31 January 2010

ON BOOKS

Thomas Jefferson once said “I cannot live without books,” and so proceeded to amass a library of over 10,000 volumes. Unfortunately I decided to emulate him, and over the course of my life largely succeeded. Now I find myself trying to divest myself of some of what I accumulated. I intend to keep the ones that are rare and valuable, or that hold some value for me, but dispose of many of the rest. It is the ones that are not that give me the most grief. I find selling them tedious, but in my mind the notion is fixed that every book has some value. if not I want to dispose of it. In reality this is not the case. Some, indeed many, books are clearly worthless insofar as there is no demand for them.

You see this at book and library sales (which I no longer frequent), where on the last day, remaining books, even if they are totally free, have no takers. They probably wouldn’t even make the $1 bargain shelf at most used book stores. These, unfortunately, are declining in number. I hate big chain stores stocked mainly with best sellers and never go to them, but take pleasure in browsing the one-of-a-kind shelves of used bookstores where you never know what you’ll discover. Years back the Isaac Mendoza book store was located around the corner from my office. It was the oldest book store in New York City, and I enjoyed browsing there, but unfortunately the rent was raised and the store went out of business, as have too many others. These are irreplaceable resources simply because they contain so much that is now scarce and out of print. This is partially offset by things like BookFinder on the Internet, where the inventories of thousands of used booksellers can be checked provided you know what you’re looking for. But it still doesn’t compare to a musty old store with classical music playing in the background.

Is all of this obsolete now due to electronic readers and the new Apple IPad? To me they are useless. I can read a pdf on my laptop so what do I need a dedicated reader for? Obviously there is some market for them, but nothing compares to holding a book in you hand and turning the pages. This is especially true of a classic in a well-made edition, which is about all I read (the only new books I read are nonfiction). I think every literate person should devote time to reading the “great books;” they are “great” for a reason, even though “multiculturalism” has removed many from college curricula, that is all the more reason to compensate for the semi-literate education people receive today.

29 January 2010

THE ENDLESS CAMPAIGN

In his State of the Union speech Barack Obama took the unprecedented step of criticizing a Supreme Court decision in front of the congress and country. That was an outrageous breach of etiquette and furthermore much of his statement was factually incorrect. The Supreme Court lifted restrictions on domestic corporate campaign contributions, not foreign contributions, which is prohibited by another law. Having once been subject to prosecutorial persecution on this issue myself, I believe we should get rid of most if not all campaign finance restrictions, provided there is full transparency on the record as to the source of all contributions. Donations to parties in particular should not be limited as they do not accrue to any single individual.

This is not because I look favorably on the vast amount of money going into political campaigns but because I think that finance reform is futile, and the wrong approach to a larger problem. What we really need is election reform. Currently we are subject to a virtually constant campaign. Elected officials spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising. John F. Kennedy did not even announce for President until January of 1960. Today the presidential campaign is ongoing, almost from the moment an election ends, even though the next election is years into the future. All other elected officials or potential candidates must be continuously preoccupied with fundraising.

So what is to be done to reform this system? I believe the answer lies in restricting the time period during which campaigning can be conducted. In Britain once elections are announced it is only a matter of several weeks before the election, not an endless number of months, as happens here. If the time frame for an election is limited, far less resources are required to seek office. With a shorter designated campaign window we would also not be subject to endless campaign solicitations and commercials. If both parties could agree on a time frame for campaigns the public interest would be far better served. An election campaign season should be measured in weeks, not months or even years. This would work for most elective offices. For the presidency the whole nominating procedure needs to be reformed, but that is a subject for another piece.

25 January 2010

A NEW WAY TO IDENTIFY TERRORISTS?

In a prior blog I had made the case for profiling to identify terrorism. In response I heard from John D. Byrnes who runs the Center for Aggression Management. They have come up with a methodology for identifying potentially aggressive behavior that seems to fit the bill. It uses a Continuum of Aggression to measure an individual’s proclivity towards violence. This is particularly useful in the workplace where there are many incidents of employees or former employees behaving violently towards others. Mr. Byrnes feels this approach could be useful in identifying potential terrorists, and certainly would have worked in the case of Major Hassan. It is definitely worthy of investigation for use by the authorities. If such techniques can be further refined we might have an additional tool for pinpointing terrorists. For more information go here.

