Category: Uncategorized

WND column

Debased Money, Debased Marriages


“When a government compulsorily overvalues one type of money and
undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or
disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will
flood into circulation.” 
– Gresham’s law, Sir Thomas Gresham

When gasoline prices are rapidly approaching $5 per gallon, it is no
secret that U.S. money does not buy what it used to. Even if we use the
CPI-U, which significantly underestimates historical inflation, the
value of a dollar in 2012 is approximately one-twenty fifth of a dollar
in 1913, when the Federal Reserve was first given the responsibility of
ensuring stable prices. How a relentless increase in prices is somehow
equated with price stability remains a mystery to everyone not working
for the Federal Reserve or seated in Congress; if this performance is
considered successful, one can only wonder what would constitute
failure.

VPFL 2012 week 4

104 Moundsview Meerkats (2-2)
59 D.C. Hangmen (0-4)

94 Greenfield Grizzlies (2-2)
79 Luna City Gamma Rays (1-3)

95 Fromundah Cheezheads (4-0)
55 Suburban Churchians (0-4)

82 Bailout Banksters (3-1)
58 RR Redbeards (1-3)

77  ’63Mercury Marauders (4-0)
59 Bane Sidhe (3-1)

This is your weekly open NFL thread

Of elves, dwarves, and demons

We tend to scoff at historical reports of elves and changelings, of dwarves and demons.  But prior to knowing enough genetic science to understand the various ways that DNA can go awry, what would have been a more logical explanation for observable phenomena such as this?

Charlotte was born with a form of Primordial Dwarfism so rare doctors don’t even have a name for it. But despite being warned she could die before the age of one, Charlotte has developed into a boisterous and inquisitive girl.

Look at the pictures.  In those without her glasses, Charlotte looks more than a little like something out of a Harry Potter movie.  In fact, if she stays healthy and survives to adulthood, she might well hope to have a very profitable career as an actress as she does not appear to have any of the bulbous features that commonly appear on midgets.

Of course, this may be a dangerous line of thought, as if there were material evidence of elves and changelings, one wonders what physical phenomena inspired historical tales of giants and demons.

The drone war widens

Drones are already being flown into Israel.  How much longer before they are flown into the USA and Americans become targets?  I mean, of course, those Americans who aren’t already being targeted by their own government.

The Israeli air force shot down a drone after it crossed into southern Israel on Saturday, the military said, but it remained unclear where the aircraft had come from.  The drone was first spotted above the Mediterranean Sea in the area of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the west of Israel, said military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich.
It was kept under
surveillance and followed by Israeli air force jets before it was shot
down above a forest in an unpopulated area near the border with the
occupied West Bank.  Leibovich said it
was shot down at about 10 a.m. (0700 GMT), after it traveled east some
35 miles across Israel’s southern Negev desert.

It should be illuminating indeed to hear federal officials angrily decrying the monstrosity and inhumanity of those flying lethal drones firing missiles at Americans inside the USA.

The decline of human capability

Bruce Charlton posits a dark possibility:

I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around
1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been
declining ever since.  This may sound bizarre or just plain false, but the argument is simple.
That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the
supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever
solved by humans. 40 years ago we could do it – repeatedly – but since
then we have *not* been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we
have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it.
Humans have lost the capability.

Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon
only because we no longer *wanted* to go to the moon, or could not
afford to, or something…– but I am suggesting that all this is BS,
merely excuses for not doing something which we *cannot* do.

It is as if an eighty year old ex-professional-cyclist was to claim that
the reason he had stopped competing in the Tour de France was that he
had now had found better ways to spend his time and money. It may be
true; but does not disguise the fact that an 80 year old could not
compete in international cycling races even if he wanted to.

As true as this rings, I think Charlton is mistaking the decline of the West for the decline of humanity in general.  While our generation is the first in many generations to be less wealthy than its predecessors, while I am without question less generally capable than my father, and while it is easy to imagine most of the idiocracy starving or descending into savagery about one month after the system breaks down, all of these things only apply to the West.

Unlike the West, the East has not lost its values.  Even the Middle East may hope to see an imperialist renaissance of sorts once the New Caliphate is constructed and it continues the expansionary phase that began back in the 1950s.  But as for the USA, it is important to keep in mind that Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the medieval caliphates all saw a significant decline from their technological heights.  It would not be surprising, therefore, if 1972 was one day seen as the peak of America. 

Especially given that 1973 marked the point at which real wages began declining as the increase of women and immigrants into the workplace finally outpaced the exit of older white men from it.  There is no singular cause of societal decline, but it increasingly appears obvious that the secular equalitarian ethic that replaced the traditional Protestant one over the course of the 20th century was one of the more important factors.  Certainly, we have not seen the unleashing of human potential and capability that was repeatedly promised by its progressive advocates.

