Dan's thoughts

Kunstler and the Looming Energy Crisis

2011-08-06T09:33:00.000-07:00

My good friend James Howard Kunstler is both right and wrong about the looming energy crisis the world faces. Kunstler is right to assume that the present electric grid and America’s car centered lifestyle are unsustainable with present technologies. He is wrong to think this un-sustainability will lead to the collapse of modern civilization and a return to a 19^th century lifestyle.

Kunstler’s scenario which he calls the Long Emergency is based upon the presumption that technological innovation will cease. It is obviously wrong to assume that innovation and invention can be grown like flowers in a garden. Yet it is equally incorrect to assume that technological innovation will cease.

A more likely scenario is that we will move from dependence on the grid to smaller sources of energy. We’re already seeing this on a small scale with the widespread adoption of wind mills, solar panels and small hydro for electric generation and the use of wood for heat. It also looks highly probable that practical fuel cells and cold fusion are available.

Italian-American inventor Andrea Rossi claims to have a working nickel energy cold fusion device that can produce enough power to provide heat and electricity for the average home. The Greek company Defkalion plans to being producing and marketing it later this years. Rossi is also working on a larger device that can power small factories or office buildings.

In Britain, the gas company is testing fuel cells and Stirling engines that can generate both heat and electricity from natural gas. There are other inventions such as the Bloom Box. I might also add that thousands of inventors are working on energy breakthroughs.

Furnace that produces electricity now available in Britain

Now Kunstler is right to point out that much of the so-called “green technology” is a dead end. Much of it such as wind mills is an attempt to sustain the electric grid which is probably unsustainable. The work done at the National Renewable Laboratory and the US Department of Energy appears to be designed to keep the traditional energy industry going rather than to replace it.

This isn’t saying that there is not a lot of good research and innovation going on. There is, it just isn’t going on at places like NREL, the US military, the Navy in particular is doing a lot of work on cold fusion. So has NASA. Individual inventors like Andrea Rossi have also done a lot of exciting work.

My guess is what we will see is a collapse of the electric grid, which won’t bring down civilization. Instead people will simply adopt other energy sources not dependent on the grid. We will also see a movement away from the automobile, or at least the individually owned automobile. Many big corporations in the US are already quietly installing their own generating systems that operate outside the grid. Their public relations departments say that is being done to reduce green house gases, but what they’re really afraid of is large scale shortages of electricity.

This would probably include a large scale revival of rail and bus travel. Many people would also abandon individually owned cars for rental vehicles or some sort of cab service. How this will look or work I don’t know it is still developing.

Now Kunstler is correct in his thesis that the suburban experiment in the United States is over. The market has spoken and 20^th century style suburbia is dead no matter what steps politicians take to sustain it. “Home ownership” has fallen back to 1965 levels and it will continue to fall. The only area of residential construction that is growing in the US is apartment construction. The only real growth in property values in the US is in land in urban centers and farmland.

What will replace it is an urban landscape that looks like that in Japan or parts of Europe. Lots of high density areas surrounded by empty land and connected mass transit systems. Kunstler probably won’t like it because there will be fewer horses around. People won’t be able to afford them. I also expect some more local agriculture but Kunstler won’t like that either. It’ll probably be hydroponics agriculture run by cold fusion reactors or fuel cells.

I also predict we’ll see less government and more capitalism. Especially when corporations can provide things people need such as food, energy and transportation when government can’t or won’t.

Italian Inventor Says Fusion Powered Trains and Ships are coming

2011-07-05T09:15:00.001-07:00

In this video Italian Inventor Andrea Rossi who claims to have developed a working Cold Fusion powered steam engine that he calls the E-cat says fusion powered trains and ships will soon be here.

The Coming Israeli Super Power in the Bold New World

2010-09-23T13:03:00.000-07:00

The world is changing and those changes could make Israel a superpower and its greatest enemy Iran completely irrelevant.

Don’t believe me consider this little story that’s been circulating around the net but hasn’t attracted much attention. Cyber security experts were shocked when a new virus called Stuxnet appeared. Stuxnet targets industrial installations and could conceivably cripple or shut down such facilities. The cyber security eggheads didn’t believe a computer virus that could that could exist but it does.

Experts think that Stuxnet was designed specifically to sabotage Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Reactor. The most logical place that it came from was from Israel and the Israeli government probably created. If true this story could show how the balance of power in the world has changed completely. Israeli is now a superpower, Iran a fifth rate power weaker than Costa Rica.

Israel is a leader in technology with a well educated population, lots of entrepreneurs and a lots of venture capital Israel is second only to the US in many areas of high tech. If Israel can leverage its mastery of technologies in both military and economic applications it could make itself into a regional if not a global superpower.

This has some really profound implications because it means that traditional military power could be obsolete. Iran has spent untold billions of dollars to build up a massive 20^th Century style military machine and to possess the ultimate weapons: nuclear bombs. Yet Israel could sabotage and perhaps shut down Iran’s military industrial complex with a piece of software that costs a few hundred thousand dollars. This mean’s Iran’s military industrial complex is little more than a collection of scrap metal.

The software of course is only the tip of the iceberg coming soon are robot weapons, nanotechnology, and all manner of small high tech weapons Israel could easily master. Israel could soon be in a position to destroy the economy, industry and military of any country at little or no risk to itself.

This could make Israel a sort of superpower in both economic and military terms. The Israeli superpower wouldn’t be a massive military machine like the United States it would be a smaller, more nimble largely economically based power similar to the Dutch in the 17^th Century.

The existence of such a power will make it impossible for any country to establish any sort of hegemony in region of the world. This power could throw a monkey wrench into the plans of any conqueror much as the Dutch and later the English resisted and ultimately destroyed the Spanish and French Empires in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Israel’s economy is booming and its power is increasing even as its enemies in the Middle East sink into something like a dark age. No real economic growth is taking place in most Arab countries and their only source of income: oil is running out. Israel meanwhile is one of the leaders in the development of alternatives to oil. As Arabs and Iranians grow poorer, Israel will grow richer.

This will make the so called Middle Eastern peace process irrelevant because in a few years the Arab powers simply won’t have the money or technology to seriously threaten Israel. Indeed their only source of income in a few years will be selling old Soviet made weapons to Israeli junkmen. The Palestinians will have the stark choice of starving or learning how to wait tables in Tel Aviv.

The truth is that traditional military power in the 20^th Century style could be worthless. Large armies, huge fleets, stockpiles of missiles and bombs and forces of bombers are largely useless. The new war is based upon the skillful use of new technology and strategy. No number of tanks or nuclear bombs can protect a nation from a computer virus. Nor will any number of fighter planes or submarines protect a country from the new military robotics that will soon be available.

In such a world, a nation with a lot of good computer programmers like Israel is potentially far more powerful than a “power” like Iran. Iran’s power is largely obsolete it has an army of drafted peasants kept in check by a vicious secret police force. Its weapons are mostly copies of old American and Soviet designs and its efforts to project power around the world seem stolen from Nikita Khrushchev’s book. That is Iran’s “leaders” make pronouncements and blustery speeches to the UN and whatever reporter happens to listen to them and give money and arms to “revolutionaries” who share their goals. They occasionally hold a parade to show off new weapons much like the Soviet Communists did.

This of course is an illusion of power because Iran has no ability to influence the world. Indeed its leaders are scared to death of websites and tweets. Their power comes from 20^th century media such as television so they live in fear of modern media.

The pundits largely haven’t noticed this change in the world because their thinking is still locked in the 20^th Century. Twenty years from now Iran will have joined Cuba and North Korea in the Third World Dark Age while Israel will be richer and more powerful than ever.

The Tea Party and the Peace Movement

2010-07-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Like most Americans I dislike the self proclaimed Tea Party because it is arrogant, self righteous, loud, obnoxious, rude, childish and overly tolerant of kooks, cranks, crackpots and bigots. Perhaps the main reason I so dislike the Tea Party is similarity to the so called “peace” movement that was around a few years ago at the beginning of the Iraq War.

The Peace movement was loud, obnoxious, self, righteous, arrogant, rude, childish and overly tolerant of kooks, crackpots, cranks and bigots. Just like the Tea Party today, the 2003 Peace Movement seemed to be more of a publicity stunt for egotistical celebrities and would be celebrities such as Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarenden, Cyndi Shehen (remember her?), Michael Moore and Jane Fonda than a real political movement.

The Peace Movement was also a dismal failure its antics, its vitriol, and childish protests probably increased support for the war. George W. Bush probably owes his reelection in 2004 to the Peace Movement as much as anything else. Its antics left a bad taste in the mouth of the American people and sabotaged John Kerry’s presidential bid.

The Tea Party looks and acts just like the Peace Movement did, it stages noisy protests and its leaders get lots of airtime on the cable networks. Yet there seems to be no real support or any sort of message. Just a lot of noise and bluster much like the Peace Movement.

Part of the reason why the Peace Movement collapsed was that it had no real message to counter the neoconservatives or George W. Bush. Its message was “war bad, America bad, Bush Bad” when anybody raised the subject of terrorism the peace movement had no answer.

Just like the Peace Movement, the Tea Party has become a publicity event and photo op for Grade B celebrities. Although this time around it is washed up politicians and TV talking heads trying to reap the whirlwind rather than Hollywood has-beens. Egomaniacs like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck who think they can ride the Tea Party express to fame, wealth and power, need to ask themselves where is Cindi Shehan today?

The Tea Party acts in much the same way, when serious issues such as the economy or the War on Terror are raised it simply goes into attack mode. No attempt to offer any sort of alternative to Obama or his agenda is raised. No serious defense is made of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All we get is “Obama Bad, Palin good.” Just as the Peace Movement railed against Bushler (Bush as Hitler) the Tea Party rails against Obama as Stalin and can’t understand why nobody takes it seriously.

If Mr. Obama wins reelection in 2012 and my money says he will, it will largely be because of the Tea Party. My prediction is that the Tea Party will become so far out, childish and obnoxious in the next year that it will drive even many conservative voters to Mr. Obama. They’ll hold their noses while filling out the ballot but they will do it just to smite the Tea Party.

There is of course a possibility that a serious political movement might come out of the Tea Party or more precisely replace it after it becomes little more than a bad joke. The remains of the Peace Movement gave rise to a serious and successful mainstream political movement around Barrack Obama. The remains of the Tea Party could give rise to a national movement around a figure like Ron or Rand Paul.

One more thought here, as other observers have noted the Tea Party like the Peace Movement seems to take its cue from the rowdy and obnoxious New Left of the 1960s. Except for the pull out from Vietnam (which would have occurred anyway) the New Left was a miserable failure that succeeded in destroying the New Deal coalition and paving the way for nearly 20 years of Republican Presidents.

Perhaps the worst development in the US during the 1960s, at least from a political point of view; was the emergence of European style political activism in the US. The problem with this brand of political activism is that it is purely ideologically motivated with little or no thought given to practical matters. This was a break from the American tradition which viewed solving practical problems as the goal of politics.

From this destructive European import was born the attack dog politics we have today. The New Left activists of the 60s, like the Tea Party patriots today, regarded politics as war and opponents or critics as enemies to be destroyed. This attitude offers no compromise or solutions. Nor does it take into account the real world effects of its ideology.

