Eric’s Blog

Imagine the worst future possible. Visualize if you will for a second the things we dread. The collapse of civilization, totalitarian big brother, financial morass, war. Throughout human history there have been examples where human life was lived under the boot of ruthless dictators and even deemed undesirable enough to march to their death. When these examples are paraded before the public consciousness they are generally decried as terrible. I say generally because in some cases there are those in media, academia and government who cannot bring themselves to condemn even the most flagrant offenses to human decency because those offenses were done under the guise of the utopian ideology of the observer.

Utopia is of course a wonderful concept of a world filled with perfection and absent any unpleasant struggle. Utopia may also be an afterlife filled with delights. Whatever the case utopia is always a destination for idealists of conjured perfection. As such there could not be anything more insidious in practice and harmful to the course of humanity. Certainly nothing has caused more untimely deaths as utopia has claimed hundreds of millions of lives. I am going to tell you why in no uncertain terms that when someone comes to you extolling utopia you should put garlic around your neck, hold up a cross, throw holy water on them and run for the hills.

Before I explain why every utopia is born under a moon of blood from a father with hoofs and a mother with scales I want to explode the myth of perfection they each hold. A world without strife is a world without challenge. Humans realize fulfillment through overcoming challenge. Without difficulty their is no overcoming and without the possibility of failure there can be no celebration of victory. If you have heard success is a journey not a destination it is because we become listless without challenge and utopia is by definition the ultimate destination. Utopias are born in the selfishness of the singular satisfaction of the recipient of the utopia and without regard to any fabric of civilization. A perfect example is the jihadi idea of being rewarded in the afterlife with a gaggle of virgins for killing unbelievers. Not only does it have no regard for those being killed but it has no regard for the young innocent women who would be subjected to the jihadist’s whims… Then again that could be a poor example as Muslims emulate their prophet who had a predilection for marrying prepubescent girls.

Of course understanding why utopia is hell really requires starting at conception. As utopia is always an alternative to reality we should start by examining social reality. For all the flaws of our civilization it functions as a collection of ideas and practices learned throughout history. I have been told a problem is a deviation from an established standard. Standard practices are established through experience. Human beings are naturally curious and experimentation as a means of learning is fraught with failure. Thus patterns and practices that yield good results are established and for better or worse we codify our societal workings. Then as human beings we progress and learn. Over time we developed more sophistication and now can apply the scientific method which means we have an effective and rational way to measure new ideas and practices. Our society can advance in this way by absorbing and adopting practical ideas.

Utopia is spawned differently. Utopia breaks from the past, ignores the collective experience of thousands of generations and is born of a deviation in response to a challenge. Utopia seeks to rewrite human nature along with human history by erasing the challenge of the frustrated utopian. Clearly this will leave anyone entering said utopia unfulfilled and devoid of victory in their life. Most importantly by pulling up civilization by it’s roots and replanting it there is turmoil and the resulting attempt at perfection begins life as a horribly imbalanced paradigm suffering the repeated failures of generations that the established protocols of civilization had learned to avoid.

Let’s look at where the utopian ideals have led us over the years. Perhaps the most audacious and common utopia is that of the commune. When I asked my parents about it they got me a book on communes in America over the last 200 years. It delivered the amazing failure rate of 100% for hundreds of communes. Of course the benefit is that if you wish to start your own utopia you are not bound by history so the past is no indicator. Actually that tongue in cheek comment illustrates perfectly the most arrogant aspect of utopian idealists, that all others who failed before them did so because they lacked their wisdom and dedication to the cause. Communes fail because they subvert the individual and in the end the expression and fulfillment of our selfish nature is the heart of excellence and accomplishment. Altruism can only flourish where we can fulfill the desires of self first.

Of course the absurd ideas of the commune led to a couple men who had done nothing in their pampered lives, including hold down a job, to write the Communist Manifesto and somehow take on a concern of a workers paradise. Of course it sought revolution, the overthrow of the established social hierarchy for an entirely new experiment. Actually Solomon said wisely there is nothing new under the sun and what was in fact being advocated was the reapplication of a great number of mistakes made by past generations. While the incremental pursuit of perfection may by definition preclude ever achieving utopia the revolutionary pursuit of utopia invariably leads to the morass of dystopia.

The ultimate problem for today’s citizens of exploding dystopian governments is that we tend to think as a society in the incremental mode. The inherent flaw in this is thinking that what we have now was actually subjected to any rational scientific method to prove it’s merit. The fact is for the last half century seemingly all governments have been infected with the utopian thinking that had been killing over a hundred million people in a few countries earlier in the twentieth century. So today when we talk about a massive overhaul of health care it is in fact pursuit of utopia, and while I can go point by point on the inherent flaws there mere fact it chases utopia should be all you need to know. However when you look at all our social programs you will see utopia written all over them. End all suffering and make a perfect world. Foolishness.

You should not assume I like suffering, even though in fact I believe challenges and failure are essential to shaping our lives. What I happen to believe though is that a faceless gargantuan bureaucracy assisting us is quintessential dystopia. Charitable organizations can help people more effectively and more cost effectively. Every place where we have pursued utopia we have created irrational and unsustainable messes. Social security is an example. It may have sounded good, but consider how much good all that money would have done in the investment community to grow our economy instead of yanked out. Everyone today would be millionaires if they had invested wisely. Of course millions of people plan retirement around this pittance because it’s there. What if it weren’t? I’m betting they could do better.

When someone says to you “wouldn’t it be nice if…” just remember that likely as not it is the opening to a longing for utopia. Knowing that utopia is fatally flawed is liberating. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to pay our bills?” If nobody paid their bills there would be nothing to buy because everyone would be out of business. Is it an absolute certainty that any attempt at utopia will fail? I’ve been told by physicists that it is theoretically possible for an event to happen which could have a cascade effect of changing the laws of physics in our universe. As a rule we plan on the laws of physics working. An attempt at utopia could work… and the bonds of all matter could dissolve. The success rate for utopia so far is 0% out of who knows how many thousands of tries. The methodology for arriving at utopia is clearly broken.

Utopia is at the heart of the looming financial meltdown of Western civilization. I say we root it all out. A society of compassionate individuals is vastly preferable to the pursuit of utopia which invariably is pursued through growing gargantuan faceless bureaucracy into dystopia.

My parents told me they had a simple goal, to leave the world better for me than they found it. I think that should be a morning ritual pledge. I admit I appreciate hedonism. I’d love to be on a tropical beach in a party environment misbehaving. I am willing to embrace our animal desire for indulgence and I’m not proposing that our course in life out to be absolute self sacrifice for the next generation. That’s not what I’m talking about. Several years ago I noticed a funny bumper sticker on an RV “I’m spending my grandchildrens inheritance”. Hey, why not. Of course the funny thing is if you blow it in Vegas you don’t get taxed but if you will it to them you do.

If you have saved your whole life and feel like you ought to spend it then I’m fine with that. The reason we have trust funds is because rich people like Bing Crosby found when they gave their kids a million dollars they blew through it in nothing flat. Let’s face it, money doesn’t mean the same thing to us when we don’t earn it. This is why 97% of major lottery winners are financially ruined within three years of their prize. This brings me to my point. I’ll illustrate by way of a home mortgage. I remember hearing that Japan had 100 year mortgages. Imagine being born and being in debt for a huge amount of money the day you first saw daylight.

This really is the point. Have a look at a young mother pushing a child in a stroller and think of it. This month that child takes out $325 in debt because our government is borrowing $100,000,000,000. By the time they are 18 that would add up to $70,000 but that’s not counting the $40K in debt there already, the interest, social security or medicare. It also doesn’t count numerous other factors that make it rise horribly. In fact our total amount of money promised currently exceeds the total wealth of our nation. Remember when borrowing meant paying the money back? When exactly do we pay the money back?

