bs killing the US STEM market. It only takes a couple of guys to move things forward, and so far we still have them (I am *extremely* skeptical about the quality of the H-1Bs we have here, they won’t be inventing anything, in spite of all the whining hype by various greedhead industry types, echoed mindlessly by Obambus). Socially, … I’d nominate the 1980s, up through the Internet bubble 1999 or so. Masters Of The Universe time. Communist collapse. China going capitalist and sending us cheap stuff. Even poverty receeding as trickle-down appeared, briefly, to work, though it was really just the first real-estate bubbles trickling around.
But what made the dark ages dark was attitude. Nobody even tried. The world was static, zero-sum. Obambus’ world.
Our technology today probably prevents a full collapse – and by “technology” I mean such things as the printing press, atomic theory, basic biology, Newtonian physics, electricity, and if we’re really lucky we’ll even keep our computers and the Interwebs. And we’ve invented progress and science, and it will be a long time before these are totally forgotten.
But can we keep an open and generally egalitarian society, the attitudes in the Federalist Papers? That’s the part that seems most threatened.
The problems of Saudi society will come to a head sooner than they think.
Their elites import cheap labor to do their work. There is little chance that they will tolerate any changes which force them to employ Saudi citizens at higher costs.
The Saudi royals have lots of children. It’s a status thing to have many wives and children. King Abdullah has 35 children. His father had 37 sons. Other senior royals also have lots of kids. Each child will expect to live the lifestyle of his parents, even though he’s getting a small slice of a shrinking pie.
Meanwhile, the Saudis have been buying off their Salafi radicals by financing radical imams, madrassahs, and mosques worldwide. The money to continue this is running out. The radical imams will not like being kicked off the gravy train.
Things will start turning ugly in Saudi Arabia real soon now. Any reduction in oil revenue at this point will trigger internal unrest.
Jobs Americans won’t do? Horsepuckey.
With over 30 years of IT experience, I can no longer get a job in my field, despite having updated my skills. The jobs all go to h-1b visa holders and to offshore companies, or to younger people who won’t become a problem for the company insurance budget on account of Obamacare and so forth.
So now I’m working as a cashier. I would do (and have applied for) more physically arduous jobs, but nobody will hire me for them because they think I’m too old to handle the work, or it would cost too much to insure me.
Prosperity is produced by productive Work and free Trade. Productivity is reduced by government regulation. Trade is reduced by taxation.
The growth of the global productive engine of prosperity that began about 1982 ended about 2006. It survived GHW Bush in spite of his skepticism of “Voodoo Economics” and his perfidious “Read my lips” tax increases.
When our culture denigrates the growth of prosperity or even prosperity itself, prosperity will decline. It will continue to decline until the culture comes to its senses. Otherwise, it is cultural suicide.
Keynesian and socialist ideals lead to cultural suicide.
12. Teresita
“A text out of context is a pretext.”
I have read the Bible, and no, it is not Marxist. Yes, Jesus called Peter and Andrew “and they left their nets and followed Him.” (Matthew 4: 20) But it seems that Peter still had a house in Capernaum (Mark 1: 29), and after three and a half years of following Jesus, he still had his boat (John 21).
Yes, The follower of Christ, who are called to special service must be prepared to leave all. It is a common experience for missionaries even today -but, unlike marxism, it is a purely voluntary sacrifice.
In the new church in Jerusalem, the believers “Had all things in common” (Acts 2: 44). There is no record that they were commanded to do so. It appears to have been a spontaneous gesture. Certainly no one was forced to do so at swordpoint.
In Acts 5, a man named Ananias attempted to claim the credit for a fraudulent act of sacrifice – selling a piece of land and pretending to donate all the proceeds. When Peter confronts him (Acts 5: 3, 4), he tells him
“While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control?” There was no requirement for Ananias to give anything. The judgement against him was for lying, not failure to give.
One aspect of the “socialism” in Jerusalem which is passed over without comment is the fact that in “having all things in common”, the people in Jerusalem liquidated their capital, and had no further means of earning income. Years later, when there was a “famine in all the earth” (Acts 11:28), it seems that the church in Jerusalem was in particularly dire straits. A special burden of Paul the Apostle was the relief of the church in Jerusalem (Romans 15: 26, 1 Corinthians 16: 3).
As the Pilgrim Father of Plymouth Colony were to discover many centuries later, socialism – even when voluntary, even among the most select group of dedicated participants – does not work.
I think the statue of MLK made by a chicom and looking like a cross between Mao and Lenin is a perfect model of a useful idiot and also a perfect Icon for the ruling class.
can i say that?
Relative to the problem of jobs being sent overseas let me add some data.
My family owns some rental property, our grandparents’ old home and a small apartment building next door. Last year we put $30K into that property, basic but major maintenance items. And to offset that cost we are allowed about $500 in depreciation each year. As a result the upgrades will not even begin to pay for themselves for many years.
In Red China you can build or upgrade a factory and depreciate that cost in a matter of a few years. Never mind the cheap labor, Red China has vastly better tax laws than the US for business investment and is considered to be far more friendly to business overall then we are.
The greatest danger to us is that these “Anti-Corporate Greed” types will inspire an even worse business environment and therefore doom our economy to an ever greater decline – which will, of course, inspire even more protests, and so on, ad infitim.
Jake in Pittsburgh has it right: the world is changing. So does elby: this change is breeding fear.
Like the Greek tragedies of old, the causes of our problems today are the drivers of our successes yesterday. We won WWII, and were the hegemonies of the free world. The strength and security we were able to project made us the world’s reserve currency. Because the dollar was the accepted store of value, it was stronger than it would have been had there been competing currencies. Because of the strong dollar, it was inevitable that jobs would move offshore (fewer dollars required to pay labor in Asia than home). Because jobs moved offshore and dollars flowed in, finance became our comparative advantage. Because finance came to dominate our economy, rents flowed to financial services and away from manufacturing. Because finance captured more rents, talent flowed into banking and securities firms. Because finance drew both money and talent, it was able to capture even more economic rents and a higher share of global capital. Because it became such a large and profitable part of the economy, it drew more government support, including support for an artificially strong dollar. And because we had so much money, our military was able to sustain the most capable and least corrupt on the planet.
In short, the power gave us money, and the money gave us power.
These are all self-reinforcing loops. The negative feedback loops – elections – got severed through a combination of voter contentment with their share of the take, and entrenched incumbent politicians who figured out how to protect their turf by leveraging their control over a growing stream of government spending.
The thing about self-reinforcing loops in a system, however, is that they work the same way going down as they do going up. And the citizens feel this in their bones. And that’s scary, because we all know that political bodies, like human bodies, can die.
When they do die, they go through stages:
Europe is in denial.
The Tea Party and OWS are angry.
The Ruling Elite is bargaining.
The middle class is depressed.
Kübler-Ross would say the final stage is acceptance. For death, that makes sense. But these stages do not apply only to physical death. They also apply to addiction. The difference is that addiction can be reversed (death, not so much).
So we have a choice – the republic does not have to die, at least not now. Like an alcoholic, we can choose to end our addiction. But to do achieve this better end, we must defy the odds.
The choice, then, is between acceptance and defiance.
I choose defiance. Not because it is rational – indeed, acceptance is probably more rational – but because of a sense of duty. The blessings of liberty were won at great cost by many who came before us. We have enjoyed those blessings – more, in fact, than they did themselves. Having been given a gift, the proper response is gratitude. And gratitude, in this instance, is best shown by preserving the gift we have received.
That is what drives the Tea Party Movement. Whether it drives OWS or not remains to be seen (it’s still early). But if those on the left who vilify big business can find common cause with those on the right who vilify big government – that is, if they both come to see that they’re symbiotic partners like school districts and teachers’ unions – the change will come fast and furious. We will have to choose between security in the form of tyranny, or liberty in the form of self-governance.
And then we will discover whether we’re worthy of the gift.
L3
A friend sent this re the OWS crowds, after listening to Aaron Klein today (he’s on ABC AM radio on Sunday afternoons, and he’s excellent).
“So in summary:
Brookfield Properties owns Zuccotti Park in NYC.
Bloomberg’s girlfriend sits on the board of Brookfield. Her name is Diane Taylor. Brookfield also owns Granite Wind in NH and NY. They received a $168 Million dollar green loan from Obama’s DOE.
Joe Biden’s son lobbied for the loan.
Soros is a major stock holder in Brookfield. The use of Zuccotti was return favor.
Bloomberg is in a pickle now. The protest has spread to a public park. RE: Washington Square Park. I am sure the neighbors are thrilled.”
I’m one of those neighbors, and no, I’m not thrilled. Last night the protestors, drunk with power, were roaming the streets with drums, shouting and intimidating people, blocking traffic, etc. They invaded our neighborhood Citibank branch with a flash mob and scared everyone in there: the cops had to get them out. And on it goes.
I wouldn’t write them off so cavalierly. The Nam War protestors were derided in the same way, but they won in the end.
36. MichaelC—
”The problems of Saudi society will come to a head sooner than they think.”