Corrupt like a statistician

I find it amusing that everyone is so skeptical of modern macroeconomic statistics that the Obama administration is preemptively defending itself against suspicions of statistical shenanigans:

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent last month, dropping
below 8 percent for the first time in nearly four years and giving
President Barack Obama a potential boost with the election a month away.  The rate declined from 8.1 percent because the number of people who said
they were employed soared by 873,000 — an encouraging sign for an
economy that’s been struggling to create enough jobs.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was asked on CNBC about suspicions that
the Obama administration might have skewed the jobs numbers to aid
Obama’s re-election prospects. “I’m insulted when I hear that because we have a
very professional civil service,” Solis said. “I have the highest
regard for our professionals that do the calculations at the (Bureau of
Labor Statistics). They are trained economists.”

 Ms Soldis would have been more convincing had she feigned being insulted and insisted that the professional for whom she has the highest regard are trained circus clowns.  As I showed in RGD, the margin of reported error between one report and its subsequent revision is often larger than the difference between economic growth and contraction.  In the case of the BLS, the story being pushed is that the “number of unemployed Americans is now 12.1 million, the fewest since January 2009.”

What they’re leaving out is that “unemployed” is a technical term that does not mean “not working”, as the Employment-Population Ratio has declined from 60.6 to 58.7 during that time.  This means at least 5.9 million more Americans are not working than were not working in January 2009.

Mailvox: defenses of dishonesty

RobertT writes:

So anyone who has ever worked for wages at an hourly wage is inherently
dishonest? That makes sense. How else do people get paid, except for
their time? That concept is as old as time itself. Service businesses
aren’t selling a product, they’re selling their time. And they generally
get a contract before doing anything just to make sure there are no
misunderstandings. This is how I work and my clients worship the ground I
walk on.  I don’t think much of attorneys either as a group, but maybe this is a little bit over the top.

No, there is nothing inherently dishonest about working for wages at an hourly wage.  But there is a fundamental distinction between ““billable hours” and fees charged “based on the time they’ve supposedly put in rather than concrete results” and working for hourly wages.  The distinction is based on the difference between wages, which are paid by an employer who has the power to provide oversight and manage performance, and fees, which are paid by a client who is completely at the mercy of the fee-charger.

Fees of this sort are deceptive because they are based on a fundamental falsehood, which is the labor theory of value.  They are primarily the result of government intervention in the economy, which creates artificial shortages that permit the government-protected fee charger to force the client to purchase the fee charger’s time rather than the service he actually wishes to charge.

Fee chargers often resort to a deceptive defense, by claiming that they must charge for their time because they don’t know exactly how long it will take to provide the service.  This defense is belied by the fact that products and services in markets permitted to be competitive are delivered despite the fact that their time-cost is unknown.  For example, when I sign a book contract, I don’t know how long it will take to write the book anymore than a lawyer knows how long it will take to resolve a legal case.  I therefore assume part of the risk; the longer I take to write the book, the more my compensation per hour will be reduced.

The fee charger, on the other hand, not only structures the arrangement so that his client assumes all of the risk, but also leaves the client at his mercy because the only hard limits on his time cost are his conscience and the client’s solvency.  Even if the fee charger has a conscience and bills the service in the actual amount of time required to perform it, this doesn’t change the fact that the nature of the structure is intrinsically corrupt.

Logos doesn’t even attempt a defense, but tends to concur:

I’m a lawyer, and I admit that I hate just about every lawyer I’ve come
into contact with. I’m still naive enough to try to make good arguments
and win cases, but lawyers I work with abhor the possibility of closing
a matter early or letting me get credit for winning it (I even have to
fight to sign my name on my own work product, which is damn good). It
makes me sad because we are supposed to be in a noble profession that
fights for the rule of law against all who would threaten it, especially
government.

I actually have an amount of sympathy for those lawyers who entered the profession without understanding its corrupt and corrupting nature.  Neither pre-law nor law school really explicate the truth for them, but rather give it to them in small doses so that only the most perceptive law student could put into any kind of coherent perspective.  One of my best friends is a lawyer, he was fired from his first law firm due to his unwillingness to bill nonexistent hours, and he is generally a man of good conscience.  But even he sees the problematic aspects of the system.  Those individuals of good will who chose to become a lawyer may well be bothered by the genuine hatred and disdain which so many people feel for them, but then, no doubt there are nice, good, honest bankers too.  So long as he is an officer of the court, a lawyer is a sworn agent of the legal system and cannot credibly disassociate himself from it.

And finally, robwbright attempts to get lawyerly, which is always unwise when dealing with a superintelligence armed with facts and logic, at least outside the courtroom.

Now, Vox said something I find a bit ironic.  “if one doesn’t know
the difference between written law and case law, and understand how the
latter trumps the former, it’s not even possible to have an informed
opinion on the issue.”

Vox, if you’re going to rant about
something, at least get the terminology right, or YOU risk appearing as
if it’s not even possible for you to have an informed opinion about it.

By
“written law”, I assume you mean statutory law. However, that’s not a
normal/common way to say/describe it, because case law is also most
certainly written. Perhaps I misunderstand your meaning of “written
law”, but that’s not my fault, as your term “written law” is not
precise. Common law might be referred to as “unwritten law”, but that’s
not case law, either.

