Why Congress should vote on bills before reading them

President Obama put a lot of pressure on the House to pass a Health Care Bill before the August recess. Democratic Representative John Conyers on why he thinks it's more important to get bills signed than to read them:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’ ” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

And he's not the only lawmaker who doesn't understand the bill.

Mark Steyn thinks lawmakers should understand the laws they vote on. He even thinks that people should be able to understand the laws they live under:

Thousand-page bills, unread and indeed unwritten at the time of passage, are the death of representative government. . . . No individual can read these bills and understand what he's voting on. That's why the bulk of these responsibilities should be left to states and subsidiary jurisdictions, which can legislate on such matters at readable length and in comprehensible language.

Read the whole thing. It's short and very comprehensible.

You're Probably a Federal Criminal

Lots of people are considered criminals under federal law, and they dont even know that they are criminals.

Space Rocks

The Hubble Telescope has shown us a massive debris plume which is probably from a recent impact on the planet.

The Hubble team says the force of the explosion was thousands of times more powerful than the Tunguska impact, which devastated 500,000 acres of Siberian forest land in 1908.

One big question about the impact is: Why didn't we see this coming? What does this say about our ability to detect potential killer asteroids or comets before they hit Earth?

Jonah Goldberg compares the attention that a possible asteroid hit gets in the scientific world, compared to the attention given to global warming. A snippet:

. . .A scientist quoted last month in Maclean’s noted that “there are more people working in a single McDonald’s than there are trying to save civilization from an asteroid.”

Meanwhile, the global-warming industry — and it is an industry now — could fill football stadiums.

It makes you wonder. For all the rush and panic, the truth is, climate change — if real — is a very slow-moving catastrophe. Moreover, it happens to align with an ideological and political agenda the Left has been pushing for generations. . . .

Decisions on which types of scientific research to fund are sometimes more political than scientific.

Update: Jupiter = Gitmo? Heh.

Saul Alinsky and The Resignation of Sarah Palin

Bill Whittle talks about the Destruction of Sarah Palin, with a warning that it could happen to other decent people in politics, on Afterburner. Lots of ideas stuffed into 13 minutes. Including why false accusations against an innocent person are often more damaging than true accusations against a guilty person.

Available in print here:

. . . One of the Rules for Radicals is Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. Think about the genius of that. Just let that sink in. When a Republican has an ethics scandal, it’s “hypocrisy” and “double standards” and all the rest. But when a Clinton or a Pelosi or a Charley Rangel or a Chris Dodd or a Barney Frank or a William Jefferson has an ethics scandal, no one bats an eye. Why? Because of course they’re immoral! They’re Democrats.

Alinski could see that moral people have to be held to moral standards when immoral people do not. We’d better learn a lesson from this, right quick. . . .

. . . . And if we do lose to these kind of tactics, there will be no more decent people left in politics. As of today, we’re one short already.

Worth your time and thought.

Update: Sissy Willis reminds us that maybe Sarah Palin understood the Alinsky crowd better than they thought. And maybe "The Beltway media can't understand someone not consumed with presidential ambition,"

VDH from almost a year ago:

Palin in empirical fashion bucked the Republican establishment and the old-boy network when she thought it was unreasonable; Obama never figured out or at least never questioned Tony Rezko or the Chicago machine, Trinity Church or the Pelosi-Kennedy liberal mantra — unless it proved advantageous. Palin draws on everything from position papers on ANWR to how to keep four screaming kids fed and bathed; Obama on Harvard Law Review and dispensing more public money to more Chicago interest groups.

That’s a simplification, but also an answer to the old Euripidean question “What is wisdom?”

Delay in Health Care Bill is not "Obama's Waterloo"

Seems odd for Congressional Republicans to take on President Obama instead of the Democratic Congress over healthcare. The President made good use of Jim DeMint's imprudent statement that healthcare could be Obama's Waterloo. From President Obama's Twitter feed, July 21:

Health care reform opponents scale up attacks, playing politics w/ our lives & livelihood. Fight back

Listen to the audio at the link.

Ann Althouse (who voted for Obama because she had more confidence in him than in McCain concerning the economy) comments, "The Democrats have dumped a drastic, complicated health care bill on us and they are ramming it through before we can even figure it out. That's what matters, not the fact that the party out of power is squawking about it."

Wretchard presents another analogy. Probably closer to reality than the "Waterloo" analogy, though still not perfect:

I think DeMint’s analogy is wrong and Obama nearer the mark when he expressed a fear of “delay and defeat”.  Health care is not Obama’s Waterloo. Waterloo was Napoleon’s last gasp.  Obama is still moving forward, albeit much more slowly than just a few months ago. 2009 is not yet Obama’s 1815. A better analogy is 1812: the year of Napoleon’s arrival in Moscow, when his army seized the capital he long desired only to find he could not loot it of enough to sustain his men.

If Obama’s victories — the stimulus, bailouts, cap and trade and now health care — are from another point of view, a kind of looting, then he may have arrived at the point where there is nothing more to loot. Like Napoleon, the capital is his, but it lies in ashes, unable even to sustain his victories. If DeMint is looking for an analogy, it is that twilight moment when Napoleon looked out over the burning city, given over to frenzy and first realized he had thrust his hand into a monkey trap. It is doubtful that Obama, like Napoleon, will be defeated by his bumbling opponents. They are too inept. What crushed the Grande Armee was the vanity of its commander. At first his men did not drop the silks, silver, jewels and fine fabrics willingly. Yet as Grande Armee trod its dolorous road back to Western Europe the wayside became littered by discarded heaps of treasure that but a few weeks before they would have killed for.