Not least of which is I see that the 87 year-old king is headed for his third back operation. Take it from me that, even following the best practice (something not necessarily common in this field), lumbar surgery can be a minefield. Basically you can’t always tell where and why the back hurts and imaging studies can show ”abnormalities” where there’s no pain and vice-versa.
Then apparently he had a blood clot post-op, then a second surgery; this was all in the US. As a general proposition in surgery, the follow-up operation tends to be less effective than the first one, ie the first shot is your best shot.
Now he’s up for #3, age 87, and even if he’s healthy at that age it still ain’t good.
And the number 2 in line is 83, and #3 is 77 years old. So how many hundred princes are there in their 50s and 60s? What a mess.
What’s scary about the Reds (the real ones) is that they’ve seen there is no one in charge: no one like Giuliani who has the stones to stop them. So they’re running wild, with the encouragement of the Leftist powers that be, including the jackass in the White House and his cronies and minions. They’ve been getting away with murder to an unprecedented degree.
I’m an historian: it’s gotten epically worse in the past in various countries and kingdoms. It can happen here, because the Termites have been gnawing our foundations unopposed for so many decades.
One of the reasons Aaron Klein is so good is that he pries the plank off the side of the house to expose those Termites crawling beneath it. He’s going to be at the OWS demonstration next Sunday to announce the publication of his book, The Red Army. [Let's take back the moniker "Blue," folks!]
31 – speaking of that murdering rat che, is there any t-shirt maker who sells one with a picture of one of the rat’s victims with a caption that says ” Che murdered me and thousands of others”? re : “occupy” – are the protesters going to get their Mick Jagger “fair share of abuse” soon? On May 3-5, 1971 over 13,000 were arrested in Washington D C.
The roots of socialism are in prosperity. The beneficiaries feel guilt. Ignorant of the source of their leisure, they attempt to destroy that very sources both from guilt and from a misplaced sense of social justice. Shaw recognized this, “If you are not a Socialist by age twenty, you have no heart. If not a capitalist by age forty, you have no mind.”
At the same time, the very rich seek to destroy the prosperity engine in order to keep their relative power. Hence the very rich are happy and complicit to see the rise of Keynesianism and taxation, to prevent others from becoming competitively wealthy.
Soros, Bloomberg and the Republicasn elite, e.g.
Saudi Arabia is imploding.
Faster please.
Have you created more wealth than you consumed today? Ask yourself that question every day
BftP…
It’s a two-fer: as we drill and OPEC blows up it zaps China — THE most energy intensive GDP on the planet — the most.
And then there’s the under-sea hydro-carbon bonanza found by Tel Aviv.
I guess Moses wasn’t a shmoe after all. ( c.f. 2000 year-old-man )
I don’t think we’re in a new Dark Age, or even close to one, although I do sense that we’re on course for another one. The last one was a long time coming. People began to see it coming when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410 A.D., yet the western empire still managed to stagger along in decline for another couple generations. We haven’t even had our Sack of Rome event; claims that a Dark Age is coming will get you branded as a kook.
The last time all large institutions collapsed except for the Church, which survived in part due to its distributed, cell-like organization that embedded it in the surviving local cultures. It owes its survival to the idea of subsidiarity, sometimes discussed here. All the centrally-commanded structures (military, legal, bureaucratic, civic) evaporated. Localities increasingly directed their energies towards their own survival in a world of ever-shrinking pies. The famed design margin that supports bigness simply fell away.
We are passing through a doorway into a world of ever-shrinking pies in the west, and with everything financed and schemed for the opposite. The assumption of growth is a given, automatically built-in to every financial, business, or tax plan. The problem is tomorrow’s presumed customers simply aren’t there in sufficient numbers in the west. Markets on the whole are going to be getting smaller, not bigger, for the west as its hairs grow gray. That presents a challenging environment for almost everything, but particularly for large central governments nursing Ponzi-financed entitlement schemes.
Josh@10 “The problem is there are NO jobs on which to build a stable, domestic society.
None.
That, is a problem.”
The problem Josh is the cost of living has gone out of sight. This did not happen because of foreign competition or free trade. It happened because our society has been sold on the nonsensical idea that government approved “standards’ of virtually every function performed in our economy need to be raised almost on an ongoing basis to make us ‘safe” or environmentally correct, and as a result, we have made those everyday functions horribly expensive. If you travel to the more rural areas of the country of which “progress” and our regulatory monster has passed by, you will often find the cost of living to be substantially lower. There, one can still see what it was like to be free of the Nanny State. Government, particularly that run by the Left or the Elites is the problem. We are paying the price for allowing the Nanny State mindset to run every facet of our lives.
The vast majority of our country, including some who post here, are truly unaware of the unbelievably horrendous cost of the Nanny State intervention in our lives. If one doesn’t have to stop and wonder if you have violated one of thousands of vague gotcha regulations every time you turn around, one can nearly every time perform functions in a quick and direct manner that costs a tiny fraction of what it does now and not have to wait, days, weeks or years in a costly pursuit of government approvals that you may never get. We do not need these higher standards. We should be able to live our lives simply, and free of the government’s prying eyes. It’s our right under the Fifth Amendment.
There was a time not that long ago before the Nanny State Monster ruled our lives, that those less trained, motivated or intelligent could work nobly at menial tasks and earn enough to get by honorably without having to take some government handout. Self sufficiency was possible then for even the less fortunate. No more. Our elites want the majority of our country enslaved and dependent upon a big, omnipresent government that will control your every move. They are nearly there.
The choice, as L3 notes above, is between acceptance and defiance. The time is now to defy the ruling elite. It may be our last chance.
Live Free or Die, and Don’t you ever Tread on Me.
“We are stardust, we are golden and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Joni Mitchell, Woodstock, Crosby, Stills and Nash, 1969, I was a lance corporal, one of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children.
The grandchildren of Woodstock are now Occupying Wall Street? If’s enough to give one the subterranean homesick blues.
Unsk @ 51:
Amen, brother. The regulatory strangle and the compliance burden are staggering. Worse, the mentality spreads like disease in the minds of every small official. It has become a crapshoot even on the question of whether a kid can open a lemonade stand anymore. “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” Then, they banned the lemonade!
A guy not far from here built a treehouse out back for his boys. It’s a very nice treehouse, too, I was greatly impressed with his handiwork. It took him six weeks and $1400 to build. He had called the county up and asked if he needed permits and approval and whatnot, and they said, “For a treehouse? No, there’s no code governing a treehouse.” Well, that was then. One of our lovely neighborhood activist/Nazis decided she didn’t like it and went to the county with a complaint. They zoned the treehouse as an extension for his house, even though it is not an extension of his house, and hit him up for fees and the need to go through approvals. He complied with this to the tune of $1800 in fresh cost, only to be denied in the end, of course. He was doomed from the start, it was a clear set-up.
Everything will be OK. KSA is going to buy $60b worth of US defense equipment.
/sarc
I am still waiting for that list of things the government has done for me as opposed to against me for the past 30 years. My liberal friend said “well they banned smoking!” I said “I believe that was the state, besides, you know I smoke”. Anyhow, everything this government does is to pinch me and to screw me out of something and give it to someone else and just as likely that someone else is going to be a foreigner. It is as if our elites have taken an oath to protect the world from US citizens and pay retribution. I am damn well sick of it.
@12, You are wrong. This forum is too short to enter into a long theological debate, just know that the reading of short verses out of context of time, place and history.
Really? Have you ever read it? YES>
Jesus requires his followers to renounce their all private property before following him: Not completely true. He directs those that Follow Him, i.e. disciples, not simple believers.
Luke 14:33 Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. He was talking to an individual prince, whose possessions meant more to him that his soul, the real point of the piece. Again the direction was to a man asking to be a disciple.
The Early Church, in fact, was purely Marxist: Not
Acts 2:44-45 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. This experiment failed, early. This is the same meme used to justify marxism as some sort of super duper whiz bang.
Even the Old Testament commanded interest-free loans (no usury) for the poor:
Deuteronomy 15:7-8 If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.
Where does it say interest free? and Sufficient for his needs, not his wants. My charity is face to face, not tax to government agent, who takes his cut (salary, perks and other overhead) then distributes the rest seeking the glorification offered by the meekly poor. Really, Terri, you can do better than this.
It may be the case, therefore, that no other anthropocentric contrivance has ever stood so long or so well because it has never even been tried. THIS IS JUST SILLY….
I was watching a French movie called “Queen to Play.” in it there is a scene where the main character negotiates a increase in pay for doing part time house keeping. The guy agrees, opens a drawer and pays her in cash. You can’t do that in the US. Instapundit had a link to an article explaining why people hire agencies to do house cleaning, yard, work or what ever in the US. The paper work, regulations and stuff make it just not worth it to hire direct for even part time work. This is infects all aspects of employment and work in the US of course.
Compare and Contrast how the Sauds will abuse the hell of fellow Muslims from Indonesia for example, especially the women and girls. Then there was the case of the Egyptian couple that came to the US with their very own slave girl that they’d bought from her parents.