23 January 2010

PERNICIOUS PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS

For the first time in history public sector union membership exceeds private sector union membership. As private sector employment continues to decline public sector employment is increasing. This is a dismal indicator of where our economy is headed. The old industrial sector unions understood that a thriving private sector was necessary for their own prosperity. Even though aligned with the Democratic party the members tended to vote independently.

Today public employee unions like SEIU, AFSCME, and teacher unions are all prospering at public expense. They all have a vested interest in public spending and taxation, and exert a controlling interest on the Democratic party. The “stimulus,” rather than going for infrastructure, roads, and bridges, which would stimulate private employment, and provide jobs for the people who are actually unemployed, largely went to states and programs favored by these groups.

They now provide the funds and shock troops for liberal Democrats in elections and bogus counter-tea party rallies and have a clear interest in expanded government. This occurs not just at the federal level but in states and localities as well. For example, in suburbs teachers unions, apart from screwing up education and resisting reform, regularly dominate school budget votes that constantly increase taxes because few others bother to vote and opponents aren’t organized. California is going broke with absurdly high pension obligations. It is possible for a prison guard to retire at 50 and receive a pension equivalent to 90% of their last salary. New York is not far behind.

These unsustainable benefits were granted in part because of influence in state legislatures, and because public employment allegedly pays less than private employment. This is no longer true so we have the preposterous situation of people making less being taxed to maintain people making more than they are. Furthermore government priorities are warped from what would otherwise be in the public interest by this insidious influence.

Unless the grip of these unions is broken the cost of government will become increasingly onerous and its expansion will be unchecked. Thus one of the first priorities of true reformers must be to break these unions, for that is where much of the pressure on government expenditures is coming from.

21 January 2010

LET'S BLAME WALL STREET

Having lost popular support for their socialist agenda watch the administration and Democratic congress try to gain traction by focusing on a new target- Wall Street. This new “populism” will be an attempt to tap into public anger about the economy and divert attention from the fact that they have done nothing to improve it. “Wall Street” is a euphemism for the bankers and financial industry.

There are a few problems with this tactic. First of all Wall Street like most big corporations has no political principles. It simply goes with the flow. If there is money to be made by dealing with the government that’s where they’ll go. Many on Wall Street were quite comfortable with Obama. In fact Wall Street gave more money to the Democrats in the last election cycle than Republicans. Are they going to bite the hands that feed them? So just how real is this populist attack on Wall Street likely to be? It will amount to little more than divisive rhetoric.

Second, any action will involve punishing the banks for doing what the government wanted them to do. It was the government that forced the banks to make loans to unqualified borrowers in order to expand home ownership through the Community Reinvestment Act and other instruments. I don’t like derivatives and other exotic financial instruments, but insofar as they deal with mortgages they are government-inspired, particularly with low interest rates maintained by the Federal Reserve. Easy money and credit forced by the government had the effect of inflating real estate prices to unsustainable levels.

Third is the myth of the bailout, which assumes that Wall Street somehow obtained billions of dollars of taxpayer funds and then walked off with them or paid themselves bonuses. The truth is that Wall Street received no grants, no gifts of taxpayer funds. They received loans to shore up the financial system, even if they didn’t want or need them in many cases. Most of these loans have been paid back with interest. The only money not coming back is what the government gave to the auto industry, which has nothing to do with Wall Street. So Wall Street has not gotten any benefit from the government, and in fact is having to eat huge losses on government-inspired loans.

What the Democrats seek to do is divert populist “tea party” away from them and the government and towards Wall Street. True enough there is some anger at Wall Street as well, but I would wager that has more to do with a drop in the value of 401(k)s than any fundamental antipathy. These accounts are on the mend and will recover in the long run and require a healthy Wall Street to prosper.

Meanwhile the government is moving forward with “reform” legislation, before the commission it appointed to investigate this matter has reported, not that this commission is objective given the grilling the left-wing Chairman Phil Angelides gave to top bankers last week. It is blaming Wall Street before the investigation has even been completed. Any objective accounting must acknowledge the seminal role of government in creating the crisis.

But government is not going to blame itself. Yet given a jobless “stimulus” waste of money, increased debt, and a 10% unemployment rate this phony “populism” not likely to gain much traction. The notion that “We screwed up so let’s blame Wall Street” is too transparent to be taken seriously. It will not create a single job, which will only happen when there is a stable system and incentive for private capital to invest in future growth.

