Correct sentiment, bad execution

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Our idea of hell: Being stuck on a cross-country flight in the middle seat between two dudes rambling on about their fantasy football team. Ugh. We shudder at the mere thought because there is nothing more interesting on the planet than your own fantasy team and nothing least interesting than everyone else’s. That’s a bad combo.


So, we’ve been interested to see whether or not the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) moves to lift the ban which currently hangs in the balance.


Two Republican congressmen, however, are not going to wait for the FCC to act and have introduced legislation to keep the in-flight cell phone ban in place.



From The Hill:

Political momentum to keep a ban on cellphone calls during flights gained momentum Monday as lawmakers said it would be crazy to allow them.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) became the second lawmaker after Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) to offer legislation to keep the ban in place.

“Let’s face it, airplane cabins are by nature noisy, crowded, and confined,” said Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “For those few hours in the air with 150 other people, it’s just common sense that we all keep our personal lives to ourselves and stay off the phone.”

Right on! We couldn’t agree more. Keep at it fellas:

“For passengers, being able to use their phones and tablets to get online or send text messages is a useful in-flight option,” Shuster said. “But if passengers are going to be forced to listen to the gossip in the aisle seat, it’s going to make for a very long flight.”

Shuster and Alexander, who both face primary challenges in 2014, say they are responding to popular opinion.

“Imagine two million passengers, hurtling through space, trapped in 17-inch-wide seats, yapping their innermost thoughts,” Alexander said last week in a statement. “The Transportation Security Administration would have to hire three times as many air marshals to deal with the fistfights.”

“Stop and think about what we hear now in airport lobbies from those who wander around shouting personal details into a microphone: babbling about last night’s love life, bathroom plans, next week’s schedule, orders to an assistant, arguments with spouses,” Alexander said.

“Imagine this noise while you travel, restrained by your seatbelt, unable to escape,” the senator continued. “The FCC commissioners will earn the gratitude of the two million Americans who fly each day by deciding: text messages, yes; conversations, no.”

These guys are saying exactly what they are thinking but they’re wrong… dead wrong on the issue of legislating a cell phone ban.


Call us wacko birds but we thought the Republican brand was to not be buttinskis in private enterprise matters and though we realize the regulated nature of the airline industry is what it is, this would be a perfect opportunity to let the airlines themselves figure this out.


For those of you averse to free market mechanics, why don’t we just settle on the concept of freedom of choice. Freedom of choice for the airlines to make their own business decisions on how to handle this and freedom of choice for you the consumer on which airline to patronize depending upon those airlines’ business decisions.


How about smoking/non-smoking flights and/or sections? How about slapping a big fat scarlet letter on the cell phoners to shame them out of the market completely? We’ve essentially done the same thing to smokers, why not stigmatize these other social undesirables as well? The possibilities are endless.


Sorry, (R) congress-critters. Time to let the airlines and consumers figure out this one.


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Definition of the day

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What you are about to read was once derided by a political set of people not all that long ago:

CORPORATISM: the organization of a society into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and exercising control over persons and activities within their jurisdiction.

And in other totally related news:

How big of a headache has the implementation of Obamacare and the subsequent health insurance cancellations become for the Obama White House?

Big enough for the president to call on health insurance executives to help him explain the situation to upset Americans.

The White House is asking insurance companies to explain to millions of Americans the cancellation letters they’re receiving in the mail.

President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, met Tuesday with CEOs from some of the largest health insurers. The White House says McDonough updated the CEOs on fixes to healthcare.gov and problems with enrollment data sent electronically to insurers. McDonough also solicited input on whether the system is getting better.

The White House says McDonough urged insurance companies to “ramp up communication and education efforts” to those who have lost their insurance.

Millions have received cancellation notices, sparking outrage because Obama repeatedly promised that those who liked their health care could keep it. The White House says many of those losing coverage have better, cheaper options through the new exchanges.

No conflicts of interest here, right? Just what sort of pressure is the White House exerting on Big Health and how much of it is being exerted?


Are you comfortable with Big Health and Big Government being in bed together to the extent that they are? You would not be mistaken if you felt that the well-being of both are hopelessly tied together at this point.


Of course, the cynic in us would say that this sort of arrangement is precisely the sort of thing Republicans would play politics with and hold hostage during the next budget showdown and that is precisely the problem. The public-private enterprise that is the Affordable Care Act serves only those two entities and not the needs of the individual. Millions of Americans who have and will have their current insurance plans cancelled transitioned are finding this out.