I suspect that as things get worse the black market for work will grow and be overlooked in the US. Also expect more abuse of people despite the rules. Watch the “elites” violate the labor laws first.
Other cultures have survived a crash by focusing on a tribe. They found temporary shelter in keeping alive the embers of memory until the fullness of time the catastrophe which laid to the original culture passed them by. This is how the Jews survived; and by sheer size and breadth, how Chinese culture survived nearly a century of humiliation.
But is this how America will survive?? What does it mean for America to survive when it has put aside all claim to tribe and race? Will that fragile tissue be rent and outlived by the ideas of negritude, hispanism and perhaps a recrudescence of europeanism? All the old gods! Will they return after a long absence and dance victorious on the ashes of the founding father’s dreams?
It is the sheer universality of that identity which makes it so hard to preserve: the dream encompassed “all men”; it can have no Jerusalem; it would be “self-evident”, there is no sacred book but human intuition; and within it everyone would claim his “unalienable rights” — from God of all things. It a preposterous, glorious vision. And all that would be lost — lost to a pile of race cards — to a new Balkans, to a resurgent tribalism, an entire engine of Babel erected ironically in the name of tolerance and enlightenment.
But consider how it must survive if it ever does. Because the American ideal cannot survive in a tribe, a place or holy writ, then it can only continue until it is self-evident to all the nations. The secret message in the human heart: the idea of the individual as the bastion of freedom and the possibility of direct access to reality must be proclaimed until all have heard; it must at least survive against all the forces of collectivism not simply as a remnant, but as a victor.
And it is already halfway there. All over the world people have heard tell of it; even in the deepest recesses of the mightiest collectives comes the rumor: not government but individual man and his happiness inviolate against all the plans of the annointed. But it cannot stop there since this time the challenge is global. Perforce the task is to midwife a new birth of freedom, not simply in North America but throughout the world.
Throughout the world? The collective sees that as their natural domain. One must at least be as bold. So it is a mental strife after all; and why not? Where light burns no dark age can come. Those who value that ideal must not give up on it; and it is stronger than one would think; “still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.”
L3; Unsk; Cowboy:
Answer with a shell and a rousing Rebel Yell.
Blatant refusal to accept enemy premises drives them insane.
Idea is to give them the choice between being routed or getting
physical. Vast majority will opt for the former. The rest?
They will let their alligator mouth overload their tadpole ass
never fear.
What is wrong is that people in rich western countries or dopey oil-rich middle eastern countries, believe that life is a picnic; a free picnic. The people who wretchard calls the great unwashed have known since birth that they eat only what they kill, or they die. No wonder they will work anywhere at anything for very little pay.
Things will only change in the rich countries when the picnic runs out of food. OWS is the first outraged wailing by the picnic class as they see the party ending. Wealth consumption is the game of the picnic class. They have stolen much wealth and with it many jobs from their fellow citizens. Now the non-picnic class, tea party people, can’t find work.
Rich countries are rich because previous generations created more wealth than the raggedy-assed countries were able to. When the rich world picnic class agrees to work in return for pay that reflects the value of its work then economies may become sustainable again. If they worked, the picnic class would still be paid more than people in raggedy-assed countries because there is more wealth per capita in the rich countries. If the tangle of wealth-destroying regulations were done away with, the picnic class would find its labour to be worth a bit more.
Most of the great unwashed from poor countries who work in places like Saudi Arabia are creating jobs for themselves and their kin. They are doing whatever they have to do to survive. I am cheering for them to win whatever individual success and whatever individual joy may come their way. Some rich kid laying down in the road and complaining that someone won’t give him free stuff, or that no-one will clean up his own garbage and excrement, for him for free, deserves nothing.
@46 GRUP
Not exactly what you asked for, but close
http://tinyurl.com/3wr8erx
“What does it mean for America to survive when it has put aside all claim to tribe and race?” Remember the original Star Trek episode “The Omega Glory”? What was it that held the Yangs together? A faded and ragged Old Glory and a crumbled piece of paper called the Constitution. Those too are the symbols of our “tribe”. All those that rally to them and hold them dear are members of this tribe. Those that do not are the outsiders. In times of trouble the tribe takes care of its own, which also has always been the American way. That is why America will survive.
Annoy #54:
Here locally we have been seeing TV commercials urging people to – do something or another – to prevent exposure to the 2000 dangerous chemicals in cigarette smoke – in parks, public parks. That is, as in out-of-doors.
I don’t smoke and don’t like cigarette smoke but they want it even stopped OUTSIDE?
Give me a break! In a park or on the street, with even a little wind, there can’t be enough exposure to smoke to matter, even if you are sitting on a park bench next to a smoker.
And despite the terrible budget crisis, some government agency or NGO has the money to produce spots and buy TV time to warn us about this horrid deadly danger and to solicit action.
This is even worse than Workforce Central Florida buying red “superhero” capes to hand out to the unemployed to do… something. At least in that case the governor told them all to take a hike, replaced the entire management.
Of course one problem is that when we get rid of all of this nonsense, regulations, and TV spots and so forth, we are going to put some people out of work, and they are pretty much people who don’t know how to do anything really useful anyway.
#28 Ari Tai says “California legislators are considering various mechanisms for getting what they consider to be “their $1,000″ (be it home renovation, gardening or raising chickens).
I hate to break it to you but local California governments have been doing this for years. BUILDING PERMITS !!!
Why should ANY homeowner have to get permission for, and pay a permit fee for doing something as simple as building a deck, laying some concrete, or re-roofing his house himself??
wretchard 57 Profound. Amen
63 bob: Why should ANY homeowner have to get permission for, and pay a permit fee for doing something as simple as building a deck, laying some concrete, or re-roofing his house himself??
Because they don’t actually own it. They do not have alloidal title – these home “owners” only have a fee simple title, ie a fiefdom granted by the state.
The really big argument lots of folks are missing is “do we own ourselves?”.
I really question any comparison whatsoever between the Tea Party and OWS. The former are grounded in the tenets of the American revolution and the latter in those of the French Revolution. Nothing could be more different, it seems to me, than a religious revolution and an anti-religious one. And that’s not to mention the organic nature of the Tea Party and the entirely artificial nature of OWS.
As for the comparison of Jesus’ words with Marxism/communism, that appears to be a surprisingly common distortion these days. I recently read it in Cahill’s “Desire of the Everlasting Hills.” How anyone can equate the encouragement to abandon material pursuits in favor of the spiritual with the strictly materialistic theology of Marxism remains a bit of a mystery to me.
Maineman #66:
Quite right! Well said.
The Tea Party is a Back to America Basics movement, and in that way unique.
The OWS types appar to be nothing more than monkey-see monkey-do imitators of the “Give me My MTV and Socialism Too” protesters of Europe. People say not to worry because the USA is not Greece. Well, for some people it is.
Then add in the Obama-Driven “The People Against The Corporations” crap, the same thing we saw in the DC protest of a year ago, stir in a some insanity, and there you have it.
55. michael hoskins
Jesus requires his followers to renounce their all private property before following him: Not completely true. He directs those that Follow Him, i.e. disciples, not simple believers.
This is a classic sleight-of-hand. You create two tiers of Christians, simple believers and disciples, and claim that Christ’s filter does not apply to your new class of simple believers, so that the majority of Christians can retain their private property and still be accepted by Christ. Well, number one, Jesus said unless you become like a little child (with simple but pure faith) you cannot attain to the Kingdom. Number two, to fulfill the Great Commission, do we make disciples of all nations, or just make them into your “simple believers”?
Luke 14:33 Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. He was talking to an individual prince, whose possessions meant more to him that his soul, the real point of the piece. Again the direction was to a man asking to be a disciple.
It seems that Jesus was also speaking to us today, when we have a whole nation of people who live better than that prince did in the First Century, and who love their plasma TVs and SUVs so much they are willing to bifurcate the body of Christ into simple believers and disciples, and embrace the life of the simple believer who is still allowed to roil in his beloved possessions.
The Early Church, in fact, was purely Marxist: Not. This experiment failed, early. This is the same meme used to justify marxism as some sort of super duper whiz bang.
One might also say that God’s experiment in the garden failed as well. But it is still held up as the ideal state for humanity, just as the tight community of the early Church is held up as a more recent ideal.
Even the Old Testament commanded interest-free loans (no usury) for the poor: Where does it say interest free?
This is why I asked if you read the whole Bible. The People of God are commanded not to charge interest at all, except to “strangers” who do not acknowledge the maker of heaven and Earth.
Leviticus 25:37 Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.
Deuteronomy 23:20: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it.
RWE – Here in San Diego they have outlawed smoking on the beaches and in the parks. If this is what 16 trillion dollars worth of government produces I want my money back.
Democrats have a proud tradition of slave ownership and can even convince free people to become slaves for the equivalent of cheap baubles and candy. But you run out of ghettos to recruit dependent voters out of so they import cheap dependents from nations around the world including the Horn of Africa. You see, it is the pyramid principle; the more warm bodies from the dregs of the world you can stack up underneath you, the greater your welfare empire and the bigger the plantation man you are. Democrats love slaves.
