Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.

I pass on this article solely because of its compelling, jolting truth: Putting unqualified people in charge of life and death, people who are not trained physically, educated mentally, and programmed physchologically to deal with life and death, is, predictably, going to cause unnecessary death and destruction.

In a similar vein, I wonder if Harvard has an econ professor with insight as currently valuable as this from a prof at a lowly state U.

Hitler, too, was fond of eugenics and population control. Stalin and Mao were strong advocates of government-enforced population controls, including forced abortion and other violent means of using "family planning" to achieve political/social control. Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was not merely for birth control; she also advocated abortion, exterminating the malformed or retarded, and forced sterilization of selected elements of (what she felt to be) social undesirables and a racially inferior underclass.

The London Exchange had at least a thirty-year history of extensive dealings in the shares and bonds of private companies, and it had served as a center of public credit for far longer. Yet it had never experienced anything like the events of 1720. A group of unscrupulous financiers had conspired with a government riddled with corrupt ministers to defraud large numbers of investors in a company whose solidity appeared guaranteed by the fact that the Company's chief asset was the credit of the government itself. (Emphasis added.)

Dear Mr. Burke:

Thank you for writing me regarding the need to control state spending in the upcoming budget. I recognize the seriousness of the budget crisis the state now faces and believe that the legislature will need to act in the near future to address this crisis, and that doing so will requiring substantially reducing state expenditures. However, given the depth of the fiscal crisis we find ourselves in, I do not believe we can rule out enhancing revenues through progressive tax policy.

New York State is currently facing a deficit of over $1.5 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year, and an additional $13.5 billion projected for the fiscal year beginning in April 2009. These numbers are a reflection of the terrible economic times our country and our state are facing, and specifically relate to the dependence of New York State on tax revenue generated by the financial, insurance, and real estate sectors of our economy, as well as the years of shrinking support from Washington DC.

The deficit for 2009-2010 approaches ten percent of the total state budget, and we will not be able to close this deficit without making some very difficult choices, and without a recognition that the decisions we make will inevitably have a negative impact on many New Yorkers. As I evaluate proposals for addressing this crisis, I believe there are certain basic principles we must apply.

First, we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable in our society. While cuts may be necessary to even the most critical programs, basic safety net programs must receive adequate funding to survive, and it is foolish to make cuts in these programs, which are most needed in bad economic times and most likely to have Federal "matches" which actually increase our resources.

Second, we need to recognize that we cannot solve this problem without addressing both the revenue and expenditure side of the budget. We will need to make spending cuts, and given the depth of the problems we face, many of these cuts will be extremely painful. We will also need to take steps to increase revenues by calling on those who do have the resources to contribute more. I believe one way to do this is through a re-evaluation of both income taxes and business taxes to assure equity and fairness in our tax system. I believe that there are many other changes to our tax system that we can make that will both enhance the progressivity of our tax structure and also raise revenue. That said, tax and fee increases must not be the only part of the solution, and we need to recognize the negative economic impact of tax increases in a difficult economic time.

Third, our solution must spread the pain, as there is plenty of it to go around. The reality is that the cuts we make to close this budget gap will inherently hurt good programs, just as any tax increases will hurt those who have to pay more. It is critical that as we develop our budgetary solutions, we do so in a way that ensures that the burdens are fairly and equitably distributed, and do not fall disproportionately on those least able to effectively lobby in Albany.

Finally, we must aggressively pursue federal assistance. New Yorkers consistently contribute tens of billions of dollars more to the Federal government that we receive in return in terms of federal expenditures in the state. Particularly in this difficult economic time, we need the Federal government to be part of the solution by returning some of that money to our state. President-elect Obama and the Congress have both expressed support for including state aid as part of a stimulus package, and it is critical that New York's leaders fight to ensure this commitment is kept.

There is no question that these are difficult times for New Yorkers and the State as a whole. I appreciate you taking the time to share your concerns and ideas, and as the budget process moves forward in the weeks and months ahead, I will welcome your further input as to how best to address this fiscal crisis.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Sincerely,
Liz Krueger
State Senator

Ted thought way too small.

If a politician wants to bring really super-pork to his state and his constituents or to his union boss cronies or to his boardroom buddies and be applauded rather than prosecuted, he must not market in mere public works projects.

Rather, he must buy and sell "rescue." The "rescue" of banks and investment bankers and their credit markets that they poisoned, the "rescue" of homeowners who conspired to obtain mortgages they did not deserve, the "rescue" of city and state governments that spend far more than even their exorbitant taxing can fund, the "rescue" of Katrina residents living where they should not have lived and refusing to evacuate when they should have fled, the "rescue" of any industry (such as autos) that Congressional Democrats and their union supporters has previously mortally wounded with regulatory burden and uncompetitive costs, the "rescue" of any and every body in a state of self-induced economic distress, so long as he, she, or it can be pushed off on the mobocracy of stupid voters and sheep-like taxpayers as a "victim."

