The Emerging Budget Deal

For nearly forty years the Responsible Faction has told us that balancing the budget ‘this year’ would bring about the collapse of civilization. ‘But soon, yes, in a few years, we will balance it. But not now: Banks would be embarrassed, the economy would collapse. Millions would die.’

If we had ignored the Responsible Faction 35 years ago, balanced the budget, suffered the short term problems, and continued to ignore the Responsible Faction, we’d be in far better shape today.

Instead, we submitted to the Responsible Faction’s wisdom, because they spoke with great gravitas and wore expensive suits and had impressive credentials and spoke with great authority and now we have over twenty trillion dollars in federal debt which very likely will be paid off with highly inflated dollars which crush the value of our own savings into worthlessness.

Then we will find out that the experts were every one of them marching stark naked in a blizzard and no one had paid attention to the foolish children snickering and pointing and exclaiming at the naked fools in the snow.

So let the federal government run out of money, and grimly rejoice as Department after department shuts down and interest on the debt is unpaid as that would would do the best of all things: drive the federal government out of the credit markets for decades. There is no good way out of the mess we voters and non-voters alike have created for ourselves, and we are the ones who should suffer for our irresponsible voting habits and submission to the Wisdom of Experts. Better sooner than later, when the debt is forty trillion or fifty, because we were too foolish and submissive to bring down the Experts when the debt was three trillion, or when it was five trillion, or when it was ten trillion, or even fifteen.

If we continue to submit to the Wisdom of Experts with Gravitas, the eventual result may make the Terror of the French Revolution look mild, and none of us needs that.

WaPo on the emerging budget deal.

Will the the 21st Century See The Dismantling Of Centralized Power?

“The story of the 21st Century will be the dismantling of centralized power.“ : Richard Bledsoe

I can’t think of any evidence for this. Are there any governments on earth which are smaller than they were ten years ago? Is Google’s power shrinking? Amazon’s? Big banks? Has Giant Faceless MegaCorp decided to break itself up into independent twenty employee segments?

We have seen in the last couple decades the creation of a global surveillance state of intertwined governments and private businesses which not even the Stasi could have dreamed of in their wildest drug induced fantasies.

We in the US have evolved from a nation of independent small business owners aka farmers and artisans, into a nation of employees trained to take orders. Our fundamental mindset has changed from that of owners into obedient order takers.

I see no evidence whatsoever that anyone in either major American political party would even consider overturning the foundation of the modern regulatory state -Wickard vs Filburn (look it up)- much less return our government to only those activities authorized by the Constitution.

The UN and leading politicians around the world are working openly to end national sovereignty, criminalize free speech including criticism of Islam and of immigration. Merkel may lose her office, but she has succeeded beyond the dreams of the mullahs in Islamizing Germany, and those people are not going to leave. Nor are those in France, Britain, Holland, Spain, or Italy.

Islam is hardly a force for decentralization, nor is the wave of socialism sweeping Americans who have been taught to despise individualism, capitalism, and the bourgeoisie.

Quite the contrary to decentralization: I think we are far more likely to see the complete politicization of economic activity coupled with a surveillance state like the world has never seen.

Will California Secede?

In the face of The Donald whupping Crooked Hillary, there have been some noises about secession made by California Democrats.

My take: If California Democrats ever get serious about seceding, the Democratic National Committee will send organic polysexual ninja hit squads out there to kill every Democrat they have to in order to stop them.

Without Californian US Reps they could never hope to control the House, and without CA Democrat electors they would never again win the Oval Office.

I think the Republicans are smart enough to realize the security calamity and economic calamity of losing CA, so they would probably pat the Dems on the head and and say 'You go, girls!'

Election Day 2016

If you think the last year has been awful, wait for the next four to make it look like The Good Old Days. No matter who wins.

When government controls every part of the economy, every part of our lives, who is in charge becomes surpassingly important. Boys MUST be allowed to shower with the girls, Citizen, or else. Your inefficient 85 cent lightbulb is a federal offense, Citizen, because our donor's efficient $25 bulb hasn't been selling well. Your suburban street sign does not meet our specs, Citizen: Take them all down and replace them. Or else. Air a movie or publish a book criticizing Hillary Clinton, Citizen? To prison with you. Yes, that was what 'Citizens United' was about.