“And despite the terrible budget crisis, some government agency or NGO has the money to produce spots and buy TV time to warn us about this horrid deadly danger and to solicit action.”
And I hasten to add that propaganda is the most important function of the nanny state and there will always be enough money for that. Especially since the MSM will parrot state missives for free and it can always be backed up with starving artists who will produce street theater for a box of granola and a roll of toilet paper ala OWS.
OT but in line with the general Outraged Wailing and Screaming is Barney Frank’s latest genius idea.
Link at small dead animals from Kate.
re: permit fees. Right. Though contractor or not those particular fees are the same (save if it’s the contractor’s brother that’s the inspector). Double sigh.
57. wretchard
The American Experiment is taking a beating, isn’t it? Your post at #57 is wonderful.
One problem wth modern America is that it has largely forgotten what it was supposed to be, and that even includes those who want a resurgence of cherished values. The only Americans left alive who were adults when America last had small government are centenarians, and even they had to deal with the spectacular stupidity of Prohibition. Much of what modern patriots consider American values and ideals are actually colored by what happened in the Progressive era of a century ago. Even the Pledge of Allegiance was the creation of a “Christian Socialist” named Charles Bellamy, and schoolchildren who said the early pledge did so while also giving what would later become the fascist salute.
America was founded by the self-interested, who knew that personal liberty and an unencumbered striving for prosperity were necessary to fulfill the needs of that self-interest. Most people in history have rebelled because they felt they neve had it so bad; Americans rebelled because they never had it so good, and were convinced that Crown and Parliament were trying to sabotage that good thing; this was the original American exceptionalism. Frankly, I think that even many “old-fashioned” Americans might be reflexively taken aback by the reality of our forebears worldview, including some Tea Partiers; this is because of the narrative we’ve absorbed over the last century. I think we need to take a clear-eyed view of who they were, and to embrace their underlying principles again. Unfortunately, the only ones who seem to pay attention to the founders self-interested worldview are America’s home-grown detractors, like the late Howard Zinn and his acolytes, who take things like Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion out of context and twist it to conform to an entirely different philosophy.
#OWS is mobocracy, plain and simple.
Republics deal with mobs forthrightly and sternly, Democracies appease them or cater to them.
One of the compelling reasons why the founders decided to craft a constitution for a formal republic and scrap the Articles of Confederation was because they were alarmed by mobs. Specifically the armed insurrection in New England by disposessed ex-soldiers known as Shay’s Rebellion. While the rebels may have had legitimate grievances, the founders couldn’t let the threat of armed force by the discontented be the deciding factor for dispensing justice. So we became a nation of laws.
Seems to be a very libertarian stream of thoughts going on here.
I’m having some work done at the house, been surveying the neighborhood to determine what needs doing, trying to come up to speed on the proceses, being a real estate newbie. So I’m only vaguely aware of building codes, neighborhood covenants, permitted versus not, licensed contractors versus not, etc. I’m getting advice from two main experts, one who has been fixing up houses for sale for the last few years (not with his own hands, all by contract labor), the other is a general contractor who lives across the street.
It’s a fascinating mix of formality, informality, permits, payments, cheating.
But also, I’ve seen what happens when there is too little regulation, and monster mansions start invading nice old neighborhoods, or twenty people move in next door with three cars on the lawn, etc, not to mention turning a house over to marijuana cultivation. Or one house in my own residential neighborhood seemed to be running a farm, with chickens, geese, goats (actually I had occassion a few years ago to look into the regs on that, friend had a few araucana chickens with the blue/green eggs …).
There seems to be some role for community standards, consensus, compromise. Licenses. Inspectors. All irritating, and because they are government hard to keep rational, but – the *idea* seems good and – worth pursuing, I think. There are all kinds of specialties involved. Maybe they each require slightly different handling.
My point, fwiw, is that it seems remarkably rare to find a happy median in any of this, a simple and business-like list of things to do, prices, signatures, and then things done. Comes under the heading of “such is life”, I guess. You can wish things were just easy, but hey what would be the fun of that?
“Or one house in my own residential neighborhood seemed to be running a farm, with chickens, geese, goats”
Maybe you should move to the middle of the desert where you can live on your own and not be bothered by others with McMansions and cars. However, WTSHTF you may want to raise your own chickens and goats so that you have something to eat while your old neighbors tear each other apart and demand a police state to make sure perfect uniformity. Alternately you could live off of drinking seawater and eating one Eucharist wafer a day. That is the course of the ascetic. The important thing about neighborhoods is they should not tolerate anything which is not identical to exactly how you live your life. Since you cannot discriminate to keep dark skinned people out, you should endeavor to keep out anyone who does not conform to the specifications of the state. That is a good reason to convert to Islam and to build your own tribe. Once you have the numbers you can drive all of your infidel McMansion loving neighbors out. The muezzin’s call emanating from your minarets should be enough to strike terror in their heart of your offending neighbors.
Whoops, was that too libertarian?
toadold@56
The idea that the regulations and tax compliance issues are so onerous for part-time domestic help that it requires a payroll service UNDERSTATES the problem – any business that isn’t large enough to require the services of an accounting department is in exactly the same position.
I owned a small retail business and thought that I could handle it. Hah. After 18 months where only 5 months worth of paper went through without SOME sort of problem finally convinced me to hire a service who would have the time to deal with the bureaucrats who are creating make-work problems to protect their otherwise useless jobs. One month, the state applied the entire contents of the “escrow” account to ONE of the three bills, instead of splitting it among them, as they were supposed to do. They then acknowledged the overpayment in a letter telling me that the money would be applied to future bills; at the same time I was being billed for missing payments in the other two accounts, with penalty fees added. The people in those departments admitted that it was a mistake in the states accounting department, but said they had no way to correct it- there was no procedure in place to deal with this. I eventually wound up paying the extra penalty fees because hiring a lawyer was more expensive… and the jerks in the gov’t knew that.
The arrogance of the “governing class”, both in and out of gov’t, is the source of much of the rage of both the Tea and OWS folks.
75. Josh
Seems to be a very libertarian stream of thoughts going on here.
Yes, you’re talking about rational zoning standards. There are limits even to “personal liberty,” and rampant individualism. Even the founders and citizens of early America argued about that. The rampant individualists back then could high-tail it to the frontier, which was whatever was west of the Appalachians back then. Once there, they found that “rules” or customs of the then-majority Indians put some crimps in their lives as well, mostly dealing with boundaries for hunting and trapping.
11. john :”I can very much sympathize with an adolescent that views the world with fear. I have a lot of fear myself.”
IMO, the fear is wasted; Get busy doing something productive, live within your means even if they are humble and the world seems much less scary. I have never been without a job since I was 15 years old. Many times I worked more than one to make ends meet. I have some college now, thanks to the military (which most of these complainers would never even consider) but that was not necessary to be employed. Sadly, drug dealers are better role models than these losers, at least they hustle to survive. Never had a drug dealer steal money from me as do these government dependents.
13. Thrasymachus: “I don’t care for the politics of the Occupy kids, but if there were even crummy jobs available they would probably be working at them.” That’s a load of crap. Some how the illegal immigrants seem to find work but the people who have lived here all their lives just can’t seem to crack that code? BS! Even people living for free in government housing who are unemployed, and by definintion have all the time in the world to keep their homes clean, do not lift a finger to do the most basic tasks. And speaking of the illegals, how is it they are not treated with the same contempt as Wall Street since they are taking jobs out from under the protestors? If you are not willing to fight for the jobs, you don’t deserve them.
Building permits trigger inspections — which save you from yourself.
Construction is more difficult than imagined — which leads to cutting corners — and then disaster.
Like traffic cops they are simply necessary.
Gordon
Regarding the statue, you are correct it is awful. However, the style is not soviet, it is indeed gangster. If yo look at the statue and imagine a lot of “bling” especially a big medallion hanging on a chain around his neck it would be at home on a cd cover. I do not know who decided upon this design or what bunch of clowns co-opted the selection process, but this does not at all resemble the popular culture mythology of mlk as a man of peace who led non-violent protests.
This fellow is thug through and through.
I think this has a lot to do with how his usurpers would have us view them; they do not want to be seen as needing to use non-violence because they view that as a tactic of weakness and instead want to be seen as having and able to wield violence / power.
Similarly, I have no idea what the speakers at the unveiling were thinking. Were they unaware that it was being recorded and broad cast? Much of it was only so shy of a Farrakhan numerlolgy speech.
17. elby : “From the Tea Party we hear that if only we got rid of ObamaCare, cut government spending and got rid of government regulations then all would be well.
From the Occupiers we hear that if only we taxed the rich and gave the poor and middle classes free healthcare and college education then all would be well with the world.”
There is a definite difference, one is the Ideology that built this country to Superpower status and the other one has been eroding that staus ever since. Call ‘em as you see ‘em.
Bums and drums. Bums with drums.
Cecil Rhodes supposedly said at the end of the 19th Century that to be born an Englishman was to win first prize in the lottery of life. At that time, “Arab” was a pejorative. But the big wheel keeps on turning. Now the Arabs have marble-clad palaces, and the English show up in Dubai as sluttily-dressed women and their obnoxious drunken male companions.
