The House that Jack Built
What is at least partly driving Al Sharpton’s call for civil disobedience if the city of Sanford doesn’t arrest George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin? What is at the heart of Keith Olbermann’s dispute with Al Gore? Why are Rosie O’donnell and Oprah Winfrey no longer best friends? What has made the Huffington Post bloggers sue Arianna Huffington?
A subject as old as the ages; a matter discussed in the Bible which has gone by many names down through time. A matter so solid some have called it the foundation of society — even a memorial to dead presidents on which their likenesses are emblazoned. Found in large quantities it is called grand. The central pole of the Big Tent is made of it. Yes, we’re talking about money.
The chief problem with money, as Walter Russell Mead observes, is that the Blue Model is running out of it. Once upon a time the money was just out there. The dollars were mooing and lowing like the buffalo on the Great Plains. The only problem was divvying it up. But now that it’s getting harder to come by, a whole host of professions based on the dollar hunting and skinning business is becoming endangered. Mead describes the situation in his vivid prose:
The dream machines of the blue social engineers don’t sail serenely across the azure sky anymore. Think of the various carbon exchanges and environmental planetary schemes; think of high speed rail proposals like California’s $100 billion train to bankruptcy; think of Obamacare. These days the experts, “social entrepreneurs” and smart young blue twenty somethings fresh out of the Ivy League whomp up social programs with as much verve and dedication as their New Deal and Great Society predecessors, but the new Dreamliners don’t take off. At most they roll around the runway, emitting clouds of noxious smoke; wings fall off, windows pop out, turbines misfire and the tires go flat.
The Big Tent is the house that jack built. And jack has left town.
So don’t be surprised if the the Big Tent is sagging at the edges. The marketing department has been particularly hard-hit. Al Gore’s Current network was paying Keith Olbermann $50 million to attract viewers they hoped to have. Olbermann was supposed to be its primary liberal voice. But the New York Times explained that Olberman wasn’t attracting anybody, even though he acted like he was:
In his 40 weeks on Current TV, he had an average of 177,000 viewers at 8 p.m., down from the roughly one million that he had each night on MSNBC. Just 57,000 of those viewers on any given night were between the ages of 25 and 54, the coveted advertising demographic for cable news.
Talking Points Memo quoted a source which said “Olbermann failed to show up for work without authorization, missing almost half of his working days in the months of January and February. Olbermann asked for a vacation day on March 5, the night before Super Tuesday, according to the source. He was told it would be a breach if he took the vacation, which Olbermann did.” For his part, Olbermann said he would sue Gore. In the end, perhaps, they both needed and deserved each other.
I’m truly disappointed KO couldn’t make it work out. Those crazy kids! The thought of him milking algore for another decade was one of the few things keeping me going since SP chose not to run.
Marie Antionette said, “Let them eat cake.”
Jack replied, “Let them eat words.”
All factually accurate but besides the point. So long as the left can gather 50%+1 of the vote, they will stay in power. A 2nd term for the Obomination means they turn the presses on and wire the throttle down. There is never an end to fiat money.
In the end this will all be for the good. It’s just there is a ‘ell of a lot of pain and suffering betwixt now and then. Almost glad my 3 score and ten is up soon. Almost.
The US is already so far into admitted and hidden debt that perhaps a bit , or even a lot more, does not matter.
The debt can never be repaid and sooner or later interest rates will rise.
Inflation or default are the only ways out. Americans are not Argentinians, so inflation it will be.
I hate defending them, but the wrong-address Tweets may not have been accidental. I think Spike and Roseanne were asked to divert violence toward a secure setup; their actions weren’t “fake but true”, rather “true but fake”.
STOP THE PRESSES FOR THE FRIDAY DOCUMENT DUMP! http://tinyurl.com/c7ruaqq
Under pressure, Ali-Bama of the Forty Thieves imposes sanctions to squeeze Iran’s oil exportation!
“The president said he made the decision after determining world markets have enough crude oil that such sanctions would not hurt U.S. allies.
“There is a sufficient supply of petroleum and petroleum products from countries other than Iran,” the president said. “I will closely monitor this situation to assure that the market can continue to accommodate a reduction in purchases of petroleum and petroleum products from Iran.”
Obama got the authority to impose the sanctions through the National Defense Authorization Act.”
It seems SEAL Team Six still has tight control of TOTUS!
No giggling with Medvedev. No equivocation! Cut the Mullah’s economic throat, empower the Green Movement, and prepare for a SWIFT thrust up the soft underbelly of Tsar Vlad the Impaler II’s “oil empire”!
Free the Captive Peoples of Central Asia!
GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY FOR THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY!
DAMN, THIS IS FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
UPDATE – EPA BACKPEDALS ON FRACKING http://tinyurl.com/83alamw
“The Environmental Protection Agency has dropped its claim that an energy company contaminated drinking water in Texas, the third time in recent months that the agency has backtracked on high-profile local allegations linking natural-gas drilling and water pollution.
On Friday, the agency told a federal judge it withdrew an administrative order that alleged Range Resources Corp. had polluted water wells in a rural Texas county west of Fort Worth. Under an agreement filed in U.S. court in Dallas, the EPA will also drop the lawsuit it filed in January 2011 against Range, and Range will end its appeal of the administrative order.
The agency dropped its claim Friday.
In addition to dropping the case in Texas, the EPA has agreed to substantial retesting of water in Wyoming after its methods were questioned. And in Pennsylvania, it has angered state officials by conducting its own analysis of well water—only to confirm the state’s finding that water once tainted by gas was safe.
Taken together, some experts say, these misfires could hurt the agency’s credibility at a time when federal and state regulators seek ways to ensure that natural-gas drilling is done safely. ”
UPDATE II – Alaska Clears Way For New Pipeline http://tinyurl.com/6wfoqjg
U S Approves Nuclear Power Plant in SC http://tinyurl.com/7dkq7p8
Not so sure the Industry is going anywhere.
Other countries have had currency crashes, IMF debt bondage, default, and hyperinflation- yet they still have militant unions, byzantine bureaucracy, crony government, favela slums and a thin middle class, decades later.
It just seems like the new norm.
Are socialists right? Is endemic corruption better than mass death in ‘wars for freedom’?
I surely do appreciate your constant upbeat optimism, as well as the best writing on the web, Wretchard.
Thanks! A fan since 2003.
To maintain the desired system you have to handle the exception. Think “Try … Catch”. But what if the main system design requirement is that there should be no exception handling? Everything must always pass the logic test. That is the equivalent of specifying that nobody can be evaluated and no one can fired.
In that case “exception handling” becomes letting the customer absorb the mayhem. When cheating was found to be taking place in the Atlanta School system, it was at first believed to be an isolated incident. But given the requirement that there should be no exception handling how could it be? And sure enough it is now emerging that grade falsification is more widespread.
The New York Post describes the ultimate outcome of a system in which the main design goal is never to handle an exception. Disgraced teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave
This is not a system that’s broken. It’s a system that’s working perfectly. The problem lies in what the system is designed to do. It is designed to employ hacks for life. And it does this superlatively well.
It’s extraordinarily expensive to society as a whole and captures all that is unsustainable about the Blue Model. But since teachers like Rosenfeld are never going to leave of their own volition, and there is no legal way to fire them, the only hope is that Arithmetic will ride to the rescue and simply bounce the DOE’s pension checks.
This would be tragic for those teachers who did their jobs well. But the outcome is foregone. If the Blue Model won’t fix itself, Arithmetic will force them to fix it.
Re comment 8. Wisconsin is an ideal test case. The Democrat machine and Unions have created a situation very close to anarchy.
“5. Baobo: I hate defending them, but the wrong-address Tweets may not have been accidental. I think Spike and Roseanne were asked to divert violence toward a secure setup; their actions weren’t “fake but true”, rather “true but fake”.
Secure set up? Spike and Roseanne should be commended because the wrong people might get lynched?
None of this should come as any surprise to one who understands the vital importance of absolute respect for individuals’ rights to social and political stability:
The vaunted “blue model” was always based on the blatant invasion of private persons’ property rights, in particular their rights to the fruits of their labors. The consequences were foreordained; the only aspect of the thing that was uncertain was how long it would take for the looters to empty the treasury.
We who claimed to know better indulged the looters for far too long, forgetting that our treasury has Constitutional authorization to sink us into debt. The whole country, not just the beneficiaries of the “blue model,” will pay for our inanition.
Why should someone like Rosenfeld voluntarily leave? He is under no legal threat. The system was set up to make sure that tenured teachers have the freedom to continue their teaching unencumbered. I can just imagine the thoughts of the lawyers, union officials and school administrators in their room all locked into group think justifying their grand contract with the goal of teaching freedom for all teachers never even dreaming of a Rosenfeld. I always find it amusing that liberal socialists always view themselves as being so smart that they somehow never imagine someone like Rosenfeld ever happening.
As far as liberal TV/talk shows goes, it’s funny how someone like Rosie can be so popular and make so much money by simply putting on a funny fun show, by doing a show that isn’t political. She had a pretty good gig going with the light fun stuff. That’s how she started out. But then she could not help herself. Most liberal entertainers can’t. Somehow they just feel, once they get enough money, as though entertaining people is beneath them. Oh well, they got their jack….
Wretchard #8;
“This is not a system that’s broken. It’s a system that’s working perfectly. The problem lies in what the system is designed to do. It is designed to employ hacks for life. And it does this superlatively well.