Like the leftists who mindlessly back any Communist or Socialist “Revolution” and ignore those hurt and killed in the name of Revolution, the Tea Partiers can’t see any practical considerations. They for example demand that unemployment benefits be ended, even though ending such benefits would throw people onto the street and into the arms of the left. Tea Partiers also oppose taxes, fail to see the failure of the military operations overseas and refuse to acknowledge very real environmental problems like global warming.

Hopefully, the Tea Party will be the last out break of this obnoxious European inspired radicalism in America. This activism is one import I’d love to ship back to France where it belongs.

Is US Aid to Pakistan Causing Terrorism?

2010-07-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

One “little” item most people probably missed in recent newscasts and elsewhere was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of $500 million in funds for infrastructure construction in Pakistan. This $500 million was part of a larger $7.5 billion aid package for Pakistan.

Many American taxpayers will be wondering why the US is giving so much money to Pakistan when we face record budget deficits and a lack of infrastructure at home. The answer is both obvious and disturbing: Pakistan is in a position to blackmail the US into sending it money.

The situation in Pakistan is well known, the country is on shaky ground with a weak central government and powerful army facing a terrorist insurgency allied with Al Qaeda. The situation is made worse by the presence of an unknown number of nuclear weapons and an unknown amount of nuclear material in Pakistan.

All the Pakistani government has to do to shake Uncle Sam down for more dough is to do nothing about the insurgency. Let the insurgents set off a few bombs or kidnap a couple of Americas. Or better yet let them send a few questionable threats about attacking America to the media. The chicken littles in the media and Congress will then demand that the US do something.

With US forces bogged down in increasingly political unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that the military no longer seems willing to fight there is very little Uncle Sam can do. The only option to do something about Pakistan is to send more money.

The bigger the terrorist threat from Pakistan the more aid money that’s forthcoming. The danger from this situation is obvious the Pakistani government has no incentive to actually control terrorism and every incentive to expand the “terrorist threat.”

It is interesting to note that this aid announcement comes just a few months after a Pakistani born man named Faisal Shahzad tried to set off a crude and ineffective bomb in New York’s Times Square. The official story in the media is that Mr. Shahzad got his bomb training from the Pakistani Taliban and was taking orders from them.

One has to wonder, though if Shahzad was working with Pakistani intelligence in an attempt to give the country more leverage over the US when it comes to foreign aid. After all, the links between the Taliban and Pakistani intelligence are well documented, and the American taxpayer has long been the main source of funding for Pakistan’s military and intelligence communities.

Particularly interesting to note is how amateur and ineffective Shahzad’s bomb was. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are experts at making effective and highly destructive low bombs as events in Afghanistan and Iraq attest. One has to wonder how one of their pupils failed so wretchedly on such an important mission. Could Shahzad have been deliberately trained to fail by somebody?

Increasing US aid to Pakistan can also benefit the Taliban because it is in a good position to siphon off a lot of that money or simply extort or steal it from those Pakistanis who receive it. Thus the US taxpayer could end up financing Islamic extremism in the name of battling “terror” as is already happening in Afghanistan.

The Times Square bombing did come right in time to convince the Congress and the White House that Pakistan needs more “aid” for its war on terror. It seems to be an intriguing coincidence.

The situation in Pakistan is a bad one, there is a government completely dependant upon foreign aid. The Pakistani government’s only recourse is to find ways to force the US to give it foreign aid. Terrorism provides the pretext for American aid to Pakistan so the Pakistani government now has no incentive to get rid of it.

Perhaps it is time that we looked at our policy of foreign aid and decide if it is an effective method of fighting terrorism. The case in Pakistan indicates that foreign aid might actually be the cause of terrorism.

Christianity in America

2010-03-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

Many people will wonder how I as a person with high moral values and a conservative bent can have such a strong dislike for Christianity. I suppose it is my experiences with the current American variety of Christianity which appears to be a shallow mockery of historical Christianity and Christian belief.

The most irritating thing about modern American Christianity is the failure of Christians to follow the most tenet of their faith, The Golden Rule; “Treat others as you would have others treat you.” What is so hard about that? I’m not a Christian and I try to live by it.

Every time I encounter one a particularly vile corporate American pest such as the back stabbing practitioner of office politics or the petty minded bureaucrat who mindlessly enforces corporate regulations regardless of their effect on others I find them to be a Christian. The most insensitive and cruel persons invariably have Bible quotes on their walls and Bibles on their desks. I once had the experience of being fired from a job and escorted out of the building for no reason by a particularly loutish corporate apparatchik who had the nerve to lecture me about his faith.

Beyond the failure to treat their fellow human beings decently, which is supposed to be a tenet of their faith; is the lack of humility of today’s Christians. Every time we turn on the TV it seems we get treated to another example of this noxious Christian arrogance.

A particularly odious example of this is California preacher and Vietnam War era draft dodger Rick Warren who has the arrogance to vet presidential candidates about values and civic duty. Another is Fox News mouthpiece Britt Hume who used Tiger Woods travails to rant and rave about the superiority of Christianity over Buddhism (Yes folks Tiger is a Buddhist). Hume had the arrogance to think that Tiger wouldn’t have cheated on his wife if he had just read the Bible and went to church. There are I suppose millions of women who married and divorced “good Christian men” who can disprove Mr. Hume’s idiotic theory.

Now the lack of rudimentary Christian behavior on the part of self proclaimed Christians is to be expected. The vast majority of Christians I encounter seem to have no knowledge of Christian theology, history or even many basic Christian concepts. Most of them claim to have read the Bible but that’s about it.

In particular the lack of knowledge of Christian history on the part of anyone besides a few Catholics is quite distressing. The imbecilic and poorly written “Left Behind” novels are a perfect example of Christian ignorance. They are simply a repackaging of End Time dogma that prophets and preachers have been spewing out for 2,000 years. Any one with any knowledge of basic Christian history or theology can poke the theories presented in them full of holes.

Rick Warren is another example of Christian ignorance. His service doctrine is simply the progressive Christianity of the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries repackaged. This drivel gave us such wonderful things as Prohibition, the income tax, segregation, the draft and World War I. His attempts to reestablish missionary outreach to the poor heathen in Africa (where most people are now Christians) show us how ignorant the man is of the rest of the world and our own history. I wonder will Rick Warren be there when the missionaries he sends out get lynched by a mob of the natives (probably stirred up and led by a Bible thumping preacher) they are trying to “help.” One can only hope God is that just.

Finally, there is the failure to understand the importance of the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers (some of whom were devout Christians) wisely sought to keep religion out of the public sphere and avoid the catastrophic religious wars that had devastated Europe. Today both Left Wing and Right Wing Christians seem to be eager to tear down the barrier that protects the state from the church and just as importantly the church from the state. Obviously these people forget about “Render onto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”

School prayer, faith based initiatives, the peace movement, etc are all efforts to get the state into the church. The faith based initiative is particularly loathsome because it is a blatant grab for tax money by self proclaimed Christians. Since all of these efforts seem to be bent on creating a theocracy it seems quite certain that those behind them are ignorant of history.

Every theocracy in history whether Christian, Islamic, Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Hindu or Marxist has ended in corruption and oppression. Indeed the most corrupt regimes in history such as the Arab Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Renaissance Papacy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, Communist China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia were theocracies. The believers’ efforts to create heaven on Earth invariably ended in corruption, war and oppression.

So it’s obvious that, unlike the Founding Fathers, most of today’s Christians haven’t read their history or worse read it very selectively. This makes me wonder if these people really are Christians. Their faith is nothing like historical Christianity such as that of the Founders.

Perhaps today’s Christians should follow one of Jesus’ most important teachings: “Remove the log from your eye before criticizing others.” I suppose that’s too much to ask because it would require the basic Christian value of humility.

Manhood Under Assault

2010-03-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

It’s a difficult time to be heterosexual male in America because present day American society has only one role for heterosexual male: ignorant lout.

The present American orthodoxy teaches that a man must be a rude, crude, ignorant, beer swelling, sports watching brute who makes Fred Flintstone seem civilized in comparison in order to be heterosexual. If a man is educated, polite, well-groomed, honest, honorable, decent and well read; in short civilized, he must be gay.

This horrible stereotype is reinforced everywhere in our society on TV sitcoms where all the average American males are shown as ignorant, beer guzzling sports addicts. In movies where all the American heroes are shown as vicious, nasty, rude, ignorant brutes and the villains as well mannered and well groomed. And most graphically this stereotype is shown on the reality TV hit, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy where the only way average men can learn how to be civilized is to imitate gays.

The results of this horrendous message can be seen all over America today men increasingly act in a rude and crude away. The grandsons of the men who wore full suits to the movies wear t-shirts and blue jeans to weddings. Sexual assault and abuse of women is rampant. Average middle class men go to sports bars and strip joints where women are treated as nothing but sex objects. Movies and other entertainments are increasingly rude and crude. Foul language that was once only heard from the mouths of sailors is now heard on the streets everyday.

The ideal of American manhood is now the ignorant lout, the ideal of the great American gentleman is dead killed by homophobia and a vicious stereotype. Men are afraid to act civilized, to be polite, read, learn, dance, dress well and groom themselves because they are afraid to be branded gay.

Every day experts tell us that young men are performing worse academically and fewer and fewer boys are succeeding in our schools. Some of them even predict that in a generation or two there will be a shortage of men in our colleges. The reason is obvious: boys don’t want to be seen learning because they’re afraid that they’ll be branded gay.

Vast numbers of American women remain single because they can’t find a man with an acceptable standard of behavior. In other words they want a real man who is also a gentleman and can’t find one except in old movies.

In society at large men are afraid to be polite, read books in public, eat at good restaurants and go to the theater or any movie that doesn’t involve explosions or potty humor because they’re afraid of being branded gay. Our society is becoming less educated and less civilized all the time because of this stereotype.

Under present day American standards such he men as George Washington, Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, Ernest Hemingway, John F. Kennedy and Clark Gable would have been branded gay. After all Washington and Lee were educated gentlemen, Kennedy and Gable were snappy dressers and Patton and Hemingway both read poetry (Patton, about the toughest general our army ever had even wrote poetry). Of course those men didn’t have to worry about being branded gay if they were seen reading a book or heard quoting poetry in public. Gable didn’t have to worry about being branded gay because he was wearing a nice suit with a matching tie. Nor did JFK ever have to worry about loosing any votes because he wore nice suits on the campaign trail.

It is time for the heterosexual men of American who don’t want to be forced to choose between acting like a barbaric boob or being branded gay to rise up and say enough is enough. It is time to show the people of this nation that a man can be civilized without being gay. For if we don’t it will be impossible to live a civilized existence in an

America

with only two kinds of me

The Security Mindset

2010-02-19T20:09:00.001-08:00

When a country, a society, a culture or an organization becomes obsessed with the concept of security it looses the capability to evolve and progress.

Once the security mindset takes hold, common sense, reason, freedom, creativity, independence, valor, imagination, initiative and justice are quickly sacrificed in the name of security. In the society dominated by the security mindset all must bow to security.

Nations obsessed with security do poorly in war because the security mindset discourages those qualities necessary for success in war namely valor, imagination, courage, initiative and the willingness to take risks. The France that built the Maginot Line is a classic example of the security mindset. Vast fortifications were built to guard one portion of the nation’s border but the logical invasion route was left unguarded.

Security is not about protection but about providing a comfortable illusion of protection. The “security guards” we see in most office buildings are a perfect example of the security mindset. An out of shape middle aged man in a mock police uniform who has no gun is little protection. Indeed all the average “security guard” can do in an emergency is call 911.