Many nations have their day in the sun. Let’s not begrudge the Arabians their turn. The real question for Australians & Americans is how to make sure that we do not fall as far & as fast as the English. Which means thinking about what made the good times roll in the first place, and getting back to that ASAP.
In the meantime, let’s acknowledge that the Omanis and the Emiratis have created societies where a woman can take her power-walk alone on the beach in the dark in complete safety, and gas stations are full-serve. Maybe we have something to (re)learn from them. While Europeans are stuck in a snit of holier-than-thou global warmism, Arabians are building steel mills and aluminum plants, mines and chemical factories, nuclear power plants and (yes) evil oil wells.
What is the difference between a Saudi with a $260/month Filipina maid and a Clinton Administration nominee with an underpaid illegal immigrant servant on whom she avoids taxes? Except, of course, for the fact that the Saudi actually follows the laws of his country.
Why do so many people tut-tut about underpaid foreign workers in the Middle East, while texting on their iPhones made by Chinese workers who dream about making $260/month tax free? It may take a certain amount of hypocrisy to make any society work, but at least the Saudis don’t hide their low-paid workers behind an ocean.
#80 blert
This presupposes that the inspectors are competent at what they do. Like many traffic cops, this is not always the case. Especially in big cities where the heads of the police departments are first and foremost politicians rather than cops the focus seems to be on gathering fines from low hanging fruit like driving with an expired inspection sticker or not wearing a seatbelt. It provides revenue from the fines. Protecting the public becomes a dim secondary objective.
And I guess it varies from locale to locale, but the building inspectors I’ve dealt with in the past seemingly got those positions from political connections, not from competence.
What drives the desire for freedom is the impulse to find out the truth for oneself. Some people have the fundamental desire to “talk to God”, perhaps not in the sense of Moses and the Burning Bush, but at least as in seeing what is in the next valley; beholding the canyons of Mars; finding some new and undiscovered branch of mathematics out for themselves. There must always be room for those who want things straight from reality and not out of some bureaucratic handbook.
And for that privilege many will hazard “looking upon the face of the deep”, launching out on the seas or the void of space, running the risk, taking the chance. Some people want to discover the limits of the possible for themselves. “I aim to misbehave” is the roguish equivalent of the phrase ‘I will know the truth’
And who can tell us the truth? Ultimately we can only know it for ourselves. Although there will be the need for traffic lights to keep individuals from colliding with each other, some minimum order that maximizes freedom, the future exists precisely to the extent that we keep reading the book of truth; keeping going a little further yet.
Consider that in terms of policy content Hope and Change is really about the opposite idea: it is about implicit despair and stasis. It’s about accepting limits, regulations, strictures, speech codes and above all some overarching authority apart from “God” — or the truth, or nature if you prefer — as expressed in a group of human beings who rule above us because they “know the truth”. For we are not permitted to find it out independently. When we accepted the largesse the fine print said, “conditions apply”.
In that world we should never know or think for ourselves. Truth comes from “consensus”, not some independent reality and those who disbelieve it are “deniers”. Take “climate change deniers” for example. It is plain to see that what goes from Global Warming is true in all the thousand of “truths” which we must mindlessly memorize, the secret code of social acceptance.
If you want a world where people chant in unison, think only “appropriate” thoughts, live only as long as the government panels decree, limit their activities to those prescribed by some office of “health and safety”, then build the great togetherness, raise the high tower, establish the great state at the end of history. Do it: and change this globe from a collection of selfish individuals to one that wants to buy the world a Coke.
But there is no end to history, except in the minds who want to rule where they will make it stop. There is only a little further yet. It is this dynamic that fundamentally prevents humanity from sinking into some slough and from a lack of horizons turning its cities into prisons.
Of all the intuitions of the founders, the most important, it seems to me, was the notion of incompleteness, as expressed in the idea of the Creator, in the something we pursue for happiness. And in their greater wisdom they also forbade fully determining what the Creator was, so that we should never be certain that was all there was; that there should be no established description of the truth, whether that description was called a church or an ideology like Marxism-Leninism. Man’s goal upon the earth was “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” and never, never to submit to some wizard in a darkling tower.
47. winslow : “…the very rich seek to destroy the prosperity engine in order to keep their relative power… Soros, Bloomberg and the Republicasn elite, e.g.”
To which Republican elitists are you referring, because none come to my mind. You could be correct, I just can’t picture who you do apparently.
86. wretchard
Amen.
Life is an adventure.
Just heard an interview with one of the Los Angeles “OWS” protesters.
Asked who she represented, she replied herself, adding that she was with the Los Angeles Unified School District.
She then went on to say that the “Zionist Jew Bankers” who control the largest banks should be “run out of the country.”
Okay a Jewish Pogrom is on their agenda. And it always starts with running them out of the country, like, say, to Madagascar, but actual transportation requires excessive competence, so it’s easier to just herd them in camps and give them all a shower.
You know, actually all this is great. They are presenting us with a priceless teaching moment. Even if, God forbid, we actually have to get out in the streets and fight such people, it’s getting so that we won’t feel bad about it at all.
I just hope it does not ever get to the point where it actually feels good to do so, but I fear I see that signpost coming over the horizon, like the first one in a Burma Shave slogan.
Although I ridicule city building permits mostly tongue in cheek, every citizen has to contribute their own brick in the wall of a totalitarian state that is arrears to the tune of around 16 trillion dollars and climbing. Ever particle of mass adds to the mountain of bureaucracy. Is it possible that things can be done more efficiently? Yes, I am certain of it. If it were a choice between what we have now and poorly built houses would I choose tyranny? Not a chance. Wretchard recently highlighted the use of water bottles for lighting in the slums outside of a Philippine metropolis. Would it be better that the inhabitants had an oversized government and toil in the dark? Many who work in those outsized agencies certainly think so. Remember that we are in the present dire circumstances because government is unable to regulate itself. Could not come up with and execute its own plan. Is unable to review a civil architecture of its own and we are asking them to police us without oversight.
That said, I believe in core functions of government. A system of laws and a judicial system and a police force to enforce them. A fire department, fire codes et al, and yes, building codes that ensure public safety (though not designed to eliminate public envy). But we have seen time and again the government first taking control then taking away liberties. For example, once upon a time there were open spaces. Here in California they decided that the state would administer them with state employees instead of allowing a manager living in a cabin or in a mobile home to administer for little more that the cost of having a nice place to live like one of millions of apartment managers. So they decided that they cannot ‘outsource’ it to private industry and since they cannot control costs they are shutting the parks down. Blocking access and arresting trespassers. They will take away your police and fire and will not issue you a building permit if you do not pay for midnight basketball. You volunteer to pay extra in tax to fix schools and to fill potholes and they use the money to redecorate their own offices and retirement portfolios. That is government doing what it does best. In the famous words of Roger Hedgecock; “had enough government yet?”
89. RWE: Okay a Jewish Pogrom is on their agenda. And it always starts with running them out of the country, like, say, to Madagascar, but actual transportation requires excessive competence, so it’s easier to just herd them in camps and give them all a shower.
The Flea Party is also calling for a national registry to identify and locate the rich, particularly the rich who don’t spend their money the way they want them to (Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon aren’t included, you see) and for the rich to be given star or dollar sign tattoos. Obama enjoyed the support of 78% of American Jewish voters in 2008, and now the President has embraced the term “99%”. Presumably the 1% of Americans who will get put on the cattle cars are the 22% of Jews who didn’t vote for Obama.
From the Divine Right of Kings to the Divine Right of the Properly Credentialed.
The Old Nobility is either dead or powerless, all hail the new “noble” families. Who are watching the stash vanish and hear the pitch forks being sharpened.
So the lawyers for the OWS crowd who have been arrested in New York have threatened to clog up the courts by not doing plea deals unless the prosecutors let them go. Can you imagine what a chief DA with courage could do to the little darlings and their lawyers?
#90. Annoy Mouse
There are other alternatives to regulation in many areas that government occupies. Building inspections? Screw that. Require that the builder has insurance. The insurance companies will send out their own inspectors. Depend upon it. And they won’t be chosen because their Uncle Rick is a state senator.
We might look to insights from the past, such as the Code of Hammurabi, which established liability for a builder whose house he built collapsed, and which also provided that a judge who reaches an incorrect decision is to be fined and removed from the bench permanently.
The correct and legitimate laws are those which are “rules of the road.” It does not matter if you are required to drive on the left side or the right side of the road. It is value neutral. All that matters is that all adhere to the same standard.
And screw the notion of equality. People are not equal. This is a fact of life. What the original thinking was in the great American Experiment was simply equality before the law. In other words, if A does act X towards B, would the law accord the same result (criminal or civil) if their positions had been reversed? To the extent to which it does not–we do not have equality under the law.
Notions like “Affirmative Action” are actively opposed to the equality that the US Constitution sought to impose. It was a betrayal of the dream, but these days very many people make their living from the root of that treachery.
This shia ayatolla from saudi arabia talks about the oppression that the shia’s experience every day in saudi arabia.