It’s extraordinarily expensive to society as a whole and captures all that is unsustainable about the Blue Model. But since teachers like Rosenfeld are never going to leave of their own volition, and there is no legal way to fire them, the only hope is that Arithmetic will ride to the rescue and simply bounce the DOE’s pension checks.
This would be tragic for those teachers who did their jobs well. But the outcome is foregone. If the Blue Model won’t fix itself, Arithmetic will force them to fix it.”
When mass numbers of people become members of a cult religion – the religion of worshipping at the altar of bulletproof paycheck security (and the status it brings) and freedom from anxiety about income – this is what happens.
Much of the awful stuff we see happening isn’t because of all the philosophical things we banter about here at BC and other blogs, although those things are inportant. It’s simple, naked fear of fear which pushes people into the cult of worshipping perfect income security. It’s the substitution of the desire to succeed and create and do well and be free with the desire to avoid anxiety about money and status, ceding the responsibility to provide these things to unions, government, etc, instead of taking it upon one’s self.
Wretchard, you have spent considerable time in the one place where the blue state model has reached its penultimate expression, Massachusetts. A state organized around the idea that nobody should ever have to worry about their next paycheck. Dukakis’ fake social security numbers to apply for state aid, the “hackerama” of state workers related to legislators and appointed officials, the heavy unionization and the incestuous relationship between unions and politicians, all of these and more define the state’s citizen’s relationship with its government. All of this is courtesy not of some deep philosophical pursuit but rather of the worship of perfect income security by the masses, despite what they do on Sunday or what religion they pretend to have.
In the end you are left with town workers and union members who are alleged good Church members and eucharistic ministers who vote for, and even work on the campaigns of, politicians who promote abortion and gay marriage and who promote atheism and secular humanism. Why? If you are committed to the Church sufficently to be a lay minister, shouldn’t you be incapable of voting for someone whose entire program is anathema to your religion? The answer is, of course, that you should be incapable of doing that – but the fact of the matter is that your eucharistic ministering is more of a habit or a hobby or an ethnic signifier than a philosophical conviction. Your real religion is the worship of whatever power provides the relief from anxiety about income stream. And that Democratic politician you work for and vote for is your real priest. Philosophy doesn’t enter into it. Social issues are merely for lip service. In the end it’s the desire for that prevention of worry about the checks that moves the politics of that person.
This is why the blue state model keeps chugging along, because while the philosophical underpinnings of the ruling elite may form the framework, it is the abdication of the role of free men to be free in exchange for a mess of pottage that is the fuel that keeps the awful blue model machine going. Several commenters assert that the fish rots from the head. I’ve been fishing my whole life and I can tell you it just ain’t so. It’s the guts that generate the rot.
So it comes down, as you point out, to a mathematical “us or them” conflict, and when the money runs out, we’ll see what happens. Does it end with them getting no checks and walking away? Or does it end with them saying “I’ve got a contract, no mo uro, and you still have some money and property!” and using union cops to take my house and business and wealth for themselves, and tossing me out in the cold?
Stay tuned…..
Humanity through most of its existence has lived in communities of 200 or so people — three generations living together. So we are hardwired to interact that way. A lot of people on the left want to organize much larger societies on a similar pattern and it doesn’t work. Instead of 200 people interacting they want to have 200 groups or 200 movers and shakers working things out. Then everyone has to belong to one of these groups or be subordinate to one of the movers and shakers. These relationships — both of the members of the groups and among the groups themselves — have to be locked in place because such a system does not handle change well (changing one relationship changes them all). Matters are not decided on an economic basis but on a power relationship basis.
The Free Market system allows the groups to self organize and their make-up to change and their relationship among each other to change. It tends to reward the most productive members rather than the most powerful.
Dear Dr. Bones,
As Paddy and Eye said just yesterday, Don Ricardito de Fernández y Podhòretz can be lotsa fun.
You will appreciate that a Party neocomrade of the ‘Spaniard’ persuasion–careerismwise, not merely incidentally–has to keep in with the Squire of Simon Pajama an’ with the backwater media generally, a project which is bound to require large quantities of TB2P, “Talkin’ Bilge to Power.” Don Ricardito knows how to spout an excellent class of bilge–¡Walter Russell Meade, for Pedro’s sake: definitely NOT ‘Wally Wombschool’!–and I infer with some confidence that the felllow-travellin’ señorito must be a pretty good judge of power-friendly bilge products as well.
Freelord Meade’s bilge is maybe not quite top-drawer, however, if you care to scrutinize minutely. At any rate, the whine would have been better if it had been aged longer. A Kiddiemaster who discovered the Meadean neodiscoveries thiry years ago would have shown far more merit an’ “intellectual bottom” than one who did so thirty minutes ago.
His freelordship may be a little touchy on the point, no doubt unconsciously: “[D]ream machines … don’t sail serenely … anymore,” sneers Not-Wally, as if the fleet had been grounded just the other day, possibly on the occasion of the Crawford Crash. A little “strong reading” with the Neohaven sort of strength will turn that into “¡Don’t blame me for not seein’ it comin’!” Though of course we do not blame his freelordship in the slightest, we merely carp that to have foreseen would have been better still. [1]
Abandoning Mr. Olbermann, who crops up next, not altogether accountably, I fear, to the attention of music critics in the MacL@@han Tuba community, pajamaclad or decent, we may rush on to the Blakean idiocy that Don Ricardito erects upon the Tomb of Olbermann, namely that the Pundit’s Path to Personal Plunder, as of A. R. 1433-2012-5772 is, oddly enough, Don Ricardito’s own way: “¡Keep whight, an’ *especially* when when passin’!”
Of course ‘whight’ is rather a blank expression, a form that can be ___________ in a variety of ways. In context, though, Don Ricardito intends is clear enough. One can get rich quick an’ fast, maybe quickest an’ fastest of all, by scabbin’ for ScroogeBank, now richer than ever, specifically by singin’ the new hit tune, “Baby, I just can’t afford you any more.” [2]
Hardly any bilge could be power-friendlier in Otherparty circles at the moment than that. Or at any rate, Paddy and Eye cannot think of a superior candidate. Let us know, please, Dr. Bones, if you can.
Happy days.
–JHM
___
[1][2] The notes have been disappeared to protect the innocent.
baobo 5,
That may be the craziest bad movie script conspiracy theory of all time.
no mo uro 13,
The Lefts belief in protecting the income stream to avoid anxiety is key. “Anxiety” is a nebulous slightly feminine sounding condition that groups can be motivated by. Is it legitimate? We may be talking about a Mars and Venus disconnect in views of the world. Possibly there are people who are more productive and creative when motivated by the prospect of scarcity and there are other people who become less productive when stressed by income anxiety.
The problem with guaranteeing income security is that it removes from the system the competitive information needed to set the price of the work performed. Many Leftists would have said 30 years ago that the Bookkeeper or Teacher was worth $30,000 a year for work properly performed and been happy. Millions of people can and will do that work better without having to think about risk. Unfortunately once the honest decent worker is guaranteed their job then without a wage market to set their wages a bureaucracy, which is a political market, substitutes. That inevitably leads to corruption and wage inflation.
How to prevent the possibly criminal but unconvicted worker from spending a decade or more in a rubber room at $100,000 plus/yr? Actions need Consequences to reestablish a market. If a Teacher is truly abusive then they need to be prosecuted and really punished. Failure to punish results in infiltration by sick people who see no downside. The same problem happened in the Church with abusive priests. Teachers do need protection from false accusations. The way to provide for that is to introduce real consequences for slander. The English rule that the loser pays in a lawsuit provides an incentive lacking in the American system. That model can be applied to most disputes. Al Sharpton and Spike Lee etc. need to face consequences for their actions.
Regarding the Teacher Rosenthal, perhaps the City can demand a share of the profits he earned working on his private business while on the City’s clock, that is Company Time.
Ok, we can see the blue model falling apart whereever its been tried. Look to Euroland and see the marches, riots, and looting. You see currency restrictions and you see austerity. What’s next is probably repression to keep the lid on. That’s our future because when the money runs out, there is nothing left to the soul-less, but violence. Gimmie mine because I demand it; not because I earned it. And, notice that Barack has set up all those FEMA camps. Just why do you think he needed them? And who is going to sent to “camp”?
I forget who said it (Adam Smith?), but there’s an old proverb in economics, which states that any system that operates on the “rob Peter to pay Paul” principle is dependent upon Peter, not Paul. This is irrespective of how loyally Paul delivers his vote to those who rob Peter on his behalf.
When Peter no longer has any money that can be extracted, the system collapses.
This is similar to the Thatcher Theorem that “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money to spend on it”.
The problem with the “blue model” is that it holds no limits on the amount of money that is available to finance its dreams of total power over everything. Plus its irritating tendency to leap from false assumptions to “preordained” conclusions. Rather like the old axiom that an expert is someone who starts from an inaccurate hypothesis, and avoids all the minor errors while sweeping irresistibly onward to the grand fallacy.
The AGW delusion is an illustration of this, in that progressives believe that (a) Man has absolute power over the environment, (b) it is being misused by people they hate to sustain a culture they loathe, and therefore (c) they will use the power of government to wrest this control away from those evil people and use it to “heal Holy Mother Gaia”- and guarantee themselves Absolute Power Forever, over everything.