Either the people who are tired of dictates which have no constitutional authorization lose, in which case they will remain...tired, or they will win, in which case the people making a great deal of money off dictates will be screaming "Nazi slave raiders at the gate!" until they are back in control.

So it doesn't matter all that much who wins today: somebody will see themselves as losing something important, and the next four years will be far more hate filled than the last year. Plan on losing friends and family.

Donald Trump' Unredeemable Deplorables Are Getting Very, Very Angry

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong: ""The emergence of Donald Trump as a political force reflects a mood of growing discontent about immigration, globalization and the distribution of wealth," write analysts at Fathom Consulting".

Trump support is about discontent with illegal immigrants, illegal immigrants getting massive subsidies with taxpayers' tax money, illegal immigrants undercutting wages commanded by legal immigrants and low/no skilled Americans alike, a perception that our leaders sold out entire workforces with trade deals designed to pour money into the correct people's undeserving pockets, and political direction of wealth to the correct people ie big political donors at the expense of the people who have earned that money in the marketplace.

Can't sell your obviously superior product for $35 because your century old competitors sell their inferior product for 86 cents? Get the federal government to ban your competitors' products. Trump support is a result of the politicization of every aspect of life by Republicans and Democrats alike: Refuse a cake order at your baker: Face bankruptcy. Refuse a photography job? Bankruptcy. Believe that people with two X chromosomes are female and people with a Y chromosome are male? The federal government is coming for you just as they have already come for others. You will submit to the dictates of your obvious superiors or be bankrupted and jailed because you are too stupid, ignorant, and smelly to be allowed to run your own lives, peasants.

THAT is why Trump has supporters, and if "analysts" are so removed from reality that they blame racism, sexism, and xenophobia for resentment at being bullied and fleeced by sniggering elites, we shall continue seeing more of the same until some non-trivial part of the people who own 300,000,000 guns may just decide that since the elites have openly torn up the social contract, that contract no longer applies to them either.

Like the peasants or despise them, Americans have spent the last decade arming like it is 1775, and if one thing is clear, they hold both major political parties in the same contempt in which the parties hold them.

A Trump presidency would likely be disastrous, but a Clinton presidency might just bring on an armed revolt. No one in their right mind should look forward to that, but from the sounds of the blithering 'analysts' they don't understand just what thin ice they are dancing on, because they don't even understand they are on ice.

Enormous numbers of people have been screwed by Republican and Democratic Party politicians alike, and Hillary Clinton's response is to call them deplorable and unredeemable. The Republicans and Democrats alike agree with her, and that should be a scary thing indeed because the unredeemable deplorables are getting very, very angry with sniggering elites, and they are very, very heavily armed.

Hold the unredeemable deplorables in all the contempt you like, but understand that when enough of them decide that politicians are too corrupt to be removed by the peaceful political process, there are 300,000,000 guns with which to do the job, and that can only end in calamity for all of us. Piss in an armed mob's face at your own sniggering risk.

PS: Agree with this ICE official or not, you ought to be able to recognize why such information angers the peasants.

The Presidential Election

I still haven't decided who to vote for.

I was planning on a syphilitic goat, but it occurred to me that drafting Nicolas Maduro might get things over sooner: No toilet paper, no refrigerators working because there is power only two days a week, but that is OK because there is no food to put in them, raids and trashing of newspaper offices, and even the fleets of 747s flying in inflationary currency from Europe have stopped because the printers don't trust Maduro to pay them with REAL money.

I grant that Hillary would make a decent stand in for either, especially now that she has actually gone on record explicitly calling for a constitutional amendment to allow prosecuting people who criticize politicians.

On the other hand, there is no reason in Hawaii to vote: The Democrat will win.

Worst political class since 1855, and we know where that took us.

I am a little surprised that even with Sanders' and Trump's popularity, the leaders in both parties seem utterly unaware of just how incredibly angry average people are with them. Given the level of political education in US high schools and colleges, I have ever less trouble believing we will eventually respond to overweening politicians and their bureaucrats with an even more totalitarian leader. No matter how incompetent, no matter how corrupt politicians and their acolytes prove themselves to be, the public response is to demand they have ever more power to abuse.