Another example is the Transportation Security Agency which makes travelers lives miserable but does little or nothing to protect airline passengers from terrorism. The thinking behind the TSA is that any threat can be stopped. The logical answer to terrorism: taking aggressive action to track down and eliminate the terrorists is given short shift.

The United States today is a perfect example of a society infected by the Security Mindset. The American military, intelligence agencies and law enforcement organizations don’t have enough interpreters who can speak the enemy’s language or understand their culture. Yet little or no action is taken to eliminate this obvious defect. Instead our tax money is wasted upon fancy scanning machines that will in the very near future gather dust in airport basements.

Indeed the TSA actually punishes those who display the kind of behavior we need to win this war. CNN reported that security apparatchiks in Philadelphia arrested an obviously white American who had flash cards with Arabic writing on them. The young man was trying to learn Arabic in preparation for a career in intelligence or the diplomatic corps. In other words the guy who might actually help us track down the real bad guys finds himself harassed by high school dropouts in white shirts.

The security mindset offers little hindrance to criminals. Indeed it encourages crime and lawbreaking. Many average people end up breaking the security regulations just to go about their daily lives. The person who slips a twenty dollar bill to a TSA agent to get waived through airport checkpoints is a perfect example of the corruption that security encourages.

The security mindset quickly makes a mockery of law and law enforcement. Average people develop contempt for the law and those who enforce it. Security work attracts four kinds of people: the bungling and incompetent regulation obsessed bureaucrats who can’t find work in real police forces, bullies who are looking for an opportunity to lord it over others, average people who need an easy job that involves no work to make a few extra bucks and of course out and out criminals who recognize a good racket when they see when they see one.

The ultimate security mindset is totalitarianism where society is organized completely for the purposes of security and little else. Such dismal and ultimately ineffective societies as Castro’s Cuba, the Soviet Union, East Germany and North Korea are perfect examples of where the security mindset leads. Such cultures drive away the creative and effective and reward the corrupt, servile and paranoid.

The security mindset is a trap that all societies must avoid if they are to keep out of the ash heap of history.

Looting of America Continues: Major Newspaper Chain Bankrupt while Execs Collect Millions

2010-01-31T09:37:00.000-08:00

The executives who mismanaged one of America’s largest newspaper chains; MediaGroup, and drove it into bankruptcy are walking off with multimillion dollar paychecks.

MediaNews is a holding company that owns 54 daily newspapers and 100 weekly papers. Its most famous publication is its flagship paper The Denver Post. Other prominent MediaNews papers include The San Jose Mercury News and The Los Angeles Daily News.

MediaNews was put together by advertising salesman turned press baron Dean Singleton. Singleton made his money by buying smaller papers and jacking up advertising rates. MediaNews has been bleeding red and wasting money for years.

Singleton’s brilliant strategies at The Denver Post included paying winos to stand on street corners and hound Denver residents into buying The Post in a fraudulent bid to increase “circulation.” He also jacked up advertising rates and drove advertisers away. Meanwhile readers noticed a decline in the quality of writing and journalism. Even though The Post was loosing money, Singleton borrowed heavily to build a fancy new skyscraper as his corporate headquarters in Downtown Denver.

According to Denver’s independent free daily The Denver Daily News Singleton could get up to $1.49 million for his work at MediaNews. Singleton brings home a salary of $994,000 and could collect a $500,000 bonus. Singleton will also get a lot of worthless MediaNews stock as compensation so there is at least some justice.

In the last year journalists and production workers at MediaNews papers have faced layoffs and unpaid furloughs. While journalists and printers are filling out job applications at Kinkos and Wal-Mart, The Denver Daily News reports that MediaNews President Jody Lodovic could collect up to $2.25 million in compensation. Lodovic gets a base salary of a little over $1 million and could collect up to $1.25 million in bonuses.

Like many of America’s rich incompetents Singleton and Lodovic are able to protect themselves through a prepackaged bankruptcy. This legal device could enable MediaNews to pay its creditors many of which are mom and pop businesses that are struggling to survive 19 cents on the dollar. When MediaNews goes down Singleton will still have his fortune, many small business owners will loose everything.

The MediaNews debacle is a perfect example of the looting of America by parasites masquerading as businessmen. Instead of modernizing newspapers, adopting innovative new business plans and improving journalism, Singleton and company artificially inflated circulation figures and used that as an excuse to raise advertising rates. The advertisers went away and the newspapers floundered.

Not surprisingly the sorry facts about MediaNews did not appear on the front page of The Denver Post. Fortunately, Denver residents have a real newspaper which did expose Singleton’s bungling and his shoddy attempt at a cover up.

The Denver Daily News a free newspaper put the news about the bankruptcy on its front page. Unlike The Denver Post the Daily News is an independently owned paper created by local entrepreneurs who took advantage of new printing and computer technologies. Even as the dinosaur Denver Post falls prey to the professional scavengers, The Denver Daily News is thriving and sticking it to Dean Singleton in his own backyard.

2010-01-30T08:02:00.001-08:00

Sometimes neophytes make the best writers because they refuse to follow the rules and actually put what they think down on paper. That is certainly the case with James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren.

Since James Hansen is a NASA scientist best known for climate research that supports the Global Warming hypothesis, I expected a book about Climate Change. Instead I found an expose written by a very angry man who feels disappointed by the institutions he’s loyally worked for all of his life.

Hansen’s anger is well placed especially his anger at the politicization of science in the United States. He accuses both the Clinton and Bush II administrations of trying to suppress scientific research and data they didn’t like. Worse he describes a growing tendency to manipulate releases of scientific information and scientific research for purely political reasons.

The frustration Hansen directs at the nation’s so called leaders is legitimate. Among the damning charges he makes: the Clinton Administration terminated a program to test a clean breeder nuclear reactor that could have led to fourth generation nuclear power. This fourth generation nuclear reactor could have powered cities without generating nuclear waste or greenhouse gases or depleting fossil fuel resources. Decades of research paid for with untold billions of tax dollars were quietly shelved away because the conclusions of the research threatened Clinton’s leftwing supporters’ world view and coal industry profits.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations attempted to restrict the flow of information from scientists to the public and the press. The George W. Bush administration; in a policy eerily reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s propaganda efforts, placed political hacks in charge of public information offices at NASA and other agencies to keep data that disproved its party line from reaching the public. At the same time the budget for scientific research was cut significantly to punish scientists who didn’t follow the party line.

In this book Hansen comes across as a very angry man, a loyal government employee and dedicated scientist who realizes that the institution he has so faithfully served has betrayed him. One is reminded of the writings of Soviet dissidents of the 1970s, people who realized that the system they believed would create utopia was really designed to empower an increasingly arrogant and corrupt elite at the common man’s expense. Hansen has discovered at age 68 that the government he thought existed to serve him really serves those with the deepest pockets and he’s angry about it.

I’m not qualified to say whether or not Storms of My Grandchildren is good science or not but it’s certainly a very effective expose of a failed ideology: American Progressivism. Progressivism is the delusion that government always has the people’s best interests in mind and that big government can solve any problem.

Hansen is certainly a Progressive and a very angry one. He’s frustrated that government isn’t solving the problem of air pollution and angry that politically motivated decisions encourage fossil fuel use. Yet like most angry Progressives he doesn’t see government itself as the problem.

He blames the problems in Washington on “money in politics” and wants money out of politics. How he would achieve these goals, Hansen doesn’t say. He just demands that government do these things for him. In this he sounds like the Party members in the Eastern Bloc who demanded that Communism transform itself into Swedish social democracy.

As with many frustrated liberals Hansen has turned to the political dead end known as civil disobedience. Instead of working constructively’ say with private industry to develop non polluting power sources Hansen now goes around chaining himself to coal trucks.

The anger and frustration in this book surprised me. I wonder if it is a harbinger of growing frustration and discontent from America’s educated classes. When people like James Hansen get radicalized you know that we are on the verge of social political and cultural upheaval.

The New Tribalism

2010-01-14T18:34:00.001-08:00

One of the biggest developments in today’s world is the rise of the new tribalism.

The tribe is the most basic form of human organization it is a band of people who come together to stay alive in the face of difficult conditions. A tribe is not just a band of primitive hunter gatherers it can be a group of people fighting to stay alive and keep themselves fed in our modern world.

The New Tribes as described by John Robb are groups that will arise to replace traditional organizations and loyalties. People will form these tribes because they need to keep themselves fed, housed, entertained, educated, motivated and protected in an ever changing world.

Around the world we see historic organizations and institutions such as the nation state, some traditional religious institutions (such as the Main Line Protestant churches in the United States), labor unions, neighborhoods, corporations, small towns, schools and families failing to meet people’s needs. We also see some institutions, such as the American educational system, doing a poor job of meeting people’s needs.

The New Tribalism is strongest in failed nation states (such as Somalia and Iraq) and regions of nation states where traditional society has broken down (American sums and French housing projects). In many cases New Tribes will assume the functions that government and traditional institutions fail to provide. For example gangs and militias have taken the place of the police in Brazilian slums. Traditional Islamic schools provide education to poor Pakistanis because government schools don’t exist. Street gangs and organized crime take the place of the regular economy in some American and Latin American slums.

Now New Tribalism isn’t necessarily a bad thing yes street gangs are tribes by Mr. Robb’s definition but so is the Salvation Army. In many American cities the Salvation Army provides social services to the poorest people that government can’t or won’t. For example it actually provides hungry people with food while government provides confusing forms to fill out.

So what are some examples of the New Tribes and how do we deal with them? Well I’ll attempt to provide a short definition here. Here are a few rough thoughts on the subject that certainly need to be fleshed out:

Technological Tribes are groups of people who come together because they share a mutual interest in some technology. They use their knowledge and skill in the manipulation of that technology to survive and prosper. Computer hackers are a perfect example of a Technological Tribe. Long term Technological Tribes could become formal organizations similar to Medieval Guilds which will dominate the economy through technological prowess.
Warrior Tribes are groups of people that come together to fight some enemy real or imagined. Terrorist groups and street gangs are warrior tribes. So are British soccer hooligans. (See the movie Green Street Hooligans for an excellent look at the appeal of this behavior to young men). Warrior tribes have a strong appeal to young men because they provide discipline, purpose, leadership, excitement and adventure. Military forces and Marxist guerrilla groups could degenerate into Warrior Tribes. In the long run Warrior Tribes could become mercenary organizations. Selling their product namely violence to the highest bidder.

Economic Tribes are individuals that come together to protect their economic interests. For example a group of merchants that wants to drive out competitors or workers seeking a better salary. Expect to see many such groups of people trying to get a better deal in the new world economy. Organized crime groups like drug cartels are a perfect example of an economic tribe.

Religious Tribes come together around their faith which defines their life. Orthodox Jews, the Amish and Mormons would be perfect examples of religious tribes. Such groups will be very attractive in some parts of the world in the years ahead. Often because they will be eating and enjoying something like a normal family life while those around them aren’t. Many of these groups will have to take up arms to defend themselves from jealous neighbors in the near future.

Ideological Tribes are similar to Religious Tribes except they come together around a strongly held belief. They believe they are right and everybody else is wrong. This gives them a motivation to survive and fight. Marxist guerrillas, Animal Rights Activists, Radical Environmentalists, and American White Supremacists are examples of Ideological Tribes. Ideological Tribes often evolve into Warrior Tribes which evolve into Economic Tribes.