This from Roger L. Simon:

Liberalism as practiced in today’s America is a chimera, not actually an ideology but an alliance of interest groups controlled by elites for the preservation of their (the elites’) wealth and power. The interest groups often seem to be working against their own advantage by being so affiliated (e. g. African-Americans are in the worst shape in years under Obama), but not the elites who have been able to thrive. These elites are also able to appear altruistic to themselves and others while behaving in manners that are hideously selfish and atrocious to the common good. Liberalism is not so much an ideology in our society as it is a shield, a defense mechanism for a lifestyle.

(italics, ours)



We scarcely recognize modern liberalism and it's once-adherents. What ever cronyism or in-bed-together arrangements (remember Haliburton and Enron?) is not recognized during this administration as the saintly good intentions and infinite and benevolent wisdom of the current crop of our betters in D.C. trump any sort of principle our liberal friends once professed to possess.


As it stands, we will call them out for what they are: hypocrites.

Link of the day

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Two more syllables to work into the National Anthem...

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...We've been demoted.

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"You bought me that?"

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We've tried to explain this concept or have used it in attempt to illustrate the folly of a particular government program previously on this blog but since we're honoring the life and revealed truth of Milton Friedman on the 100 anniversary week of his birthday, we figured we'd let him describe it.


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There are four ways in which you can spend money. Guess which way the government spends money?:


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Hey, why am I stuck over here on the left side of this post?

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We've never put together our definitive list but I think it might be safe to say this guy makes the 3-people-as-dinner-mates-list cut.


Happy 100th birthday to a man who is our favorite economist and one of the great quote machines of all time.

Here are just a few of our favorites:

. Industrial progress, mechanical improvement, all of the great wonders of the modern era have meant little to the wealthy. The rich in ancient Greece would have benefited hardly at all from modern plumbing - running servants replaced running water. Television and radio - the patricians of Rome could enjoy the leading musicians and actors in their home, could have the leading artists as domestic retainers. Ready-to-wear clothing, supermarkets - all these and many other modern developments would have added little to their life. They would have welcomed the improvements in transportation and in medicine, but for the rest, the great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful.

o Free to Choose (1980) p.148

Think of how much has changed in our lives since the advent and broad-based usage of the internet in the past 15 years. And to think that all the first cell phones could do back in the 80s was make phone calls. Shoot, when was the last time you actually made a phone call on your smart phone?

. A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

o Ch. 1 "The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom", 2002 edition, page 15

We're looking at you, statists.

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

- Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)

The road to hell is paved with statist intentions.

There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.

Free to Choose (1980), segment Who protects the consumer?

Nanny Bloomberg, we're looking at you.



Wow, so many more. You know, to hell with it. It's the guy's hundy, so we may be sharing more quotes and videos from him as the week progresses. That's how important we feel him to be.

The gift that keeps on giving

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The President is still getting rightfully hammered* for his inane, idiotic and uninformed statement regarding small businesses. In case you've been living under a rock or are left-leaning and were unaware of the remarks and the fact that the President is an economic illiterate, here is what he told a campaign stop crowd in Roanoke, Va., last week.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The left's counter to the pointed criticism of not just the words but the overarching world view the President holds towards markets, free enterprise and capitalism that would produce those words is basically: Well, there goes those right-wing loons again, trashing the government and not wanting to pay any taxes for basic services such as roads, schools and national defense (that the government would limit themselves to that basic model).

B-Daddy of the Liberator Today provided a fine counter to the left's counter:

Where to start? This is rich, of course, coming from a guy who didn't build a thing, who didn't even get decent grades in college for all we know. But the outrage is really about his tone of arrogance in telling us that unless we support his big fat welfare state, we are being ungrateful to our third grade teacher. Entrepreneurs know who helped them and they already said thanks. And all of us know that some government is necessary. We know that government establishing a rule of law, including contract law, and preventing corruption are key features that allow business to succeed. We wouldn't mind paying for government that was limited, small and worked; a government that stayed within its constitutional boundaries and its means.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if they actually built roads and dams. But as Mark Steyn reports, Obama's Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior has promised that "You will never see another federal dam." Ever.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if they weren't squandered on green energy projects that lined the pockets of the President's campaign donors.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if they weren't used to enable Mexican drug lords to gun down U.S. agents.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if they didn't support an increasingly corrupt welfare state.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if the government schools actually educated our kids.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if the President supported the rule of law and didn't pass laws through executive order.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if the military wasn't used as social experiment in diversity and biofuels.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if state workers didn't have better salaries, benefits, pensions and job security than the average taxpayer.

We wouldn't mind paying taxes if the President wasn't so arrogant about demanding that we should pay more.

Well said, we think you would agree.

Solyndra, Beacon Power, A123 batteries, Fisker... they all didn't do it on their own, either. They had the help of hundreds of millions of tax dollars to assist them in their failings.