Hillary will probably win, she may get her amendment, then the incumbent politicians will set up criteria for deciding which groups are 'legitimate' news organizations exempt from the ban on criticizing incumbent politicians, and all which apply for that exemption will be scrutinized for political subservience. Those like the Tea Party will be denied news licenses, and if any accidentally receive one, it can be revoked.

Just like any proper banana republic.

Saludad a nuestro Líder Suprema!

The Slow Overnight Collapse of Venezuela

This is the best short description I've seen recently about the industry by industry collapse of Venezuela -once the richest country in South America- into...well...collapse like tin foil hat wearing preppers worry about. It can take many years for a prosperous country to fall apart, it just looks sudden at the end. No toilet paper, refrigerators are worthless because there is electricity only two days a week, but that's really OK because there is no food to put in the non-working refrigerators.

Now they don't even have enough money to pay for printing more inflationary currency, and the foreign printing companies which were flying it in, in fleets of 747s, have stopped because Why trust Venezuela to pay the printing and shipping bills?

Between corruption and Marxism, and corrupt Marxism, and Marxist corruption, the Venezuelans have well and truly buggered each other left, right, and upside down. Right along with all the good, decent people who did NOT vote this calamity.

Bernie Sanders' Daily News Interview

I've read several times that Bernie Sanders' Daily News interview was a disaster for Sanders. I disagree only because almost no one will read it.

Bernie Sanders' depth of ignorance on his own key issues is abyssal.

His vague responses to the questions about the banking industry are downright Trumpian: We will hire the best people to figure that out. The banks must have broken laws, I have no idea which laws they broke but they must have broken them. I know it. So we would prosecute them. And break them up. I don't know how we would do that, or what they would look like afterwards, but they are destroying America so we would break them up. It's fair.

One of Bernie Sanders' points on guns, which he should know something about since it is a major issue with Democrats:

"What we do is do away with the straw man provision, where you can buy a gun legally and then sell it to somebody who's a criminal. "

This is the kind of ignorance of existing law which is worthy of a professional gun banner. It is a felony to buy a gun for the purpose of selling it to a prohibited person. If a person who is allowed to buy a gun does so for the purpose of selling or giving it to a felon, the purchase itself is not legal: It is already a felony.

So Bernie thinks that straw man purchases are legal, when they are already a federal felony. Selling it to a felon is a separate felony. The felon taking possession is a separate felony. Providing ammunition to a felon is a separate felony The felon possessing ammunition is a separate felony. Bernie, however, apparently thinks that buying guns and ammunition for the purpose of providing them to prohibited persons is perfectly legal under "the straw man provision"...and probably because of the evil influence of The Protocols of the Elders of the NRA.

If this guy's supporters stay politically engaged, I look forward to the US achieving the economic fairness and prosperity of Venezuela: No gas, no toilet paper, shutting down all businesses for a day a week because there is no electricity, bread lines, and raids on newspaper offices.

Quite lengthy, and damning if anyone reads it: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/transcript-bernie-sanders-meets-news-editorial-board-article-1.2588306

Much shorter is the paper's commentary about the interview: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/james-kirchick-bernie-stoner-college-roommate-article-1.2591052

"But ask him a real question? Nine times out of 10, the wind-up doll has no answer. When Sanders did occasionally muster coherent answers to questions, he was usually wrong."

Totally Fair Tax

In this joyous election season, I propose a Totally Fair Tax:

No matter who wins the election, anyone who votes Democrat pays a 73% flat tax, and anyone who votes Republican pays a 15% flat tax.

Let everyone put their own wallet where their ideology lies, and see what happens.

Hawaii Government At Work

Hawaii Government: It's slow, it's unfocused, it flails about, it eats everything in sight, and it leaves a trail of slime everywhere it goes.

Lloyd's Insurance on Solar Storm aka CME Effects On North America

Gotta love that British understatement:

...major and widespread social unrest, riots, and theft…major global financial impacts…major disruption to transport, food supplies, emergency and hospital services…would quickly effect water and fuel supplies, sewage systems and flood defenses… potential for large-scale, long-term economic and societal chaos

Power outage…good scenario: 16 days. If new transformers are needed: minimum 5 months. Ok, maybe 16 months. Bad scenario: 1-2 years.