The fallacy, of course is (a); Man does not control the Earth’s environment. At best, he can accommodate himself to it. But most progressive doctrines proceed from an inaccurate and unsupportable assumption to an illogical conclusion that is hazardous to everyone’s health. Including the progressives’ own, if they had the wit to see it. Which they apparently have never had.
Rather like the “Mann Hockey Stick” computer simulation which shows an accelerating upward curve of temperatures no matter what numbers you plug into it, progressive doctrines on any subject end with total government power at any cost. And if the real world refuses to behave as predicted by their “model”, they simply exert more force, by law, spending, or whatever, to compel reality to obey.
The trouble is, reality is bigger than they are. And they have run out of resources they can expropriate to exert pressure with. In the past, the usual result of such a Jonbar Hinge (to borrow a term from Asimov) has been the collapse of the system, or society, which relied on that power structure to continue.
When systems, or societies, collapse, people get hurt. Fortunately for their own peace of mind, progressives are only interested in “people” in the abstract, as exploitable groups, so they are emotionally insulated from the results of their machinations.
The rest of us, however, must deal with the consequences of their Utopian delusions. And historically, that has never been either pleasant, or cheap.
clear ether
eon
#15 bftp:
Excellent points.
One quibble I might have is that fear of complete losses of income does, in fact, motivate EVERYONE to work harder, even and perhaps especially those heavily stressed out by anxiety about income. Nobody becomes less productive when they know they can be fired for tardiness, laziness, or incompetence. In addition to the market forces you mention and a return to a true market rather than a bureaucratic one, this principle always applies.
I am particularly impressed with your notion about total loss of income and pension for transgressions. But this is exactly the sort of anxiety public functionaries hope to avoid at any cost to the civilization. It is why public employees resist the firing of ANYONE for ANY reason. That anyone can be fired for any reason means that the possibility for a reason to fire THEM exists. And so ensues the anxiety. Return the possibility that they could lose it all and the work ethic ALWAYS returns, for self-preservation if nothing else. If this causes anxiety as a byproduct, tough.
Isn’t it funny how so many people involved with Bill Clinton have mysteriously dropped dead and Kathleen Willey’s cat got disappeared as a warning, but nothing ever happens to the Rosenfelds of the world?
How much longer will it be before the Left’s robust Zero Defects program is applied to itself?
After all, as one of Obama’s mentors said, “Our problem was we didn’t have enough bombs.”
This is no surprise because people have seen, once again, what a terrible and wasteful fraud liberalism is. And to the ethnic groups who have always donated heavily to the Democratic Party, such as the Jews, the Blacks, the Hispanics, I really want you to tell me, what has Obama done for you? Obama is arguably one of Israel’s worst detractors (treating Israel’s own Prime Minister like a delivery boy) and we don’t really have to go over how Obama sucks up to the Muslims, especially Iran. And to the Blacks and Hispanics, are you really, really better off today than you were under the Bush administration? If you say you are, then you are lying, because unemployment uner Obama for Hispanics and especially Blacks has skyrocketed. Where is your recovery? Where are all these “jobs” his administration claims are being made? You know it’s all a lie. So why vote for him again? So that you could get more government handouts rather than a real job?
Stop it. The only way we are all going to get out of this mess is if our economy really and honestly gets better. And with Obama’s policies, it really is NOT getting better. The unemployment rate is only going down because so many fewer people are looking for jobs. And what about those millions of people without any jobs for over two years? What happened to all of them? And do you really, really, want to compare the real unemployment rate as it is now to what it was in say, oh, 2006, when Bush was president, when we had a real unemployment rate of roughly 5%?
So I ask all of the core groups that make up the Democratic Party, the Jews, the Blacks, and the Hispanics, ask yourself, “Am I really better off than I was four years ago?” If the answer is no, and you know it is, then vote Republican in the next election. After all, what have you got to lose?
So? As Jack McCoy has famously said, “You can indict a ham sandwich.” No prosecutor with any sense would dare take this case to trial. Only facts and evidence can be presented to a jury, not rhetoric, or “the narrative.”
The Achilles heel of the Big Tent — and Big Government — is its penchant to spend money faster than it can raise taxes or borrow.
No, the Achilles heel of Big Government is that it destroys the very system that created the verdant fields upon which the cash cows grazed. Capitalism tilled, sowed and fertilized the lush grazing range and fruits of the harvest fattened all in the land. Then Big Government stepped in with strand after strand of regulatory barbed wired and the cash cows, once able to graze freely, now lay ensnared and dying just inches from water.
The Blue Social Model requires a free, innovative and creative people individually driving the economy to greater and greater heights. Big Government requires an unimaginative and meek population that adheres faithfully to every edict and mandate. The Blue Social Model is incompatible with Big Government but the politicians would rather rule over a decaying and declining country than govern over a prosperous and growing nation.
“Running out of money?”
Richard, this system isn’t even running on fumes anymore. It’s running on the vague memory of those fumes; the engine is now sputtering out, and we will soon be dead at the side of the road.
The secret will be that when it all finally comes crashing down, that it doesn’t take all of the rest of us with it.
20. Libertyship46
So why vote for him again? So that you could get more government handouts rather than a real job?
I believe that’s been the plan all along, and I’ve been saying so since 2009. Cripple the private sector and massively increase unemployment benefits and food stamps in order to force as many people as possible to become dependent on the government. Create a climate of fear, insecurity, and uncertainty so that people will turn to the government in desperation.
Most of the “stimulus” money went to cash-strapped state and local governments, in order to keep government workers employed and hire new ones. The only thing that was stimulated was government employment.
Toss affirmative action into the mix, and there are an awful lot of people who are doing much better under the blue model than they ever could in a truly free market.
That is from 1886. It took a while but finally, through infection of the academy, the blue model acolytes lost sight of what feeds their parasitic life.
Equality of opportunity is liberty. Equality of outcome is tyranny.
Ask them if they still want America to be more like Europe
Why is everyone dignifying it by using the euphemism “Blue” model? Call it what it is:
It’s the Red model. Red through and through.
TO THE SITE ADMINISTRATOR -
As usual, there are many very good comments in response to the author’s column. Why did you eliminate the “reply” feature and leave only the “link” possibility for a response? It is much more interesting when the responses are interactive. Personally, I find the “link” situation to be annoying.
In 1997, I sat in a tv studio in Atlanta watching Eric Holder and Bill Clinton in Washington announce a vast new infrastructure of “programs” to address the so-called “rising tide of hate.” It was interesting to sit in a studio with the local Who’s Who of leftist activists all calling for fierce law enforcement, long sentences, even death, for criminals — certainly the opposite of their usual modus operandi regarding crime and cops, but they were able to do so without cognitive dissonance because they were imagining imaginary Klansmen, not just run-of-the-mill killers and rapists.
The “rising tide” was imaginary, but it didn’t matter because the point was always the “programs,” the money. Every person in that room would have a shot at new streams of federal funds and new causes for vast private fundraising to “educate” children about “hate.” That was the real point. And at the midpoint of the fat and happy Clinton years, hate crimes laws provided a needed shot in the arm for leftist groups that were flagging a bit in direction and fundraising.
All they needed was manipulable laws and an even more manipulable enforcement protocol to create opportunities to fine-tune the activism and keep the flames of hatred — their hatred — hot. Preferably, a steady stream of one or two cause cases at a time, to better monetize every aspect. Plus the cash in fundraising from their own bases for constant tweaking of the laws.
Welcome to Sanford.
I find it absolutely amazing how the same people who are demanding the arrest of Zimmerman will point to the videos of Zimmerman being led through the police station in handcuffs, under arrest, as evidence that he was not injured by Martin. Then return immediately to indignation over the “fact” that Zimmerman was was never arrested.
There’s some doublethink for you.
I want an arrest, too, and in no way am I accusing him of being a murderer. I do think he needs to be charged with voluntary manslaughter and let a jury determine who is telling the truth.
3. Stoicheion: A 2nd term for the Obomination means they turn the presses on and wire the throttle down.
I think they plan on putting a brick on the throttle and wiring the safety valve closed, so when it blows, there’ll be nothing left to salvage. Perhaps I misunderstood.
8. wretchard:
Rosenfeld should be made to do those mimeographed pages of arithmetic or multiplication and division all day instead of his personal business. So many sheets a day, error free, {and not told which problems were in error upon submission}, or he forfeits some pay. The nuns did that back in 2nd or 3rd grade, and it was torture. {I forgot: pencil and paper only, no calculator}
To be paid to do personal business lets him be the winner. If nothing else, he should be made to sit at a desk with nothing to read, no telephone, no distractions at all. He’d soon tire of his ‘win’.
Re: Rosenthal and the other NYC teachers
The existence of these parasites has little to do with tenure or even the most restrictive language that could likely be found in a labor agreement. It is all about the political power of teachers’ unions over school boards and school management. It isn’t that they can’t fire these people; it is that they won’t or, perhaps, in a few cases they tried and failed. The one kind of public employee that is truly almost “fireproof” is the one the employer tried to fire and had the dismissal overturned by an arbitrator, ALJ, or court.
Teachers get little evaluation outside the faculty lounge even when they haven’t achieved tenure. During their time as an aide, a student teacher, a substitute, or a non-tenured teacher, the teacher herd decides if the potential new member of the herd “fits in.” During that period before tenure, even under a union contract, the employee has few rights and in most jurisdictions is just like any other probationary employee who can be dismissed and non-retained “for any reason, no reason, but not an illegal reason.” Once contractual permanent status and tenure are achieved, usually coincident, the employer most afford due process and show cause for any discipline or dismissal.
