As predicted

The mainstream media has gradually moved from discussing a jobless recovery to the “Great Recession” and is now beginning to contemplate a Great Depression 2.0.  Robert Samuelson is among the first:

It is now conventional wisdom that the world has avoided a second Great Depression. Governments and the economists who advise them learned the lessons of the 1930s. When the gravity of the financial crisis became apparent in late 2008, the response was swift and aggressive. Central banks like the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank dropped interest rates and lent liberally to threatened financial institutions and rattled investors. The United States and many countries approved “stimulus” programs of tax cuts and additional spending. Panic was halted. A downward spiral of falling private spending and rising unemployment was reversed. The resulting economic slump was awful. But it was not another Great Depression. The worst has passed.

Or has it? Greece’s plight challenges this optimistic interpretation. It implies that celebration is premature and that the economic crisis has moved into a new phase: one dominated by the huge debt burdens of governments in advanced societies. Comparisons with the Great Depression remain relevant — and unsettling. Now, as then, we may be prisoners of deep and poorly understood changes to the world economic system.

As I explained in the book, the problem is debt combined with the fact that neither Keynesian nor Monetarist economics place much significance on it.  Even now, you will find some stubborn neo-Keynesians insisting that debt is good, that it cannot possibly be the root of the problem.  As Karl Denninger has repeatedly shown, their attempts to explain the situation demonstrate little more than their ignorance of simple mathematics as well as political economy.

The massive sovereign debts can never be repaid.  Nor can many of the private and corporate debts.  So, once the burden of servicing them becomes too great, they must be eliminated with either default or hyperinflation.  The frantic efforts of the various Western governments to shovel nearly $1 trillion into the maws of the desperate bankers is little more than an attempt to buy a little more time in the futile hope that the magical revival of Keynesian animal spirits will trump the inexorable mathematics.

Free association in academia

I was asked to provide my opinion about this situation.  And my opinion is that Marquette absolutely did the correct thing.

On Thursday, university officials announced that they withdrew an offer to Seattle University professor Jodi O’Brien to serve as the dean of Marquette’s College of Arts and Sciences. The university said in a statement that O’Brien “was not the person who could best fill this very important position”and that the school had made “oversights” in their search process. According to the Associated Press, O’Brien’s scholastic writings include sociological studies that detail lesbian sexual activity.
The professor expressed her disappointment to the AP in a recent email.

“At this time the only comment I can offer is to confirm that I was offered the position of Dean and I accepted it, but there was an intercession by the President before my appointment was announced officially,” O’Brien wrote. “I’m very disappointed. The College of A&S at Marquette is strong and vibrant and I was looking forward to working with the students and faculty there.”

Several faculty members and students protested the decision, claiming that O’brien’s sexual orientation was the reason the university decided to rescind the offer.

First, the university’s reason for rescinding its job offer to the woman is totally irrelevant.  The Constitutionally protected right to free association means that the university is free to employ or not employ anyone, for any reason.  While it’s true that this right has been massively and persistently violated for decades under the dishonest facade of “civil rights”, discrimination is, in fact, still practiced at every American university.  The only difference between the past and present is the targets of that discrimination.

Second, academia would not be in the dire straits in which it finds itself now, a ludicrous and increasingly irrelevant joke to the genuine intellectuals of the world, if more of the Christians who founded most of the world’s great universities had not fallen for the lie “academic freedom”.  “Academic freedom” is a transparent fraud; it is the university version of the dictator’s democratic mantra: one man, one vote, one time.

The ignorant youf

These results from a recent Pew Survey are precisely why I am so often amused when atheists point to the lower percentage of religious belief among the young compared to the elderly as a sign of anything but the inexperience and ignorance of youth.  While it is true that a few of the idiot teens of today will be the influential decision makers of tomorrow, they are as unlikely to retain their political, religious, and philosophical attitudes as they are to retain their hairstyles and drinking habits.

There is, after all, something that will happen to these 18-29 cretins.  It is called experience of the real world.  The opinions of maleducated ignoramuses who have been purposefully sheltered from not only real economics, real decision making, real independence, and real work, but from the benefit of the experience of the best minds in human history as well, are no more relevant than the opinions of the millions of hamsters kept as pets in America’s households.

Of course the 18-29 crowd is pro-progressive and uncertain about whether socialism is to be preferred to capitalism.  They’ve been indoctrinated by anti-capitalist progressives for between 12 and 18 years without ever being forced to knowingly confront the consequences of progressive politics and socialist economics.  But their opinion about capitalism is no more significant than their opinion about gravity or the universal principle of entropy; as Greece is learning, you can vote for all the progressive politics you want but eventually the market forces you deny will swamp you in the end.