And no, case law most certainly does NOT
trump statutory law in any court in which I have practiced (2 states, 7
counties, District Court of Appeals, State Supreme Court, Federal
District Court and Court of Appeals).

Given that robwbright quite clearly understood the precise distinction I was making between the two distinct types of law, a distinction that the average layman does not even know exists, this is nothing more than a shallow attempt at rhetorically undermining my point while appealing to his own authority.  I used the term “written law” because I am not addressing an audience of lawyers here, and there is absolutely no need to resort to legal jargon in order to make clear the difference between the statutory laws that are written and passed by the elected legislatures, (which is what most people understand the law to be), and the non-laws that are the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and can be cited as precedent, and which the lawyers in the system agree to mutually pretend are “case laws” possessed of a standing intrinsically superior to the legislative laws.

The fact that robwbright’s objection is a trivial and deceptive one can be shown by the U.S. legal jargon “black letter law”, which means “well-established case law”.  After all, statutory law is printed in black letters too… so how can anyone possibly know what “black letter law” is?  It could be statutory law, it could be case law, it could be regulatory law, right?  If we are to accept his lawyerly logic, we must assume that any judge or lawyer who uses the term “black letter law” risks appearing as if it’s not even possible for them to have an informed opinion about it.  I trust this demonstrates how feigning ignorance and confusion is a counterproductive means of attempting to rhetorically undermine an opponent, particularly when one is attempting to establish oneself as a trustworthy authority.  Henceforth, I will use the terms “legislative law” for “written law” or “statutory law”, and “interpretive rulings” for “case law”, in the interest of precision and clarity.

He then appeals to the authority of his own experience in claiming that interpretive rulings do not trump legislative law in any court in which he has practiced.  However, I have personally witnessed interpretive rulings repeatedly trump legislative law in several Minnesota and Federal District Courts, and there are no shortage of similar examples I could cite.  But since I cannot expect to win competing appeals to personal experience with a lawyer on this subject, I will have to do better than that.  Which, as it happens, is simple enough, based on logic and legal history.

Being a lawyer, robwbright must know that interpretive rulings always trump legislative law at the court’s discretion, otherwise it would not be possible for “the set of existing rulings which made new interpretations of law and, therefore, can be cited as precedent” to be so often used by the Supreme Court and other courts for the purpose of overturning legislative laws.  If we are to accept his reasoning, it is impossible for a legislative ban on abortion to be overturned… except by a subsequent action on the part of the relevant legislature.

Hence the lawyer hate

Susan Walsh asked me about why I despise lawyers:

Care to explain? I actually know a ton of married couples where both are lawyers, the dynamic is positive, the kids are high achieving, everyone seems to have good values. Lawyers marry and have families, and most of them do corporate law. Why the hate?

Lawyers are among the most useless, parasitical, and unethical scum on the planet.  They are a shameless guild in the medieval sense that uses the government to erect artificial barriers to competition, they are fundamentally and intrinsically dishonest about what they do and for whom they work.  Talk to a lawyer sometime about what “the law” truly is… and if you can catch one being honest for a change, he’ll tell you “whatever a judge declares it to be”.

Nota bene: if one doesn’t know the difference between written law and case law, and understand how the latter trumps the former, it’s not even possible to have an informed opinion on the issue.

No one who works in an industry based on “billable hours” and charges
fees based on the time they’ve supposedly put in rather than concrete
results delivered can claim to be even remotely honest. One thing I’ve
noticed in my dealings with lawyers in five countries is that if you
make the mistake of trying to hire a reputable, top-notch lawyer to
actually do something, the first thing he usually tries to do is hire another lawyer to do the actual work for him.

Now, the domesticated form of lawyer, the in-house counsel, can be all
right, mostly because they can’t pull all the usual stunts since
they’re on salary… even though they try to hire outside counsel every
time they’re not kept on a tight leash.

Finally, lawyers are the larval form of politicians.

The first debate

He says it like it’s a good thing:

Obama has always relied on the big money men in private, while
disparaging them in public.  But what happens when he comes up against
one of them in the most public way possible?  Now we know the answer, and it ain’t pretty. The president appeared small and petulant and reactive.  Romney looked presidential and secure and proactive.

While Republicans are quite reasonably celebrating the fact that Romney demolished a hapless Obama sans teleprompter in the debate – disproving once again the notion that Obama is a supergenius master of rhetoric – they don’t seem to be thinking through the obvious implications of what they are witnessing.  Obama has never been more than a tool of those who have financially raped the nation.  Romney is one of the financial rapists.

How can anyone imagine Mitt Romney has any intention of fixing the very problems that he helped foster and from which he profited so massively?

Mailvox: homeschool or die!

A longtime reader writes:

That school in Victorville where they’re having the riots is where my kids would go if we didn’t homeschool.  So, thanks again.

Happy to help.  And what a succinct response to the inevitable raising of the “socialization” issue that family now possesses.  Although, I suppose it could reasonably be argued that given the current demographic trends, white American children should be educated to expect violent struggles, both political and literal, between the black and brown portions of the population.