You can find the whole understated report here. It's only 16 pages.

Better Have A Bunch Of Batteries: FEMA/DHS Says CME Could Leave 100,000,000 Without Electricity For Months

Don't forget to stock a few flats of water:

“An analysis of the space weather impacts indicates that the greatest challenge will be to provide life-saving and life-sustaining resources for large numbers of people that experience long-term power outage from damage to the U.S. electrical grid,” the FEMA document, dated March 1, 2012, states.

The FEMA fact sheet noted...that an extreme solar storm could leave “130 million people without power for years,” and destroy or damage more than 300 hard-to-replace electrical grid transformers.

The problem with such widespread and long lasting power outages isn't the run on candles, but the lack of drinkable water: without power, the water grid and sewage treatment grid also go down. So do the gas pumps which allow people to drive to an unaffected area. If food distributors' computers don't work, they don't know what they have or where they have it, nor, without electricity, do the chillers keep it from rotting. Imagine multiple cities without potable water, with overflowing toilets, for even 10 days. At the same time, in August. It wouldn't be unpleasant: It would see thousands or hundreds of thousands dead. Possibly millions.

One of the problems with preparing for a Carrington type event is that while there is no question whatsoever that they happen, they don't happen often enough to keep people's attention. Their infrequency is a good thing for an electrically based economy, of course, but when the big hits of 1859 and 1921 are so far apart, people don't pay attention to the consequences of a low probability event. Such an event might not occur in our lifetimes, so people naturally discount the possibility despite the horrific consequences.

A brace or two of 55 gallon barrels of water in the garage or basement seems about as stupid and paranoid as a good home insurance policy.

Here is the story.

Hawaii Ranks Low Again In Multiple Economic Categories

We like it that way: Screw the poor by screwing the not poor, and feel virtuous doing so.

State Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom stated, “I agree with the authors of Rich States, Poor States when they write “Most politicians know instinctively that taxes reduce the activity being taxed – even if they do not care to admit it. Congress and state lawmakers routinely tax things they consider “bad” to discourage the activity.” We see this when we tax tobacco and alcohol....You can’t overtax the people to support bad spending habits, and then expect people to stay and invest in our state.”

As the article also says:

there is cumulative domestic migration loss of 26,409 people from 2003 to 2012, with a net domestic migration loss of 2.4%.

The Democratic Party's subservience to the Sierra Club (the most powerful lobby in the state, and a virulently anti-building one at that) has driven the median resale price of a house here to a statewide average of roughly $675,000. Try affording that as a school teacher, or anything else, for that matter. No wonder the young move to the Mainland to escape the consequences of voting Democratic. They probably still vote Democratic on the Mainland, though, so they effectively infect the Mainland as well. They do not see the connection between making it extraordinarily difficult to build homes and the rising price of existing homes.

And the Hawaii Republican Party does a miserable job of pointing that out.

"Elbert Guillory: Mary Landrieu is Not Helping Blacks"

Why is the GOP incapable of running ads like this one in every race?

The Democrats, by working for open borders with Mexico and Central America, are working to harm low skilled African-Americans by undercutting what their labor is worth.

Nonetheless African-Americans vote for Democrats in droves. Why vote for people who are working hard at hurting you?

US Falls To 12th Most Free Economy

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States."

Political actions have consequences. Politicize the economy enough, and Atlas doesn't have to shrug. Atlas can be crushed in place.

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

We no longer live in a free country, and there are very powerful interests indeed which like it that way: Controlling the regulators and the subsidizers is more effective for the bottom line than producing goods and services the consumer wants, at a price consumers are willing to pay.

Curtailing government's leviathan isn't simply solving a math problem, i.e. getting revenue and spending figures for government to balance. A far larger threat is the accumulation of thousands of rules and regulations that not only stifle innovation but also undermine our personal and property rights.

Again: That is the way the Crony Capitalists want it, and they have entrenched themselves deeply in the political system. We may never again have anything like a free economy or a free society: Interests already in place may already be too powerful to overcome.