Residual Tribes are the remnants of older institutions that have the discipline, organization, skill and wherewithal to survive in the new order. In many cases their members just want to protect what they have and have the guns or skills to do so. A good example of this would be the KGB which has prospered in Post Communist Russia. Another example would be the Pakistani Army, which is still a potent and powerful force in Pakistan sixty years after the British Empire that created it collapsed. Expect to see many military and law enforcement organizations all over the world survive as residual tribes protecting their own interests and preserving their status as society collapses.

These are just some rough thoughts here but I have a feeling we’ll a strong body of scholarship about the New Tribes as they become a feature in our lives.

The Curious Death of Ideology

2009-12-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

We are living in the post ideological age, the era when the voodoo known as ideology seems to have lost whatever hold it had on the human mind.

Now to be clear ideology never meant anything to the average person the worker, the soldier, the businessman, the office clerk, the waiter or the mother trying to raise her children. Sure these people mouthed the ideological platitudes because they knew it was the way to a job or a promotion or at least an excuse to keep the secret police away. For the vast majority of the human race ideology was a nuisance at best and a bad joke at worst.

Ideology was the dogma of the intellectuals that class of educated, literate people who burst upon the scene sometime in the mid 19^th century and dominated intellectual life such as it was for about a century. Ideology began in Europe in the mid 19^th Century just as the first classes of professional intellectuals appeared. It emerged as the dogma of the lower middle classes, the clerks, the school teachers, and the bean counters; the people who wore ties and read books and wanted to feel superior to their neighbors who worked with their hands and drank beer.

The revolutions that brought the lower middle classes to power in countries like Russia, Germany (the German Revolution occurred in 1933 it isn’t recognized by Leftists because the German Revolutionary leader Hitler refused to read Marx), China and Cuba were very much revolutions of ideology. These revolutions were attempts to transform reality by forcing it to comply with ideological formulas contained in books. They failed miserably because the ideologies had no basis in reality they were the fantasies of clerks. A similar process occurred in the United States, Britain, France, Sweden and other democratic nations when the lower middle classes won election they attempted to transform society to comply with ideology.

The ideologues failed and failed miserably their utopias were revealed as shallow lies or excuses for gangsters and thugs to murder and pillage. Their dream of equality brought dictatorships and opened the way for more worldly classes to triumph. The welfare states were soon revealed as dreary places where the middle class was taxed to pay for social workers who made poor people’s lives more miserable.

Ideology reached its ascendancy in the 20^th Century when systems of ideas were seen as magical things. The right system of ideas was regarded as a solution for all the world’s problems while the wrong system of ideas was seen as evil incarnate. Like the Christians of the 16^th Century the idea worshippers quickly resorted to witch hunting, in Stalin’s Russia Trotskyites and Kulaks were purged, in McCarthy’s America people who associated with Communists were driven from the public square, in Mao’s China those who owned bird cages were beaten to death and in Latin America of the Dirty War college students were murdered for reading Che Guevara’s diary.

The triumph of ideology was followed by its rapid collapse the magic was shown as a scam and the people rejected the charlatans who promoted it. In China, the Communist Party embraced capitalism and the New Economic Policy within ten years of the end of the Cultural Revolution. In Latin America the ideological upheavals of the 1970s were followed by privatization and pragmatic economics. In Europe socialist parties embraced privatization.

Ideology has died and we now live in the post ideological world. The post ideological world is one of self interest. In the post ideological world classes and organizations protect their own interests and work to increase their own power and ignore all else. A typical example of this behavior is the Chinese Communist Party which now exists to enrich its members even if some its policies make China weaker and average Chinese poorer. Another example is the American banking system which like the Chinese Communist Party exists to enrich its leaders. Instead of sound economic policies the US banking system pursues policies that ensure maximum salaries for its executives then sticks the taxpayers with the bill.

The post ideological world is one where survival and self interest is all and ideas no longer matter. The people of ideas either become shrill cheerleaders for the system or retreat into fantasy worlds. A good example of such alternate reality theme parks can be found on the campuses of many American universities. There well paid leftist professors keep the faith of Marxism and the fantasy of revolution alive while living a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle. Other bastions of such fantasy thinking are conservative think tanks, the newsroom at The New York Times, the Cuban Presidential Palace and Bin Laden’s cave. In all those places irrelevant people whose bankrupt ideologies have proven dismal failures gather and pretend that they and their ideas still matter when they don’t.

What will replace ideology in the human mind is hard to say? My guess is that it will be technology which actually has the ability to reshape elements of reality. How the technological world will work I don’t know but I have a feeling it’ll look nothing like the ideological world.

Find Work Through Temporary Agencies

2009-11-08T11:40:00.001-08:00

Many American jobseekers aren’t finding work because they don’t know where or how to find the jobs these days.

A large number of American employers including big corporations and federal, state and local governments fill a high percentage of their jobs using temporary agencies. Yet most Americans know little or nothing about temporary agencies or how to use them to find a job.

A new book called Find Work Through Temporary Agencies can show you how to use temporary agencies to find jobs. Written by Daniel G. Jennings - a veteran of several years work at different temporary agencies - this book shows you how to find temporary agencies, how to register with them and more importantly how to use their services to find work.

Jennings has worked for temporary agencies for years and he knows all the tricks of working at them. He tells you how to get noticed by temporary agency recruiters, how to get interviewed at temporary agencies and how to make yourself more likely to get placed in a temporary job.

Temporary jobs can lead to permanent positions at big corporations and government agencies. Many employers use temporary jobs as try outs for new employees. Others use temporary agencies as their human resources department.

Even if temporary jobs don’t lead to permanent employment they can be a great source of extra income and experience. You can get skills and experience that you can put on your resume. You can also put a few extra bucks in your pocket working through temporary agencies.

Temporary agencies don’t just place office workers any more, jobs in almost all sectors including high technology, manufacturing, retail truck driving, hospitality and construction are now filled by temporary agencies. Every working adult needs to know what temporary agencies are and how to use them to find work.

Until now there has never been a book that can guide people through the temporary process. Now there is Find Work Through Temporary Agencies: A Survival Manual for the New Economy by Daniel G. Jennings.

This book is available as a paperback from www.amazon.com and as an e-book on the Amazon Kindle. Investing a few dollars in this book could help you find employment and put money in your bank account.

Obama and Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-11T07:58:00.000-07:00

Like a lot of people I can remember when the Nobel Peace Prize actually meant something. When people like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Lech Walesa amd Andrei Sakharov won it. These guys were real heroes who stood up to tyranny and evil and suffered terribly for it.

Today the Nobel Peace Price means absolutely nothing, a politician Barrack Obama has won it for making campaign promises. Mandela, Walesa and Sakharov faced prison and worse for standing up for their beliefs. King was murdered for his beliefs. All Obama risks is nasty jokes from Rush Limbaugh.

Indeed the emptiness of the modern Noble Prize is exemplified by the fact that the Obama administration is confused and troubled by the award. They admit freely that they aren’t worthy of it and their response seems to admit that they don’t want it. What this means is that the Nobel Prize has become a very bad joke.

Now Barrack Obama’s aims are certainly noble but he hasn’t achieved any of them. Indeed Obama’s political program is vague and unrealistic like that of any leader in his first term. He lays down a series of vague but noble ideals and sees if he can achieve some of them. Like all good politicians he puts out a couple of unrealistic big ideas knowing that these will be forgotten if they don’t become reality but will remembered for centuries if they are achieved.

Giving Obama the Nobel Prize for making a bunch of pedestrian speeches is insulting. It’s a betrayal of the ideals behind the Nobel Prize and an insult to Obama himself. As I pointed out earlier the Obama administration and Obama himself don’t seem to want the honor.

This makes me wonder who hands out the Noble Prize? Junior officers at some Norwegian bank or some does committee of the Norwegian parliament award it after a debate on sidewalk improvements in Oslo? It sure sounds like it.

What I wonder will happen if President Obama refuses this ridiculous honor? and I hope he does.

There are others who certainly deserve the Noble Prize for making peace. One late American President who definitely deserved the honor and really worked for Peace and Freedom was Ronald Reagan. But he was a right wing Republican so he won’t get it. Even though he deserved it. Maybe he’ll get it on default if Obama turns it down. I wouldn’t hold my breath hopefully this ludicrous award will expose the Nobel Peace as the very bad joke it really is. One thing I do know Alfred Nobel the great man who created this prize is rolling over in his grave.

The Choice the Free Market or Brute Force

2009-10-03T10:17:00.001-07:00

Socialists like Michael Moore and other critics of capitalism just don't get it. There is only one alternative to the free market that of brute force. If you don't want to buy, sell and trade for the goods and services you need you have only two recourses. You can produce everything you need yourself which would only be possible for a Wizzard like Harry Potter or you can resort to brute force.
Every attempt to create a utopia based upon sharing and kindness has ended the same way in the use of violence to take goods, services and money from others. Ayn Rand was right Robin Hood was nothing but a common bandit. He may have given to the poor but Robin Hood used violence to get what he gave to the poor.
The only way wealth can be distributed without the free market is at the point of a sword or a gun. No alternative has been found or will be found.
The only way wealth distribution without the free market would work would be in a society of perfect beings without greed or avarice. Since such beings don't exist the free market is the only moral economic system. Those who don't learn that lesson condemn themselves to an unending spiral of violence and destruction.