…………….
Following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Saudi Ayatollah Nimr Al-Nimr, which was posted on the Internet on October 7, 2011:
Nimr Al-Nimr: For the past 100 years, we have been subjected to oppression, injustice, fear, and intimidation. From the moment you are born, you are surrounded by fear, intimidation, persecution, and abuse. We were born into an atmosphere of intimidation. We feared even the walls. Who among us is not familiar with the intimidation and injustice to which we have been subjected in this country? I am 55 years old, more than half a century. From the day I was born and to this day, I’ve never felt safe or secure in this country.
You are always being accused of something. You are always under threat. The head of the State Security Service admitted this to me in person. He said to me when I was arrested: “All you Shiites should be killed.” That is their logic. The head of the State Security Service in the Eastern Province said so himself.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2794110/posts
1969 the CD
http://tinyurl.com/3z55kuu
Listen friends, and mark my words in this moment and this hour–
God is jealous for his name for his name is jealous.
Nor is this a charming flower to set before a man
nor one of his commands.
Yet, without Jesus, this is more than we can love as we desire peace,
and less than we can know as we desire joy.
For the sacred fire
that makes us liars–
I mean, that separates speech from dreams,
and separates our flesh from the future–
is God’s power manifested.
So, in the year and the hour– for his sake, invest your desire in Jesus.
Follow his holy fire for right now. Right now he intercedes for us in heaven!
Some will say we are people of the way.
We are people of the way.
We praise his holy name
Yahweh.
I am who I am.
I cause things to be.
I am the first cause of creation.
We praise his holy name
Elohym.
And say “Thank you Jesus for your precious blood–
better, so much better than the blood of Abel.
How then should we pray?
I pray bless me a lot oh God.
Show me your kingdom and righteousness
in such a way that my thoughts words and deeds
reflect your wisdom and power–
and that– for the sake of your honor and glory.
So that I will live in your presence
in this life and the next.
For your name sake
Let me hear my children praise your name
And their children too.
I pray all this in Jesus name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHXEfNxO83w
I like the plan to send them up in a rocket so they can occupy space.
90. Annoy Mouse: I have a serious problem with how my taxes are misapplied on purpose so I can be gouged for ever more. I don’t live within city limits which to them means I do not get fire protection paid for through my property taxes. They do however pay for schools within the city, schools I have no children attending as I have no children. The county sent me a bill for fire service coverage in the event I need the service. If I do and have not paid in advance I will be billed a much larger sum. So how can I be forced to pay for sevices inside the city I do not need while services I do need, outside the city, must be paid for seperately? Because it is all an extortion racket. Being angry about it will not change it and since the majority of voters live inside the city limits I stand a snowball’s chance in Hell of changing it since to do so would raise the taxes of those inside the city. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, “Aaargh!”
#4
speakeasy 87?
Speakeasy
No hard evidence, just observation and inference.
Any who support increases in government, esp. taxation and regulation: The elder Bush and Baker, McCain, Lindsey. I don’t know anybody behind the scenes, but I observe the politics of those selected for nomination.
The younger Bush, I must admit, did not seem to be with the program, although he did seem to be ignorant of the benefit of his tax cuts toward increasing general prosperity.
The enormous struggle that Reagan had with his own party is further evidence.
This year old article by Dinesh D’Souza pulls together the various strands of Obama’s thinking. Dinesh characterized Obama as an anti–colonialist. The weirdness of Obama is that these attitudes stem from Obama’s father and the 1950′s. The world has longs since moved on. So there is a ghost in the white house.
How Obama Thinks
Dinesh D’Souza, 09.09.10, 05:40 PM EDT
Forbes Magazine dated September 27, 2010
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0927/politics-socialism-capitalism-private-enterprises-obama-business-problem.html?partner=email
by the time we got to wall street
we were haaaalf a dozen strong
with iPhones everywheeeeere
and defecaaaaatio-un
we are stardust
we are golden
we are trapped in a statist baaaargain
and we-ve got to get ourselves
back to the ga-ah-ah-arrrr-den
Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right:
“What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page,” Taibbi writes. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are actually natural allies against the “incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington.” The media, many politicians, and especially the banks would rather “draw phony battle lines, and then herd everybody back into the same left-right cage matches of old.” Don’t fall for it. This “isn’t part of the same old story.”
That which makes us human is the desire to learn, to become more than what we are. Whether it consists of the desire to learn the intricacies of quantum mechanics or just how to make flour tortillas from scratch makes no difference. When we quit striving to expand we have chosen the grave.
IMHO what makes civilizations fall is when lids are placed upon what is currently perceived as being the essence of reality. Political Correctness and Credentialism are symptoms of the underlying disease–a myopic political/cultural class that feels threatened by any type of change that they do not control and who will attempt to stop it by any means within their power because it will mean their status, power and wealth will be diminished.
They have chosen the path to the grave. They seem incapable of understanding the path of the people who wish to avoid it.
From the Tea Party we hear that if only we got rid of ObamaCare, cut government spending and got rid of government regulations then all would be well.
You left out the part about spending less than your revenues, and increasing economic freedom, and divesting power from distant Washington to closer State and local governments. So your hearing was pretty bad, unless you meant to caricature the message all along.
Blert, in most jurisdictions a proposed building design is reviewed in what is called Building Department Plancheck, where the Architect and Engineers’ plans are checked for conformance to code. Building Inspections just verify whether the approved plans have been followed. The key part of the process is plancheck. If the plans have not been designed properly, it won’t make much difference during the inspection phase.
The level of scrutiny is also key and it varies greatly depending on the location. In many rural and some metropolitan areas the level of scrutiny is actually quite low. In Blue Metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, ( my city) the level of scrutiny in horrendously high and intrusive.
Some key points about that regulatory scrutiny:
• Many areas now have laws that reflect more a desire for social engineering than a desire for safety. There is often a “planning” or zoning review where subjective adherence to politically correct dictates are the consideration for approval. Many projects die right there. There are also Nanny State political correct safety issues that when taken the logical leftist point of view conclusion become wholly unworkable and unfeasible. Too often, again in Blue areas, project death by unworkable fantasy regs is becoming common.
• Buildings as you noted can be complex endeavors. There are literally thousands of decisions. Another problem is overly heightened scrutiny. If pushed, a planchecker can and all too often these days does push for the review of hundreds of the most mundane issues asking for expensive calcs, drawings etc. This can also happen in the Planning Review stage where projects may be asked to conduct a full EIR with costs generally running in excess of $100K. Here again, the cost can be enormous in either phase and many owners just cannot fund the heavy upfront costs of this kind of regulatory approval.
The basic problem is that our regulatory system in many areas has jumped the bounds of our Constitution and now has no checks and balances. We need to reform our regulatory system to fix that problem. Some regulations are necessary. Many are not. We need a process that respects our Constitutional liberties and at the same time sorts out what is reasonably necessary and what is not.
In California Title 24 regulations are being gamed by manufacturers — relentlessly.
This is one of many reasons why California real estate is so pricy.
Congress has rather consistently expanded California crazy to the entire nation.
The proscription against Edison lamps being a case in point.
Next up: tamper-proof receptacles and AFCI circuit breakers.
This last item has caused the industry to entirely resize the electrical service panels — pretty much doubling their size. What used to be a 200Amp 240VAC 3-wire Service is going to be 320A 240VAC 3-wire.
Such a bump increases the drain on the local power company — just when the construction of new plants is being tied up — and when coal power is being shuttered.
All for the EV of the future…
But they are entirely impractical for northern climates and the sun belt. No air conditioning, no heat!
EVs make sense for Hawaii and perfect weather.
The basic problem is that our regulatory system in many areas has jumped the bounds of our Constitution and now has no checks and balances. We need to reform our regulatory system to fix that problem. Some regulations are necessary. Many are not. We need a process that respects our Constitutional liberties and at the same time sorts out what is reasonably necessary and what is not.
We need no regulations at all. If they are unimportant enough to be passed by the Legislature as actual laws rather than “regulations” we don’t need them, ever.
One of the worst things we ever did was to permit the Legislative branch to delegate their power to make law to the Executive branch by means of creating “regulations.” That was and is an abomination. No good has come of it, and I suspect no good ever will.
The world is changing. The current political class is becoming irrelevant at a rather high level of speed, and that applies to the synthetic middle class as well–people who work for the government drawing middle class salaries whose abilities wouldn’t get them hired for anything more than minimum wage in the private sector.
The world is indeed changing. Subsidizing social parasites is a luxury that we may no longer be able to afford.
102 @YBR:
You mean the same Taibbi that has been found to have been coordinating with the organizers of OWS? Don’t think I’ll be buying that spin, but thanks for trying.
Douglas Schoen: Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd
A good deed done by a Democratic Pollster. Actually finding out what OWS wants, sort of…
tom
tom@109: Actually finding out what OWS wants, sort of…
From DB@108′s link:
Other emails include Taibbi’s:
[...]
If OWS could identify a few basic problems – over-concentration of capital, regulatory capture, overweening influence of money on politics, excess financialization of the economy, tax unfairness….