The Constitutional minima for due process articulated by the USSC in Loudermill v. Cleveland Board is notice of the allegation(s), notice of the evidence, though not the evidence itself, an opportunity to offer obviating and mitigating facts and circumstances, and due consideration of the employees offered facts and circumstances before the employer takes action. That can be satisfied by something as simple as, “John, I’d like to talk to you about why 3/4ths of your class didn’t pass the standardized test.” If they employer has to do more, it is because it bargained away rights to the union. Then you meet with John and listen to his lame excuses before you discipline him. If John is union, and maybe even if he isn’t, John has the right to ask to be accompanied by a union representative or another employee anytime he meets with a supervisor or manager where he has reasonable cause to believe that discipline might result. The union rep is not there as an adversarial advocate and has limited rights to do anything other than be there, but many of them use such meetings as an opportunity to threaten and bully supervisors. The right thing to do is fire them or throw them out if they work for the union rather than the employer, but you generally can’t do that in Democrat-controlled governments, which would be pretty much every school board in the Country. Here is a memo I wrote originally back in ’00 setting out the State of Alaska’s policy on dealing with union reps: http://doa.alaska.gov/dop/fileadmin/lr/pdf/representationrevised.pdf
The original of that memo was written at the request of a Democrat boss who was tired of the unions harassing him and wanted to know what his rights and duties really were. Democrats being Democrats, my then director and commissioner called their “friend” the union business manager and showed him the memo and asked if he disagreed with any of it. He couldn’t think of anything that was inaccurate about it but he didn’t think it set the “right tone for the relationship” between the union and the administration they considered their chattel. Not only was the memo never published, we embarked on an almost two year odessey of a Statewide “joint training” of State LR and HR people with the staff and stewards of our largest union to try to make us get along better. If you don’t know, union steward is usually just a nice word for useless malcontent. A half million of your federal tax dollars went to that through a grant from the Federal Mediation and Concilliation Service, which, interestingly, has no jurisdiction over public employees – but their staff really likes having an excuse to come to Alaska at government expense. The total cost to the tax payers of the US and Alaska for that useless exercise was at least $1MM. When we threw the Democrats out in the ’02 election and I became head of labor relations in early ’03, I published the original memo, which drew screams of outrage from the unions, but with no Democrats to cry to, there was nothing they could do. That little story goes far to explain why they say they “can’t” fire those teachers.
In any event, unless it involves sex with a student, assault, some kinds of dishonesty, incompetence that results in injury or real damage, or true insubordination, you can’t really fire a teacher or any other public employee for a single act of misbehavior. But if you document an employee’s poor performance and engage in corrective actions including progressive discipline, if the employee continues to perform below objective expectations, you can fire ANY public employee and make it stick through grievance arbitration, labor board appeals, or court action. Though you must understand that even for a Republican government, for awhile you might have to work your way past Democrat controlled personnel or labor boards and Democrat judges. Tenure gives teachers one advantage over other public employees in that they can take a disciplinary action or a dismissal directly to court and bypass both the union contract’s grievance and arbitration process and administrative agency appeals. That doesn’t really make it any harder to fire one, it just makes it take longer and cost more.
Fundamentally, what you’re seeing in the NYC situation, and they are not alone, is the fact that a union bought school board and a union vetted school management would rather pay out millions to miscreants than run afoul of the union’s political power because there is nothing in the union’s collective bargaining powers that could save these teachers’ jobs if they truly are poor performers and there is substantial evidence of that poor performance. I know I always considered the NEA to be true lightweights on the collective bargaining side of things, but don’t get between them and an election!
28. Yooper
That was by popular demand here. We were used to not having the reply feature, and the consensus was that it made it difficult to find the most recent comments.
I may not have said so publicly, but I was in agreement with getting rid of it. However, I do use that feature at other PJM sites. Strange.
Some simply great comments this thread.
I think the real question is how long can the Wile E Coyote Economy that seems to float on thin air continue, or when will it come crashing down? And what happens when it comes crashing down?
My guess is that both Romney and Buraq desperately want to make it into next year so they can massively raise taxes to give the perfectly working “Blue Model” funding scheme a few more years of glide path to its eventual horrible crash.
But what is kinda amazing of all the “solutions” proposed by Buraq, Bernacke, the EU, et al is that the they are all temporary band aids to get us through the next few weeks, months and at best- years, but definitely not decades. Inherent and unspoken in all their proposals is some day of future reckoning when everything changes, but changes to what?
Senator Sessions has done some math. He has reckoned the real cost of Obamacare is a cool $17 Trillion. The down payment on that monster is due just a couple years from now if the Supremes don’t kick it to the curb first . What do these geniuses think is gonna happen when the bill for all these shenanigans finally unequivocally comes due? Is that what the FEMA camps PattyMor and RickL speak of are really for?
s @ 3: There is never an end to fiat money.
Yeah, I have to join stoicheion in the curmudgeon corner on this one. There is also never an end to real money, as long as the sun rises in the east, the rain falls, and the grain grows.
Famously there may be somewhat less money over time, the “Galt” effect, but (slightly rephrased) Parkinson’s Law says any organization expands to consume 100% of available resources, maybe 100% plus some deficit amount and *then* plus a fiat amount. Trying to put anything aside for a rainy day, is politically exceedingly difficult. Trying to keep government programs limited in flush times, is nearly impossible.
Here’s the thing, until and unless our socialist contingent destroys it, we are a hugely rich society, there are just oceans of money sloshing around looking for something to do. What the socialists do not understand is how delicate those oceans of money really are, how quickly then can vanish. OTOH, what the conservatives sometimes do not understand is how much a billion dollar account can scream when you pinch a few pennies off it. The scream is not really pain, obviously, but that even a small pinch may pop the bubble, be a sign of a billion more tiny pinches to come that in aggregate are a mortal threat.
We do have a very different (let us say) distribution of money in America these days, compared to thirty years ago, or a hundred. It keeps changing. But these days much more of that ocean of money is sequestered in the accounts of the top 1%, the top 0.1% actually, and maybe 0.001% is more like it. And also much more of that ocean of money is outside the American boundaries, than twenty or fifty years ago. In the hubbub about the Obamanation these factoids of income distribution have mostly been burried. There is an issue, at least, and perhaps a crisis, or two. But the left does not even discuss this any more, nor does the right want to acknowledge it, each side assumes a different truth of the matter and then just growls at the opposition.
–
mp @ 6: Friday night document dump
OMG, when the good stuff the administration is coerced into doing, is hidden.
–
y @ 28: did you eliminate the “reply” feature and leave only the “link” possibility for a response?
Survey last year of the BC locals elimited the reply-tree feature in favor of linearity.
OT?
Has anyone here noticed an increase in the number of what Rush used to label “seminar callers?”
These are folks who start out claiming to be fans/conservatives and end up being apologists for the Left.
Is BC on a DNC list?
Is it a sign of desperation or recognition?
I expect many more psyops and false flag operations in the near future.
eliminated.
so what now, has the edit widget gone on strike again?
–
oh now the edit widget finally shows up on three messages at once? so it was just on a fifteen-minute smoke break?
OT. but I’m really getting tired of that FEMA Camp bullsh1t;
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/4312850
Urban legend, propaganda, rumor, whatever. They do not exist.
if you think they do produce the budget allocation that built them and the house bill that funds them.
Produce GPS co-ordinates so we can Google earth them.
L @ 37: Has anyone here noticed an increase in the number of what Rush used to label “seminar callers?”
Not especially.
But I did hear Hannity yesterday talking to a “seven year old”, who was clearly an adult using a voice changer, clearly to me that is but not to Hannity who was thoroughly pranked.
I don’t believe Olbermann/O’Donnell fit the Blue Model. I think these are simply business ventures gone sour. Happens all the time in TV. Rush Limbaugh left TV after a couple of years but it was hardly from the demise of a Conservative Model.
As for Sharpton, IMO he is just a hustler whose time is past. One sees this all the time. A person rises to the top and fades, and can’t regain their mojo. I don’t believe ideology has much to do with it.
As for Obama, I don’t see his fund raising problems being the fault of a failing Blue Model. IMO his problems are a result of running in 2008 as a moderate and ruling as a socialist.
But the rubber room thing is different because it is supported by an entity with the power to tax.
I agree the arithmetic doesn’t work, but national governments everywhere are still trying to make it work. Printing money has been the political path of least resistance and it has worked so far, but I have read that the world money supply has expanded 3 fold in the last 4 years. One wonders how much of that is reflected in the price of items like gasoline, but that can be explained away as being the fault of greedy oil companies or rogue nations, not the fault of government printing presses.
As I peer into my crystal ball, I see us all getting a lot poorer as serious inflation takes root and erodes our incomes, but I don’t see the end of the Blue Model. I just see it being pruned back. Take food stamps for example. Instead of being able to buy virtually any comestible, limiting the dependent to rice and beans. Ditto for pensions. They will remain but probably just enough to provide a roof and sustenance.
The Blue Model will never go completely away.
For centuries we didn’t need it because virtually everyone farmed. Therefore everyone had a “job’ and they generally had enough to eat. Shortages happened but everyone suffered the same fate.
Enter the urbanization of the late 19th century and suddenly you have large numbers of workers not producing their own food. So what happens during economic downturns when they are out of work and have no money to buy food and pay rent?