A Delusion of Modern Conservatism

2009-10-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

The greatest failing of modern conservatism at least in economic terms has been the delusion that simply cutting the revenue stream to government (taxes) will reduce the size and scope of government.
The result of the modern mania for tax cutting(which was started by conservatives but is now a firm part of the leftist agenda as the Obama Administration’s policies indicate) is that government keeps growing in power, size, complexity and influence even as its revenues steadily decline. This seemingly impossible feat is achieved through inflation which as Allen Greenspan pointed out many years ago is a means of seizure of wealth from the middle classes.
The principle vehicle for the creation of this inflation is government debt the incredible growth in variety and complexity of the financial markets has given governments on all levels many more opportunities to borrow. There are the traditional bonds and similar instruments issued by governments, these are generally sold on international markets. The major reason the US federal government has been able to run up such a high deficit and issue so much debt in recent years is that China has been willing to buy so much debt often with cash generated by the sell of products to the US.
There are now many other means by which governments can issue debt. A big one is to sell, lease or mortgage a government asset to private investors. All over the US hospitals, highways, bridges, government buildings and other facilities have been sold or leased to private investors. At the same time private companies have been retained to perform government services such as the collection of parking tickets. This of course represents an extension of credit to governments by private entities and a poorly understood one.
An even more bothersome government practice is the extension of government credit to private individuals and companies. The federal mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae which are bankrupt, are financed through the issuing of mortgage backed securities overseas. More recently we saw Cash for Clunkers, which actually involved no cash, instead credit was extended to private individuals to buy cars.
When government extends credit it creates money and dilutes the money supply creating inflation. The governments of the past created inflation and paid their bills with the printing press. Today’s governments pay their bills and create inflation by issuing credit. The credit is either directly through congress by direct or indirect payments to the public or by the issuing of credit to banks and other financial institutions by the Federal Reserve.
The automatic increase of Social Security benefits based upon inflation also represents an extension of credit to the elderly. The government uses inflation as an excuse to increase the money supply which results in more inflation.
A popular kind of credit is a tax credit either the earned income tax credit in reality a welfare payment to lower income people or a special credit such as the tax credit for buying a new house. Farm subsidies and tax breaks for farmers are another kind of tax credit. The earned income tax credit and tax refunds also represent a federal loan to local and state governments because a large portion of the money paid out will come back to those entities in the form of sales tax.
More recently we have seen the direct payment of money mostly borrowed to business including the finance and automotive industries. The government is now in the business of protecting business executives from their own incompetence. The money extended to these businesses represents yet another massive extension of credit.
The credit extension has created inflation, which the government goes out of its way to hide. As Peter Schiff points out the real rate of inflation is hard to determine because the Federal Reserve has been able to hide it through market manipulation. There are many indications that inflation has increased massively consumer prices have gone up considerably magazines which cost 50 cents apiece 25 years ago now cost five dollars each, an inflation rate of 100%. Gasoline which cost 75 cents a gallon twenty years ago costs nearly $3 a gallon. The official inflation rate the consumer price index as Peter Schiff has noted is a chicanery not related to the real cost of goods or services.
Wages and salaries are another example of the increase of inflation. Indeed salaries are often the best indication of the rate of inflation, because people won’t work unless they can support themselves at a job. In Denver, Colorado, Safeway is hiring strikebreakers to bag groceries in the possibility of a strike for $10 an hour. Many working class jobs including truck drivers now pay $40,000-$100,000 secretaries and clerical workers now earn between $15-20 an hour. Employers are paying these salaries because workers won’t work for less.
Another way the inflation rate is hidden is through interest rates. The official interest rate especially for mortgages is held artificially low at under 5%. The problem is that very few people pay this interest rate they pay a far higher one. The most common type of consumer credit, credit cards charge a rate of between 10 and 20% or more. So do some mortgage providers and companies that issue home equity loans. Alternative lenders such as pawn shops and payday loan companies charge an even higher rate at around 25%. So the real rate of inflation is actually much higher than the official rate.
The banking industry uses many tricks to charge a higher rate for example credit scores which are largely artificial and not reflective of a individuals’ net worth or ability to pay off a loan. These can be used as an excuse to charge a higher interest rate. A typical scam is that a lender issues a person a loan interest line of credit to an individual because they have a good credit score but no means to pay it off. The lender is then able to jack up the interest rates because the person has not paid. Another are the fees added to loans and bank accounts which are really interest.
An even more interesting method used by some banks is checking accounts these really represent an extension of credit based on an individuals’ salary. By giving a person a check book and the ability to set up payments in advance the bank, extends credit. The overdraft fees charged represent interest on the loan issued in anticipation of a direct deposit. Many people get into trouble by writing checks in anticipation of salaries and future income. Banks could easily avoid this situation by issuing low income people debit cards that only pay out what is in someone’s account in lieu of check books. They don’t because the overdraft fees and other charges are a profitable source of income.
The destruction of the currency through inflation has many negative effects one of which is the end of savings. Politicians, economists and bankers are constantly complaining that average people don’t save but instead spend all of their money on consumer goods. The average people are not as stupid as their self-proclaimed leaders think. They know that money decreases in value so money kept in savings will result in a net loss. The average person sensibly buys now while his or her buying power is higher.
Encouraging inflation encourages spending which increases the government’s power. I might also add that encouraging spending generates sales taxes revenues which governments use to pay off the interest on their bonds.
Particularly bothersome is the fact that the government is getting little or nothing back for much of this credit backed spending. In the 1950s at least, we got something back in the form of Interstate Highways. Today we get nothing back but more and more inflation.
At least in the old days government made an effort to pay its debts through taxes. Today there is no pretext or assumption that government will ever pay its bills, it just keeps on borrowing and borrowing. The result of all this borrowing will eventually be collapse because sooner or later the money will be completely worthless. One strong possibility is hyperinflation as happened in Argentina where the dollar’s value suddenly collapses. The crash of the Federal Reserve especially if its brought on by an audit or investigation of that institution would cause this.
My guess is that sooner or later the US government will have to declare bankruptcy that is announce it can no longer pay its debts. When that happens no one will extend Uncle Sam Credit and the spending spree will be over. The social and political effects of that event will be devastating but at least it will put us back on track to a sound economy. Particularly hard hit by these events will be leftists like Michael Moore when they realize that the all the money they believed was stolen by the evil robber barons of Wall Street never existed in the first place.
Conservatives have no one to blame but themselves for this looming catastrophe by not insisting on fiscal responsibility while glorying in tax cuts they have made it possible for government to spend its way into bankruptcy. A bankruptcy that will hurt everybody in the United States and many other countries.

SubPrime The Sequel

2009-09-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

The old cliché says that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The Obama administration is among those who don’t learn from history because it is preparing a repeat of the subprime mortgage debacle.
The White House is about to give state and local housing agencies $35 billion to finance low interest mortgages for low income people who have a hard time getting housing loans, The Wall Street Journal reports. A plan soon to be submitted to President Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would have Uncle Sam issue $20 billion worth of bonds to finance the mortgages issued by local and state housing agencies.
To make matters worse at least some of these bonds would be issued through federal mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae which are already in financial trouble because of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis. The plan includes another $15 billion in federal funds but the September 28, 2009 WSJ article by Deborah Solomon doesn’t say where that money is coming from.
For those of you who don’t remember Freddie Mac is the agency that lost $2 billion in 2007 but still managed to pay $210 in retention bonuses to its employees in 2008. Things at Freddie Mac are so bad that its acting chief financial officer David Kellerman killed himself on April 21. The Wall Street Journal reported that the agency’s accounting practices and governance are being investigated by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Yet President Obama is planning to give $35 billion to these guys.
This scheme is an effort to artificially prop up real estate prices and housing sales by having the local and state housing agencies take the place of discredited and bankrupt mortgage lenders like Washington Mutual. There are several reasons why the administration would want to do this, foreign investors have poured trillions into Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae which have been taking a beating in the financial market. The collapse of these agencies stocks could make the economy worse.
It must be noted that a number of politically powerful special interests including real estate developers, real estate agents and contractors profit from cheap mortgages. Now that the subprime bubble has burst these predatory interests are looking to Uncle Sucker for a new payday. Turning local and state housing agencies into ATMs for these interests could generate a lot of campaign donations for Democratic politicians.
The side effects of this plan could be catastrophic it could bankrupt the state and local housing agencies which have managed to avoid the subprime pitfall. These agencies help many first time homeowners and low income people get mortgages. The short sighted short term effort to increase these agencies’ funding could push these people out of the housing market.
Publicity of this plan could destroy Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s reputation and cause foreign investors to pull out. Especially if they think the plan is a bailout and those agencies are about to crash. The collapse of these agencies could devastate the mortgage industry and cause a complete collapse in housing prices in the United States.
It goes without saying that further federal loan handouts will drive up the federal budget deficit and increase the money supply. Two moves that are bound to create inflation by lowering the value of the dollar. Just a few more of these cheap credit schemes could destroy the dollar and completely undermine the US economy.
There seems to some opposition to this scheme in Congress but sadly enough the money Obama could use for this was appropriated in the misnamed 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act. A better name for this would the Act for the Destruction of the Housing Market and the Economy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125409967771945213.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTWhatsNews

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/04/22/freddie-mac-tragedy-follows-trouble/

http://ml-implode.com/index.html#lists

Post Oil Fiction

2009-09-26T16:39:00.001-07:00

From the headlines and the prices at the gas pump it looks as if Peak Oil has arrived or is very close. The end of the oil age is here and writers of fiction seem to have noticed.

In particular my good friend James H. Kunstler has attracted a lot of attention with his thought provoking and entertaining novel “A World Made By Hand.” Kunstler’s thesis is that the end of cheap readily available oil will bring modern technological civilization to a crashing halt. In the novel near future America has been reduced to a 19^th Century level of existence where people grow their own food, ride horses for transportation and make their own clothes. The average person’s universe is centered around their home town and technology is a fond memory. The idea is not a particularly new one but it’s one that hasn’t been well explored by writers and other artists.

Now I can’t think of any major novels set in a post oil world and of only one truly influential work of modern art set in such a world. “The Mad Max” movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, in these films a lawman living in near future Australia the title character “Mad Max” played by transplanted American Mel Gibson struggles to survive in an energy starved wasteland ravaged by post modern barbarians. In the first film gasoline is a precious commodity and gangs of speed crazed motorhead bandits terrorize the highways stealing gasoline. In the second film, “The Road Warrior” a small community of civilized people struggle to defend an oil well from a warlord and his army of high speed punks long enough to get enough oil to fuel their journey to farms by the coast. In the third film, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” oil is a thing of the past and cars are powered by methane harvested from pigs raised in a post industrial trading post that features gladiatorial games and trial by combat for entertainment.

Now most of the post petroleum novelists won’t admit it but Mad Max is their inspiration. The original film was supposedly based on some Australians violent reaction to fuel shortages in the 1970s. The film’s writer and director George Miller says it was inspired by the auto related injuries he treated as an emergency room doctor in the early 1970s.

Today’s post oil novels of which Kunstler’s is the first to achieve some press attention are vastly different vehicles. They seek to warn and inform the reader as well as entertain. I won’t survey these books here, Frank Kaminski has already done an excellent of job of that over at www.energybulletin.net.

I will offer some criticism here these novels seem to be driven by a number of conflicting intentions. The first being very good intention to warn average people that the oil is running out and we should do something about it. I applaud this it’s about some time somebody made a serious effort to alert the public and prepare them for the looming catastrophe that is Peak Oil.

Underlying these good intentions are some darker and more questionable trains of thoughts. The first being technophobia the fear and suspicion of technology and the thought they’d we’d all be better off without all these confusing new fangled gadgets like computers and cell phones. Some of these writers like Kunstler (who as far as I know makes use of all these gadgets in his personal life) try to demonstrate that we can live without these things and be better off without them. Now technophobia is nothing new it is a natural and perhaps logical reaction to technological change which isn’t always progress (the replacement of rail travel by automobiles for example). On some level these novels represent a desire for a simpler less technological way of life and wishful thinking that all the technology will go away so we can live like people again.

Such novels also feed into our irrational fears that we can’t live without the technology. They are based on the premise that technological civilization is a fragile thing that will easily breakdown and collapse. The fear that all the things we take for granted and depend upon will disappear overnight. It’s a powerful fear and a good one for novelists to exploit so on some level these writers are like Stephen King. They’re stoking our fears to sell books, which is nothing new or wrong. Tales of a dark future where civilization has collapsed or the bad guys have won have always sold and will probably always sell.

There is also a strong nostalgia in such writing, the age old dream that people will return to a simple life close to the soil where they live by the fruit of their hands. Such glorification of country life and peasant culture is age old and found in almost all cultures. In America we see it in everything from Thomas Jefferson (who was the owner of a factory farm that utilized slave labor)’s vision of a republic of small farmers to the Andy Griffith Show. The farther we get from real country life twelve hours of back breaking labor on the farm, no electricity, no running water, no medicine, the specter of starvation at the door and sharecropping, the more appealing such nonsense will become. Only people whose grandparents enjoyed running water and supermarkets can fall so quickly for such fantasies. The idea that the old traditional America of small farmers and shop owners which was itself a fantasy will come back and save us once big business and big government has failed is appealing but not necessarily realistic.

Now it’s obvious that the post oil writers are cherry picking the future and naturally choosing one that confirms to their hopes, fears and desires. That’s fine and natural, it’s what science fiction writers have always done and should do. Still it makes me a little hungry for a different vision.