Breitbart has more here.

The original, at CATO Institute, is here.

Mitt Romney On The Disruption Of Trade Routes

Mitt Romney has an opinion column in the Washington Post, in which he advocates for a stong US military force, in part because:

The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers — to use former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s phrase, we would be paying the cannibals to eat us last. And in the meantime, our economy would be devastated by the disruption of trade routes, the turmoil in global markets and the tumult of conflict across the world.

Funny that disrupting trade routes is a point I hardly ever see, but it has been an issue ever since the Muslims cut off European trade routes to the East, leading to Europeans exploring both the west coast of Africa to find a new route to the Indies, and Columbus searching for new routes by sailing west. The Soviets targeted specific places for revolution, like South Africa because it controlled the trade and naval route around the Horn of Africa, and Kenya and others which could close the Suez Canal route and the Persian Gulf.

The great farm houses designed by Andrea Palladio in the 16th century were built for Venetian merchants who saw their trade routes through Turkey about to be cut off, so they bought swamp land, drained it, and replaced their trading income with agricultural income. The rise of European power and agriculture in Malta and later in the West Indies and Brazil were a direct response to the Muslim conquest of the Middle East, where Europeans had had huge sugar plantations.

Funny how disrupting trade routes can have world wide effects which last for centuries.

Belgian Nuclear Power Plant Sabotage

According to this Reuters report, the sabotage was not to the nuclear portion of the facility, may have been committed by an insider, and appears serious enough to take the facility offline until the end of the year.

Electrabel said on Thursday the Doel 4 reactor had shut automatically on Aug. 5 following an oil leak in its steam turbine in the non-nuclear part of the plant. The firm said the leak had caused major damage to the turbine's high-pressure section.

"Based on this partial analysis, Doel 4 will certainly not be available before Dec. 31, 2014," Electrabel said....

Energy experts have raised the spectre of possible blackouts this winter...

Nothing like winter blackouts to make them more dependent on foreign countries.

Barney Frank: Obama Lied

Former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank:

"But frankly, he should never have said as much as he did, that if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. That wasn't true. And you shouldn't lie to people. And they just lied to people."

Do tell. Thanks for telling us now, Barney.

California vs Texas: Politics Have Consequences

Joel Kotkin, in the Orange County register:

Toyota’s decision to pull its U.S. headquarters out of the Los Angeles region in favor of greater Dallas...is part of an ongoing process of disinvestment in the L.A. region....

The Toyota decision also reflects the continued erosion of California’s historic economic diversity...capped this year by the announced departure from Los Angeles of the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum. Blessed with huge fossil fuel reserves, California once stood as one of the global centers of the energy industry. Now, with the exception of Chevron, which is shifting more operations out of state, all the major oil companies are gone, converting California from a state of energy producers to energy consumers...

As did the oil industry, the auto industry, and, particularly, its Asian contingent, came to Southern California for good reasons... Back in the 1980s, the expansion of firms like Honda, Toyota and Nissan seemed to epitomize the unique appeal of the L.A. region – and California – to Asian companies. Today, only Honda retains its headquarters in Los Angeles (Nissan left in 2005)

The state and local politicians and those who vote them into power have apparently made it clear they don't want manufacturers, or even any other politically incorrect business's befouling their sensibilities with jobs.

Since 2000, one-third of the state’s industrial employment base, 600,000 jobs, has disappeared, a rate of loss 13 percent worse than the rest of the country.

But, the prevailing notion in California’s ruling circles seems to be, if you have Google and Facebook, who needs dirty, energy-consuming factories or corporate operations filled with middle managers? Silicon Valley crony capitalists and urban developers who support our political class, and are willing participants in various subsidized green energy schemes, have little interest in traditional manufacturing, regardless the damage inflicted on blue-collar workers....

Good riddance, say the pols.

More here.

Collapse of the Middle Class in Chicago: 1970-2012

If accurate, this graph is scary. While there was fairly significant growth in the affluent groups in Chicago (that seems like a good thing everywhere), the middle class areas of 1970 were almost wiped out by the growth of poverty stricken people.