Belmont Clubbers know the rest.
OTOH, at the state level, I noticed and interesting item a couple of weeks back. California killed its redevelopment agencies in order to save several billion a year. When a government starts to cannibalize itself to keep going, then the money is truly running out.
If even celebrities like Keith Olbermann and Al Sharpton are feeling the pinch, how are the Occupy Wall Street dupes going to fare?
Just fine. Several of their puppetmasters – the SEIU, AFCSME, Tides Foundation, Soros – have resources available if they felt that an upsurge of riots with favorable media coverage could tilt the scales. And the threat of an end to the Obama-generated manna from taxpayers might generate a desperate all-out effort.
The plans are already in place. SEIU was advertising in Washington State last December for a full-time professional agitator, to coordinate with such as the Occupists for civil disobedience, statehouse takeovers, direct actions etc – and they must have run such ads in other states as well. It was a nice innocent-looking ad in their ‘healthcare’ section, but an inquisitive bloke pointed it out and I saw it before they took it down.
@39- Don’t be naive! I don’t believe in the FEMA “Camps” stuff either, but practically the whole FEMA budget was black until the end of the Cold War. Since Slick Willie “loathed” the military, he wanted the federal image to be something other than OD when disasters ocurred, so he put the ever-charming James Witt out there in his blue and gold FEMA jacket. Slick used FEMA like a Democrat ATM and there was a disaster in practically every election district where a Democrat was running. Until the end of the Cold War, practically nobody had ever even heard of FEMA, but since its intended role was planning and manageing a US response to a nuclear strike, it had lots of money and lots of resources, and certainly not a few of them off the books and not in appropriation bills. You could build lots of “gated communities” by merely skimming the rounding errors in a big federal department’s budget and so few people would have any actual knowledge of what was being done that it could just be dismissed as the paranoid fantasies of right wing extremists. Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you, but there are much easier ways to stifle dissent in a big, rich country than by rounding people up and putting them in camps.
Are you implying that those on the Left and those of the Blue persuasion
Don’t know Jack? Or don’t know Jack Sh*t?
Or Both.
I have to agree.
For what it’s worth, I haven’t mentioned FEMA camps on this thread. I only saw them mentioned once, by PattyMor.
Although the recent news item about Homeland Security purchasing 450 million rounds of ammunition was a bit troubling.
We first came across the NYC school district’s “rubber rooms” several years ago when they were exposed by the newspapers. Eventually a couple years ago we were told that they were closed up and done away with in response to the public backlash stirred up by it all. Well according to the article Wretchard linked, that may be well and true, but the teachers who used to be in them have not gone away. They’ve simply been disbursed throughout the system, given do-nothing desk jobs in various places. The wheels of Progress!
Note the words of one of the highwaymen in the department, “If these people truly are a danger to kids, then it has been worth the money to keep them out of the classroom.” In his criminal mind two options exist, either let the child abusers have the kids or pay protection money to keep them away. I’m sure somebody says he deserves thanks for all his thankless years of dutiful service on behalf of the public’s interests!
Chris-22, concise and well said.
JKB-25, whom are you quoting? Very good stuff:
“Liberty is, and always has been, the cry of the capable, the clever, the brave, of the men who were destined to be prosperous. Equality is the demand of the ignorant, the incapable, the foolish, and the cowardly.”
Finally, have to agree with Yooper-28, adding the reply feature is a good idea.
15. Blast- Would you even know if Zimmerman has parents? When a democrat headquarters was vandalized by one of their own, the FBI anticipated more violence and set up a defense fund “for our comrade in arms” as they put it (anonymous donations not accepted). Both Mr. Spike and Mrs. Rose might cooperate with something like that.
Stoich @ 39.
Thank you for the link. I have dealt with FEMA on several occasions. My impression is that they are pretty much bumbling functionaries. Good intentions but not much Oomph. / erc
No economist, I, but jack or filthy lucre, fiat currency in our particular case has provided the necessary handle for government to usurp control over the public, thereby enslaving the fruits of our labor, without the necessity of gaining title of ‘means of production’.
Clever, that. We can now have social collectivism, with its many guises, without expressly acknowledging the particular variant. Marxism without admitting that it is Marxism, for example. Now it’s called ‘moral imperative’.
Slick, isn’t it. Perhaps someone more learned can weigh-in on this subject. Why are they not arguing the meaning of “commerce…among the several states…”? It’s not quite the same as power to regulate commerce ‘period’.
It seems that is where the crux is. There is a need to prevent states from erecting barriers, to ensure that the transcontinental railroad from east and west use the same gauge, that they intersect at a particular point.
The consistent theme underlying the entire document is that those in power must be constrained because of the natural proclivity of ‘governors’ to increase their control over the governed.
In the recent arguments before the court, we see the rationalization that we need this control because…. when we should question ‘why is this commerce among the states’ that requires federal regulation. What is the necessity for that regulation? That medical records be in the same format if they perchance cross state lines?
13. no mo uro;
“[T]he worship of perfect income security by the masses, despite what they do on Sunday or what religion they pretend to have.”
This is why women should not vote.
Hear me out:
A democratic society will continually face choices between freedom and security. Men will choose one or the other, depending on circumstances, their personality, how lucky they feel, and a thousand other criteria. Esau trades his birthright of freedom for a mess of pottage, but Jacob does not. Women will always and everywhere choose security. It’s how they are wired, and it’s good for children and the continuing of the species, and they should make that choice. When women can vote, however, it skews the electorate towards security instead of freedom, and the nanny state results, inevitably.
I’ve not idea what to do about it, since we’ll see the return of the monarchy before we see disenfranchisement of women, but it’s troubling to think that there’s a design flaw in democracy.
Art Chance/33: awesome comment. A complete mini-cpurse in labor relations, or at least the ugly end of it. Thanks.
Saw this today: http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20220329gop_blasts_inadequate_ebt_reform
The gross abuse of the generous Mass. EBT program, once uncovered, leads to a commission appointed to pretend to solve the problem.
These giveaway programs are not and never were, meant to be limited, targeted or efficient. They’re a 24/7 middle finger to those who deign to work and live responsibly. “Free” money dollopped out to the irresponsible to keep them that way and to guarantee violent resentment if taken away or limited. The left is determined to destroy this country by whatever means necessary-direct attack or roadside bomb Time to stop playing our game of Whack-A-Mole with our small toy hammer. Infant’s squeal as loudly when you remove their pacifier as when they are actually punished.
39. stoicheion
I am sure the North Korean authorities deny the existence of those re-education camps as well
Socialism and free government cheese were a consequence of the illusion of infinite natural resources.
It’s no wonder that Marxism crawled out of the woodwork in the 19th century. During that era it looked as through there were infinite natural resources (Why not share the wealth?). Is it any wonder that as we entered the era of Peak Oil, the first nation to fold was the Soviet Union?
Surprise, surprise: The next national group to fold will be the socialist European Union.
The United States will survive if we can jettison the socialist/entitlement state in time. If we remain socialist then we’ll fold like the Soviet Union and the EU.
Peak oil and resource depletion are stressing the world’s political systems. The various political models are failing in order of their dependence upon socialism or economic efficiency, e.g. the Islamic world. Millions of years ago the climate changed, the mammals survived while the dinosaurs died or changed into birds. We are observing Darwinism in action.
Any time something of Rosie’s stature falls there will be a splash in any substance short of solid rock…
The left will not run out of money because in their dream world they are like six year old children sitting in the car with their hands on the wheel sawing back and forth making motor sounds. Hell, the Soviet Union never ran out of money even when no one else would sell to them in Rubles.
The rumor is that not only is Obama’s fund raising not up to goals but that the funds that are being raised are going out rather quickly. Which is one reason they have told various Congress critters that they will not be getting any campaign money from the Obama machine. Apparently some think too much money is going out to keep the pet nut jobs sweet.
@52 oMan – Thank you for the kind words!
THE TENT IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE TENT
At the edge of the fairgrounds
All tattered and torn
The mildewed old canvas
Sits sad and forlorn
Where once it stood proudly
The Midway’s grand prize
Fairgoers now see
It was nothing but lies
No longer the big top
No more the trapeze
No longer the clown car
No children to please
The circus is closing
It had a great run
But people stopped coming
It was no longer fun
#40 Josh said, “But I did hear Hannity yesterday talking to a “seven year old”, who was clearly an adult using a voice changer, clearly to me that is but not to Hannity who was thoroughly pranked.”
Call me “pranked” as well, as I heard that call as well. How could you tell it was as you described above?
bc @ 60: Call me “pranked” as well, as I heard that call as well. How could you tell it was as you described above?
I know a certain guy who has used the device for call-in shows for many years, I don’t think this was him, but the first thing to know is how easy it is. Versions were sold as toys some years ago, maybe still are.
Just a frequency lift and faster decay, I think, or something like that.
Then you listen for vocabulary, issues, facts, sentence length and structure, none of which was consistently appropriate for that age. I know how maturely even some two year olds can speak, but this really wasn’t credible on its face anyway.
I really would have thought Hannity’s staff would have been either waving him off or rolling on the floor laughing about it while it was on, they should maybe review the tapes now. There’s probably an audio artifact you can use to check, too, though I wouldn’t know exactly what.
45. rickl
I suspect the 45M rounds (reportedly .40 S&W pistol ammo, which also fits at least two SMGs) was bought more on the “use it or lose it” principle re their budget.