The truly amazing thing about this is the left leaning perspective. I mean think about it. China has started selling off our debt. Europe is in such disarray that it looks like Greece may default on it’s debt and Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain are now known there as PIIGS for their economic troubles. China is no longer considered our biggest creditor, Japan is, except you could argue it’s the Fed. So what does the left want? National health care. Let’s ponder it. Right now it’s estimated that medicare is being defrauded byt $70-$120 billion a year. That’s fraud, as in doctors doing 200 procedures a day and pizza parlors getting checks for performing medical procedures. In Florida the mob is getting out of drugs and into medicare fraud because it’s safer and more profitable. Last I hear the president still hadn’t nominated someone to oversee medicare and the budget isn’t there to handle this. Lefty wingnuts howl about 30% overhead in profits and some mysterious 4% administration cost for medicare. It’s probably the lack of oversight. Credit card companies charge 3% and have a fraction of a percent fraud. Profit is why. In the UK they had 4,000 babies born in hospital corridors and on sidewalks last year. One UK pol said they instituted their program after WW II when they were in a shambles. Now UK health care is the third largest employer in the world behind the Indian raliroad and the Chinese red army. They can’t vote it out.

The argument is to be compassionate to everyone today and make it so they don’t have to pay anything. Like free money. Squat down, close your eyes and grunt… Hmmm? That doesn’t smell like money, but it is free. Here’s the problem with this compassion. Let’s say you want to take all your friends out to dinner. You go to the restaurant and order drinks. They take your credit card and come back and inform you there is no money on your card. There you are trying to feed everybody and there is this little snag. Of course we know what to do, right? We email our congressman and ask them to make a law that our credit card can’t be refused, right? Wrong! At some point we have to recognize that no matter how kind and thoughtful we are somebody has to pay, and pay they will. Hand them the government sugardaddy card and have at it. Drinks for everyone, caviar and foi gras. The sky’s the limit. After all your children and grandchildren will pay. Hey, maybe you don’t even have kids. Too bad those other suckers weren’t ready for the end of the world. Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we implode under the fetid debt of 40 years of excess.

When I was young I remember hearing the name George Bernard Shaw in high regard. Not long ago I saw a video clip which this video where he extolled the Marxist collectivist idea of killing those not useful to society. It is ironic that the collectivist idea that says we are our brothers keeper means we should provide for them and yet at the same time if we are engaging in generational theft we are clearly harming the collective. Of course all collective agendas must be implemented by a strong central government. Strong central governments are answerable to no one so piss on them if they don’t like us destroying society, right?

Here we are in a world I never imagined. Call me old school if you will. When I heard banks had problems with NINJA (No Income No Job no Assets) loans I was flabbergasted. How the hell do you get a loan like this. Oh yeah, the government decided it would be the good thing to do and used Fannie and Freddie who then saw the huge profits in mortgage based securities. That meant Wall street bankers could go for it and privatize the profits while socializing the losses. When people say capitalism failed I want to see if they can recognize Shinola, or say a hole in the ground. Don’t worry, your Wall street banking dollars are being well spent in the new financial capital of Washington DC. If you want to see capitalism fail you will need to look at a small business who is not too big to fail as they struggle to get a loan while all the money is now being loaned to government while they spend like crazy. Capitalism hasn’t failed, but it is getting strangled by socialism from above and below.

And that brings me to another simple principle I was taught. Be honest. I know, how silly and old fashioned is that. I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word is is. When FDR started social security he gloated that nobody would ever be able to get rid of it and get re-elected. Remember government of the people, for the people and by the people? What would happen if you set up a retirement plan for your business and then borrowed money from it and used the money from younger people coming in to pay older people. I’ll tell you. You would end up parked next to Bernie Madoff. That is exactly what was done with social security.

There is an old saying that the older I get the less I know. When we are young we are ready to change the world, but with time we come to see things differently. Where we used to challenge the ideas before us we come to see the wisdom in them. Let me tell you about some really cool guys, Madison and Jefferson. They really distrusted government. Jefferson said “government governs best that governs least”. Madison was instrumental as a key thinker in forming our constitution. You may not care about their opinions but I bet they would be dismayed with our government today.

I know this isn’t popular but I don’t want a dime from social security. Did you know that the Amish don’t have to pay in because they are conscientious objectors? It does not require a religion. However it is frightening to consider confronting the IRS and the government. On the other hand in a just world things would be different. Government employees and elected representatives would be held the the same practices and laws as private citizens and corporations. Much of congress past and present would be in court or in jail for defrauding the America tax payer. FDR would be remembered for starting a Ponzi Scheme. LBJ likewise. Thousands of laws including social security would be rolled back as unconstitutional. People would begin saving for their golden years. The average 65 year old would be a multi millionaire if they put their social security payments instead into a mutual fund.

Here is the amazing paradox of our current dilemma. I recall in the 80s being told debt was insurmountable. it wasn’t. In WW II we fought wars on two fronts and we beat Japan with 18% of our industrial output. At the start of the war they had the best navy in the world and vastly superior aircraft. In the war of 1812 Andrew Jackson beat the British who were at the time the best army and navy in the world. In less than a decade of JFK saying we would go to the moon we were there. We can do amazing things, but only if we adhere to simple principles.

It’s time we stopped being a bunch of babies and demanding a wet nurse. It’s time we told Washington DC to get the hell out or our lives. Last year we had over $300B in charitable giving and that is with one of the worst tax burdens in the world. Imagine the explosion of greatness and dignity if we ditched Marx and instead went for Madison.

I was surprised to read a recent poll that a majority of people disagreed with the recent supreme court decision on free speech. There is actually a brilliant analysis and explanation here. Really, I mean Americans against free speech? Hello Fidel? Excuse me but I should be clear. First of all anyone opposed to the decision most likely doesn’t understand it and second of all probably doesn’t understand how it is barely relevant. However I’ve also seen supposedly respectable thinkers suggesting a constitutional amendment. I think perhaps the worst thing is the hypocrisy of our president opposing it and the extremely bad manners to chide the supreme court in the state of the union. Hey, if he would take that kind of tough posture with Iran…

First of all the decision didn’t reverse 100 years of law, it reversed 10. Second of all it didn’t change the law about companies contributing directly to candidates. What it did do is give companies the same right as individuals to have political speech. Now let me tell you why Obama is a hypocrite for opposing it.

One result of this decision was that the McCain Feingold campaign finance reform law was shot full of holes. Early on Obama swore he would accept government money and be constrained by McCain Feingold. John McCain accused him of lying because he didn’t. Deceit or not what Obama did was brilliant. By opting out he was no longer under the same spending constraints and he raised twice as much money. Can you buy an election? Maybe, maybe not, but it never hurts to have twice as much money as the other guy at crunch time. Of course McCain was fighting with one hand tied behind his back as it was his law but you can bet Obama had already killed much of McCain Feingold as dead as McCain’s presidential hopes in 2008. Nobody will ever accept government money again.

The restriction the law imposed on corporate speech led to the 527 groups. These took money from companies and unions and effectively laundered the money that was going to be used before. Nice solution. Remember what happens when you try to take freedoms. The 527s were the speakeasies where nobody knew how it got there but everybody knew it was getting out to the public. Just like banning liquor made bootleggers banning companies from speaking made 527s.

Of course there were exemptions under the law. Try newspapers, networks and magazines. Imagine if you will banning blogging. Imagine banning free speech. Actually you don’t have to imagine. President Obama has been compared to Wudrow Wilson as he was our first president out of academia. Wilson gave us the Sedition Act duing WW I. Look it up. If you said something against the government in public you could be locked up without due process. it’s frankly hard to believe so I suggest you go look for yourself. This is the point. Once you decided to allow some free speech of some types by some people but not other free speech of other types from other people… well you might as well tear up the first amendment, install censors in news outlets and close the internet because it’s only a matter of time before you are charged with sedition.

Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. Read the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

BTW I love the constitution and the amendments for their simplicity. The 2500 page bills out of this congress are so incomprehensible you need 15,000 pages of reference material to read them. Odds of understanding and conforming to such laws? You simply empower administrators to interpret it as they see fit and rule by fiat. Not so our founders. Tell me part time citizen legislators would pull this, but I digress…

If you make a law which will abridge free speech you are violating the first amendment. The exceptions are where you can prove public endangerment, inciting to riot, libel or violating the rights of another. However if there is any speech that ought to be protected it is political speech. There is no more important freedom than the freedom to peacefully change our government through elections. Once that speech has been abridged not only have we been violated but we are dis-empowered to effect peaceful change. Such a loss of empowerment could only serve to empower tyrants.

To paraphrase the president in his famous 2004 speech at the Democratic convention, this is not a red or a blue country, we are all Americans. I agree, and that means that we don’t shape a law today for it’s statistical probability of benefiting a political party, then change it later. We should especially not do this with our constitution. We should all agree that free speech is too important to play political games with. Moreover we should be thankful our supreme court continues to believe this and concerned that such questions even need be litigated. John McCain and Russ Feingold should both be removed from the senate for violating their oath to protect the constitution and subjecting us to 10 years of unconstitutional law.

When you hear the number 300 what comes to mind. In the past maybe a car but now that military history has been made into a movie once again we think of the 300 Spartans who led the defense of the pass at Thermopylae. Of course the movie did as all movies about history and grossly oversimplified. There is no fault in telling a good story and the key to this story on screen is the bravery and convictions of the men who stood there. In truth it is more complex, but the historical perspective is far more dramatic. Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Athens was the birthplace of democracy. It was in fact Alexander who spread the culture and shaped the world. He was a brilliant conqueror who took an entirely different approach to empire, a politically savvy approach. None of this would have been possible without stopping the massive Persian assault. The truly dramatic aspect of the 300 men from Sparta is that they forever changed the world.

One of the things that makes any culture great is to look back into it’s history and learn the lessons of the great failures and successes. We are forever infatuated with legends. I don’t recall learning about men walking barefoot in the revolutionary war and civil war and leaving a trail of blood, but I recall being moved upon learning of it as an adult. Today there are those seeking to create their own legends with history. Today there is a new 300 and it is all the buzz being repeated on all the news shows by all the talking heads.

The 300 I am talking about though are not men of honor, at least not according to our principles. In congressional hearings attorney general Eric Holder told senator Kyl that there were 300 terror convictions in the Bush administration. It seems it went like this, 300 were caught, tried and all convicted and you will never get that kind of success in military tribunals. After all even the president and AG both assured us that after a fair trial KSM would be convicted and executed. That has to show how just we are. There’s just one small problem. Senator Kyl asked for a list of these supposed 300 convictions. Holder agreed to provide it, shined it on and eventually said they could not legally provide the information. Wow! Handy!

You see one of the things that the administration says is they are doing exactly what the Bush administration did. They mention the shoe bomber in 2001. Compared to the underwear bomber he was from the US but it turns out there is a lot more going on. He was arrested months after 9/11 and Bush tried to have him sent to a military tribunal by executive order. The ACLU and others went ballistic and it went to the supreme court which said he could not be sent to a military tribunal. That was not possible until 2006 when congress finally hashed it all out, which is why KSM hasn’t been tried yet. I happened to catch O’Reilly today when he had Ann Coulter on talking about how the legal resistance on the left had forced the shoe bomber to have no other option but civilian court.

I’m not going to take a position on the legality of the shoe bomber case. Whatever we may think it is clear that we should not abuse or legal system to get a result and we must abide the decision of the court. What I have a problem with is pretty much everything coming out of the Obama administration on this. First of all why aren’t the left upset if he wants to do what Bush did? Wasn’t Bush the devil incarnate? Second of all is “he did it” ever an adult answer for why you make a given decision? Finally, if people like your attorney general were working to thwart military tribunals and defend terrorists in their civilian business is it right to claim that what you forced someone to do was their idea? The real toxin here seems to be the lie about success and failure in civilian and military courts. Who are these 300 and why has the military option been so very difficult to execute?

I would not deny that Obama has has some notable successes in the war on terror. He has been doing a good job killing them, a lessor job capturing them and a horrible job extracting intelligence from them. One could argue many points and directions pro or con so I will offer some simple observations. For one if you got everything you needed to know in 50 minutes and now you are getting more does that qualify as too much information? For another if you disband CIA interrogation and set up a new program and six months later that program isn’t available isn’t that a problem? Finally if you have an AG calling the shots and not consulting anyone else involved with national security then really why the hell do you have anybody in your administration working national security?

Obama became famous in a 2004 speech where he said there is no red or blue America but we are all Americans. Certainly in the realm of the security and safety of our people it should not be politicized. We should put aside our differences and work together. I ask you, if at the heart of the administration there is an attorney general playing fast and loose with the truth and operating in a political manner and the talking points are all structured to revise history how we accomplish that. If even a right wing ideologue like Sean Hannity is letting these talking points pass as he yammers his narrow view then I guess the administration can claim a small victory.

In ancient times the military loss by a group of city states led by 300 brave men turned to a political victory as it set the stage for occupation to be too expensive. Those 300 men forever changed the world. Today the fiction of 300 convictions is taking the same brave hedge against the weight of a nation seething for a popular revolt at the ballot box. A political victory here would come at the cost of honesty, decency and the common understanding of the war we are in and the word forbidden to use for fear we upset those intent on murdering all of us… jihadists. I have more trust in the truth of a thousands of years old mythology than the mythology being spun now about the new 300.

I’m getting ready to produce a definitive guide to disprove the theories of global warming, but I have planned to do this for a long time so I thought I’d write a blog post. Simple question for anybody who believes in global warming…Why? Seriously, this is a question you can ask politely and with genuine curiosity because it’s fairly certain the vast majority of supporters will not have any coherent answer beyond the conviction similar to any religion. Pardon my impertinence but any rational person has to admit that in scientific terms the existence of God can neither be proved nor disproved and therefore is an article of faith, or not. The other answer is from someone involved who will spew mindless data that causes any rational person to nod off. You remember being told about not seeing the forest for the trees.

My point about those people who can’t tell you why they believe something is that I can tell you why I don’t believe. However if we do believe in AGW then we need to trash our industry and create a massive carbon trading system which admittedly won’t have any effect on carbon in the end, but will transfer trillions of dollars from the little guys, through the chump companies and to the ordained like Al Gore. Since it seems civilization is supposed to be at stake it must be our duty to respond, not simply snicker and point and call true believers funny names.

The reason people believe for the most part is because they were told to. I should have titled “I hate ism’s” as “I hate orthodoxies”. Orthodoxy allows you to state a position as ordained fact. Any position contrary to it is heresy and of course people were killed for heresy during the Spanish inquisition. They still are under Sharia law in Islamic theocracies. After all it is the duty of the orthodoxy to protect deities from humans with opinions. Note that it is never a bolt of lightning, but a righteous pillar of the orthodoxy who burns the heretic. But I digress. Let’s examine the excuses because the first thing you must do to subscribe to an orthodoxy is suspend the rational questions, like how the population grows if we all had past lives…

Of course the first thing to ask is if the AGW believer knows who Dr Phil Jones is. Being the disgraced head of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit his recent interview with the BBC pretty much debunked everything including no warming for 15 years, similar warming over history and previous warmer climates in Europe. That’s pretty much game over, and remember this guy also has been found to have violated England’s Freedom of Information ACT, although since it was over 6 months since the last request he cannot be tried and convicted. Nice statute of limitations. I wonder how long it takes to forgive a parking ticket there.