Read the whole thing. Watch the video at the last link.

Just as Europe was stunned by Napoleon's conquering army, many Americans have been stunned by this administration's "Shock and Awe Statism". Consider that "It took Obama six months to pick a dog, but he wants a Health Care Bill by next week?" The frenzied rush to push this health care bill through is Beyond Parody. And we've seen some of the results of similar fierce urgency to pass a bill. Not hopeful.

The Administration and Democratic Congress have now met considerable push-back. The President's approval ratings are way down. But they are gearing up for a new fight after the August recess. Napoleon wasn't finished after Moscow. And the decision not to push any longer for signing before the August recess is probably just a tactical retreat.

A little music for contemplation: Bonaparte's Retreat with Bass Fiddle and Dobro standing in for bagpipes. Wretchard's post has some interesting history concerning Napoleon's Moscow campaign.

Wildly Inaccurate Reporting about Honduras

The AFP (Agence France-Presse) numbers this protest at "hundreds". Scroll down. It sort of looks closer to "hundreds of thousands".

Why is the media furthering the interests of a leftist who is trying to become leader-for-life in his country, apparently in violation of its constitution? Why does President Obama reflexively side with Zelaya instead of others in the government who by many accounts legally removed him from office on orders of the Honduran Supreme Court? In the absence of other information, it seems that procedures specified in their constitution were followed. Where was that "wait and see who wins" attitude President Obama took toward Iranian protesters? Is he in favor of an invasion from Nicaragua? Who's reporting can we trust?

ObamaCare - Rhetoric meets Reality

Charles Krauthammer :

. . . As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health-care nirvana: more coverage, less cost. . .

President Obama premised the need for reform on the claim that medical costs are destroying the economy. True. But now we learn -- surprise! -- that universal coverage increases costs. The congressional Democrats' health-care plans, says the CBO, increase costs on the order of $1 trillion plus.

In response, the president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue-neutral. But that's classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health-care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable. , , ,

This is not about politics? Then why is it, to take but the most egregious example, that in this grand health-care debate we hear not a word about one of the worst sources of waste in American medicine: the insane cost and arbitrary rewards of our malpractice system? . . .

But the greatest waste is the hidden cost of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits. . .

Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.

Read the whole thing.

Obama sets up a strawman when he suggests that Republicans want to do nothing. Though Congressional Republicans have not been particulary good at presenting comprehensive alternative plans. They're acting like a party with no power, which is true in Washington. But the Republican Obama is sending to China as ambassador introduced a better plan for Utah.

Kathleen Parker:

Compared to what's being trotted around the Asylum on the Hill, Utah's bipartisan reform project sounds downright dreamy. Simple and geared toward the consumer, it was designed under the operating principle that Americans are capable of making their own decisions, whereas the Obama plan presumes that only government can solve the problem.

Government has a place, to be sure. But as Huntsman and his team have demonstrated, government's best role is in creating mechanisms for people to help themselves.

Personally, I like the idea of Medical Savings Accounts, tax deferred, along with catastrophic insurance. If people keep themselves healthy, they are rewarded by having a little extra money for retirement. Even with traditional insurance, individuals and groups outside the workplace should be able to get the same tax breaks on health care costs as are available with employer-provided health care coverage. Tort reform and other changes can help a lot, too.

Update Mark Steyn on President Obama's recent media over-exposure: "Stars don't shine in sunlight."

On the Other Hand: President Obama still seems to retain some magic, mostly among people who have very noble intentions. Angry libertarian rant here concerning those who would help Congress to rush through a bill that nobody has read and analyzed throughly, which will dramatically affect everyone in the country, and eventually the world. Principle involved: Government compassion toward one group (i.e., the uninsured) leads to less compassion toward other groups (i.e., those with chronic diseases). You have to read a lot of rant to get to that principle, though. Perhaps not the best way to change hearts and minds.

The Obama Administration's "Organizing for Health Care Blog" quotes the Washington Post:

...The all-out ground and air war is broadly understood as a fight for the hearts and minds of the American public but is more rightly seen as a battle for the votes of the 100 members of the Senate. (These two strands are interrelated; public opinions does tend to sway political positioning -- particularly on issues as controversial as this health care plan.)

So much for a new administration "bringing America together".

Group-think, Scientific Fraud and Big Mistakes

John Derbyshire reviews a book detailing elaborate scientific fraud by a scientist at Bell Labs. I've done quite a bit of reading over the years about scientific fraud and the way not only managers but also entire university faculties can close ranks to protect a person accused of fraud. Meanwhile, the person who uncovers fraud become the target of virulent attacks. This also happens in organizations with no connection to scientific research when someone reports malfeasance. We have personal experience.

In the case described in the book, an internal investigation was done and there is no mention of serious retaliation against those reporting misgivings or fraud. Particularly in organizations dependent upon certain research for income (including government grant money), those who find evidence of fraud need to be very careful in order to avoid having their careers destroyed and their lives ruined. A few rules of thumb from advocates for whistelblowers:

1. An accusation against a superior almost always fails.
2. Leave the organization and get another job before reporting fraud.
3. Warn family and friends that you intend to report fraud, and enlist their support beforehand.
4. Go directly to the media or outside authorities. Do not risk an internal report.
5. You must have hard proof before reporting fraud.
6. Your own actions must be completely above reproach and meticulously documented.