Government agency budgeting does not encourage economy, because if you don’t spend every cent you get in one fiscal year, the next FY you’re likely to see your budget reduced by that amount, on the grounds that you’ve proven that you didn’t need it. This is the time of year when, as one FY ends and the budgets requests are being presented to Congress for the next one, there is a strong incentive to make sure there is no “mad money” left in the kitty. Otherwise kitty gets less Little Friskies the next time around.
Since the going rate for pistol ammunition like this (government contract price) is about 2 cents per round, they probably spent about $900,000 on the contract. In Federal Government BureaucratSpeak, this is known as “pocket change”.
Exactly what TSA or DHS would do with enough .40 S&W to stock 9/10s of the police departments of the U.S. (cities with populations below 200,000), I don’t know. But it was probably easier to explain to the Congressional Budget Office why they needed pistol rounds than it would have been to explain $900,000 worth of Sticky Notes (TM).
cheers
eon
The report I saw said 450M rounds not 45M rounds.
A concise description of the Blue State model, in this case the decline of the American version:
But its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures: the [US] government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects. The taxes were multiplied with the public distress; economy was neglected in proportion as it became necessary; and the injustice of the rich shifted the unequal burden from themselves to the people, whom they defrauded of the [entitlements] that might sometimes have alleviated their misery.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter XXXV.
It’s getting harder and harder to figure out who the racists are and who the sexists are and who wins when one side is accusing a sexually assaulted woman of being racist by claiming she was sexually assaulted by a football player
Of course, you don’t need any extra details, now, do you. However, the link is there.
#51- Patriarch: “This is why women should not vote.”
You are right.
But a far more destructive expansion of the franchise was made when it was determined that those who pay no taxes and even those on the public dole should be allowed to vote, a policy that only gradually established itself after the abolition of strict property requirements.
Our Founders recognized that the connection between taxation and representation goes both ways: no representation without taxation is as good a maxim as the reverse. They were even reticent to give federal government EMPLOYEES the vote, hence the “oppression” of the District of Columbia.
Of course, no contraction of the franchise can ever be done, and it is quite naughty of us to even speak of it.
Comparing Blue California to a Third-World Banana Republic is insulting to Banana Republics everywhere: City of Los Angeles workers steal gas from pumps; Senator Feinstein sacrifices Central Valley to greenies;Brown wants to rush build-out of eco-damaging bullet train.
So much for the Nobel Peace Prize
Blast @ 15 – “The Lefts belief in protecting the income stream to avoid anxiety is key. “Anxiety” is a nebulous slightly feminine sounding condition that groups can be motivated by. Is it legitimate? We may be talking about a Mars and Venus disconnect in views of the world. Possibly there are people who are more productive and creative when motivated by the prospect of scarcity and there are other people who become less productive when stressed by income anxiety.”
The anxious are prone to believe in “Hope” and if things make them anxious, “Change”. Sensing safety in numbers, they flow toward the group. Exhibit “A” is Peggy Noonan, but even Ann Coulter has wimped “Who Castrated Ann Coulter? http://tinyurl.com/84gdj2e
So we use the same technique we use for regime change, Whack-A-Mullah. Whack Steven Chu (once a “Nobel Prize Winning Physicist”) and you instill panic on the Far Left which starts a flow away from him, the herd feels the commotion and moves Right. So trying to appeal to the Moderates is a fool’s game. You want to whack the clearly defined Leftists. This is why so many voters are exasperated that Republican candidates have been attacking each oither rather than Obama. Every time one goes into attack Obama mode, his poll numbers skyrocket.
But let’s face it, the candidates have been listening to their political advisers, not Freedom Loving Attack Dogs. They are finally starting to gain traction on energy. High gas prices have concentrated everyone’s mind. Even Obama is leading from behind. That is a reason why CHU LIED, DOPLPHINS DIED! is so useful.
First of all, everyone saw the dead dolphins and oil covered birds. http://tinyurl.com/826jmhw They saw Obama pleading for Jack to save him. He promoted his “Nobel Prize Winning Physicist” to the point even Chris Matthews said he was about to “puke”. He cannot undo what he hath sown.
Second, the “Blue Meme” is getting clobbered in federal court
BP oil spill health settlement details are still a mystery http://tinyurl.com/72jpeye
Gulf oil spill settlement reached; BP expected to pay out $7.8 billion http://tinyurl.com/86p3nyw
http://tinyurl.com/8yreglj
http://tinyurl.com/8yxdnuv
The trial is due to resume April 16, 2012. All the usual suspects expect Obama-Bucks. They are going to be disappointed. Meanwhile all those Jacks and Jills paying high gas prices will gloat when Obama fails to shake down BP for tens of billions as a way to raise gas prices further.
Think “Solyndra” Chu is going to sell anyone about a miscarriage of justice? So the rightward stampede will begin. Just re-assure those moderate women that they were fooled by that cad Obama, but now everything will be all right. Hope and Change will appear on the Right from that good looking, capable, stud muffin Jack. He is a FATHER, a HUSBAND, he is GOOD TO HIS KIDS. He is a veritable
DUDLEY DO-RIGHT!!! http://tinyurl.com/6qykd8w
PRESS RELEASE March 12, 2012, 8:30 a.m. EDT ATK Secures .40 Caliber Ammunition Contract with Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (DHS, ICE) –ATK Wins Five-Year, Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity Contract for .40 Caliber Ammunition from DHS, ICE –Additional .40 Caliber Ammunition Contract with 450 Million Round Potential Demonstrates ATK’s Leadership in Ammunition Manufacturing
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atk-secures-40-caliber-ammunition-contract-with-department-of-homeland-security-us-immigration-and-customs-enforcement-dhs-ice-2012-03-12?reflink=MW_news_stmp
Lost: $450 Billion, Missing Since 2007 Monday, 26 Mar 2012 By Andrew Packer
http://www.moneynews.com/AndrewPacker/packer-retirement-babyboomer/2012/03/26/id/433916?s=al&promo_code=E904-1
And one more thing! Don’t know who wrote the headline, or how much they think they know about cars, but in the world of production cars, even expensive limited production cars, a ’33 Dusenberg would be characterized as a “modern” car even in comparison to many cars of the 1980s, early ’90s. Dual overhead cam 8 cylinder engine capable of taking it to a top speed of around 120mph in naturally aspirated form and considerably more with the supercharger, hydraulic brakes, synchromesh transmission, all sorts of instrumentation and automation; just a big, fast, and Godawful expensive and luxurious car. If I had a few million to spare, I’d try to find and buy one.
63. Make Believe Media
450M? That’s in the MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) range, because in 2005 the U.S. Army required about 300 million rounds per day for combat, training, inventory, etc. Still, 450M at .02 each is still “only” $9,000,000. At .10 each it would hit $45 mill, or about the flyaway cost of a single F/A-18E.
Either way, 45M, 450M, two cents or ten, it still looks like a “save our budget request for next year” expenditure. And probably easier to justify to CBO or OMB than 300,000 Mr. Coffee Power Serves.
cheers
eon
Assuming that maintaining proficiency with a firearm might justify expending, say 125 rounds per week (that number seems just a little light, just a little less than nine 15-round clips, and I understand many shooters do not insist on filling their mags to full capacity to save the springs…) that might work out to 400 – 500 rounds per month per LEO. 12 x 500 rounds = 6,000 rounds per year per shooter.
The 450 million is a figure for 3 years, so one year would be 150 Million rounds.
150 million rounds divided by a yearly per shooter allowance of 6,000 rounds = 25,000 shooters with a monthly allowance of 500 rounds of ammunition to maintain proficiency, over a three year period.
Working backwards to check:
25,000 shooters x 6,000 rounds/yr x 3 years = 450,000,000
=========================================================
Anyone is welcome to challenge my assumptions AND my math.
Am I crazy?
73.
Am I crazy?
No. Just Mad!
Patriarch:
It sounds like you are saying lets dont let Ann Coulter or Sarah Palin vote, or else they might
re-elect Obama,
Most leftists would agree with you that women are natural leftists. But statistically it turns out that is single women, and to a lesser extent single men that are commites. sorry to use the derogatory word.
Nothing like having kids of your own to make you care more about real world security and economics than leftist fairy dust.
re: the 450 M .40 cal rounds.
Actually, as I recall the article, it sounded as if this was an “as needed” contract. That is, that the DHS, et al, can buy .40 ammo in any amounts they want -if they have the funding- up to 450m rds during the term of the contract and for the contract price. They can buy none, or perhaps a minimum, some, or all, but are not required to buy any unless a minimum is stated.
70. Washington76- would you like to hear my theory that gold is offloaded from this planet periodically as the reason for our existence?
No? Uh… April Fools. Yes, that’s it, only kidding…
73. Mad Fiddler
There is cheaper ammo to use to maintain proficiency than that Expensive HP ammo. That stuff is specifically for stopping people.
This may or may not be OT, but I’d be curious to see Wretchard’s and the rest of the BCer’s take on this story. I haven’t seen much coverage of this story, not even in the righty blogosphere.
RED ALERT: Former Marine Strike Planner on Obama’s Azerbaijan Leak: “Start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel”
Ben-Yishai gives few examples of the Obama administration’s efforts to thwart an Israeli strike on Iran, but the news this week provides what seems to be a case study supporting his thesis. Foreign Policy reports that, according to “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers,” Azerbaijan has granted the Israelis access to airbases in that country. Such access would dramatically mitigate the difficulty of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
…
“Bill”, a former Marine Corps strike planner, weighed in on the implications of this leak Friday on The Mark Levin Show. Read every word.