Of course Phil Jones still thinks man caused the last warming period, even though it seems he isn’t saying man caused the current cooling trend. Of course some people point out 2009 was the second warmest year on record. That’s why we should ask if they know who former IPCC lead author John Christy is. Christy resigned from the IPCC and had to threaten a law suit to get his name removed when he realized they were not actually about science. He was recognized by NASA for retasking satellites to check temperatures at high altitude to look for the warming effect of the greenhouse barrier. It wasn’t there. Christy has recently released a peer reviewed report about irregularities in temperature measurement stations in the US. You see cities tend to capture more heat during the summer because roads and buildings absorb heat. Foliage not only doesn’t absorb as much but also photosynthesizes and releases water vapor as a byproduct. Oh, lest we forget, it needs the paltry 0.4% of CO2 in the air to do that. Of course it was easy for Christy as there have been reports that as many as a third of US weather stations didn’t meet standard to insure accurate measurements. Add to this a study in England underway, statements from Russia and China about manipulation of data the provided and many colder recording stations being dropped off recording and it is easy to see how no warming at all could look like an alarming warming trend. Climate record? It’s a cook book!

Of course the big question is why we are even afraid of warming at all. Look up the Holocene Optimum. 8,000 - 10,000 years ago it was a lot warmer than today and the name for that time has referred to optimum climate. Of course the medieval warming period saw the Norse farming Greenland and leaving graves in what is now permafrost. It would be near impossible to dig a grave there by hand now, let alone farm. So look at what we know. The greatest biodiversity is in the tropics. The least is in the polar regions. Why do you suppose that is? Even stranger, 10,000 years ago the Sahara was tropical rain forest. A recent documentary pointed out that the earth shifted North one degree on it’s axis and this caused a slightly shorter day. That meant less time to photosynthesize which meant less water released into the air. Less condensation means less clouds, less rain and less cooling.

So why do we assume bad things will happen with warming? Well they plug it into the models using a positive feedback. As yourself how warmer temperatures had a tropical rain forest in the Sahara. Heat causes condensation. Sunlight on foliage causes photosynthesis. Moisture makes clouds. Clouds reflect sunlight. That is a negative feedback, which is how things work to stay in balance. How does nature recognize whether or not an effect is caused by man and respond differently? Nice trick!

Of course the question is why would scientists and politicians lie. Okay that was a really stupid question. Why would scientists lie? Well prior to this emergency the climate scientists working at universities weren’t rock stars and didn’t get to buy super computers and get huge grants. In the US there were millions of dollars going into climate science before the IPCC reports. Afterward there were billions of dollars, supercomputers and rock star status. Politicians had a different goal. Remember Enron? Maybe you just remember in the 90s they were an energy company that was utterly disgraced and were scamming everyone and not even making energy. Well they were working on something truly grand and Al Gore was right there with them… Carbon credits. Carbon credits work like this. If you exceed your cap of allowed carbon production you have to buy credits. If you are below you sell your credits.

The UK is really familiar with this. Carbon credits are a unique commodity because you don’t get something with a purchase, you get nothing but paper. They are also not worth anything in some places and worth a lot in others. Thus a large portion of the trading in the UK is fraud. That is to say people bought credits where they were cheap and sold them where they were expensive, then lied about how much they made. It’s important to note the observed result is no appreciable difference in emissions with cap and trade but it would make Al Gore a billionaire if we passed the law. Of course he has no private jet in this race.

But carbon is still bad isn’t it? Actually no. If you look at the total atmosphere it is a fraction of a percent and if you add up all that man puts in then you have about 5% of total CO2 production. Never mind the fact that there isn’t even any demonstrable proof of a greenhouse effect as the boundary layer can’t be located. In fact there is an observed fixed temperature gradient that allows you to calculate the temperature at any altitude given the ground temperature. I ask you, do you believe it is the air or the ground that has the radiative mass to affect this? If you said ground has the radiative mass rather than a molecule making up a fraction of the air mass you just refuted the greenhouse effect. Welcome friend! The explanation for the temperature gradient is ignored, but it is gravity on giga tons of gas speeding up the molecules. After all even though you don’t perceive it there is 14 pounds of pressure on every square inch of your body. The average man has an estimated 1.9 square meters so roughly 2 yards at 9 square feet per yields 18 square feet at 144 square inches. Say 2,500 square inches at 14 pounds each? So you don’t freak out let’s just use a square foot… 144 x 14 = 2,016 pounds per square foot. Frightening but true. 35,000 pounds of total pressure on a body? Well how much does the atmosphere weigh? German physicists have used this to calculate the temperature of Venus which utterly makes no sense to people using the greenhouse theory.

Of course none of this is what it seems. Ever since the United states offered a free government where people could make their own choices elitist megalomaniacs have dreamed of finding a way to get humanity to relinquish power to them so that they could rule the world by fiat and edict. It was the spirit of the American patriot who refused the edicts of King George III and were willing to give their fortunes and their lives for their freedom. Today it is the elitists attempting to lead those easily led to give up their hard won freedoms for lies. It is not just Americans who are patriots now, but every man woman and child who will rise up against the intolerant orthodoxies, elitists and tyrants of the world and speak with a voice that says we will not accept lies.

As the orthodoxy of global warming continues it’s wailing cries and death throes and we scorn those who spread the lies we should show mercy to those poor souls who were sucked in. They deserve our compassion as they come to grips with the fact that they have lived a lie. We should not scorn them but enlist them to become champions of freedom, reason and questioning the authority of the orthodoxies that seek to enslave us for their profit and power. And in this moment we should pause to consider how close we came to our own economic destruction and how our government is not yet ready to accept reason and relinquish pursuit of this evil agenda. We must enlist the fallen to redeem themselves and secure our future. It is we the people who will drive the final nails in the coffin of this scam. No quarter! Global warming, may you rest in hell.

I just realized I like selfish people. Don’t get me wrong, I contribute to free software, make charitable contributions and think of others. What has come to really bother me are people who have lost self, what Lenin referred to as “useful idiots”. I was at a show today and saw Wil Wheaton had retweeted something about Republicans being foolish for making a mess and complaining about how it wasn’t being cleaned up fast enough. It was really irritating, if for nothing else for how out of touch it is. I heard today in a recent survey only 35% of people admitted they voted for Obama. Republicans? I’m going to say along with independents that are some Democrats lying there.

However this isn’t about political parties or ideologies. America is traditionally myopic that congress holds the purse strings and the president can suggest a budget, but after that he either signs what he gets or vetos it. That said I would not just look at the historical facts but the present consequences. Republicans spent too much money through 2006. Democrats are blowing cash at an alarming three times the rate of Republicans. Let’s be honest, they both have problems, but nothing is being fixed here. Our president has no accomplishments other than a so called stimulus bill that a dismally low percentage of the population thinks worked and the architect of that promised it would save us from going over 8% last year and now posts numbers with the implied admission of failure saying it won’t go below 9% any time soon. If you think it was because we were so broke at $5T that the fix putting us over $12T is going to take 10 years to get to $24T before it gets better than please slow down and look at this with an open mind.

Forget political parties and ideologies. Do you or anyone you know have children? What are we leaving them. For that matter do you plan on being alive a few more decades? I suggest you take a look at what is happening in Greece. They have been borrowing and spending worse than we have. So much so that their bond rating has been lowered. This basically means it looks questionable they can ever pay the money back entirely so the interest is much more. What if you were buying a house and one day the bank said your payments were going to jump by a huge amount? Now along with paying this extra money you have to borrow more to pay it? End game!