20 January 2010

THE MESSAGE FROM MASSACHUSETTS

When the most liberal Democratic state in the union sends a Republican to the Senate, which it has not done since 1972, something clearly is up. Scott Brown’s comfortable victory sends a clear message to the most radical government in American history. The people do not want what the congress is trying to put over on them. Never in the history of the country has a radical congress tried to put across a major piece of legislation which a solid majority of people oppose. That is the case with the abominable health care overhaul, which was already bad before it descended into blatant deal-making with certain senators to provide their states with something others are not getting, and exempting the unions from a tax that will be foisted on everyone else. People have looked at this and decided that even what we have now is better than what is being proposed.

That this message resonates as far as Massachusetts indicates how strong feelings are about this congress. This election was clearly nationalized so there’s no doubting the meaning of the outcome. Democrats may find solace in the equally out-of-touch mainstream media, but the course they have chosen is clearly disastrous, no only for them but for the country. People don’t want a socialist America. They do not want a bloated government with ever increasing spending, deficits, and taxes. They do not want the government taking over health care. They do not want cap and trade legislation that will wreck the economy. In fact there is little on the agenda that they do want.

How can politicians be so tone-deaf? The answer is purely ideology. They have misread their majority as an endorsement for a radical agenda of every item on the left-wing wish list. The leadership is so dedicated to this that Pelosi and company will still try to push it forward even as party members drop away for fear of a tsunami of change that is certain to arrive this November. Hopefully the damage between now and then will be limited.

17 January 2010

THE DEMISE OF NEWSPAPERS

When I was a kid I loved going to a newsstand in Times Square that used to carry all of the out-of-town newspapers, which I would collect with an insatiable curiosity about other places and information sources. If you named a city I could tell you the names of its newspapers. Many are sadly long gone and more are on their way out.

There has been much handwringing about the demise of newspapers, especially by liberals as most papers reflect their views, but this should be of some concern to conservatives as well. The Internet and cable news along with things like Craig’s List, which has decimated the local ad market paper depend on, have eaten away at the newspaper audience. If it weren’t for supermarkets and department stores most would be toast as circulation drops and advertisers migrate to other media. Even the Wall Street Journal, the largest and best paper in the country barely makes a profit. To these other factors I would add the decline of attention span in younger populations. Few have the patience or discipline to read a long newspaper article. I’m a fast reader, but it still takes an hour or so to read through everything in the Journal. Few people have that much time or patience. There are a couple of free newspapers doing fairly well here in NY, because they contain articles that can be easily finished in the course of subway ride. What those who are concerned about the decline of “substantive journalism” are missing is that there isn’t that much of an audience for it.

On the other hand something like the New York Times regularly serves as the new source for much of the other media, which is one of the reasons much of the “mainstream” tends to have a liberal bias. That is why there is so much concern about the possible demise of the Times- it would be the loss of a primary source of news. Having been in their crosshairs at one time I can attest to how the rest of the pack slavishly follows the Times, which definitely has an ideological liberal agenda. Many of us won’t miss the Times for that reason, as much as elites may moan.

The conventional thinking is that failing papers may eventually wind up on the Internet. The problem with that is that thus far the web can only support a skeleton staff, not the cadres of reporters papers currently employ, albeit in decreasing numbers. Some regret the demise of “investigative” journalism and substantive articles, as well as field reporting. Yet there is plenty of that on the Internet, it is just that the power there shifts from single-source newspapers to news aggregators. This at best results in a kind of Wikipedia level of accuracy.

The notion of professional journalism and objective hard news is a relatively recent phenomenon, mostly of the twentieth century. This ideal has hardly been maintained by many of those in the field, but it was at least a theoretical standard. Prior to the last century most newspapers did not even bother claiming objectivity. In fact newspapers actually began as partisan political propaganda organs.. You only have to go back and read some of the scurrilous attacks on the Founding Fathers in the press to realize this. Newspapers were printed with a political objective and from the beginning have had an agenda. That is why even today some papers have the name of a political party on their masthead even if the connection is long gone. So this tells us much about the true origins of newspapers.

So perhaps this is how newspapers can survive- as organs or advocates of political organizations. There is certainly massive amounts of money being donated to political parties so there is no reason why some of it cannot find its way here. That along with wealthy people who can afford to take the loss may be the way out. It may be less than ideal, but its also nothing new.