What about a post oil future where civilization hasn’t collapsed where the cities still function and most of us still work for a living. Where computers still work and most of us still bank at the ATM. What would that look like? My guess something like modern Japan rabbit warren cities, most people using mass transit to get around and far more authoritarian government with a much more militaristic police force to make people behave. I haven’t seen many books like that although Paul Dinni’s wonderful animated TV show “Batman Beyond” gave us an intriguing vision of such a future where average people try to cope amid diminished expectations and technological wonder.

Now I’m that up on modern literature but I haven’t seen many books with such a vision. Although I clearly see the beginnings of it here in my hometown of Denver where developers are putting up lots of apartment blocks and rowhouses and the government is building an efficient electric powered rail transit system to move us around. I take the light rail everyday, its clean efficient, fast and often crowded. I also notice that there’s a Wackenhut transit cop who wears a brown paramilitary uniform and carries an automatic pistol on almost every train. I have a feeling that’s our future so it’s what I’ll write about. So perhaps what we need is a post oil novel with a different vision. So maybe I’ll try and write it.

The Definative Post Oil Novel is Here

2009-09-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Post oil fiction the subgenre of science fiction about what happens to society when the oil runs out has been around for awhile. The best or at least the definitive post oil novel so far Julian Comstock: A Novel of 22^nd America has been written.

Most of these novels are set more or less in the present or a few years from now. They generally show modern technological civilization collapsing and society reverting to something more traditional and less technologically oriented. Some like James Kunstler’s “World Made by Hand” extol the virtues of small town life and the common people that will replace today’s wicked society. Others seem to be a pretext for authors to glory in violence and destruction worthy of a Mad Max Movie.

Julian Comstock by American-Canadian author Robert Charles Wilson is very different. Its set a century or so after the end of oil and the collapse of our civilization when society is slowly rebuilding itself. Our society has been destroyed and most of our science and technology lost but enough survives for America to begin rebuilding.

What I like about this novel is that Wilson seems to share none of the prejudices that bind most post oil writers. He doesn’t show the pre industrial past as a friendly and peaceful place where people lived simple and happy lives in communion with nature. He doesn’t see the end of technology or the civilization it supports as a good thing. Instead Wilson reminds us that in pre industrial times most people lived a short brutish life of back breaking labor and vicious exploitation.

Instead of a pastoral utopia Wilson’s future America is a hellish place where most people are indentured servants, slaves by debt, laboring away on huge plantations controlled by a ruthless aristocracy. The majority of people are slaves who can’t leave their homes because they can’t pay their debts. National government in the form of a militaristic monarchy led by a hereditary “president” who claims to be a successor of George Washington has been restored but the only national institution that functions is the army. The monarchy is propped up by a fundamentalist Christian theocracy called the Dominion which tries to impose its vision of Orthodoxy on society.

By the time of the novel, the year 2174, some industry has been restored to America and the railroads are being rebuilt. Some technology like electric lights, submachine guns, movies and typewriters are making a come back. The resources used to make these things are harvested from the ruins of the old cities.

The story is an interesting one based on a real historical figure Julian the Apostate. Julian the Apostate a late Roman Emperor and a descendant of the first Christian Roman Emperor was a war hero who tried to replace Christianity with a pagan church and restore classical culture. His efforts were cut short when he died under mysterious circumstances while leading a campaign against Rome’s arch enemy Persia.

The novel focuses on a friend of the title character Julian, a writer who follows his hero to war against the Dutch and later to the national capitol in New York and the Presidency. Along the way the young writer becomes obsessed with an old book that proves the popular fairy tale that Americans walked on the moon was true. Meanwhile Julian becomes obsessed with the story of Charles Darwin and tries to make an epic movie about the father of evolution which leads to conflict with the Dominion and his down fall. It’s a good read and nowhere near as dreary or dead beat as most post oil fiction. Nor is it as violent.

As for plausibility well that’s hard to say. I’m not one who buys into the idea that the exhaustion of oil will end civilization or lead to collapse. Some Mad Max type violence perhaps but not collapse.

Yet Wilson’s future is more plausible than most because he doesn’t see it through rose colored glasses. Wilson’s political speculation is quite probable and what would probably happen after a collapse. America becoming a third world nation with a military dictatorship, an aristocratic elite and ending up a nation of sharecroppers.

Although I might note that the absence of automobiles in the book seems a little far fetched. If people could build an electric dynamo or a submachine gun they could certainly build an automobile or a tractor. Automobiles and tractors are simply too useful and versatile a technology to be let go of. They can also run on a wide variety of fuel including diesel, alcohol, methane and coal oil. My guess is that the automobile like the gun is here to stay in some form or another.

I might also note here that the book might have been a little stronger if Wilson had a little more military knowledge. The post collapse army he envisions would probably have tanks, Browning Automatic Rifles, grenades, bazookas and machine guns. It would also have a few airplanes another useful technology that won’t disappear.

Another criticism here, I can’t see either the Catholic Church or the Mormons rolling over and playing dead before the Dominion as they do in the book. Indeed there’s a very good chance that the American theocracy Wilson envisions would be a Catholic one dominated by the bishops. I might also add that the non white non Anglo population of the United States wouldn’t disappear and would be a big part of the post catastrophe society.

Despite its flaws which are minor, Julian Comstock is a great read and a compelling warning of what life without modern technology would be like. He reminds us just how precious science and technology are and why we shouldn’t let them get lost. This book deserves the Mad Max prize as the best post oil novel yet.

A Lesson From History for America

2009-09-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

Americans who want to see where our economy is headed in the near future should read an interesting little book called Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White which chronicles the French 's use of paper money to finance national recovery during the French Revolution of the 1790s.

When nations enter into times of economic distress, as the United States is today, sensible and educated people often turn to unsound crackpot schemes that offer free money or easy to credit all backed by some magic formula. This was the case in France between 1789 and 1796, the nation's ruling body tried to create prosperity by issuing vast amounts of paper or fiat money. The money was supposedly backed by the value of land confiscated from the Church and opponents of the revolution.

At first the system worked quite well, the money supply grew and the economy boomed. Seeing that issuing paper money brought prosperity the politicians began issuing more and more paper money.

The more paper the government issued the less value the paper had hence the term "Fiat Money Inflation."

Eventually France's money was worthless and the nation was impoverished. Average people couldn’t buy food and other essential products. Businesses shut down because they couldn’t pay their workers and unrest spread through the land. The response of France's National Assembly was to keep issuing paper money because politicians and speculators were profiting from it and getting rich. The average people got poorer while the speculators and their friends the politicians got rich.

As the economic situation got worse all sorts of crackpot solutions were tried including price controls. Business owners were forced to accept the worthless money at pain of death, merchants who refused payment in worthless paper were sent to the guillotine or imprisoned. People caught using or hoarding gold coins were imprisoned or killed. The Draconian measures failed and the money=s value kept falling and falling. Eventually the situation got so bad that the printing press used to create the worthless money was smashed and publicly burned. France was in chaos and primed for the dictatorship of Napoleon.

The modern American equivalent of paper money is easy credit created through artificially low interest rates generated by the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is the American printing press every time the gang in Washington needs more money they use it to crank down the interest rate. The lower the interest rate the more easy credit available to the mob. This fuels the consumer society and like the French paper money creates the illusion of prosperity. Easy credit works just like paper money by increasing the buying power of the average person without creating real value.

A classic easy credit scheme was sub prime mortgages by getting rid of all sensible requirements for mortgages the government made mortgages available to people who couldn’t afford them. This gave the working poor the illusion that they were "middle class" could “buy” a house. It made politicians feel good because they could say they were “lifting people out of poverty.” This fantasy was compounded by easy access to credit cards and car loans made possible by low interest rates which enabled the working poor to purchase the trappings of middle class life without a middle class income. This house of cards has now collapsed and the working poor have been reminded that they are poor. Government efforts to restore easy credit such as the Federal Reserve's .25% interest rate will fail and make things worse.

Like the paper money speculators in France, the beneficiaries of the American easy credit fantasy are turning to government for "help." In other words the predators having consumed all the private capital are turning to the public purse and the taxpayer. We’ve already seen the "Wall Street Bailout" and “Cash for Clunkers." I imagine demands for bailouts for the movie industry, broadcast television, newspapers and other industries will follow. If the bailout cycle is allowed to go on, we’ll see a new bubble based on public financing that’ll burst sooner or later and bankrupt the government and the entire nation.

The sensible course of action would be for government to let the market work by allowing these businesses to suffer the inevitable effects of their own greed and incompetence. The competent and strong businesses would survive to build the economy up, the incompetent and weak would perish. This would form the basis of true economic recovery and real prosperity. Getting rid of easy credit would force people to live within their means and save which would help the economy. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like that will occur because our leaders haven=t learned from history or read Andrew Dickson White.

*White, Andrew Dickson (1959) Fiat Money Inflation in France Irvington on Hudson, New York, the Center for Economic Education.

A few notes on modern war

2009-09-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

War is no longer profitable for the nation state as many observers point out but it is still profitable for a lot of people. This is why war persists in our modern world and is now sleazier and bloodier than ever in some ways.
The United States government maybe loosing money on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but a lot of other people are profiting from them; defense contractors, professional mercenaries, professional soldiers, drug lords, warlords, terrorists, all profit handsomely from this kind of fourth generational warfare which is why it persists. The professional soldiers get to have their war, the professional criminals profit from the chaos war generates, the defense contractors and munitions makers profit by supplying the weapons, the mercenaries profit because they get a paycheck from the trade they enjoy and the terrorists get to have the fun of wrecking havoc. The bill of course is footed by the American taxpayer who at the end of the day is simply confused by the conflict.
The situation becomes harder and harder to control because so many non state actors are involved. The US government can’t stop its enemies or allies from growing opium or its so called employees at the embassy in Kabul from behaving like drunken frat boys. This simply isn’t our fathers’ or grandfathers’ war it’s something new and frightening.
We’re conditioned to think of war as a massive conflict with us on one side and the bad guys on the other. That’s the way it was in World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. It isn’t in this war, there’s no all inclusive ideology like Communism here, almost everybody in Iraq and Afghanistan is a good Muslim. The people trying to kill us are good Muslims but so are the people fighting by our side. The American soldier trained and indoctrinated to fight something World War II simply doesn’t know how to react.
It’s a new war for a new world, and we’re not prepared for it. The old rules don’t work anymore and the new rules haven’t been written yet. Until they are everybody is flying blind.

America's New Enemy

2009-07-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

Those people who think President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will implement a peaceful new foreign policy in place of Bush's idiotic "Axis of Evil" are sadly mistaken. Hillary has already added a new "member" to the Axis of Evil, Burma or Myanmar.

This is one of the poorest countries in the world, a nation that can't even control all of its own territory without Chinese help. Yet Hillary has decided that Myanmar is now a threat to the United States because North Korea might be helping this country which has no modern infrastructure or industry develop nuclear weapons. Since Myanmar is about a thousand miles from North Korea and the two nations don't border each other it's hard to see how North Korea could transfer nuclear material to Myanmar without the US Navy intercepting it. Yet Hillary now thinks the evil alliance of North Korea and Myanmar is now a threat to the stability of Southeast Asia and the world.

Naturally, this will lead to massive new military deployments to protect Myanmar's neighbors from a country that can't control its own territory. It will also lead to diplomatic efforts to isolate Myanmar and calls for "regime change."