Governments can opt for several things including suffocating taxes or the hidden tax, inflation. That’s when they print more money and devalue the currency. Now they can pay back their debts easily but you need to take a wheelbarrow load of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread. Don’t laugh, it happened in Germany after WW I and it’s happened in other countries. However for the US there is an even more frightening possibility. Many countries hold our currency for trading and as a hedge against their own currency. Oil is traded in dollars. If confidence in the dollar falls that money is released into the world markets and we have instant devaluation of our currency. Since our money is no longer based on gold it is based on trust.

So getting back to the idea of being selfish, this is not a time to fall in line with red and blue flags and throw water balloons and call names. This is a time to ask about our self interests. I don’t personally care if our president had a good day or if your party or my party was bad at some point in history or promised something or whatever. I care about the people in my life and I care about whether I will enjoy safety and comfort. Up till now I have seen very few people in either party say anything that indicates they understand what is going on.

Today there are people who want to save the planet or see our president succeed, regardless of how that success is defined. That by the way is troubling if it is not only against the will of the people but also at immense risk to our economic well being. The point is I don’t trust people who need to find their identity in groups! When someone expresses to me what they are concerned about or desire in a selfish way I find the honesty much more trustworthy. Even if they are ideologically opposed to me I can at least respect their honesty.

In my opinion the most enlightened individuals are those who see that their self interest is intertwined with others and are willing and able to consider the other person. At the same time the definition of personal motivation is that there is nothing we do that is not in our own self interest. It is in vogue today to attack self interest, to call people greedy. It is as if the cardinal sin in our new delusion of enlightenment is to acknowledge any self interest in our interactions. The sad thing is that when we set our self interests aside we find ourselves craving some ideology to fill the vacuum.

This is the moment for the pied piper, the mystical salesman, the Al Gores of the world… this is the opening to use the useful idiots. The formula is simple. Take your selfish goals, be it money or power or a quest for utopia, then figure out how to cast it into a story calling on our better natures. Tell us that we are reaching for something greater than our small meaningless lives. Something like saving the planet or helping some Chicago politician lower sea level. The truly inspiring thing about this mesmerizing group think is that once the hook is set then it’s as good as Stockholm syndrome. Some of those people will stand in the face of mountains of evidence and repeat what they have been taught.

Useful idiots turn victory into defeat, lecture the wise, claim intellectual superiority while spouting profanity at those they disdain… Useful idiots sign over their lives and belongings, do the bidding of lunatics and donate to anyone tugging their heart strings. However they are compensated in the comfort of knowing they are welcome and secure in the group. They have gained acceptance from their peers and approval for doing the bidding of their masters. Useful idiots are… unfortunate and tragic souls who have lost touch with the confident and thoughtful self they could be for the purpose of joining the mob and being validated.

Think about what is important to you. Think about what you want. Don’t settle for jingoistic sound bites spewed from useful idiots or their selfish masters. Be your own selfish master and evaluate what you see and hear based on what matters to you. What should matter are those we love and those we share a most amazing nation with. What should matter is responsible action, freedom and, to my thinking, knowing that our personal actions contribute to making the world richer and freer.

If you will do what is truly beneficial to yourself you will be in a position to empower others. Civilization is the intersection of self interest and tyranny is the abdication of self interest.

I’m getting more and more agitated. There are two words that are absolutely murdered by propagandists today. Those words are fairness and justice. Now I believe in justice and I believe in equal opportunity. While I don’t believe life is fair or we should expect it to be I know that any time any word is compounded with fairness or justice than it means the opposite. Hey, if you haven’t noticed the most common naming scheme in the world for a bad idea is to name it the opposite. Look at the stimulus bill. We were told unemployment would not go above 8% if we did it and would go close to 10% if we didn’t. It went to 10% and now those same people (Christina Romer) are saying it will hover in the 9s. Excuse the aside, she just said she was totally wrong last time, big surprise for someone who never left the halls of academia to really understand economic factors like why companies do or don’t hire. Just an aside, $1T out of the private sector did more harm that good and I can document and debate easily.

Getting back to fairness and justice. Here’s the simple concept. Let’s start with what is fair. Is it fair that you start out clueless, get acne, get dumped and made a fool of, struggle to get by and just about the time you figure life out your aches and pains signal that your probably most of the way to the grave? In case you’re in your 20s or 30s and your eyes are glazing over I’ll just tell you the answer. No! Life is not fair. If any two people could get everything they wanted out of a deal then half the marriages today wouldn’t end in divorce. Rule one of fairness, life isn’t fair. So that leaves two choices. One choice is to figure out how life works. Let’s say we were to talk gambling. Casinos have a several percent advantage. What does that mean? It means over time you are going to bleed cash until it’s all gone. It’s statistics. Now let’s look at a fair way to deal with this. First the rational way. Don’t gamble… unless you can buy a casino. Now we have adapted to an unfair world with no lose propositions. Now for the irrational way. Complain incessantly as you lose all your money, get drunk and ruin your life. It’s not fair, is it?

Now let’s take our unfair casino model a little further. Let’s say you instead legislate that casinos have to flip their margins and pay a small percentage. That means the longer you play the more you make. There is a problem though. Casinos didn’t get rich being stupid, so now they are doomed to go out of business. So let’s take the richest gamblers and give them different odds in the casino so they pay a lot more and keep the casinos afloat. Sound fair? Well, not really, but let’s call it casino-fairness anyway. It’s fair because we should be able to go to a casino just like rich people, but while they can afford to go to lose money we can’t. That’s not fair. Now it’s fair, but it’s also gotten more popular and the casino could go broke so we need to up the percentage that the rich guys pay. Now all we need is someone, say a high government mucky muck to say that it’s the patriotic duty of those rich people to step of and pay their share. Fair enough?

I’m going out on a limb here and saying that you think my rich person funded casino is not only stupid but really not very fair. The question is whether you are okay with getting the Mafia to hold a gun to some rich guys head and make him spend the money so you can win yours. Well, are you OK with that? The funny thing is my casino example is a lot like the US tax system. Almost all federal taxes are paid by the upper 10% and the bottom 50% not only don’t pay but get money back. in fact it’s approaching 60%. However that merry go round is about to spin out of control because the vast majority of money in this country is in the hands of the middle class. Oh yeah. We’re getting just about all we can out of high earners and businesses and if we took 100% of everything the top 10% earners make we could only run the country a few months. Oops!

So getting back to fairness, how about tax-fairness? What does that mean? We have a progressive tax, which doesn’t actually have anything to do with progress other than stifling it. Progressives are economically descended from Marxists. Try this on. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Great president? No, the same guy who said the duty of the lessor races was to die. No, not Hitler, Karl Marx. It really comes down to what you want to equalize. I choose opportunity, Marx chose outcomes. If nobody can have a better outcome than anybody else then you have to ask yourself a question about the person living on the street… Is it possible they might actually be there by choice for reasons we can’t understand? It may seem an absurd question but it is only pertinent because the only way to have equal outcomes for all is to put everyone at the lowest level. I’ll simplify here. If people got rich by accident poverty would require a concerted effort.

Equality of opportunity is different. It is the level playing field. Being a musician I like to think of Django Reinhardt. I used to read every guitarist I liked credit him as an inspiration. So I dug up some of his music from the 1930s in the Hot Quintet du France. This Gypsy was amazing, but even more so because his left hand was burned in a fire and permanently deformed. Many people said he would never play, and yet he became one of the most influential guitarists ever. Nobody ever talked about giving him some special musical fairness, best deformed guitarist or anything. I have always liked the saying that we are born with an equal opportunity to produce an unequal result.