It’s not just the youth who are fools, though.  The general dichotomy between the dislike for militias and the support for state and civil rights underlines what everyone here already knows.  Most people are idiots.

Ban SWAT

They are totally out of control.  They murder pets, murder innocent people, lie about it after the fact, and usually get away with “accidents” like killing young mothers and maiming babies.  Reason’s Radley Balko has long been in the forefront of the war on the War on Drugs:

On February 11, the Columbia, Missouri, police department’s SWAT team served a drug warrant at the home of Jonathan Whitworth and Brittany Montgomery. Police say that eight days earlier they had received a tip from a confidential informant that Whitworth had a large supply of marijuana in his home. They say they first conducted a trash pull, and found marijuana residue in the family’s garbage. During the raid, police shot and killed the family’s pit bull. At least one bullet ricocheted, injuring the family’s pet corgi. Whitworth, Montgomery, and their 7-year-old son were at home at the time. The incident was written up in the Columbia Daily Tribune, noted on a few blogs that cover drug policy (including a post I put up here at Reason), and then largely forgotten for several weeks.

On April 28, I received an email from Montgomery. She had seen my post at Reason and read an account of some of my reporting on SWAT teams published in Reader’s Digest. She said she was reading to her son in his bedroom at the time of the raid. Her husband had just returned home from work. Police fired on their pets within seconds of entering the home.

“I’ve never felt so violated or more victimized in my life,” Montgomery wrote. “It’s absolutely the most helpless and hopeless feeling I could ever imagine. I can’t sleep right … and I am constantly paranoid. It’s a horrible feeling … to lose the safety and security I thought I was entitled to in my own home. Nobody protected us that night, my son and I were locked in the back of a police car for nearly four hours on a school night while they destroyed my home.”

According to Montgomery, when the couple’s neighbors inquired about the raid, they were told that the SWAT team had merely conducted a drill, and no shots were fired. When neighbors learned from the family that this was a lie, they began writing to the department and the Daily Tribune to demand answers. When the couple discovered the police had videotaped the raid, they requested a copy of the video. Montgomery said in her email that the copy they were initially given had no audio, and the incriminating (to the police) portions of the video had been removed.

On February 23, the Daily Tribune published its first story on the raid. The paper made its own request for the SWAT video, which the police department initially denied. On April 20, Jonathan Whitworth pleaded guilty to a single charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. He wasn’t even charged for the minor amount of marijuana in his home (marijuana for personal use has been decriminalized in Columbia). He was issued a $300 fine. On April 27, the Daily Tribune made a formal request for the video, which it received on April 30, with full audio and with no visuals removed. The paper posted the video with an accompanying article on May 3. On May 5, I posted it here at Reason, and the video went viral.

The police department has since conceded it was unaware that there were pets or a child in the home at the time of the raid. A spokesman for the Columbia Police Department initially said police had to conduct the raid immediately before the drug supply could be moved, a statement later shown to be false when police revealed the raid was conducted more than a week after the initial tip.

Police SWAT teams are provably more dangerous to Americans than the Taliban, al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden combined.  They are far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein and the Republican Guard ever were.  So, it is long past time for states and communities to begin outlawing both SWAT teams and the no-knock raids they commit on a regular basis.

Contra Kindlespying

While I quite like the potential of the Amazon Kindle – the Kindle version of RGD is still doing very well as an economics bestseller – I really do not like Amazon’s attitude about its ownership of the Kindle network.

There have already been plenty of questions over who “owns” the ebooks you’ve bought, with stories of remotely deactivated books and remotely deactivated features — neither of which happens when you have a real physical book. But there are also other concerns opened up by newly activated features. Apparently one new feature — sent in by a few concerned readers — is that Amazon will now remotely upload and store the user notes and highlights you take on your Kindle, which it then compiles into “popular highlights.”

At the very least, Amazon needs to do this as an opt-in option. I don’t think any amount of ease of use is worth granting both the power and the legal permission to sift through your data to a third party.

Homeschool or die VII

Okay, these murderous attacks on Chinese schools are getting to the point that it is straining even my dark sense of humor to find the comedic silver lining:

Seven children at a nursery school in north western China have been hacked to death and at least 20 more injured in the ninth attack involving children in just over a month…. the Chinese government has ordered intense security at all schools, redeploying thousands of troops and equipping security guards with restraining poles and pepper spray. In Beijing, the police say they have stopped seven more attempts on schools in the past month. However, the extra security has so far been unable to protect children in the countryside, and parents have voiced their panic.