This nonsense of course sounds very familiar doesn't it. A few years ago, another President warned us about another member of the Axis of Evil: Iraq. He demanded that action be taken against Iraq's evil dictator so he couldn't develop nuclear weapons to threaten America and the world with. Three thousand Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are now dead because of that and no weapons of mass destruction have been found.

It feels like Deja Vu all over again doesn't it? The faces in Washington change, the so called enemies change but the idiotic policies don't change.

Book Review Liberal Fascism

2009-07-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Book Review: Liberal Fascism

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left by Jonah Goldberg, New York, Doubleday, 2007.
On the surface this book looks like another tiresome piece of political propaganda on the order of American Fascism, Christopher Hedges’ loathsome and hate filled tract that assures Blue state residents that everyone who reads a Bible is potential Brownshirt. In contrast Goldberg’s book a rather fun tour through history that makes some good conclusions.
Unlike Hedges, Goldberg is a good historian who actually knows something about history. His basic conclusion is right on, between 1910 and 1950 the American Progressive movement behaved a great deal like the Italian fascists and their wicked stepchildren the German Nazis. Like Hitler and Mussolini American progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and FDR wanted an all powerful state and promoted an all embracing nationalism that trampled the rights of average citizens. Like Wilson, FDR & TR Mussolini believed that war and conquest were good things that would benefit the nation. Goldberg is correct when he notes the similarity between Woodrow Wilson’s World War One administration in America and the dictatorships of Mussolini and Hitler.
Goldberg is also correct when he points out that large numbers of America’s best and brightest openly admired Hitler and Mussolini and wanted to emulate their regimes before World War II. Of course he forgets to note that until World War II, Hitler and Mussolini’s behavior wasn’t all that bad and certainly no where near as horrific as that of Lenin or Stalin. Nor does Goldberg admit that most Americans abandoned whatever sympathy they had for Hitler after the revelation of the true nature of his regime and its crimes particularly the Holocaust. Or for that matter the contempt most Americans had for Mussolini and his pygmy empire. Especially after Mussolini’s military when faced with overwhelming British and American military power in 1943, quickly changed sides and joined the Allies. Leaving Il Duce to the tender mercies of his ally Hitler.
Goldberg goes off course when he starts chronicling after 1950 and making the case that modern American liberals are fascist. When he tries to call the radicals of the 1960s fascist he falls flat on his face. Of the various leftist morons who surfaced in the 1960s only the Black Panthers could be called fascist. The Weathermen, the anti war movement, Students for a Democratic Society and so on were many bad things but they certainly weren’t fascist. Anarchist perhaps, Communist maybe but fascist no. Indeed like far too many modern conservative historians Goldberg pays far too much attention to the bored students who played revolution in the late 1960s. That is they played revolutionary until daddy stopped mailing the allowance checks then the revolutionaries quietly bought ties and rejoined society.
Nor does Goldberg make a convincing case that the tired joke called the modern American left is fascist. He gives the left too much credit, true fascism would require energy, imagination and some modicum of courage. The present American left hasn’t shown any of these traits. Indeed the American left is so afraid of itself and its own ideology that it is practically harmless.
Indeed as Goldberg points out if there are American fascists or heirs of the totalitarian progressives of the 1930s and 40s it is the neoconservatives. Like the old time Progressives the neoconservatives believe in war for war’s sake, imperialism, militarism and nationalism. Like John F. Kennedy (the real guy not the liberal myth), Lyndon Johnson and Theodore Roosevelt before them, the Neocons want an American empire and believe that American arms will bring democracy to the world. Like the progressives the neocons are willing to lie for the sake of their war effort and violate the rights of their fellow citizens. Like the progressives the neocons have enlisted God in their crusade, George Bush dusted off the tired old social gospel and began sermonizing from it. Fortunately the Neocons have not been able to trample civil liberties or engage in the kind of fascist gangsterism that FDR and Woodrow Wilson were allowed to get away with.
In conclusion Goldberg’s book is a good read, but hardly original (generations of libertarians have pointed out FDR’s fascist tendencies) or convincing. Goldberg is right to conclude that there was a progressive fascism in American but he fails to notice that it died shortly after World War II if not before. What happened in the 1960s and has happened since is certainly bad but it isn’t fascism. What’s needed is for a far more insightful libertarian writer to take a look at 20th century history and write a definitive and original book. Goldberg’s book isn’t it that but hopefully it could inspire such a work.
One final thought here, the fact that this book was brought out by a major New York publishing house and given wide attention shows that there is a strong discontent with the establishment view of American history and a strong appetite for libertarian thought out there. Hopefully Goldberg’s work will inspire Americans to learn the real history of their country and see how the leaders of past misled us and trampled our liberty in the process. If that is the case then maybe this book will be remembered as the opening shot in the war to reclaim American history for liberty.

Robert McNamara Is Dead but His Sick Legacy Lives On

2009-07-09T11:09:00.001-07:00

I see that tired old fool Robert McNamara is dead, McNamara for the 90% of the population that rightly and justly doesn’t know or care who about his memory was Lyndon Johnson’s secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.
McNamara revealed himself to be a hypocrite, a fool and perhaps even a fraud by his behavior during the war. During the Vietnam War McNamara blindly and enthusiastically supported the war effort. The war effort involved sending several hundred thousand American troops to Vietnam getting 60,000 of them killed for no apparent reason and wasting untold billions of the American taxpayers’ hard earned dollars on a battle that McNamara himself admitted was senseless. To make matters worse McNamara’s war effort involved massive bombings that killed or injured tens of thousands of innocent Vietnamese people, the people we were supposedly fighting the war to protect.
The worst part of the war was that we fought the Vietnam War to stop the spread of Communism. Yet it ended with Communist occupation of South Vietnam the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians by Communist thugs not to mention the exile of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese citizens who simply wanted to live their lives for something other than the glory of the Communist Party.
The saddest aspect of the story was that the US could have ended the Vietnam War in a few days by simply occupying North Vietnam. After the tremendous victory over Communist forces by US forces in the Tet Offensive in 1968 the US military could have quickly overrun North Vietnam forced Ho Chi Minh and his followers into exile and ended the war. Media coverage of the North Vietnamese Communist Party’s torture chambers, concentration camps and atrocities would have given the US a huge propaganda victory over Communism in the Cold War. A US victory in Vietnam would have also shown up the Soviet Union and the mighty Red Army for the paper tigers they really were, all the Kremlin could have done in the face of a US invasion of North Vietnam was to print a few editorials in Pravda condemning American Imperialism.
Or had McNamara if he had imagination and courage could have urged his boss LBJ to adopt the simple and effective strategy that Ronald Reagan used to win the Cold War without a single American coming home in a body bag. All the American soldiers and weaponry wasted in Vietnam could have been shipped to Europe to face the Red Army in Germany. The Kremlin would have had to respond in kind with massive military deployments of its own. Such an arms build up would have quickly bankrupted the Soviet Union and caused its collapse a decade or two earlier. I might also add that under such a strategy, the Americans killed or wounded in Vietnam would have enjoyed a pleasant interlude of drinking German beer and chasing Frauliens rather than hell in the jungle. As for Vietnam well, history demonstrated the minute the gravy train from Moscow was cut off the Vietnamese Communist Party couldn’t adopt capitalism or become or friend fast enough. This would have occurred with or without the Vietnam War or the 60,000 American deaths there.
McNamara of course admitted none of his mistakes. After leaving office, he began parroting the Liberal Establishment Party Line that the Vietnamese Communists were patriots fighting for their country and not thugs out to establish a vicious dictatorship. For this behavior McNamara was hailed as a great man by liberals who had denounced him as a baby killer a decade before.
McNamara at the end of the day was like almost all liberal elitists a hollow man with no real imagination or character a shallow fool who let The New York Times editorial page do his thinking for him. Like most of his ilk McNamara was betrayed and mistreated by the liberals yet he kept coming back to them at the end of the day because he had nothing. No imagination, no values, no loyalty just a desire for fame and power that ultimately destroyed him.
Of course the real danger from McNamara is that there are thousands of would be McNamaras in Washington right now ready to implement any imbecilic strategy or plan in exchange for a big office and a few minutes of media coverage every week. The solution to the problem of Robert McNamara then is not to condemn the memory of a pathetic dead man but to put an end to the monstrous system that put Robert McNamara in power, allowed him to destroy countless lives for no reason, rewarded him for his incompetence and honored him for his stupidity. Until that happens we’ll see an unending stream of McNamaras in Washington and a growing number of Americans coming home in body bags.

Electric Cars vs. Electric Trains

2008-07-28T20:51:00.000-07:00

The age of the electric car is probably upon us as I’ve noted elsewhere. Naturally many of you will ask does this mean that the electric train and mass transit are no longer necessary.
The answer is no, even with the electric car almost in your garage the electric train and trolley still have a place. If electric cars appear and make driving cheaper and easier there is still the problem of congestion. If driving gets really cheap because of electric cars there will be thousands more cars on the roads, the highways won’t be any bigger and congestion will be worse than ever. Given modern environmental concerns and property rights there will be little room to expand the highways so congestion will be worse than ever. The logical answer to congestion is rail transit which can move many more people in the same space than electric cars. My home state of Colorado faces this dilemma the main road into the mountains Interstate 70, is already jammed, the only way to expand it will be to bulldoze a couple of historic mountain towns. Naturally, those towns residents are now vocal supporters of a rail option.
Beyond space there are the limitations of the electric car, the top of the line electric car the Tesla Roadster has a range of 220 miles on a charge. This is more than enough to meet the driving needs of the average American, they can reach work, the supermarket, Wal-Mart, their church and the local airport. If they want to go farther they’ll need something else such as the train.
It’s a dirty secret that right now if an American wants to travel outside the big cities he or she needs a car. If I who live in Denver, want to visit Gillette, Wyoming, or Salida, Colorado, I have to drive. Sixty or seventy years ago, my grandfather who lived in Christiansburg, Virginia, could have walked down to his local train station and bought a ticket to both of those towns. It would have taken him a few days to reach those destinations but he could have reached them without a car. I can’t, in fact I can’t even visit some of the suburbs of Denver without a car. The economic havoc this is wrecking on rural and urban America is unimaginable and unreported. How many good hardworking people are moving away from the communities their families have lived in for generations because they lack decent transportation options?
This of course doesn’t bode well for those who can’t afford an electric car. Right now the electric car is a rich man’s vehicle, Mel Gibson and George Clooney can buy them. Average people can’t, if gas prices keep going up a lot of working class people are going to find themselves unable to reach their family members or their workplace because the bus doesn’t go there. Okay in the long run the electric car will be mass produced but it’ll take two or three decades to get into everybody’s garage, think personnel computers it took thirty years to get them practical enough for use in the home. There will be social, political and economic hell to pay when Joe Sixpack is standing at the bus stop looking at the gas guzzler rusting in his driveway and watching the local rich guy cruise past in his new Tesla.
It must be added The electric car would be the perfect vehicle for commuting to the train station. The commuter could drive to the station, plug the car in and commute to work. When they got back it would be fully charged for the trip home. With vast numbers of Americans now living forty or fifty miles from their work this will be a desirable alternative. It makes a great deal of sense only our politicians won’t see it because won’t be politically popular. Of course the hard headed businessmen known as real estate developers will see the sense and make it a reality. The politicians knowing who their real paymasters are will smile and go along.
The electric car then is a wonderful invention but it doesn’t make the electric train or electric powered transit obsolete. It merely augments them and makes them more vital than ever.