So getting back to fairness and justice it is any kind of fairness or justice that bring a discoloration of the pure essence of what is just and equitable. What is fair and equitable is that we all pay the same tax rate so that if we make more money we keep the same proportional amount. It’s possible to lose money if you make just enough to hit the top bracket today. I’m willing to make the concession to give those less fortunate a break, but the worst part of fairness is that it never ends. People are finding more and more things that aren’t fair and the government is making more and more laws and regulations to make it fair. In the end we have so many rules and regulations it becomes nearly impossible to comply and more and more expensive. Our tax code and regulation is all about a nanny state nudging or bludgeoning us in the direction they want.

The problem with seeking fairness is it is rooted in a utopian belief and the problem with government and utopia is that you have greedy powerful unaccountable idiots running it. The United States is a truly amazing creation of government and free enterprise. Our failing has been when our libertarian government and free enterprise system have gotten in bed together. It’s a marriage made in hell, crony capitalism where money and power is given to people drunk on the rewards and ready to prod the masses with a class warfare message branded in fairness and reeking of social justice that soaks those evil rich… You know, the bankers and business people who actually have been honest that the bankers and politicians who are lying to you want to distract you with.

It couldn’t be much simpler to cut off this fat cat wealthy Washington DC money grubbing politician and their big money friends. Simply turn on them with pitchforks and torches whenever they combine any word with fairness or justice. You can be sure when they say that they are trying to divide us to be led off to support their grab for more power and more of our money.

Just say no to fairness.

When I was in the Navy I noticed that seemingly every officer who flew right seat in charge of ordinance was a political science major. I asked if they need to understand this before the bombed the enemy but they didn’t think it was funny. Shut up enlisted peon. Whatever. This is not about political science you study in college. This is about science being replaced with politics and the science of politics.

When I had my revelation about the obvious flaws in global warming I got a few videos, which I recommend everyone do. There is a new one out I haven’t seen called “Not Evil, Just Wrong”. I got Lord Monkton’s “Apocalypse No” and “The Great Global Warming Scam”. The later had a good number of interviews and an extra DVD with more interviews with scientists in the field. It was interesting to see guys like Chris Christy who had been one of the top IPCC guys at the start and had walked away. Christy was all the more interesting because of a common claim of science by consensus. He insisted his name be removed from their summary. He said most scientists gave up and let their remain. (Christy was sincerely interested in global warming and retasked NASA satellites to get the data showing no boundary layer)

This is perhaps one of the most interesting things about such reports. The people in charge of producing an IPCC report are not scientists. They are managers hired by the UN, or as we would say, bureaucrats. Many scientists who originally worked with the IPCC did not agree with their conclusions, but little wonder. I really love Penn & Teller’s Showtime show Bullsh*t. One episode they did was on second hand smoke where they pointed out that the report could find no conclusive evidence as to any health issue. This is not what the World Health Organization wanted in the summary so they wrote a conclusion that was in fact any thing but inconclusive. Here’s the interesting part. They understood that if you have a report that is hundreds or thousands of pages most people are too lazy to read it all and just read a few pages of summary. That means you can commission a report on anything, get whatever data is returned and then say whatever you think you can get people to buy in the summary and you will probably be just fine. Penn & Teller are non smokers BTW in case you want to send them hate mail.

And so we have the assertion put forth of the 2000 plus people involved with the IPCC that they are all scientists and that they all agree completely, every one of them down to a man. Now to sell this really preposterous idea you must present it in a very serious way and with absolute conviction so that nobody smells the undeniable odor of bovine excrement wafting up from the assertion. Think about it. Climate science is a very young discipline. Every year computer modelers get together to see how they did predicting this year’s change and every year they are all 3%-6% off. Compound a 3% error over 100 years and you’re off by 300%. That means in a century what was 70 degrees is now 210, almost hot enough to boil water. At 6% you’re broiling steak at twice that.

It would be great if a fledgling science could somehow suddenly get thousands of selfless scientists who could alert us the the horrible end of civilization only a few short years away that somehow we were all too stupid to know about before Al Gore showed up with an inconvenient message like manna from heaven. On the other hand it took doctors decades to heed the science to wash their hands to stop spreading disease. Granted there was consensus for those decades, but at the cost of many lives for the arrogant educated looking down their nose at real science. But there hasn’t been any dissent on this new idea has there? Funny thing about that. Let’s say that I were to cede that, even though maybe 100 of those people involved in the IPCC reports were scientists instead of railroad engineers or eco-fundraisers, let’s say they are all scientists. We’re talking people with degrees from universities in science, not some knuckle dragging Joe lunchbox out of the public school system. In fact let’s take it a little farther. Let’s say they all had PhDs in some science field. 2,500 PhDs. Now let’s see if we can find any people with the same relative standing to offer a counter opinion.

You know what? Let’s put it this way. You line up your IPCC alarmist fund raiser bozos, the whole kit and kaboodle and I will just see if I can find as many PhDs who disagree. Would that make you think maybe we should revist? Wait… I feel generous. I’ll give you 2 to 1. I need 5,000 science PhDs. Aw what the heck, 3 to 1. If I could show you 7,500 science PhDs who disagree with the IPCC position on global warming then you would reconsider if the science was settled? This is what I thought was so interesting. The petition where each signer was vetted was put together in my home state of Oregon no less by OSU scientists. As of this reading I see 9029 PhDs and 31,486 scientists total. Have a look here.

So let me get back to the politics of science. Al Gore loves to say the science is settled. Doesn’t look settled to me. Does this look settled to you? Let’s consider the politics of science…

When you publish a paper you have to find a scientific journal to publish it. So you have to get to first base with a publishing organization. To be considered peer reviewed you have to submit your paper with your assertion and the documentation. This is given to other scientists who then see if they can duplicate your experiments or verify your formulas and data. The critical factor is that those reviewing cannot have a vested interest in the review. So you can’t have your partner review your new widget you plan to sell to the defense department and say it’s good and expect to have any credibility. So if you could manage to influence the relatively few publishers who wanted your idea to succeed you could in theory keep competing ideas from being published. This was one of the revelations in the climategate emails.

So when the hockey stick graph that persuaded me global warming must be real was published it seemed very interesting to a couple guys in Canada. Steve McIntire has an award winning blog. Imagine contacting the author of the chart and asking if you could have the data to do a review. Remember if a report is peer reviewed than the data must be available, but it turns out that it wasn’t. In fact this data was never fully made available but with some sleuthing they finally came upon what was being done in weighting a mix of data in such a way that you could have mapped your bathroom visits in the last month and got a hockey stick.

This was the perfect example of how to lie with statistics. Unfortunately we have to trust some people. If you can’t fly an airplane (and don’t have wads of cash) you’re going to have to trust the pilot. However in the case of peer reviewed data that is in fact clearly not peer reviewed… Congressional hearings ensued and it became clear the hockey stick was a fraud.

So what happens when you disagree with the climate orthodoxy? In Iran if you are found to be against God they kill you. During the Spanish inquisition if someone accused you of being a witch they tortured you until you confessed. Confession is good for the soul. Today in America we have come a long way. Unfortunately one consequence of our constitutional freedom is that the orthodoxy is prevented from disposing of those who inconveniently blaspheme their doctrines. Since they can’t simply kill those offensive knuckle dragging flat earth idiots they simply assassinate their character.

Here is the final bastion of irrational thought. First the deacons pontificate and strut about naked proclaiming their silken robes. Many people fall in line because they said they had clothes on with such convictions. Hey if you’re not too smart why call attention to it by pointing out that the emperor has no clothes? Of course calling it into question gets a stern rebuke. Disagreeing requires something stronger. That’s when the condescending name calling starts. Of course the emperor’s robes are nice. Unfortunately they forget the words of Gandhi, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Here’s the central idea to take away from this. In America our founding fathers had differing ideas on how to construct a government. In the end the back and forth created the most amazing and successful long term government in modern times. No small feat. When you look at all great accomplishments you see that people must come together. They must bring diverse ideas and in the testing and debating the forge a fusion of the strongest elements into something great. No man who possesses a great idea or a worthy proposition is afraid to bring it to the table for debate. The conviction that your idea is worthy, that your discovery is significant, that your research is right… That is something you surly want your chance to prove.