It is also important to understand the organizational culture to get an idea concerning how safe it is to report fraud, malfeasance or even mistakes. How have others fared after uncovering malfeasance? Do fears that outsiders will eventually discover fraud or mistakes make discovery inside the organization welcome?

There are psychological reasons why people will do unethical things at work which they would never do in their personal lives. Included among these are pressures to conform, the tendency to trust authority figures before trusting people with less authority, and reluctance to believe that scientific fraud or even big, dumb mistakes could actually take place in "our" organization. There's also a kind of group wishful thinking that can sometimes take hold.

Fraud can be minimized within an organization by an atmosphere of openness. When I worked at a pharmaceutical company, when a new clinical trial was finished, a group of about 40 people from several departments would sit around a huge table going over the final report line by line, asking questions of the trial coordinators and the statisticians. Everyone in the company with a job connected in any way with science (including those with only general scientific background to the highest medical and scientific degrees) also participated in reviews of raw data. These types of procedures send a signal that it would be difficult to slip fraud through the system. They also lessen the risks that "group-think" among those in a single department will lead everyone to unconsciously overlook a glaring problem. Sometimes someone with less specialized knowledge looks at the data from a different perspective and can ask a "dumb" question which reveals a potential problem.

I was at the table once when this happened, after a study was completed, when someone asked about a deficiency in the design of the trial. The expensive study was much less useful than it could have been. Depressing, but it was better that we found it before the FDA did. If it had been fraud, it would have been even more critical to uncover in "in-house".

Not all organizations engage in such rigorous reviews of scientific data. There are reasons to distrust scientific data beyond Post-Normal Science. However, the acceptance of "Post-Normal Science" as a "legitimate" way to approach scientific data reinforces the tendency to "overlook" fraud or mistakes in study designs or execution. It also confers legitimacy on those who punish scientists who don't go along with the consensus. In the case of global warming, suppressing data which didn't fit the desired political result was widely accepted as a good thing. Still is in some places, like the EPA. Dissenting scientists were demonized unmercifully a few years ago. This punishing atmosphere has recently started to turn around. It has been more than ten years since the hottest year in recent history, 1998. It's getting harder to justify sensationalizing worst-case scenarios in order to push political changes. Finally, some dissenting scientists are being taken seriously.

Related: The powerful psychological drives favoring consensus and group-think can lead to disastrous mistakes with very serious consequences. There is a theory that the New York Times hired John Tierney to write the practical TierneyLab column in preparation for the changing "consensus" on global warming. Already, "global warming" has become "climate change" in information produced by advocates of controlling carbon emissions through government action. But the column covers other issues, too.

Concerning the way one researcher censored himself in order not to stray too far from consensus concerning the possibility of the housing bubble which recently burst, Nicholas Wade writes in the TierneyLab column:

If the brightest minds on Wall Street got suckered by group-think into believing house prices would never fall, what other policies founded on consensus wisdom could be waiting to come unraveled? Global warming, you say? You mean it might be harder to model climate change 20 years ahead than house prices 5 years ahead? Surely not – how could so many climatologists be wrong?

What’s wrong with consensuses is not the establishment of a majority view, which is necessary and legitimate, but the silencing of skeptics. “We still have whole domains we can’t talk about,” Dr. Bouchard said, referring to the psychology of differences between races and sexes.

Update: Still fighting to keep temperature data and climate study methodology secret from those who might find some problems.

Good Examples: Obama's Surgeon General Nominee

Conservatives Support Obama's Nominee for Surgeon General, bucking opposition to her confirmation because she is overweight. Jay Nordlinger and others think it's more important that she sets up medical clinics for the poor and demonstrates fine personal attributes.

An interesting commentary about our times, when for some people good vs. evil (or worthy vs. unworthy) are often thought of in terms of "healthy" vs. "non-healthy". Thus, cigarettes, whose effects are mostly on personal health, get much worse press than alcohol, which not infrequently "helps" people kill someone, abuse family members, etc.

Another note on the Surgeon General Nominee: "Hope our praise doesn't do her any harm."

Who Killed the California Economy?

We live in Central California, a "red" part of a very "blue" state. All is not well in the Blue States.

On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area. . .

Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and café society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America. . . . .

. . . hopes that Obama would emphasize . . . basic infrastructure now have been dashed. Instead, the stimulus has been largely steered to social service providers, “green” industries, and academic research. One reason, as we now know, is that feminists saw such an approach as too favorable to “burly men” who might not have been among the president’s core fan base.

Sadly, many of those “burly men,” particularly the unemployed, still reside in the blue states. They might not be in the places inhabited by the post-industrial elites but they do live in the hardscrabble neighborhoods, industrial suburbs, and small towns from Michigan and upstate New York to California’s vast interior. . . .

Here, Joel Kotkin gets more specific, talking with Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) about what happened to California's economy, and what California's experience means for the rest of the nation. Registration for PJTV is free.

Mr. Kotkin wrote a book years ago correctly predicting the prospects for American resurgence at a time when Asia was moving forward quickly. He was once on the staff of the Washington Post. His primary emphasis in writing now appears to be economic and political geography. His viewpoint is intriguing.