America’s Interurban Revival

2008-07-17T05:28:00.000-07:00

Much has been written about the revival of street cars in America but little has been stated about an equally exciting development the revival of Interurban rail lines.
Interurbans were essentially electric powered railcars (trolleys to the general public) that operated between cities and towns hence the term Interurban. Most of the Interurbans served rural and suburban lines and some of their routes quite long distances. Unlike most commuter trains (which only operate on weekday mornings and afternoons), Interurbans provided regular service all day.
In their heyday in the 1920s, Interurbans served virtually every America city and many of its small towns and suburbs. The famed Pacific Electric connected Los Angeles to Long Beach, Riverside and even Redlands as well as dozens of other communities. The Northshore line provided high speed service and streamlined trains between Chicago and Milwaukee. My home state of Colorado boasted Interurban lines between Denver and Golden and Denver and Boulder.
Competition from automobiles and buses killed off most Interurban lines by World War II. Only a few lines such as the South Shore line between Chicago and Gary, Indiana, and New York’s Long Island railroad remained by the 1990s.
Now something exciting is happening, Interurban Rail lines are being revived and a new technology diesel electric engines is being used to reduce costs. Three new Interurban rail lines using existing railroad track and new sleek diesel electric rail cars have been opened in North America in the last few years. The River Line which connects Trenton and Camden, New Jersey (http://www.riverline.com), the O-Train (http://www.octranspo.com) in Canada’s capitol, Ottawa, Ontario, and the Sprinter (http://www.gonctd.com/sprinter_intro.htm) which connects Oceanside and Escondido in north San Diego County. These projects are exciting because they restore transit rail service to areas that lost it decades ago and because they could serve as models for cheaper and more efficient rail transit in other American cities.
Several other Interurban lines are now in the planning stages in the United States. The most exciting projects are in my home town of Denver. Here the Regional Transportation District plans to implement electric powered commuter rail service to the suburbs of Thornton, Westminister, Commerce City, Aurora, Arvada Denver International Airport. This would be an Interurban system because most of these trains would use existing railroad tracks but operate on a time table comparable to a light rail system. RTD also plans to restore Interurban service to the nearby cities of Boulder and Longmont using an existing track and diesel electric trains. Interestingly enough this ambitious project called Fastracks (http://www.rtd-fastracks.com) would use Union Station, the historic hub of Denver’s Interuban system as its hub.
In Chicago the Metra commuter rail system which operates on all day basis, is planning its first suburb to suburb rail line the Suburban Transit Access Route or STAR Line (http://metraconnects.metrarail.com/star.php). This project would use diesel electric rail cars to connect Joliet with O’Hare Airport in a line that would loop around the city. This would be an Interurban project because it would use rail cars and existing track in a suburban setting.
Many more Interurban systems will be proposed and quite a few will be built in the years ahead with the price of gas skyrocketing. Real estate developers and home builders who have land and houses in bedroom communities and suburban office and industrial parks sitting empty will be prime movers behind these projects.
America’s far flung suburbs and exburbs are perfect environments for Interurban rail. With large numbers of Americans living twenty or thirty miles from their jobs and changing patters of living alternatives to the car become imperative. Interurbans which are cheaper and easier to build than heavy or light rail transit are a perfect alternative. They can use existing rail lines, abandoned rail road right of ways or unused sections of freeway right of ways to reach their destinations. No expensive subways or elevated rail structures are needed. It wouldn’t be hard for diesel Interurban cars to run on light rail tracks. In the city center and more crowded areas Interurbans can use the same tunnels, elevated lines, stations and cuts as existing transit systems, a huge savings. Philadelphia’s excellent transit system should be a national role model here, Los Angeles an example of what not to do.
The Interurban fits the suburban lifestyle perfectly it allows citizens to keep the flexibility and freedom of the car and access the efficiency and convenience of commuter rail. Residents of small towns and subdivisions can drive to park and rides park their cars and use the train. When they get off the train these people can walk or take a cab or shuttle bus to their final destination. One Interurban stop can easily serve a huge shopping mall or office park. Changing commuter patterns also favor Interurban rail many Americans now live in gentrified Downtown areas and commute to jobs in suburban office parks.
Interurban rail is an old idea whose time as come again as evidenced by the huge success of America’s light rail systems many of which resemble Interurban rail lines and often operate on old Interurban rail routes. The question is how can we can get our politicians to fund this practical and sensible transportation alternative?

Colorado’s Transportation Policy: No Vision and Lost Opportunity

2008-07-15T19:46:00.000-07:00

Nothing displays the lack of imagination and vision at Colorado’s state capitol than the failure of our state legislature to do anything about our state’s transportation crisis this past session.
As anybody who drives in Colorado knows our highways are overcrowded and falling apart. To make matters worse there is no alternative to the car in most of our state meaning that most Coloradoans will have to spend more and more of their limited income on gas to get around.
The crisis is made worse by the fact that we are heavily dependent upon tourism both in and out of state. Tens of thousands of Coloradoans work in the tourist industry or in jobs that service the tourist industry and hundreds of Colorado businesses depend upon the tourist industry. Virtually all of those tourists arrive by car they either drive in from out of state or the Front Range or fly into DIA and drive to their destination. High gas prices will mean that vast numbers of tourists simply won’t be able to afford to come here which could devastate our economy.
Closer to home large numbers of Coloradoans already drive vast distances to get to work and to the necessities of everyday life such as the grocery store and the doctor. Many of these people are poor and live in rural areas, lots of them will be forced to choose between gasoline and health insurance or gasoline and food because of high gas prices. Many other Coloradoans will end making another unthinkable sacrifice high gas prices will mean they simply can’t afford to go to the mountains which should be every Coloradoans right. With these people staying home many mountain towns where a lot of people are barely hanging on economically could be devastated.
Faced with such a crisis one would think our legislature and governor would be spurred to action. After all both houses of the legislature and the governor’s mansion are controlled by the supposedly eco friendly Democrats. One would think the Democrats would take the sensible measure of putting a measure for a sales tax to fund creation of a statewide network of buses and commuter trains. This measure could include purchase of the rail lines that link Front Range cities, the now abandoned Arkansas Valley rail line which links Pueblo and Vail and the creation of a state commuter rail line like New Mexico’s Rail Runner.
Also included in this could be construction of a high speed rail line along the I-70 corridor connecting DIA and Grand Junction. As well as a state wide over the road bus service to connect our smaller cities and towns. Some of the ground work for this is already laid in the form of RTD’s FasTracks and the FREX commuter bus between Denver and Colorado Springs.
The highly successful T-Rex rail and highway expansion project in Denver would be an excellent model of what could be done on I-70. Perhaps we could create an I-70 corridor Regional Transportation District to construct and operate an I-70 rail line and maintain and expand the highway and the Eisenhower tunnel. Or expand Denver’s RTD to the entire Front Range and neighboring mountain counties. These things would be in the legislature’s power.
Voters would be inclined to pass such measures they voted for FasTracks and T-Rex. Coloradoans don’t mind raising taxes if they think they’ll get something from the taxes. I imagine a statewide FasTracks would pass easily especially if it included commuter rail service for the entire Front Range. Note of course the state legislature doesn’t want to admit this because it would mean admitting that the TABOR amendment isn’t a straight jacket that impoverishes the state.
But our legislature as usual has done nothing but generate a little hot air and a few media sound bites about tolls on I-70. The legislators have done nothing so perhaps its time local municipalities, real estate developers and the tourist industry whose economic future is in danger got together and put something on the ballot themselves. If we don’t our state and especially our tourism industry might not have a future.

Barack Obama and the Fair Tax an Intriguing Opportunity

2008-06-28T12:50:00.001-07:00

Supporters of the Fair Tax, that is a national sales tax which would replace our nation’s idiotic income tax structure have an interesting opportunity in Barack Obama. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president hasn’t come out in favor of the Fair Tax but he hasn’t come out against it either.
Obama is clearly hedging his bets on the Fair Tax issue, the official Fair Tax website (www.fairtax.org) reports that John McCain has come out squarely against the Fair Tax. McCain has said that he would vote against the Fair Tax or a similar scheme. Obama has said the Fair Tax needs more study which is political speak for “it’s probably a good idea.” Obama’s position is intriguing indeed for it opens up the possibility of real reform on one of the most serious issues facing America today our tax system isn’t working.
Average people face a rising tax load while the government can’t find enough money to pay its bills even though the economy is booming. Meanwhile the rich who have lots of tax breaks laugh all the way to the bank and pay fewer taxes. Now any economist worth his salt will tell you that a national sales tax would raise enough money to pay off the national debt and pay for all the stuff we want our government to do. Virtually every other industrialized country on Earth has a national sales tax, the European nations and Canada which liberals worship have high national sales taxes.
Yet nobody in Washington is talking about such a tax because it would away Congress’s ability to create tax loopholes. This puts money in lobbyists and politicians bank accounts so it’s a sacred cow they can’t touch.
President Obama would be in a unique position to champion the Fair Tax or something similar. The presidency is the bully pulpit, the President can champion causes no other politician can yet even Presidents have limits. No Republican would be able to promote a National Sales tax because they would be vulnerable to media claims that such a tax would hurt the poor and the working class even though such claims are pure bull shit. Hence John McCain’s almost pathological opposition to such a measure, he is a rich Republican who lives in a country club so he can’t oppose the Fair Tax no matter how good that would be for the country and those that work for a living (a class of individuals that includes neither John McCain or Barack Obama which is part of our country’s present crisis).
President Obama, former community activist and card carrying liberal Democrat would face no such criticism if he came out in favor of the Fair Tax. Indeed he could point out why the Fair Tax is a good fundamentality liberal idea and sign it. Democratic Congressmen with their pockets stuffed full of tax lawyers money and media shills would be in no position to attack him.
But would President Obama make such a bold move? Well if President Obama’s poll numbers were falling and he faced a hostile Congress it would be possible. It’s happened before.
Remember Bill Clinton and Welfare Reform by the early 1990s it was obvious that Lyndon Johnson’s welfare system was a dismal failure. Lots of well documented research proved that federal welfare was actually keeping people in poverty and making social problems worse. Average working Americans were sick of welfare recipients laying around watching TV while their incomes shrank. Yet no Republican could sign off on welfare reform out of being seen as mean to the poor, even though welfare was hurting the poor. Enter Bill Clinton, having tried to govern as a traditional big government Democrat and failing miserably. Bill Clinton eagerly signed off on welfare reform and got reelected by a wide margin.
My guess is that Obama will pull a Clinton with tax reform, some time in 2009 or 2010 when his polls are falling and it looks like Jeb Bush is coming on strong in the polls, he’ll drag the big idea out of the closet. The big idea will be the national sales tax, imagine the public reaction if the president goes on TV on April 14 and says folks next year you won’t have to pay income tax or worry about a tax return if Congress votes for my new tax bill.
Of course President Obama’s position on the Fair Tax will be probably be a mute point because I seriously doubt Congress would pass such a sensible measure. Congressmen and Senators simply don’t want to take the money the income tax brings them out of their pockets. Congress will only go along with such a radical reform if their backs are against the wall, as they were in 1933 when the nation was facing the Great Depression. If the present economic crisis gets that bad we may see the Fair Tax.