If you are trying to put something over on people you take a different course. You first focus on packaging, because if the content is lacking the packaging had better be great. Then you seek to present where you cannot be questioned or debated. If you are drawn into a one on one discussion where someone can expose the failure of the merits of your assertions it could be your downfall. Most ideally you look to get endorsements from popular voices and finally you present with the confidence that even though this is the first time somebody has heard of it that it is old news and everybody else knows it’s true.

I close with this. Al Gore is a politician. He can say he is heavily invested in carbon trading because of his convictions, but that doesn’t change the fact that he would take pennies on the dollar and become a billionaire. He can say he believes everything he said and that he donated $100,000,000 to charity, a charity he oversees. He can try to tell me that it’s not an awesome tax shelter. The guy debated George Bush on TV when he ran for president. He can debate one of the people challenging him. In fact when the eco-press took the mic away from a film maker asking him an inconvenient question last year it was the first time in four years he had taken a question. Ask yourself, why isn’t Al Gore explaining and supporting his settled science as so many doubt it?

When politicians can deliver science without answering questions and stifling all debate, then ask for the largest tax increase in US history that will make them rich and suggest we need “global governance” I think we can say that is science being co-opted for politics. Not only is the science not settled, the politics aren’t settled either.

I recall the first time I heard this expression. It seemed revolutionary to me and I had to ponder it. It made sense. The economy is a complex and intriguing beast. The very idea of creating wealth is at once obvious and mystical. Adding value into an economy enriches the initiator as well as the consumers. Look at the obvious benefit of industrialization. Goods became cheaper yes, and people were able to buy more, but leisure was also in the offing. Look back a few hundred years and the average rural family spent most of their day raising food and doing the chores it took to run a household. Almost everything they consumed came from within a few miles. Dinner items we take for granted were seasonal, if at all. Just doing the laundry was hours of labor. Many people spent nearly every waking hour just doing what it took to run their families and often the whole family worked together. That’s the reason for summer vacation in school, so children could help on the farm.

When you look at today it’s all different. Our children don’t work to help support the family and instead of working late and doing chores we’re watching TV, playing video games or socializing. Not only do we all have gadgets and cars but we have half a day for the most part to do other things besides work ourselves to death… except of course for crazy self employed people. Most significantly we only introduced federal income tax in 1916 and now those who have been the most successful pay half of everything they make to the massive government we grew.

If you think about it, it’s rather intriguing that our society has been so remarkably productive that we can pay such a large chunk of the wealth we create to an ever swelling tumor on our economy that we know as a government drunk with power and out of control spending… and even as the life is slowly being squeezed out of our economy we still live so much better than before. I’m sorry. Am I being dramatic? I invite you to make your own evaluation of our current and proposed budgets. I thought it was ironic that our president reflected the concerns of the nation and talked fiscal responsibility, then proposed the biggest budget ever.

I plan another post on the wrongs of Keynesian economics and to be fair George Bush also ran up a lot of debt. However Bush can be defended by pointing out the dot com bubble, 9/11 and two wars. That being true domestic spending still went up way too much so it’s not a good defense. However Americans are all too naive as it is congress who holds the power of the purse. In 2006 we got fed up with the Republicans spending too much and put the Democrats in control. I believe a survey showed 18% of Obama voters even knew who was in control in congress The point is for as bad as Republicans did… Democrats are making them look like amateurs.

The problem with all this spending is finding more money. Here’s the irony. Wealthy people already pay most of the taxes in the country. The bottom half pays no federal tax, even though you see things deducted that’s not federal tax. The top 5% pay almost all the taxes. The more money you make they more they have foreign and unusual carnal knowledge with your wallet. The ugly little truth though is that there aren’t enough rich people. If you took 100% of those top 1% earners income you could only run the government a few months. Excuse me, I mean that is how it used to be. As it happens now you can only run the government a little over half the year anyway. The rest was Chinese money, but now we’re just printing it like they did in Germany after WW I when they needed a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

Here in Oregon, to my shame and disgust, we decided to soak the rich recently. After all the rich can afford it, right? Oregon now has the highest top marginal tax rate in the country, but don’t worry. For years we have made it difficult for business which is why Portland is the leading test market in the country. If you can make money in Portland you should be able to clean up in any other city. However if you happen to make too much money in Portland, however unlikely, you can move to Clark county. You see Washington has no income tax. Right now it’s cheaper to get a residence there for tax purposes if you’re being hit by this new tax. We aren’t yet, sadly, but as of this year we plan to look for property in Washington instead of Oregon. When you add it all up you realize that taking home 40% of your paycheck means looking for ways to suffer less.

So getting to my subject, think of our economy not as a collection of classes. Think of it as the productive element that creates value and wealth and the public sector which inevitably falls into the category of an expense for the productive private sector. We need roads, bridges, water and police among other things government provides. The class distinction makes the appeal that government needs more money so who should pay. From each according to his ability to each according to his need. Well, actually that was Karl Marx who also said it was the duty of lessor races to die. The first question should be why does government need it.

Government needs more money because they get more. Let me explain. The average public sector job pays substantially more than the same job in the private sector and offers retirement 10-15 years earlier with sizable pensions. Government employees see raises several times the cost of living every year. In down economies public sector production goes down. Top earners who are disproportionally taxed earn less money and governments who are dependent on this income lose these high value assets as well as the unemployment factor. Governments budget for optimal economies and are ill prepared for less income. The solution is to tax more out of the economy.

Now go back to what I opened with. Wealth is created by adding value, and those who consume benefit from that value as well as those who provide it. Those who provide ride that demand and expand their business thus providing income to more people. In simple terms adding or taking away money from the private sector will grow or shrink prosperity regardless of where it is done. However the irony is where it makes the most difference. When small amounts of money are given to large numbers of people it makes a small difference in the overall distribution of wealth. However reducing or increasing the tax burden of the wealthy is quite different. Why?

There is an old saying. Serve the classes, live with the masses. Serve the masses, live with the classes. By and large most wealth is accumulated by offering a small value to a large number of people. The more this is encouraged the more the engine of prosperity is stoked. The more wealth and the the more easily accumulated by the common man striking out in a business the more he spends with other businesses and the more likely he is to hire people and support more families with is work. The more families well supported the more spent at various businesses.

In simple terms, pulling money out of the productive public sector for government is essential to a point. Past that point it becomes wasteful. At a point beyond that it becomes such a drag that it threatens, well… to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Remember that story? When our economy slows our citizens need to tighten their belt. we need to do with less. Our government, if you think about it, no longer seems to really operate at our discretion. It holds us hostage. It requires us to feed it’s excesses and if we do not then we are hauled before the courts. Occasionally because of restrictions some wise people set on our government they must ask for consent to further consume the bounty of our work. Recently Oregon demonstrated they don’t get it and want a worse economy… soak those filthy rich.

The saddest thing about soaking the rich, aside from those who end up losing their life’s savings as many did recently, is that while the rest manage to get by with less… the people who can least afford to get by with less are now looking for work because they are now too expensive to keep on the payroll. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor when hardship befalls you. It is all difficult, and all the more offensive when it happens because of class warfare and in the guise of offering the essential services we require as a society while in fact disregarding the simple law the rest of us live by. If you can’t afford it, cut back!