He has also written a short list of 5 answers to the question, Who Killed California's Economy. You may be able to guess a few of them:

Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.

It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. . . .

Worth your time, whether you read his articles, watch the video, or both.

Update: To add insult to injury, looks like lots of California's stimulus money went to Texas.

Hitler and the U.S. Advertising Industry

When Hitler first started to transform Germany, the U.S. advertising industry was proud that he was using their methods of simple slogans repeated often. Apparently, because of language differences, there was no difference to Hitler between "advertising" and "propaganda".

Now, in the Age of Twitter, our willingness to stick with a subject long enough to learn details may be even less than in the time of Hitler. Gift suggestion for students here.Found through Instapundit.

Forty years ago, men landed on the moon

I was at Keira's house, eyes glued to the television like everyone else. We had a friend who was near Yellowstone and missed it. Hard to believe that an American would have missed this exciting, tense event. A giant leap for mankind.

This morning, they started showing old movies pre-dating the moon landing, about people going to the moon. Some of the fantasies were similar to those in the movies now. Though, of course, today the special effects are much slicker. I guess it took until evening to get around to covering the actual event.

NASA doesn't seem as exciting as it used to. Interesting piece from the WSJ about Celebrity Culture vs. The Right Stuff:

. . . Not enough has been written about the Apollo astronauts and, in particular, about their place in the history of American character. That’s a pity: What they have, or had, is something Americans could use.

That something is “The Right Stuff,” which in the movie version means fearlessness, ambition, unblinking patriotism and a penchant for understated irony. Most of us would probably think of the Right Stuff as some combination of piloting skills and a barrelful of guts.

But the really essential ingredient is personal modesty, if not in private then certainly in public. “One day you’re just Gene Cernan, young naval aviator, whatever,” recalls the commander of Apollo 17 in the documentary, “In the Shadow of the Moon.” “And the next day you’re an American hero. Literally. And you have done nothing.”

Mr. Cernan is the last man to have walked on the moon. Nobody can accuse him of lacking for courage. He is simply expressing the very human bewilderment of a sentient person caught in the blandishments of modern celebrity culture. Does America make men like Gene Cernan anymore?

Then again, Mr. Cernan is positively boastful compared to Mr. Armstrong. . . . . Modern parlance allows us the term “private person” to describe people like Mr. Armstrong. Closer to the mark, I suspect, is that he abides by a private code of conduct. He understands that fate has assigned him a historic, if somewhat fortuitous role, and he means to honor the terms of the bargain.

That this should seem at all peculiar tells us something about the age. Codes of personal conduct were once what Americans—great ones, at least—were all about . . .

Read the whole thing.

Update: Hoe did they do it without today's computers? Interesting retrospective here, with videos, photos and contemporaneous comments.

Plus, WD-40.

Restricting book imports in Australia

Obstacles to knowledge.

Freedom, Mistakes and Progress

Thought Piece of the Day

Does reality always win out over spin in the end?

What level of certainty should we have before we make a decision? How do we grapple with "anti-knowledge" - the things we don't know?

Does the absence of mistakes mean you're making progress, or is it a sign of danger?

What level of certainty should reporters have before reporting a news item? Should their level of certainty be higher than for bloggers who present information with caveats, asking others for further information?

What level of certainty should we have before running the risk of bearing false witness against a neighbor?

. . . Freedom implies the ability to make mistakes; it may even imply the necessity of them. Well might the perfect being exclaim: “not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. … For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive.” Bitter indeed; for freedom is humanity’s curse and greatest gift, the ground of both fall and redemption. It is our common fate and our staircase to the stars.

What do you think?

Surprising summary concerning Honduras on CNN!

Famous Quote: Liberalism and Conservatism

Attributed to Winston Churchill:

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

(There are several versions of the quote, and variations have been attributed to other political figures.)

Demographic Crises and Obama's Science Czar

Mark Steyn notes that more people are starting to pay attention to the looming crisis caused by falling birthrates in developed countries. This was a main focus of Steyn's book, America Alone. We're talking about countries which seem the most secular and sophisticated, where cradle-to-grave government supports are most established and where family supports are nice, but not necessary, in order to feel secure about raising a child. Countries where most everyone believes in the importance of collective social responsibility. Like Japan and Canada - the two countries mentioned in Steyn's post. Ironically, these are often the countries where people don't seem to want to have children - or at least more than one or two. For a while, Japan was paying college-educated couples to have children. Don't know if they still are.

As Lawrence M. Miller notes, everybody wants security, but when people in an organization or a society feel too secure, everything starts to fall apart. One of the paradoxes of life.

Japan has added problems caused by suddenly opening the workplace to women not long ago, giving them an alternative to the often repressive traditional marriage customs in Japan. When I was in school, it was the policy of the Japanese government to send only girls as exchange students because the boys often acted like demanding, spoiled jerks in home settings. They gave Japan a bad image. When women found themselves with more choices in Japan, many either decided not to marry or decided to drastically limit their families to reduce their responsibilities.

Which brings us to a scary book co-authored by Obama's Science Czar:

. . . If society’s survival depended on having more children, women could he required to bear children, just as men can constitutionally be required to serve in the armed forces. Similarly, given a crisis caused by overpopulation, reasonably necessary laws to control excessive reproduction could be enacted.

Other nice ideas: Forcibly taking children from single mothers, putting sterilants in the water, forced abortions and preventing reproduction by "undesirables".