Make Believe Media @ 7i said:
“There is cheaper ammo to use to maintain proficiency than that Expensive HP ammo.”
Blazer 22 long rifle ammo is incredibly cheap, i.e. 500 round box for $20 (4 cents/round). If the goal is to maintain proficiency then shooting 22 longs is the way to go (I try to shoot 50 rounds a week with a bolt action target rifle).
80. Eggplant
Actually, I have a question about that. I have thought about getting a .22 adapter for my 9mm semi-autos, but it seems to me that .22 does not give you the same experience as 9mm, so I stick to 9mm ball (which is a little cheaper than 9mm HP, and definitely cheaper than that stuff that Homeland Security et al is buying). Do you have any comment here? What I worry about is that you could get used to the recoil of the .22 and then when you come to shoot the real stuff your shooting is off because the recoil is different. (I remember the shock when one of my offspring first shot with 9mm.)
I have been slacking off in the practice area, however.
This was demonstrated early in the first Reagan term. Reagan caved. (Don’t believe me? The DOE and even the National Endowment for the Arts still exist, don’t they?) David Stockman wrote a book that, among other topics, told the tale.
The lesson was repeated in 1995. Speaker Gingrich and the new Republican majority in the House applied the fingernail trimmer to the federal budget and millions screamed (their motivation to scream was helped along by Clinton’s shutdown of the federal government). Republicans caved again.
You’re correct, Josh, it’s not really pain but it is close to the loudest and shrillest scream they can manage.
The lesson the late Milton Friedman drew from Reagan’s 1981-’82 experience was that instead of nicking many programs some small percentage (sending tens of millions of teat-suckers into a screaming bender), the politically prudent budget-cutter should lop off the entirety of fewer programs.
Dworkin Barimen @ 79 said:
“But giving away all of the secrets of an ally? When you’re doing that, you have to ask whether we still have Israel as an ally. We are not acting like an ally. In fact, if you ask me, based on the amount of time I expect the Israelis put in this relationship with Azerbaijan, I would start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel.”
Netanyahu is no fool and would have concluded that Obama was no friend after direct conversations with him. Did the United States independently discover that Israel was forming an alliance with Azerbaijan and then leaked the information or did Israel inform the United States with the understanding that the information would be leaked? Given that Netanyahu knew that Obama was not a friend, would he authorized disclosure of this information and hope it would remain secret? Not likely. Is it more likely that the MSM cooked up the story on its own? Perhaps there is no alliance with Azerbaijan and this is just agitprop to confuse the Iranian leadership? Maybe Israel has a deal with the Saudis and the Azerbaijan yarn is merely a cover story. We are talking about the Middle East: Back stabbing is standard operating procedure. The truth is never obvious with Middle Eastern politics.
51-Patriarch, I get it, it’s April Fool’s Day.
Make Believe Media @ 81 asked:
“Actually, I have a question about that. I have thought about getting a .22 adapter for my 9mm semi-autos, but it seems to me that .22 does not give you the same experience as 9mm, so I stick to 9mm ball (which is a little cheaper than 9mm HP, and definitely cheaper than that stuff that Homeland Security et al is buying). Do you have any comment here?”
I’m not qualified to answer. I only shoot .22 for target practice. On this topic, I’ve been shooting with a scope and people say that’s a mistake. People say it’s better to practice only with iron sights. People also say that Anschütz makes the best target rifle and ammo quality makes a significant difference with accuracy. I’m such a lousy shot that I can’t tell the difference between good ammo and bad ammo.
Anyone who has not marked this administration’s readiness to betray ANYONE at ANY TIME, is blind, deaf, and dumb.
Some folks set up their associates to draw fire (or lightning bolts) just to map the territory and identify the dangers.
I’m late coming to these conclusions. As for many of my fellow citizens, shedding the illusion of the LEFT as constructive and well-intentioned has been hard.
It would be comforting to dismiss the pResident as a bumbling quarterwit, but there are clearly some folks behind this who are fully rational, intentional, and as malignant as any tyrant of history.
JJRedFan @ 86 said:
“It would be comforting to dismiss the pResident as a bumbling quarterwit, but there are clearly some folks behind this who are fully rational, intentional, and as malignant as any tyrant of history.”
IMHO, there are some very bright guys in The Left who are capable of deep and highly subtle intrigue. However IMHO, Obama is not amongst their number.
ObamaCare is proof positive that Obama is incompetent. A deeper thinking Leftist would have abandoned ObamaCare and focused on the economy. Obama is the affirmative action President and barely able to do his job. Obama had no business serving in the US Senate let alone be elected President.
Now one could argue that deeper thinking people were behind Obama’s election. That is an interesting assertion and given the timing of the stock market implosion in 2008, I am inclined to agree with it.
db @ 79: Obama’s Azerbaijan leak
I’m not sure it’s entirely news, Israel has been rumored to partner with everyone from Romania to Greece, and, well, now that you mention it and I’ve reviewed the map, exactly how are Israeli forces supposed to get *to* Azerbaijan in order to launch from there? Oh, aha, it’s a trick question.
On a possibly related note, Hildabeast was on the airwaves today bloviating how the peaceful window for Iran to settle up won’t be open forever. Mebbe Obambus is getting ready to wag the dog?
Patriarch @51, the design flaw in democratic government is men. Exulting in their supposed powers of superior rationality, they cook up these Cartesian perfectability schemes that prove with numbers how we can engineer our way back to the Garden. Just can’t trust ‘em with a calculator.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that the left doesn’t write very well and their attention spans are bad. One factor in that may be the over use of technology to communicate. Of course I see this pernicious influence in my own thinking and writing also.
http://artofmanliness.com/2012/03/25/the-tool-works-at-both-ends/
Mad Fiddler 75,
DHS contains a raft of armed LEOs. ICE, CBPO, CBP Air and Marine, CBP Border Patrol, TSA Air Marshals, US Secret Service, and the US Coast Guard all report to your friend Janet Napolitano. That totals almost 50,000 civilian federal law enforcement officers under DHS and over 40,000 active Coast Guard. Include the Coast Guard Reserve and you have 100,000 armed people under the command of DHS. While the contract is sizable I see nothing to justify tin foil hat conspiracy theories. My guess is that these stories, like much of the “birther” meme, are generated by the Donks as distractions and to discredit conservatives.
Dworkin Barimen 79,
What the US has done to Israel technically counts as a “hostile act.” Obama has effectively and unconstitutionally declared war on them.
1. Did he do so with the intent of aiding in the elimination of the Jewish State?
2. Is he acting as the ally of Iran or is he seeking the mutual elimination of Israel and Iran?
3. If the above is true then cui bono? Who is Obama acting for?
4. Is Obama just an incompetent Chicago thug who can’t tell the difference between an international Act of War and routine Cook County back stabbing?
Patriarch -
I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming your sentiments @52 are part of an April Fools joke.
Dworkin @ 81 – Successful intimidation of an enemy is much more effective he if KNOWS you are capable of carrying out your PROMISES! Remember as a kid, Mom saying, “Just wait until your FATHER gets home”?
Now take a close look at the target drone in this video http://tinyurl.com/82pdl9s Doesn’t it look just like the one Iran “captured”? So a throw-away drone used to test Iranian air defenses gets played by them as a huge intelligence coup in the know-nothing press. But the press doesn’t fight wars. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards know what they have is a glorified toy.
So now they have to try and judge their threat axes, direct from Israel, from USN carriers in the Arabian Sea, from Afghanistan, from Incirlik in Turkey, from Diego Garcia or from Azerbijan. Where will a strike come from?
Israel has a lot to gain by not going it alone, but by working on an integrated strike package with the U. S. The multitude of options will overload their ability to deal with so many. They will become paranoid. We will be deep inside their heads. They will be very vulnerable. Cut off their flow of cash through oil sales and they won’t have a way to buy their thug muscle. So by degrading their defenses, we relatively strengthen their opposition.
The goal is not a war with Iran, it is regime change leaving a friendly Persian population taking charge of their own future without outside interference. It is easier to make friends than to make enemies.
83. Make Believe Media, in my experience ( Lots of it. I turn 70 today, got my 3 score and 10 in the log book, it’s all gravy from here on out) sight picture, breath and trigger control are all more important then recoil. By the time recoil enters the picture, the bullet is already on it’s way to where it’s going. As far as the second shot, sight picture, breath and trigger control are what’s important. Recoil only matters if you allow it to.
P.S. Want to know why a captured drone has tarps draped over the area where its undercarriage should be?
Why put landing gear on a target drone that will never land?
There are over 90 federal agencies with full-time fully authorized law enforcement officers. This amounts to something north of 125,000 officers I would guess. Just allowing a 100 rounds a month for maintaining skills (though, surprisingly, I seldom encountered a highly competent gunman among the LEO’s I worked with), that would be around 150 million rounds right there. The year-end purchase strikes me as pretty close to the real story as well. Might as well stock up because the largess may not continue under the next administration.