16 January 2010

BYPASS MOHAMMED BUT WATCH THOSE RIGHT-WINGERS!

While every terrorist act in recent years has been committed by an Islamic fanatic, the nominated head of the Transportation Security Administration remains clueless. According to Errol Southers, the nominee, "Most of the domestic groups that we pay attention to here are white supremacist groups. They're anti-government, in most cases anti-abortion, they are usually survivalist type in nature, identity oriented…..Those groups are groups that claim to be extremely anti-government and Christian identity oriented."

Never mind that there has barely been a peep out of right-wing extremists, and you have to look pretty hard to find white supremacists anywhere nowadays; they are nevertheless the principal threat to this moron. Everyone else seems to know that we are threatened by Islamic terrorists, not right-wing kooks. It is this kind of warped priorities that account for the government’s ineptitude in handling the underpants bomber. This guy’s nomination is a joke and should be withdrawn.

The TSA has been gripped by political correctness since its inception, treating grandma with the same procedures as Islamic males. This whole edifice should be dismantled, and reassembled to deal with the threats we actually face rather than political enemies. There is real hypocrisy in knowing who threatens us yet behaving as though we are all suspect. Our resources should be concentrated on identifying and destroying the actual enemy, not on harassing the public every time they try to get on an airplane. One of the tools that should be used is profiling. The public seems to understand and favor this, but the elites are tone-deaf and governed by ideology rather than the facts on the ground. The enemy may eventually wise up and change tactics, but right now they are giving us a gift of fairly obvious jihadis. We should take it.

15 January 2010

TAXING THE BANKS

The administration is proposing a tax on banks to cover presumed losses in the TARP program. The trouble is that none of these losses have come from the banks, who by and large have or are paying back their TARP money as quickly as they can. The government has made a healthy profit on these loans. Losses have been incurred on the part of GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the latter two government entities). Guess who won’t be taxed under this proposal. GM, Chrysler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So the government is penalizing banks for other losses, while so far there have been no losses on banks; only profits. The successful are being penalized for the profligate and hopeless. Meanwhile the public has been convinced that the banks are the beneficiaries of government largess, when the opposite is true.

Some banks, like JPMorgan Chase did not want or need TARP funds, but were forced to take them by the government. They ran their companies prudently and were never in trouble. That is also true of Goldman Sachs, but they sold derivatives and then turned around and sold them short. If Goldman were taxed that would be fine, since they play and contribute to all sides, but there’s no way to do that. What we should do is at least resolve that no Treasury Secretary ever come from Goldman Sachs again.

The proposed tax would be based on the level of risk exposure a bank has, which is not a bad idea, except that such things are usually passed on to customers. What is really needed is a review of capital requirements. We don’t need to bring back the depression era Glass-Steagall banking act (which separated investment and commercial banking). However some of its spirit could be revived. There should be separate requirements for the capitalization of the commercial banking sector. These should be stringent enough to cover depositors funds safely. The capitalization requirements for investment banking could be different. The banks capital would not be combined but treated separately. That way if officials are dumb enough to speculate excessively through the investment bank it would not affect the commercial bank, which would remain solvent. Then the losses, if any would accrue to the stockholders, not the public. At the same time, as far as bonuses and compensation go, these are matters for the stockholders to decide, not the government. Some trading bonuses are overly lucrative, given that they share in the profits but not the losses, and this is money that would otherwise go to the stockholders through dividends or reinvestment in the firm. There is certainly an imbalance in what traders earn versus the rest of the firm in many cases, but despite public “outrage,” decisions on this matter properly reside with the people who are actually paying for it. For contrary to the impression left by the media, the public is not paying for any of this.

The real losers are the aforementioned General Motors et al. After stealing the stockholders and bondholders property and giving it to the UAW, the administration now proposes to further subsidize them at the expense of the banks. As with the “stimulus,” which has mainly benefited public employee unions through government expansion this government is clearly beholden to the unions on an unprecedented scale.

11 January 2010

NERVOUS ABOUT NEWS CORPORATION

When the News Corporation took over the Wall Street Journal last year I had very mixed feelings. News Corp. already owns the NY Post, the Weekly Standard, the London Times as well as many other papers, and above all Fox News. What concerns me is that virtually the entire right is concentrated in a single corporation, so that if anything were to go wrong it would be a disaster. As long as Rupert Murdoch is alive and Roger Ailes runs Fox News there is no problem. But Murdoch’s heirs are all more liberal, so if he dies it could be disastrous for the right. Never mind that there is a winning formula as Fox News trumps all the other cable networks and earns more than all the major broadcast and cable news media combined. There might be pressure to move in a more liberal direction and thus mimic all the other networks and newspapers.