The last point was one of the assumed reasons for Roe v. Wade, according to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Not that we know whether she ascribed to this view personally or if she was just describing the thinking of Roe v. Wade proponents. But we still have the issue of Medicaid funding for abortions - whether taxpayers deeply opposed to abortions should be forced to pay for them. It always seemed strange to me that with all the ultra-rich liberals in America, they couldn't come up with some way to fund abortions for poor women themselves, without turning to the public sector and thus, ratcheting up opposition to "pro-choice". But I digress.

There are a lot of important ideas to think about here. But one thing is clear: Obama's science czar was incredibly wrong about the "coming population crisis" - at least with respect to developed countries where the measures he suggested might be feasible. The maturing generation in America will have trouble paying for the entitlements of aging baby boomers in the future, even though our reproductive rates have not yet fallen below the number necessary for replacement. Other developed countries are in much worse shape in terms of demographics. Holdren was wrong during the 1970s about the prospects for global cooling, too. He also incorrectly predicted shortages in commodities - the availability of all 5 he listed increased. Could Holdren also be wrong now about other things?

The American Left has, in the last 40 years, been incredibly short-sighted about most of their social causes and scientific preoccupations. For example, Holdren would probably not have thought much about taking children away from single mothers if Lyndon Johnson's Great Society welfare programs had not done so much to encourage single motherhood among the poor, especially among poor blacks.

If you start to think that American conservatism is an important source of potential tyranny in our age, read through the links above one more time. Do a little reading on your own, too. Check the references if you like.

Update: This is the party of "impartial science"?

And Holdren never has ceased peddling calamity as science.

Today, for instance, though Holdren publicly has tempered his aversion to population growth, he still advocates that government nudge us toward fewer children.

Instead of coercion, though, he is a fan of "motivation."

When, during his Senate confirmation hearing, Holdren was asked about his penchant for scientific overstatements, he responded that "the motivation for looking at the downside possibilities, the possibilities that can go wrong if things continue in a bad direction, is to motivate people to change direction. That was my intention at the time."

"Motivation" is when Holdren tells us that global warming could cause the deaths of 1 billion people by 2020. Or when he claimed that sea levels could rise by 13 feet by the end of this century when your run-of-the-mill alarmist warns of only 13 inches.

"Motivating"—or, in other words, scaring the hell out of people—about "possibilities" is an ideological and political weapon unsheathed in the effort to pass policies that, in the end, coerce us to do the right thing.

Read the whole thing. There's no reason why "motivation" could not become "coercion" again during a perceived crisis. And this guy is very good at perceiving crises. They're just usually not the real crises. There are plenty more policy wonks and politicians out there just like him. No, this is NOT the party of "impartial science". It is the party of post-normal science.

Post-normal science allows EPA officials to feel like they're doing the right thing when they suppress a report by one of their employees which suggests looking more closely at recent science on global warming, for example. It allows Holdren to engage in "scientific overstatements" in order "to motivate people to change direction". Post-normal science is a drastic break with previously accepted ethical rules regarding scientific research. Most older scientists would likely think of it as "lying".

High Noon for Eastern Europe?

Recently, VDH discussed some surprising changes being forced on Western Europe by the "new politics" here in the U.S. Here, Wretchard discusses the changes being forced upon Eastern Europe - perhaps with the unintended consequence down the road of increased nuclear armament. Glance through the comments for some interesting points of view.

Actually, Donald Rumsfeld started the trend toward making Western Europe more responsible for its own defense, when he announced the closing of US bases in Germany and elsewhere after the start of the Iraq war. Many Germans who decried American military imperialism were, ironically, not real enthusiastic about the US ending its occupation of Germany (since WWII). President Bush allowed Europe to take the lead in negotiations with Iran concerning its nuclear ambitions. Suddenly, the "cowboy" who ignored his allies was criticized for not taking the lead in the negotiations. But at the same time, the Bush administration made steps toward increased support for Central and Eastern European nations recently emerged from Soviet domination. It appears that this support is now being withdrawn to a large extent.

Many unanticipated changes will take place in the world because of current changes in U.S. foreign policy. Some of them will be good. Some of them will not. But it's important to look beyond the immediate intentions of changes in our foreign policies as far as is possible. The abandonment of Central and Eastern Europe to Putin's regime doesn't seem altogether wise to me.

China - an Empire trying to look like a State

The Uighur uprising throws new light on China's imperial ambitions. Interesting history of the transition from "Imperial China" to "Maoist China". Implications for Taiwan and other nearby areas.

Senator Embarrassment on gender and race

Dennis Prager nails it when he calls Senator Boxer "Senator Embarrassment". As he points out, even Californians who disagree with Senator Feinstein aren't embarrassed by her, as a general rule. But with Senator Boxer, jaw-dropping, embarrassing statements just keep coming, year after year.

Here, our junior senator, Barbara Boxer, gets arrogant about her title while questioning a general. Because she worked so hard to get that title. Her bristly feminist hostility seems so oddly out of date. Plus juvenile and rude, especially given the setting. And ignorant of the military tradition of referring to superior officers as "sir" or "ma'am". She was being honored, not disrespected.

I don't remember Senator Boxer's election as being a result of her hard work (especially compared to the work of becoming a Brigadier General). If the California Democratic Party machine had not been so dishonest and sleazy, we would have had the courteous, serious thinker Bruce Herschensohn as a senator, instead of "Senator Boxer, Ma'am". I don't think the party machine has reformed much since then. That's one reason that our state is in such sad financial shape.