Also, re: Art Chance. Excellent. Exactly that same procedure occurs in the Federal govt. I have fired 3 employees and encouraged several others to seriously examine their hole cards just by following those procedures. The largest problem I encountered in disciplining Federal employees had to do with feckless line officers and “consideration of the man’s/woman’s family”. Compassionate, perhaps, but not conducive to discipline and production
To MachiasPrivateer:
There is no undercarriage. They’re testing a new system that uses the psychokinetic levitation capabilities of certain symbiotic corals from a tiny South Pacific Archipelago. Takes a decade of training for the critters to respond reliably to the signals.
Seemingly the corals developed this feature in some lagoons with sluggish currents, so they could stir up the bottom detritus.
It’s a really appropriate scheme, since the bottom detritus now occupies the highest office of the land.
“I’ve not idea what to do about it, since we’ll see the return of the monarchy before we see disenfranchisement of women, but it’s troubling to think that there’s a design flaw in democracy.”
There is no design flaw in democracy. As democracy is by definition majority rule. Or more bluntly mob rule.
We do not rule by democracy in this REPUBLIC. This is by intention not by happenstance. The founders knew from reading the Greeks history that unchecked mob rule leads to a monarchy.
As for suffrage and the suffragettes, well you have biology and the failure of our educational system in the home to blame for our current predicament. What we didn’t understand that the progressives, communists and other totalitarian species did understand is that by and large Americans are innocents. We just don’t think that people would act to the detriment of society. I mean are not we all in the same boat? Why would anyone go about punching holes in the hull when they will surely sink with the rest of us?
We lost our way in 1913 and are just now beginning to see that the road to perdition is paved with “good intentions”. There is a article on a documentary on Wisconsin talk radio posted on this site. The article there is enlightening to those who cannot believe there are people who would commit suicide to see their supposed enemies killed. They are the truly useful idiots. Then you have the segment of the population that just wants to be liked and in their circles that means mimicking the rooster in charge. Then to top it all off you have the True Believer. He is the most dangerous of the lot as he will go to any length and sacrifice any part of his life to belong. To have some kind of meaning attached to his life is everything to the True Believer.
Be Prepared. Have a plan and work the plan.
Mad Fiddler @ 99- I hear a song coming on http://tinyurl.com/23o2fqq
Of course back in my day, we built them for REAL MEN! My plane was the A-6E, you know, planes flown by Pilots and B/Ns http://tinyurl.com/cd4fwzc
RIO’s were backseaters in the F-14D Bombcats. You know, the planes that chased the Taliban to Tora Bora with the Special Forces FAC guys riding below on horseback!
THE STRONGEST HORSE!!!!
Folks who have commented on the ammunition contract:
This appears to be, in fact, an Indefinite Quantity Contract, or IDQ. It is like having a line of credit at a supplier. It may never be used, it may all be used, no one knows up front. These are usually set as high as credible (and maybe a little higher) because the funds are logged as “spent” up front so it is as if the Agency has money in the bank that can be moved around as needed.
This arrangement is commonly used by Federal facilities to handle base maintenance functions, like landscaping, building repairs, small construction projects and the like.
Sounds like a little creative budgeting to me.
@98 Dennis – “The largest problem I encountered in disciplining Federal employees had to do with feckless line officers and “consideration of the man’s/woman’s family”. Compassionate, perhaps, but not conducive to discipline and production”
Despite conservative/Republican complaints, the federal government isn’t very unionized and labor relations people in the states with public sector bargaining would love to have the power that management retains in the federal government. The real issue with the fed at the production level is, as you say, feckless and often incompetent management. There is also the fact that there are SO many tokens and AA hires/promotions in the federal system that the discrimination complaint is always hanging over a supervisor/managers head and neither Republicans nor Democrats will give a manager much backing if s/he gets a discrimination complaint; for the Democrats, it’s a constituent complaint and for the Republicans it is the unbearable glare of controversy and also the likelihood that the Democrats will pile on.
I worked for DOI/BIA from ’85 to early ’87, when a divorce and custody of my daughter forced me to give up the life of the itinerant fed and go to work for the State so I didn’t have to travel so much. The BIA suspended its Indian preference rules and hired me and another honky dog to go find $58MM they’d left laying around rural Alaska; back then $58MM was enough money to draw the IG’s ire and even get managers fired. I loved the work but absolutely hated the office environment and the power dynamics. You just wanted to scream at some of the managers, “Don’t you realize that other GS – 12 and 14s actually have jobs and can do them?” But I did get to do what only the very rich and federal bureaucrats with a GTR Book and a TA that said “Travel determined by traveler to be in the interest of the United States,” and I’ve literally been from Ketchikan to Barrow, from the Bering Sea to the Canadian Border and most points in Alaska in between. I got appealed to the Secretary 63 times for findings of waste, fraud, or abuse or for denials of grants or contracts and won the appeal 63 times. I’m not well loved in some places.
@103 Art Chance
Early in my career I worked for the BIA for 2 years in Montana and a more political Federal job I could not conceive. On tippy-toes every day. Though I did like the work (forestry) chasing down the crew to get anything done could be a continual trial.
@104 Dennis – Yeah, when we had a building evacuation drill, it often took two or three days to get everybody back to work. ‘Course, if you really needed someone the bar of the bowling alley accross the parking lot was a good place to start looking. Out in The Bush, “immediately” means maybe next week, and there really is no firm concept of actually going to work at a certain time and certain days of the week. You can forget about having anybody much at work when the salmon are running, or certain birds are laying eggs, or migrating through, or if moose or caribou have been spotted. I thought the rural South had a problem transitioning from an agrarian life ruled by the calendar and phases of the moon, but at least they had a little sense of when Sunday came, when holidays, at least the important ones, were observed, and some notion of keeping track of and being obligated by the clock. The State of Alaska would be money to the good by buying everybody in the Bush a condo in Hawaii and paying them $100K/year for life; whole damned place just exists to provide a zip code to send the checks to and it would be a Helluva lot cheaper to support them in Hawaii.
JFSanders @ 100 – It’s difficult to draw conclusions about our sisters-in-arms when it comes to suffrage. Perhaps as many males as females are seduced by the siren song of progressive politics.
It’s never just a single agent such as the madman in Berlin or the self-deceiving tool in D.C. It’s all of those people who support and follow, being fooled by the fallacious follies of human arrogance, thinking themselves to be wise.
People believing that unilateral disarmament will prevent conflicts, that scarce resources can be made plentiful, that every need of mankind can be satisfied, that empowering success police can foster a society of equal access, that businesses will continue to prosper despite increases in cost of operation.
Historically, we fondly remember those red-headed Celtic women of great deeds who provided leadership when men faltered: Boadicea, Elizabeth Tudor, Margaret Thatcher to cite a few. Then we have our own Sarah Palin who seems to terrify her opponents as well. They cannot cease their denigrations of her.
“it is regime change leaving a friendly Persian population”
Far Left propaganda. The Persian population supports the Mullahs. If they didn’t, the Mullahs would be in the same boat as Assad. The ONLY solution in Iran is to bomb them to rubble. Then bounce the rubble. It might take years but when they have had enough, they’ll let us know.
Socialists want to stop a bombing campaign because it invalidates the entire concept of ‘soft power’.
107- You want to bomb an ethnic population based on a hypothetical country designed as a test by imperialists stealing their resources because they can’t be trusted with it… Are you sure it’s the Persians and not the Chinese, by the way? Are you sure it’s not you who’s insane?
Eggplant #56:
The curious thing about your observation relative to infinite resources, is that Socialists always focus on what people consume rather than what they produce, and they inevitably are unable to produce enough. But they start by focusing on what people consume, and especially who has “too much” and then end up with not enough for anyone. And despite its roots in, as you say, the theory of infinite resources, and despite its long record of environmental disasters, environmental extremists focus on socialism as the ultimate answer to what they see as the biggest problem we face.
Capitalists focus on what people produce and inevitably end up with plenty of everything, and fewer environmental disasters, as well. And when disasters do occur, either natural or man-made, there is enough Design Margin to fix things.
I think this goes beyond simple cause and effect. The Socialists see restricting personal wealth as an end in itself, not just a necessity designed to enforce their militant mediocrity. The Capitalists see increasing personal wealth as a way to make money as well an inherent good thing.
It may be more the case that increasing wealth is the only whipping boy that is available in a healthy economy. Thus the wealth or income gap is bemoaned as a great evil, at a time when most are prospering, and only those unwilling or unable to compete are being left behind.
Moreover, it then becomes a convenient target for plunder. Of course, wealth not controlled by government is the seed corn for future crops. We never get much investment, venture capital, or mortgage loans from the poor.
107- Sorry for the ad hom, by the way. Too far of me.
108. Baobo
What are you talking about? I want to bomb Iran, nothing hypothetical about it. EVERY population is ethnic in one way or another.
Peanut Cater started sanctions against Iran back in 1980. So 32 years of soft power has accomplished squat. If Peanut had started bombing instead, Iran would have stopped being an issue by the mid 90′s.
BTW, at over 100$ a barrel, nobody is stealing OIL.
A good plan would be to negotiate by day and bomb by night. No need to kill a lot of people either. Kill the SAMs, knock out the power grid, blow all the bridges.
The Mad Dog Mullahs use negotiations to buy time. When that time just increases the size of the rubble piles, they will negotiate in good faith.
Demos will spend, even if it’s money stolen from the future, in other words, our children and grandchildren.
Volokh makes a good point.
Obama was full of praise for the SCOTUS when they rejected a Bush policy, and that was on a subject where the POTUS is given wide latitude and where the policy was popular and with broad bipartisan support.