Where have I heard that before?
Fraternization in the Modern World.
First Comment:
Looks like a concerted effort to bring down US.
Bubbles bursting all over the place.
Media not in love with Obama:
The charge echoed longstanding complaints from conservatives that the mainstream media treated the tea party with contempt, preferring to zero in on examples of looniness or astroturfing rather than the broad energy and goals of the movement.
But a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the reverse has actually been true: Obama has received the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, with negative assessments outweighing positive ones by four to one.
[...]
The top four most favorably covered candidates, the study found, were all tea party favorites: Perry was followed by Palin, with 31 percent positive coverage and 22 percent negative; Michele Bachmann, with 31 percent positive coverage and 23 percent negative; and Herman Cain, with 28 percent positive coverage and 23 percent negative.
W: “Marks Steyn commenting on the “Occupy protesters”, noted that the worst thing about them was that their dreams could only be fulfilled by government.”
All we have to do is give more – and if deemed necessary give everything – to our government – a small group of other people after all – and utopia will spring forth – heaven on earth.
All of us “little animals” on Animal Farm need to stop placing corn in our own barns for our own families – because that would be Free Enterprise – because an animal who wants the fruit of his own labor is a greedy animal. No, we must send more and more of our corn to the non-greedy Pigs who didn’t labor for the corn – where the corn will be owned communally – but controlled by the Pigs alone. BTW, don’t think too much about that last one because – you know – doublethink is insanity. The Pigs would never be self-serving, or violent – would they? The Pigs would never pig out on the corn – they would never toss out leftover corn to the lazy (proletariat) non-greedy, non-corn-producing animals in return for votes – would they? The Pigs love us – right? So stop placing your faith in God – do not love God. Place your faith in the non-greedy Pigs – and love them – and so it follows that you must love and have faith in Big Brother – he’s not greedy either. Your dreams can only be fullfilled by Big Brother – not by greedily growing and keeping your own corn – not through your own – greedy – creative labor.
“You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him; you must love him.” George Orwell – 1984
Dave D. @ 3: “I’ve been to a lot of demonstrations and they always have drums. If they aren’t real ones, these jerks will use pots and pans, or beat on bells. What is it about percussion that enthrals the left?”
Percussion brings out the animal nature of man – an animal nature which is essential if one is to steal from a neighbor – an animal natue which is essential if one is to use violence against a neighbor.
These OWS drums remind me of “The Lord of the Flies.”
YBR, Pew poll indicates nothing of the sort. In fact, it’s just more pro-Obama distortion. First of all, the negative coverage reflects negative comments by Republicans and Pub presidential candidates, because it tracked “the news.” Second, Obie is doing such a terrible job that all news attached to his presidency is, by its very nature, negative.
But most important (from hotair.com):
“Establishment journalists will seize on the Pew study as evidence that they do not have a liberal bias. (indeed, Politico is already unsubtly suggesting Team Obama start working the refs.) To be sure, the media bias does not extend so far as pretending that the economy is roaring along. However, the Pew study by necessity only tracks stories actually covered. Such studies will not reflect the media’s propagation of Team Obama’s “jobs saved or created” dodge. The Pew study will not reflect that NBC and ABC largely ignore the Obama administration’s Fast & Furious scandal and that the entire establishment media blacked out the House subpoena to the top levels of the Justice Department in the scandal. Pew won’t reflect Big Media’s systemic downplaying of our exploding national debt and pretending that Obama has a serious plan to deal with it. The list goes on and on. When the watchdogs don’t bark, Pew won’t hear — but that’s not evidence of media objectivity.”
YBR 111: “But a study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that, in the past five months, the reverse has actually been true: Obama has received the most unremittingly negative press of any of the presidential candidates by a wide margin, with negative assessments outweighing positive ones by four to one.”
“Sometimes you see a headline that just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. This is one of those times. Imagine anybody believing that Obama is a victim of the press… There has never been a president to better use the liberal main stream media to his favor that BO so there has to be something funky going on here… Obama is far from a victim. The amazing thing to me is that Obama has received any negative coverage at all. So as usual, while the Liberal Lame Stream press loves these kinds of studies because they claim to confirm the fairness, legitimacy and balance in their journalistic endeavors. Unfortunately such reports only serve to placate the sheeples with 4th grade reading levels that they target.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/10/pew_study_results_obama_is_the_victim_of_negative_press.html
Maine@114 & S-R@115:
Wow. That was fast – 24-hr response time to the poll.
The hotair critique is more valid than the American Thinker critique. The former points to poll design as fundamental to any actionable content that might be derived from polls. All polls are subject to a similar rebuttal, some less so than others. These aren’t essay questions.
I expected more from the American Thinker site than cavalier snark. Sounds like Jimmy Pethokoukis on steroids.
My point, one I have made many times in the past, is the extreme unpopularity of GWB and the Republican Party when Obama and the Dems swept into the White House. It wasn’t just the news media – it was much of the country. The 2008 elections were anti-incumbent all the way. 2010 demonstrated a clear push-back as Washington policy-makers struggled to work with Congress to “fix” what both classes only slowly came to understand as a major financial crisis rather than a simple market recession amenable to the usual fiscal and monetary response.
I agree strongly with Taibbi’s thesis that the analysts – within and outside of the media – are struggling to contextualize current events within the traditional left vs right paradigm. That doesn’t capture the role of Wall St in the current crisis. Nor are the “limited government” people making any meaningful connections with the role of Wall St in executing Financial Repression on middle class portfolios.
blert@80: “Building permits trigger inspections — which save you from yourself.
Construction is more difficult than imagined — which leads to cutting corners — and then disaster.”
Yes and no. The problem is that inspections are only going to help in direct proportion to the skill and pickiness of the inspector. As an example…I bought a house about 6 or 7 years ago in the country. It was fairly new, having been built in 2001. There was no front steps or deck…the door was hanging in the air. The basement was fantastic and huge with 10-foot ceilings…but unfinished and not even wired except for overhead lights.
I did the electrical…and that’s not something I’m too confident about. I overbuild electrical because I’m incredibly fearful of fires…hence I ALWAYS use 12-guage (minimum) wire with 20 amp circuits. 14/15 just isn’t enough for some applications, you know? And how the hell do you know how your circuites might be used in 20 years? Well, as I dug into the existing wiring, I discovered that the idiot inspector had previously signed off on one circuit that was over half 14-guage and yet had a 20-amp breaker. Moron. I fixed it. Then I tried to do the right thing and get things inspected. Bad mistake. The guy required 4 trips (minimum) to my house at $60 a pop, just to inspect my basement wiring. Once for the outside walls with the boxes in place but uncovered. Once for the outside walls after they had been covered and fully wired. Once when the inside walls were studded in and boxes were in place, and again once the inside walls were covered and fully wired. The second trips were wholly unnecessary or at least no way were worth $60, as he just walked around and plugged his tester into each outlet, collected the check and took off. And he really could have fit the whole thing into one visit. And this guy was the same guy that did the faulty earlier inspection that I had fixed.
Another time, I redid all the wiring in my earlier house (well…most of it, including 240) and the guy came, charged $25, actually checked the important stuff, and left with a smile. If you can get an inspector and system like that in place, it is worth it to have an inspector check your shit. Like I said, I’m not really confident in my wiring ability and I’m terrified of electricity in general until it’s covered by faceplates and stuff. But if I had it to do over again in that other house, I just wouldn’t have bothered calling the guy. To this day I do not feel completely confident that I did everything correctly, because I had seen the results of his earlier inspections and it did not inspire confidence that he would catch any errors I might have made.
But you’re right…in construction in general and wiring and plumbing in particular (and maybe shingles and insulation up here in the north country) much better to NEVER cut corners, follow the building codes as closely as you can, overengineer when possible and DON’T trust the inspectors to automatically catch any errors you make. Also don’t have an inspection on Monday mornings or Friday afternoons. The inspector is more likely to be either pissed off or inattentive, neither of which can be good for you.
Followup to @116 RE Pew Poll, Taibbi, and the Swift Rebuttal
The other thing that I like not at all is the clubbiness of the involved parties – on both sides – Taibbi, Dylan Ratigan, Erin Burnett, Charlie Gasparino (holding nightly court at Elaine’s), Ann Coulter, Jimmy P. and now this new gal Dana something from the Breitbart site (I assume that’s her picture – another looker – reminds me of Katherine van der Heuven). The general impression one is left digesting is that of the cool kids comprising the high school “A” Team having a food fight. What should be a thoughtful policy process is replaced by rapid fire texting and juvenile snark with the prize going to the wit that brings in the biggest laugh. Coulter has refined this new technique to an art form, but the blog space has elevated the Gee Whiz Kids Approach to a level that appears to have further impaired Washington policy-making (“further” because there are obviously other influences in play.)
To the extent that the GWK are engaged in Poll Dancing Distractions, the Pew poll can be properly critiqued. To the extent that the GWK remain outside the end-game of Financial Repression, current events are little more than an agnostic energy source to charge their professional batteries; far from the serious long-term repercussions about to be experienced by what remains of the middle class in this country.