There is a recurring pattern of heirs to fortunes and foundations often being more liberal than the founder and abandoning his philosophy. This undoubtedly has something to do with being socially acceptable to other elites, most of whom are liberal. The Wall Street Journal has had a consistent philosophy since its founding and was always independent. It was sad to see it folded into another company. It has already undergone changes that are not very appealing. As long as Roger Ailes is around Fox News is safe, given that he started it and continues to guide it. He is the key here. Watch Roger Ailes. If he is no longer there it does not bode well for the future.

The “liberals” cannot abide a single conservative major media outlet and will do anything they can to eliminate this company. The Obama administration tried without success to boycott Fox News and exclude them from press conferences, but even the other media thought this was going too far and the attempt failed. Howard Dean has said he wants to shut down Fox News and it is a constant obsession of left-wing activists who cannot abide even one right-leaning media outlet. At this point government action would be too obvious and heavy-handed, but not so heredity. At this point all we can do is pray for Rupert Murdoch and hope that somehow a better succession will occur.

08 January 2010

SOFT ON TERRORISM

This administration is proving to be soft on terrorism, which may resonate as much as “soft on communism” did years back. Thus far it cannot even bring itself to use the word “terrorism;” Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano refers to “man-caused disasters.” She is now going to deploy scanners to see through our underwear because the underpants bomber tried to blow up a plane in Detroit. Meanwhile he is being sent to the civilian judicial system rather than being treated as an enemy combatant and he’s already lawyered up.

Add to that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who planned 9/11. He, along with other Guantanamo inmates, is being transferred to New York for prosecution, as though he were an ordinary American criminal rather than a mass murdering enemy of the United States. We’re also still closing Guantanamo with prisoners likely to be transferred to the US, and of course we’ve banned torture or any other irregular methods of questioning. Basically terrorist now have all the rights of an American citizen under this administration.

Meanwhile despite these accommodating policies and Obama’s speech in Cairo attempting to reconcile with the Muslim world, their war against us continues. But “we” no longer consider it a war; it’s just criminal activity now. If anything the war against us has intensified. We have had the murders committed by Major Hassan, the underpants bomber, the attempted attack on the NYC transit system, and the murder of several CIA agents in Afghanistan by a double agent for the other side, all in one year. Yet the CIA has been castrated and rendered ineffective by new “humane” policies.

In France by contrast, the response to the underpants bomber has been immediate. An Imam preaching hatred of the West was summarily deported, and scrutiny of flights and travelers mainly from Muslim countries has been increased- profiling without shame. When France has a more robust anti-terror policy than the U.S. you know something is really wrong. The bottom line is that the left cannot be trusted with our security.

06 January 2010

THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY IN IRAN

The Iranian regime is doomed. It has failed at one of the basic precepts of Machiavelli- be as ruthless as you need to be but never incur the hatred of the people. This is evident from the widespread opposition to this illicit regime. It includes not only students, but women, young people, alienated unemployed workers, and even dissident clerics. This opposition has not been silenced. On the contrary; it grows stronger every day, not just in Tehran, but across the country.

But rather than move in the right direction today Secretary Clinton announced that there is no hard-and-fast deadline for Iran, despite Obama previously saying that they had until December to make a deal. The message from this is administration to the Iranian regime is that no matter what you do we’ll accommodate you. The December deadline was for a U.N. deal to swap most of Iran’s enriched uranium for nuclear fuel. The deal was supposed to reduce Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, which would limit its ability to make nuclear weapons.

The administration’s attempt to engage this evil regime, even as its legitimacy collapses, has been a total failure. Now is the time to stand with the Iranian people and end this shameful policy. Despite repressive measures, opposition is growing and at no time has the regime been more vulnerable.
Instead this lunatic regime continues towards its goal of making nuclear weapons while oppressing its people, now confident that no one in the world is going to do anything about it. The only way to end this nightmare is to support the Iranian people, who can overthrow this regime with enough encouragement. We must not be indifferent to their fate.