And here she goes again, playing the race card against a black man. He takes offense at the suggestion that he should agree with the leaders of other black organizations just because he is black. Rightly so. The liberal hostility toward minorities who "leave the reservation" is a corrosive thing in American life. Senator Boxer was pretty clumsy in presenting her expectation that all blacks should think alike.

Interestingly, he got away with taking offense even though he was not expressing the official liberal "consensus". That's sort of rare. But remember, from Andrew Breitbart's heirarchy of political correctness:

Black trumps Woman.

From the comments: "Evidently, she was shaken but not stirred! . . why didn't she object when this guy called her ma'am?" She needs some shaking up from time to time or she'll get more and more condescending. "It was like being in Mississippi in 1945."

On the other hand, James Taranto makes a good point:

We watched the video, and we can see Alford's point. Boxer does come across as condescending, and, weirdly, she doesn't even seem to understand why a he would find it offensive for her to rebut his argument not on the merits but via a racially specific appeal to authority.

Yet Alford, by speaking on behalf the National Black Chamber of Commerce, is himself relying on just such a racially specific appeal to authority. We tend to agree with Alford and disagree with Boxer on the subject they were discussing, but the rule of etiquette he invoked--blacks may claim authority on account of their race, but whites may not seek to undermine that authority--put her at an unfair disadvantage, one that was particularly unwarranted given that the topic at hand had nothing to do with race.

On the third hand, she didn't think she had to prepare for her opponent.

More:

Boxer’s entire M.O. as senator is to wield liberal ethnic or gender groups as a bat to bludgeon any criticism to her agenda. That’s not debating, that’s bullying. That’s not respecting racial diversity. It’s using racial groups as a weapon.

Follow the second link for an interesting history of the phrase, "Truth to Power"and Boxer's dismissing of Secretary Condoleeza Rice's positions because Rice didn't have children. The last link concerns Dick Durbin's bigotry - some people are just genetically incapable of understanding others.

I'm looking forward to the time when legislators can get down to the business before them without diverting attention to unrelated race and gender sensitivities and assumptions. And when they actually pay attention to their constituents instead of their desire to increase their own power. Time for some new faces in Washington and some new political tactics in Sacramento.

Who thinks about the Constitution anymore?

Here's a video from PJTV with a catchy title asking if President Obama has a different copy of the constitution than everyone else does. The initial reference is to a piece by President Obama in the Washington Post. But as the three talking heads get going, it's clear that the responsibility for upholding the Constitution in the USA belongs to the voters. One point which is briefly mentioned is the abdication of power to regulate and set laws to unelected ageencies. This is one area where voters have really lost control over their government. In the recent Cap and Trade discussions in Congress, one representative stated that it was important for Congress to act so that the EPA did not enact its own draconian measures.

Meanwhile, Victor Davis Hanson identifies a number of reasons why our latest presidents don't seem to measure up to earlier ones. He compares our presidents to Roman emperors, ending with the fall of Rome - several emperors after the emperors took over the Bread and Circuses gig - when Bread and Circuses became the preoccupations of the citizenry. In our day, people want more government service without higher taxes. So we defer payment to the future while saying that "the rich" should bear the primary costs of government. (Somehow, the richest of "the rich" currently seem to profit greatly from their connections in government). It's ominous to remember a similar lack of a sense of seriousness and individual responsibility at the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages.

In our celebrity-crazed society, it is easy to put most of our political focus on one "star", the President, Everything seems to rise and fall with the popularity of one person. He's so much more interesting than words on some old "constitution" written long ago. He sometimes seems to be able to personally solve all our problems. Why not give him and his agencies the power and the money to do it? People don't even stop to consider what will happen when that money and power is in the hands of a president they really don't like.

Why worry about separation of powers? It's not so glamorous to think about who our local, state and congressional representatives are and to actually interact with them. But that's where the real political action should be. Finally, it's extremely unfortunate when our elected representatives turn the power to set laws and regulations over to unelected bureaucracies or to the courts because they don't have the courage to face the voters. It's up to us to turn this around, if we can.

Update: PJTV FOMENTING INSURRECTION

The Glorious Revolution - More than 300 Years Ago

How much do you know about England's Glorious Revolution, with its precursor to our Bill of Rights? Here's you chance to learn. Follow the links if you want to know the details. Let's not be to quick to give up rights won from governments over the centuries.

Update: Interesting idea - Liberal democracy in England was grounded in culture, while that in Europe was grounded in ideology. Because liberal democracy was not at war with the traditional culture, it tended to be more stable than Continental democracy. Things don't seem to be going quite as well in the UK now, however.

4th of July plus One Week

With the fireworks over, the dogs calm and bureaucracy's effects on our personal lives in perspective, I have a chance to look over some of the posts other people had put up about this important holiday. Some holidays are worth reflection during the following week, I think.

Here's Cassandra's beautifully written piece comparing then and now. She quotes James Madison, Henning W. Prentis, "The Second Bill of Rights" (written 65 years ago) and President Obama, among others. I appreciate her clear perspective on prominent ideas in America over the years concerning the role of government and the role of the military. Highly recommended for your consideration.

Mark Steyn: A fascinating history of "America the Beautiful"

Sometimes Americans are sweet. National Anthem at Fenway Park - Everybody join in!