I take Matt’s thesis. I’m not as sure about Matt. And the rest of them.
…..
AP@117: I’m going to defend blert because he’s such a wilting violet. I think there’s a distinction (with a difference) between private residential and commercial/industrial construction permitting. In the latter category, I happen to agree with blert. Inspectors are the good guys. In the former category, I would be wary of making generalizations since the informal record of small contractor malpractice is rather high on the complaint end. The small construction contracting business is a nasty market. Inspectors know this, which doesn’t excuse the bad stuff, but just saying.
What OWS and the Tea Party share is a belief that the Center will not, should not, hold. Romney, for example, is a candidate of the Center. Obama has to pretend to be of the Center to govern, until now.
OWS wants a change to the left, the Tea Party wants a change to the right.
As to drumming, it is a form of music that bypasses the higher brain centers. It is spinal cord music. It is beneath even emotions, much less the higher centers of the brain. The best music engages ALL the portions of the brain with structure, emotions, and rhythm.
Low politics has a tendency to use the lowest form of music to activate its followers.
Trouble is, Whitehall, the center has been redefined to include many liberal notions. Liberalism being a disregard for the truth and an embrace of relativism, liberalism must always be in error. Hence, the center is as misguided as the left.
Another way to put this is that an independent is someone without a center and no convictions.
YBR, you’re getting all tied up in knots, it seems to me.
Wall Street fits perfectly into the left/right paradigm. The lack of a moral guidance system breeds fraud and mayhem. The left opposes the authority implicit in morality, choosing instead a delusional, relativistic system in which it has convinced itself that it is free to make up the rules. When we speak of the right we are referring to grounding in tradition and Truth, which embody a guidance system that mitigates against hubris and dishonesty.
So it’s really pretty simple: Left = delusion, Right = Reality. This is the battle being waged. It will be to the death, and we know which side will win.
YBR@118: Your distinction between commercial and private permitting is probably valid…but why should it be so? Why not just have an inspection be an inspection? Pass or fail, on valid grounds. Period. That’s my attitude. I shouldn’t be held up basically at gunpoint by some guy who has very questionable precedents. The distinctions also begin to blur between local, state and Fed government. Who gives a crap really? I now just hate government, period. For the same house I was talking about (which I’m trying to sell currently), I’m not “allowed” to bow out of being on the city sewer system. Here is a house that has stood empty for over a year. Zero sewer usage. And yet we got billed for $42 a month, and this month that goes up to $47. I inquired whether I might just install a private septic tank. Illegal, I was told. WTH? I just hate unreasoning, unreasonable government. Period. Don’t care if it’s local, state or federal. I HATE it. Going Galt SOON, here.
YBR 116,
The American Thinker essay is based on fact rather than cavalier snark. The Pew study was unscientific in that it reviewed thousands of obscure – and therefore irrelevant – internet news sites instead of a study rationally weighted in relation to total American viewership. In other words the Pew study “watered down the few major sources viewed by millions with thousands of sources read by hundreds.” A truly scientific study of actual news viewership would naturally give weight to the main source of news for Americans – unfortunately that would be the Leftist MSM – of which the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism is part and parcel.
No, Pew is not a project for excellence in journalism because the American MSM is a project in Leftist propaganda. MSM “Excellence in Journalism” is a joke because it is an oxymoron – an exercise in Orwellian Newspeak. Just as Oceania’s “Ministry of Truth” concerned its self with lies, the Leftist MSM concerns its self with propaganda – the opposite of excellence in journalism. “Excellence in Journalism” does not exist in the Leftist MSM – of which the Pew Project is an integral part. You will find excellence in journalism at American Thinker – and at Belmont Club – because you will find truth – and intelligence.
YBR, you should spend more time writing comments – and maybe some essays – at the Huffington Post. There you will find a like-minded group of Leftists who believe in the superiority of self-serving Leftist government supported by their propaganda arm – the self-serving Leftist MSM – including the stinking Pew Project.
We are told by YBR that Andrew Breitbart and Ann Coulter are in a little club engaged in childish wordplay against a morally equivalent opposition in the Leftist MSM. That is not true. Breitbart and Coulter speak truth to the propaganda of Leftist government and their Leftist MSM lapdog – the new media is speaking truth to the Priests of Power.
We are told by the Leftist MSM and the Pew Project for “Excellence in Journalism” that Obama is unjustly victimized by the mass media. This is a lie. As we saw during the 2008 election, the MSM portrayed Obama as The One sent to heal the Earth and all dwelling therein – God in the flesh. In truth, the Leftist MSM is merely an extension of the Democratic Party – just as Pravda and Izvestia were extensions of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. The goal of America’s MSM is to support The Party – and The One – in every way possible. The job of the Leftist MSM is to exercise power over human minds, and so enable their comrades to exercise power over human bodies.
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others… We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we’re doing… Power is not a means, it is an end… The object of power is power… Always there will be the intoxication of power… We are the Priests of Power… The real power; the power we have to fight for night and day is not power over things but over men… Power is power over human beings, over the body; but above all over the mind.” George Orwell – 1984
Some history on The Pew Charitable Trusts, parent organization to The Pew Research Center (self-described as a nonpartisan “fact tank”), which funds the Project for Excellence in Journalism:
The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by J. Howard Pew, Mary Ethel Pew, Joseph N. Pew, Jr., and Mabel Pew Myrin—the adult sons and daughters of Sunoco founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. The Trusts is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an office in Washington, D.C.
Although today the Pew Charitable Trusts is rigorously non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were themselves politically conservative. The mission of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust was to “acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy and the values of a free market and to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won.” Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal “a gigantic scheme to raze U.S. businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs.”[2]
Most of the early beneficiaries were such conservative organizations as the John Birch Society, the American Liberty League, and the American Enterprise Institute,[3][4] although other beneficiaries included a cancer research institute, a museum, higher education, the American Red Cross, and historically black colleges. For many years, the Trusts tended to fund charities and conservative causes in Philadelphia.
In 2004, the Pew Trusts applied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to change its status from private foundation to non-profit organization. Since the Pew’s change to a charitable foundation, it can now raise funds freely and devote up to 5% of its budget to lobbying the public sector.
Richard, keep in mind that the Saudis have a reputation for the worst work ethic of any Arab nationality, and that is saying something.
“The American public is beginning to take notice of the Occupy movement. The Pew Research Center’s polling this week finds a growing number of people paying attention to news about the movement. And the Gallup Poll found that among the minority of its respondents who are paying very close attention to the story, there is significantly more approval than disapproval of the Occupy movement’s goals.” Andrew Kohut – President of the Pew Research Center
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/18/the-psychology-of-occupy-wall-street/occupy-wall-streets-taps-into-longstanding-concerns?scp=1&sq=kohut&st=cse
Andrew Kohut – President of the Pew Research Center – fails to point out that the goal of OWS movement is a Marxist collectivization and redistribution of property. You know – social justice – where the Pigs of Animal Farm take by force the fruit of the laboring, tax-paying animals (from each according to ability) in order to feather their own nests – with leftovers tossed out to the so-called proletariat class – the lazy, non-disabled, tax-eating, government-dependent animals (to each according to need) – in return for votes. Mr. Kohut also fails to divulge another truth – that the lazy proletariat class has unlimited need – because they are lazy – so the laboring middle class may be taxed without limit – according to ability.
“First, fundamental views about economic inequality are long standing. Over the past two decades we have found a very large majority of respondents agreeing with the statement that “this is a country in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” And, since the late 1980s, a growing number of citizens have begun to see the U.S. as a nation divided into two groups: the “haves” and the “have nots.” Andrew Kohut – President of the Pew Research Center
More Marxist rhetoric from Andrew Kohut – President of the Pew Research Center. Economic inequality occurs naturally under Free Enterprise because some are hard-working and some are lazy – some are intelligent and others are not so much. Economic inequality also occurs under Marxism, but the economic inequalities are far greater – and the inequalities are forced by unequal tax law – unjust law which imparts a few with superior rights to property – The Marxist Pigs of Animal Farm and their pet proletarians – and the laboring middle class with inferior rights to property. The economic inequalities of Marxism are unnatural and unjust – the economic inequalities of Free Enterprise are natural and just.
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
“The usual understanding of “equality,” when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these [Socialist] cases is the equalization of external conditions [equalization of social and economic outcome] which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
It may be true that the Pew Charitable Trusts and Research Center started out with the aim of conserving the American Revolution – but that was then – this is now. The Pew Charitiable Trusts and Research Center are now engaged in a propaganda war against the American Revolution – in support of the Marxist counter-revolution.
RE: just and natural
There is nothing just in the Wall St TBTF backstop of privatized profits and socialized losses; natural, maybe, but just, no. Jobs and manufacturing were exported not because of brains, talent or ambition, or lack thereof, but because the government was intimidated by the alleged dangers of implementing an Industrial Policy that might constrain the corporate sector by promoting the general welfare in service of the national interest. That’s just not done. Wealth is being redistributed from middle class portfolios to Wall St and the investment class. And they’re not finished.