Please educate yourself on our economy and become active to preserve our prosperity and way of life. When government attempts to divide us to take some of our money we need to remember that we are all in this economy together and we all need each other to have as much of our money as possible to promote the prosperity of our economy. We need a rising tide. Sinking the lead boats is not going to get ours out of dangerous waters.

I am a history buff. 2000 years ago it was unimaginable that Rome would fall. 1500 years ago it did. When considering great civilizations one cannot help but wonder if we could have the 800 years they did, or longer if you count the Byzantine empire which Rome spawned. When you ask people if they know why Rome fell it is interesting the answers you get. Of course there is the public school educated puzzled look, isn’t Rome still standing? Then there is the old school myth that it was lead poisoning. Finally there is the rightward assertion that it was not protecting their borders. Any explanation of conventional wisdom may have some truth to it, but will be woefully short.

First let’s consider, in condensed fashion, why Rome grew in the first place. Rome came to power at the fade of the noted metal workers from further North, the Etruscans. While they had a lot going for them they were basically only one city and Rome took much of their strong points, as well as absorbing them. Rome took the idea of self rule from Greek Democracy in Athens and was initially ruled by a senate. For all that was good and noble about Rome it was also a brutal culture of conquest. However Rome forged their empire with a wise approach similar to Alexander and Genghis Khan. Most conquerors would set out to dominate those who fell to their conquests. Rome instead, initially, absorbed them into their culture. They followed up conquest by building Roman infrastructure in their new territory. This raised the quality of living for the newly conquered while at the same time providing a uniquely Roman culture. Former enemies could become citizens and in the age of emperors they even had foreign born people rise to emperor. They also assimilated technology in their conquests. They were very tolerant to different religious beliefs making it easy for people to assimilate into their society.

Now let’s consider their fall. The assertion they suffered from lead poisoning is true as they considered it a useful soft metal. Lead was used for water pipes until a few hundred years ago. It was also used for cooking utensils. The ruling class were more susceptible because they got even more in the food, like sapper which was cooked down grape juice used in many dishes. Many became sterile and it is reasonable to attribute some of the apparent insanity of emperors to this. While it was a contributing factor it was not the cause. Likewise the argument about borders ignores the fact that Rome became strong by welcoming in a great many more people inside their borders. The element of truth here is that at the end of their empire people were coming in to enjoy the fruits of being Roman, but not being assimilated into their culture. The military also fragmented.

It is interesting that the United States and Rome both rose to power through welcoming foreigners and tolerating religious views. Paradoxically religious intolerance a few hundred years ago was from the vestiges of Roman power a millenia earlier. One key difference between then and now is that Rome was built on conquest. That’s very different from our economy, which was built on manufacturing and trading durable goods. For instance when you look at the remains of the Coliseum you are seeing emperor Trajen’s spoils of the complete annihilation of the people in what is modern day Hungary. Early Roman legions were absolutely unbeatable because of training and equipment. They had superior armor, large shields and the short deadly Spanish gladius sword. They had the pilam spear which had soft metal at the head of the shaft. It would get stuck in enemy shields leaving them useless. They could form the testudo (tortoise) to shield against arrows. They would march forward six deep killing with minimal effort in short stabs as their opponents swung violently to no effect. Then they would rotate a fresh man to the front every few minutes. It was the ancient equivalent of being the sole nuclear power.

Their military was one factor in their fall. When they were on the offense through around 100 AD they were unstoppable. By 300 AD they were only a shadow of their former glory. They moved from an offensive to a defensive posture and suffered the consequences. Their armor was less effective as were their weapons. Where they once forced their will on their enemies and struck fear in their hearts they had become impotent and by defending now had to spread that defense everywhere. Of course the loss of income from ceasing conquest was compounded by losing territory and taxes. Effectively they lost their economic will and began to recede. Repeated civil wars further drained their treasuries which were getting thin by the time they were paying tribute to barbarians like the Huns.

However the most stunning fact to me was Rome’s social programs. You see the coliseum and the great bath houses and markets were the way the emperors appeased the masses. Appeasement seems to know no ends as ever larger projects threatened to bankrupt the nation. Nero and Caligula were killed for their spending. As Rome conquered North Africa they took over farming grain there. Ships laden with grain would sail to Rome and bread would be baked. Every citizen of Rome was given free bread. Imagine a right to free food. When the Vandals could not find a home in Europe from Germaina to Espana they crossed over to Africa and conquered Roman provinces there. Then they informed Rome there would be no more free bread. It was one of their mercenary generals who was attacked while negotiating with an inept emperor who finally allowed his men to sack the city. The emperor listened to stupid advisers who arrogantly thought they could treat real threats as impudent annoyances… and Rome fell.

The important point is that Rome fell because they had arrogant and incompetent leaders who believed they were invincible simply because they were Rome. They lost their national identity and became internally a collection of disparate groups with different interests. They spent themselves into oblivion on social programs while ignoring their economic engine. They weakened their military. They failed to recognize threats. In roughly 800 years they were only defeated in the peak of their power by one civilization. Ironically their one foe who beat them also captured two emperors. Consider the hubris of a Roman emperor riding into battle thinking his presence will assure victory. It was the Persians who humiliated the Romans and kept an emperor to entertain their royal court. They had the superior military advantage of cavalry armed with exquisite bows and consummate skill. Their warriors could ride in retreat and turn and fire to the rear with deadly accuracy, from which we get the expression of the “parting shot”. Persia by the way is modern day Iran.

The great irony is that Rome, much like Greece, really is Western civilization today. Our languages and cultures are all rooted in Rome. Our medical knowledge did not begin to advance beyond theirs until the 1600s, and even that is only part of the story. In fact the Romans were doing brain surgery, a feat not repeated for over 1900 years. Even more amazing they had piston water pumps and steam powered spinning wheels 2000 years ago. Had they put the two together they could have had locomotives 1800 years earlier than we did. We tend to think we are somehow smarter, but we’re not.

Perhaps the most alarming thing is how we seem to be following the lead of Rome. Our economy is not grounded in conquest, but our military strength is no less essential to our security. With 320 million people in a world of 6.6 billion our only way to invoke fear in those who would threaten us is through superior weaponry. I read recently the assertion that we could have not stopped the USSR in the late 1940s from rolling through Europe without nuclear weapons. It’s tough to dispute, but our president is ready to get rid of them, and he seems to believe that he can succeed with Iran where all others have failed… simply because it’s him. French president Sarkozy intimated Obama is arrogant and naive. Our culture is splintered by ethnic and other factions by self serving politicians who want to leverage and perpetuate political power and financial favors. We are so in love with social programs we have several going broke, Social Security going into the red in 2010. Still we fight over adding adding the largest program ever in health care and the largest tax ever in cap and trade. You don’t need to be highly educated to predict financial collapse without making tough decisions about spending yet this year we gleefully added a trillion dollars to out deficit for no purpose other than to perpetuate our problems. In 2009 congress will spend $44,000 for every household in the country and borrow 40¢ on every dollar. For what? Now we are looking at threats from “small countries” and missing the point. The first world war was started over a single assassination. What might happen over a full blown attack in the most volatile part of the world?

The most important thing to learn from the fall of Rome is that the Romans first stopped seeing themselves as great but never thought their civilization would fall because it had once been great. Once they could eliminate the possibility of failure from their minds they no longer had to consider the consequences of any action and turned to mad self indulgent political suicide. I imagine hundreds of years from now when people look back that if history is preserved the conduct of the leadership of the U.S. at this time will be required reading on arrogance and foolishness in the face of danger. Neither man nor nation can ever be immune from the consequences of terrible policies. Rome is now a legend for the ages. The United States can resume being the fabled shining city on a hill or recede into history. To fail to learn the lessons of Rome is to edge ever closer to it’s pathetic end.