Dr. Sanity posted the text of the Declaration of Independence. She's not going to blog for a while. Concentrating more on real life. The posts she considers her best are on the left sidebar.

Pej puts the Declaration up in a little more artful style. 1776 The Musical - for the history, not musical brilliance. What the Declaration is not.

Other notable events connected with the 4th of July

More history: Letter from Valley Forge. And the Constitution's final edit. Rediscovering Frederick Douglass in the Age of Obama.

Looking toward the future, where will a new generation of leaders come from?

Recognizing Evil - Orwell

Via Sundries Shack, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell

Wretchard, on the life of Orwell:

The most frightening thing about Orwell’s life is that it took a man as inquiring and perceptive as he was so long to understand his world.

Read the whole thing. Comment thread is interesting, too.

9th of July in Iran

An important anniversary.

More protests in Iran today. Grim. Haven't heard from my Twitter source recently. Don't know if he's still alive or free.

The reviled "Neo-Con" who wrote the first post linked above, Michael Ledeen, advocated non-military support for democratic groups within Iran rather than war with Iraq after 9/11. He believed that the Iranian regime was a bigger threat to the world than Saddam Hussein. Turns out Saddam Hussein convinced his own advisors, along with most of the rest of the world, that he possessed working WMD because he was afraid of Iran, too.

Update: A faint glimmer of hope.

The Economic Crisis and the Law

Why is anyone surprised that the economy is not recovering on schedule (in spite of the massive stimulus bill which we were told could not wait a day or two so people could read it)?

Why would ANY business person without solid government connections want to create something new or re-vitalize something old, given the new legion of bureaucratic 'fixers' coming out of Washington, all ready to fix their projects? How can people in business know what to expect next? Especially with the Obama administration's recent history of disregarding contract law, along with the Congress?

Back in April, libertarian law professor Richard Epstein, who is familiar with President Obama from their days together on the faculty of the University of Chicago, gave a fascinating summary of his observations concerning the talents and shortcomings of the president, here.

He talks about the personable president's extraordinary level of self-knowledge, his self-control, his ability to get others to reveal their ideological positions without revealing his own, and his desire to be in complete control of his environment. He then states that,

The fundamental mistake of his entire world view is that he treats contracts as devices for exploitation. He doesn't treat them as devices for mutual gain. And he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact upon production. And if you live in that kind of fairyland, which I think he does, every one of your major social and economic initiatives is going to (A) misfire and if they succeed, God forbid, in getting through, they're going to lead to an intensification of the downturn that we've already experienced. So, wrong guy for the job in terms of his intellectual format. The question is whether you could force him back . . .

You might say that Professor Epstein's summary reflects his libertarian ideology. But his statements seem to be quite consistent with subsequent events.

It's interesting to me that President Obama, with his apparent desire to control so many things from the White House, does not seem to recognize that other people might have similar desires. Why doesn't he recognize that independent-minded people in the private sector - even those who aren't "rich" - might be more productive with less meddling in their own life's work? And that they might "go John Galt" (like the mule in VDH's analogy) if faced with too much bureaucracy or uncertainty about whether agreements with the government will be honored. Or uneasiness about how the rules will change. Obama's actions in foreign relations are turning out to be less predictably "liberal" than his domestic policies.

Links for the entire series of videos on "Crisis and the Law" are below. The link above is Chapter 4. They're not in chronological order. Chapter 2 has some historical perspective. He gives persuasive arguments that allowing bankruptcies under established law would have been far preferable to bailouts of AIG, automotive companies, etc. For both economic and political reasons. Chapter 5 discusses the legislative act that wins the prize for the most Orwellian name ever, the "Employee Free Choice Act". It promotes employee free choice by eliminating the secret ballot in elections on union formation and also the right to vote on contracts.

For best video quality, click on the full screen icon at the lower right after clicking the start button in the center of the screen:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

How did the housing crisis happen?

Our neighborhood housing boom and bust story
The house next door to us and the one behind it were built by a speculator shortly before the housing boom peaked. They were sold below market value at the time. The one in the back was sold to a middle-aged woman from the coast. She and her husband have another home. They are immigrants, and he cannot read. He drives a truck for a party company. She sells cosmetics part time from home. These are the kinds of people who could aspire to own two homes during the housing boom. She wants to build a small home for her mother on the property, as well.

The house next to us, about 500 square feet larger than ours on a huge lot, was also sold to immigrants, an unmarried couple in their early twenties. The woman was definitely here illegally, did not speak any English and very sporadically worked in the fields. The man was on workers compensation disability from working in the fields and may have done a little double-dipping: working and getting disability at the same time. They may have also had family help, but still. They could not possibly have gone through the kind of scrutiny we did for our home loan not too many years before. That example of irresponsible lending is only a small part of the picture of how the housing boom developed. It is only a small part of the explanation for the misery caused by the housing bust.

The house next to us is now in foreclosure. The one across the street, a much smaller home sold to more responsible young people (from the coast) is now for sale. They could not afford a home where they lived, but wanted to invest in a home for the future. They paid a higher relative price for the little house than the more irresponsible couple next door paid for their big one. They are also Latino, but native-born and therefore apparently not considered to be eligible for special concessions in home loan applications. They bought the little house just after the larger ones next to us were sold. It has been empty for much of the time they have owned it. Even if they can sell it, they will lose a lot of money.