Ace’s pre-school teacher acquaintance was arguing that real-world experience is a plus, so there’s no denying that surviving knife attacks is not only educational, but should serve the survivors well in preparing for a future battling against seven-foot tall irradiated cockroaches that shoot fire from their eyes. Of course, given that the latest Chinese caedophile also killed the kindergarten teacher, she might not be around to make the argument.

It is becoming ever more clear that we are approaching the madness season. I know there are plenty of smart people who are dubious about the concept of history’s engine, but it has to be admitted, the science of mass human emotion did predict an increase in this sort of behavior. What is frightening is that we are still at the peak of Wave 2… it’s hard to imagine what chaos will rule at the depths of Waves 3 and 5.

A wish list

Since we’re on the subject of homeschooling, here is an amusing, if slightly bitter one courtesy of Secular Homeschooling:

1 Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it is — and it is — it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2 Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3 Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4 Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5 If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a “reality” show, the above goes double.

6 Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7 We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8 Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9 Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10 We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

I have to admit, I don’t mind in the slightest when people start asking me about homeschooling in an offensive manner. Being an Award-Winning Cruelty Artist, I tend to rather enjoy seeing how speedily I can force them to retreat from a prosecutorial pose to the position of a desperate, wild-eyed defense attorney who knows his client is headed straight for the chair.

Public schools find a use for homeschoolers

I find these administrative shenanigans to be more than a little amusing:

More than 22,620 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state’s dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures. But that’s where the scrutiny of this growing population seems to end, leaving some experts convinced that schools are disguising thousands of middle and high school dropouts in this hands-off category. While home-schooling’s popularity has increased, the rate of growth concentrated in Texas’ high school population is off the chart: It’s nearly tripled in the last decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.

“That’s just ridiculous,” said Brian D. Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute. “It doesn’t sound very believable.”

Now, keep in mind that the public school administrators who are cooking their attendance books this way are the very bureaucrats that some misguided individuals genuinely believe should be in charge of deciding whether parents are permitted to homeschool their children or not. But at least it is clear that the administrators have finally come to terms with accepting that homeschooling is here to stay.

There can be little question that this malfeasance by the public school officials will be utilized as an excuse to justify calling for more administrative control over homeschooling in Texas. But even an education major should be able to detect the ironic weakness in that argument.

The Supremes and the equality myth

I’m not particularly concerned about presidential Supreme Court nominees since most appointees by both parties have zero respect for the Constitution as written. I find Obama’s present stealth nominee to be more amusing than anything, considering how she wishes to throw out literal centuries of tradition, jurisprudence, and free speech rights in favor of a nonexistent concept:

President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, argued certain forms of speech that promote “racial or gender inequality” could be “disappeared.” In her few academic papers, Kagan evidences strong beliefs for court intervention in speech, going so far as to posit First Amendment speech should be weighed against “societal costs.”

In her 1993 article “Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V,” for the University of Chicago Law Review, Kagan writes:

“I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.”

All societies are “marred” by racial and gender inequality because there has never been any equality of any kind in any society. And there never will be. It would be as reasonable, and as meaningful, to write that society is marred by the absence of flying pink unicorns and that the magical appearance of those wonderful creatures would be cause for great elation.

As a bonus, Kagan’s blathering also demolishes the idea that the Left is as vehement in its defense of the First Amendment as the Right is in its defense of the Second.

So bankrupt indeed

Perhaps Helicopter Ben needs to tell Fannie Mae to relax and enjoy the grass shoots and GDP growth:

“When Treasury provides the requested funds, the aggregate liquidation preference on the senior preferred stock will be $84.6 billion, which will require an annualized dividend of approximately $8.5 billion. This amount exceeds our reported annual net income for each of the last eight fiscal years, in most cases by a significant margin.”

This, in English, means “We do not earn enough in a quarter to pay the dividend – that is, the interest on the borrowed money.”

So it’s not just homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages anymore. By the way, I don’t mean to worry anyone unduly, but I seem to recall that FNMA was the last big investment made by Ben Bernanke prior to this weekend’s Euro stabilization gambit. I’m beginning to think we’d be better off turning the Federal Reserve over to Goldman Sachs. After all, their traders didn’t lose money on a single business day during the first quarter. They must be really good!