Enter from stage right (where else?) the planetary king of building bridges to nowhere, history's unchallenged champion of spending public dollars to rescue private entities, President George W. Bush, who, fool that he is, may now step in where even Congressional angels (HaHa) fear to tread.

Bush would use the TARP money to underwrite Detroit unless his lawyers advise him properly and tell him that his attempt to do so is plainly illegal and will be stopped within 72 hours by a judicial restraining order that will be followed by a preliminary injunction against Secretary Paulson

Consensus having nothing to do with true science, it turns out, now, that global warming caused by man is all but dead as a matter of science.

Refreshing.

I knew at the time that Reagan was right, we should never have given up the national security advantage of controlling the Panama Canal.

Now we know that he was right.

From Bertrand De Jouvenel's "On Power" (a book written in the early twentieth century), regarding the growth of centralized power:

"Where will it end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone - that of the state. In each man's absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master - the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course."

De Jouvenel was a French thinker; the 20th century successor to de Tocqueville.

From Rostovtzev (presumably, an historian):

"The reforms of Diocletian and Constantine, by implementing a policy of systematic spoliation to the profit of the State, made all productive activity impossible. The reason is, not that there were no more large fortunes: on the contrary, their build-up was made easier. But the foundation of their build-up was now no longer creative energy, or the discovery and bringing into use of new sources of wealth, or the improvement and development of husbandry, industry and commerce. It was, on the contrary, the cunning exploitation of a privileged position in the State, used to despoil people and State alike. The officials, great and small, got rich by way of fraud and corruption."

To which De Jouvenel adds:

"We may be sure that this new race of barons will try to make their own offices which bring them such advantages and to assure their transmission to their descendants. It will be the feudal system over again. Conqueror though it is of the aristocracy which took shape in society, the state will in the end be dismembered by the statocracy which it itself has borne. The beneficiaries of the state leave it, taking with them a veritable dowry of wealth and authority, leaving the state impoverished and powerless. Then it becomes the turn of the state to break down these new social molecules, containing as they do the human energies which it needs. And so the process of the state's expansion starts all over again. Such is the spectacle which history presents to us. Now we see an aggressive state pulling down what other authorities have built up, now we see an omnipotent and distended state bursting like a ripe spore and releasing from its midst a new feudalism which robs it of its substance."

"Admit that you slaughtered your wife and her friend. Just confess to the deed, OJ, and I will reduce your sentence by 6 months."

I know much more than the WSJ.

I say that "principle" as an intellectual/ moral/religious/social force in American life died betweeen 1965 and 1974 whence the family (the foundation of values,) education (the breeding ground of values,) economics and law (the defenders of instrumental values,) the academy ( the perpetrator of values), and (most importantly) politics were mortally wounded by the tsunami of the perfect anti-American storm:

The rising tide of prosperity from the post-war 50's (think growing materialism), the Democrat-inspired and led Vietnam War debacle of the LBJ 60's, the Democrat-led radical derailment of the Civil Rights movement, the emotional upheaval caused by the assassinations of the unworthy but highly romanticized Kennedys (think of a mindless, emotional/ existentialist moment that lasted 45 years,) the racially-motivated, nationally catastrophic assassination of Dr. King, the grosssly distorted Nixon Watergate era, and the rise to omnipotence of the lowest of intellectual/moral life, TV journalism.

We are now a nation without principles, any principles.

Here, we have taxpayer-funded National Public Radio hosting an academic "health care economist" who opines that the core problem is that America "has tilted too far in the direction of individual responsibility."

But I can't resist.

Alan Colmes tonight is interviewing Karl Rove and Alan wants to know, "Is that a conflict of interest" (to have in the White House a political advisor, David Axelrod to Obama, who is also a policy advisor?) How would this utterly incompetent man have survived all these years in major media but for an Endangered Species Act-like policy at FCN called "Fair and Balanced"?

There is nothing "too big to fail" if we care about the long-term health of our economy and of freedom.

In the current panic and mass rush toward socialism and a government-controlled economy one institutution, capitalism, appears politically unimportant, economically irrelevant, and small in the opinion of the economically uneducated public and our politically fatuous, economically ignorant government representatives.

w-a-x-m-a-n-b-o-x-e-r spells "catastrophe," albeit masqueraded as "environmental protection."

Environmentalism, for 40 years, has been but a supporting brigade in the army of statist socialists in their war to destroy capitalism and restrict freedom. Now, that movement has gained control of that war. Environmentalism has morphed into a monstrous religious crusade, an army of tens of millions that dominates the governments of powerful countries, is swept forth by the false god of global warming, and now wields the nuclear weapon of climate change avoidance.

I love most ethnic jokes since they are emotionally harmless to the sane and sound, truly funny for the sane and sound, and rooted in the reality of human nature, which Liberals hate and which all Liberal political programs seek to deny: That the human species has an inherent aversion to and prejudice against diversity and an inherent presumption in favor of cultural tradition. This genetic/social aversion to diversity and prejudice against cultural instability are stabilizing, species-protective, societal survival skills that are part of our genetic, evolutionary makeup.