The national story
There are a lot of losers in this crisis. The ones who have acted most irresponsibly will often get the most help in recovering. This will encourage irresponsibility in the future. ACORN, under its new name, is reportedly campaigning again to make it easier for poor people without good credit to get loans. The government is harassing banks which did not make irresponsible loans to people with poor credit. Our government could learn something from the Canadians here. Canadian banks were more conservative during the "boom" period (like the American banks now under renewed pressure to lend to people with poor credit). There was no banking crisis in Canada. We're setting ourselves up for another crisis here, it seems.

Thomas Sowell discusses how the housing boom and then the bust developed on Uncommon Knowledge.. "Now on Twitter".

Side Note: I tried becoming a Twitter follower of Uncommon Knowledge at National Review to see what was there. Not for me. Too many tweets. Better to scroll through the list of topics at the link above (also added to the sidebar under "New Media"). The Corner at National Review is a little like an exclusive Twitter group whose posts everyone can read. But the Corner crew can post reasonably long, substantive statements. Sometimes you have to scroll back to see what they're talking about when they address each other, sort of like on Twitter. That's close enough to Twitter for me, for an established website. The title of the latest post at The Corner is up over on the sidebar. under "New Topics". But back to the housing crisis.

At the links below, Thomas Sowell discusses some aspects of the crisis which most people miss, and puts the things they think they already understand in perspective. Click on the full screen icon at the lower right after clicking the start button in the center of the screen for best video quality:

Part 1: Economics of the housing boom
Part 2: Politics of the housing boom
Part 3: Origins and unique features of the housing bust
UPDATE:
Part 4: Pitfalls of New Deal Thinking
Part 5: Economic proposals of the Obama adminstration

What will emerge from the American Metamorphosis?

The changes currently taking place in America are happening at deep levels. These changes will affect the whole world. Some people are hopeful about the changes. Some are very pessimistic. Some are waiting to see what happens.

Victor Davis Hanson has posted a piece which includes a lot of ideas to ponder carefully. He proposes that America is now in a sort of cocoon stage. He talks about some of the ironic and the unintended consequences of the transformations now underway: First, there are the unexpected changes being forced upon Europe:

As I wrote, a keen Frenchman whispered to me at a reception “There is room for only one to play Obama-and we are already Obama.”

Then there are dramatic changes in our relationships with Latin American nations:

Consider: the U.S. reacted quickly and meddled unambiguously in condemning the Honduran arrest of President Zelaya.

And dramatic expansions in the power of government functionaries at home. The most interesting quote to me:

Obama has surrounded himself with legions of ‘fixers.’ Bright men and women who have Ivy League law degrees, business school credentials, PhDs in the social sciences, and academic pedigrees in science, humanities, and engineering. Quite impressive, these Platonic Guardians of the soon to be perfect state. But most of their careers in finance, government, business, and academia have been well-paid jobs critiquing, administering, regulating, nuancing, writing about, and hectoring those who create things–builders, developers, industrialists, farmers, truckers, transportation execs, retailers, lenders and investors.

We are being run now by film critics, not directors, book reviewers not writers, music columnists, not musicians. And it is far easier to fault than to birth, nuance rather than build. The irony is that the muscular classes carry the regulating and talking classes on their backs. They don’t mind being whipped occasionally and even bridled, but like any good mule will suddenly stop and no longer move when they feel the rider either does not know where he is going, or is going to kill the mule with his switch, spurs, and yanking on the bit. (Emphasis mine)

Read the whole thing. Think about it.

Update: Tigerhawk puts a number to the part of the economy Obama wants to restructure from Washington, with his legions of elite "fixers", HE WANTS TO DO IT ALL THIS SUMMER. Hubris. But Tigerhawk's number did not account for the automotive industry. (Follow the links for a look at the bright young "fixer" Obama has put in charge of GM). The auto industry brings the number to 39%.

Real Men and Women vs. Celebrities

There's been too much focus on celebrities and celebrity images this past week for my taste. As Dennis Prager says, there's a difference between fame and importance. But I have to admit that the number of celebrity deaths during this period was unusual. More on them later, after I think some more.

The departed celebrity who got the most media coverage also seemed the most dependent on careful development of an "image". It is estimated that sixty percent of news coverage was about Michael Jackson during part of the last week.

Via Maggie's Farm, American Digest and WSJ's Photo Journal, a truly candid photo taken when there was no time to think about "image": What a real man looks like. Top photo, read the caption. Description of what happened after the rescue:

And then, for the man reaching out his hand, Jason Oglesbee, and the others involved in the rescue, it was back to work on Wednesday, "We have a bridge to build here," the supervisor said as his men went about their business. -- Des Moines Register

Next photo down in the same link, real men and women in development.

Happy Independence Day

Powerline has put up its annual piece on Lincoln's campaign speech which addressed the issue of Dred Scott.

"Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them. . . . "

Read the whole thing.

Peggy Noonan has written about the Founders and David McCullough's histories of them. Also from WSJ: why July 4th is more than just an American holiday. Worth printing.

Government over-reach is one challenge today. The Tea Parties have already started. Locally, they're about a regulatory droughts as well as about finances. Big event scheduled in Tulare later today. More than 600 Tea Parties scheduled across the country. From Reason Magazine, a little visual expression of the spirit of independence.

Have a great Fourth of July.

Societal Expectations

Social norms change people's behavior. Visual proof via Darleen at Protein Wisdom.