The Department of Energy's green energy loan program is simply a manifestation of the President's comments from last Friday. If success is defined by your relationship to the government, then, of course, the cronyistic, Peronist loan program makes perfect sense.


*It's now been a full 7 days and this thing still has legs. Good. It provides a stark contrast between a statist, confiscatory government-centric economy and a individual based one where innovation and hard work are rewarded. Guess which one tells the better (campaign) story?

It's the freedom, stupid!

Via Dueling Barstools:





How far will we fall?

Freedom in the Fifty

... and speaking of freedom, Katherine Mangu-Ward for Reason.tv sits down with Jason Sorens and William Ruger to talk about how the different states of the union stack up on personal and economic freedom.

"...Because of America's federal system, states have a lot of ability to shape public policy in important ways that effect people's daily lives."

"A robust correlation between states that are free... and in migration."

"Maybe Oklahoma City will be the next Oz."


At the 3:35 mark there starts an interesting discussion regarding the illusion of cultural freedom vs. the reality of freedom.


Soren's and Ruger's "Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom" can be found here.


Our home state, California? No. 48, natch.

Entitlements vs. Rights

Give us a chance so we can dicover the most valuable ways to serve one another.

Dennis Prager from NRO on entitlements vs. rights and free markets vs. the welfare state:

What handouts do, and what the transformation of handouts into rights does, is create a citizenry that increasingly lacks the most important character trait — gratitude. Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent. That is why we teach our children to say “thank you.” But the welfare state undoes that. One does not express thanks for a right. So, instead of “thank you,” the citizen of the welfare state is taught to say, “What more can I get?”

Yet, while producing increasingly selfish people, the mantra of the Left, and therefore of the universities and the media, has been for generations that capitalism and the free market, not the welfare state, produces selfish people.

John Stossel was on O'Reilly the other night and claimed that private charity would step in and replace the broader government-sponsored and managed social safety net were it ever dismantled. We tend to agree with him but we wonder if we've passed the point of no return in that our desire and incentive to voluntarily give our time, talent and treasure to helping those less fortunate than us has been blunted to the point that our belief is no longer true.

When one starts claiming that a job, a house and health care are "rights", how is anything then not on the table to be provided and which results in the involuntary confiscation of those that create, build and provide those assumed rights?

We're seeing some positive signs particularly at the state level where steps are being taken to curtail the collective bargaining "rights" of government employee unions and also to prevent the automatic deduction (see also, confiscation) of tax-payer-funded salaries which go directly to political causes, most notably those that involve the further expansion of union "rights".

Rights supported by the confiscation of goods and services are not right at all and that's why we love that quote above that was taken from the Keynes v Hayek smackdown in the previous post.

Give us a chance = Free will not top down/command and control decision-making will allow...

So we can discover = our God-given talents, intellect and ability to figure out...

the most valuable ways = achieving the most efficient means...

to serve one another = of being a positive force in society whether in the market place or charity.

Radio KBwD is on the air

Going in a slightly different direction today but its one we think you will enjoy.


Who's up for a little macro-economics, freedom and liberty smackdown?



Ladies and Gentelmen, it's John Maynard Keynes vs. F.A. Hayek!

Give us a chance so we can discover the most valuable ways to serve one another.

Yeah, we should've figured: Hayek who has been dead for nearly 20 years has been digitally resurrected and has his own Facebook page, here.

O ye rogue monks

Regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead acts in favor of the commercial or special interests that dominate in the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.

Related...

Rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic or political environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth.

Yesterday, we saw how a handful of distributors and beer and wine makers are attempting to squeeze out the competition by restricting the ways and means by which wine and beer can be purchased and transported.

Today, we are seeing how the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey of Covington, LA who for the past 100 years have been hand-crafting caskets of "noble simplicity" are being sued by the state of Louisiana for selling caskets without a license.

The caskets are an important part of the Abbey's income but now the monks face crippling fines and even jail time for their wanton non-compliance.

The Institute for Justice has taken up the monks' cause which is detailed in the video below via Secular Apostate.

No free lunch

Milton Friedman was a violent man. No, he didn't advocate violence by any stretch. It's just that his ideas on the economy and that of freedom and liberty are in such violent opposition to the the current paradigm of the crony capitalism/economic fascism of Bailout Nation.

Part and parcel to this is the ruinous notion of a free lunch. Your Mom and Dad were right. There is no such thing and the longer we delay confronting unsustainable obligations be it, Social Security and public employee union pensions or all that wonderful health care we will soon be provided, the worse it's going to be.

Here's KT looking at the the other end of the equation: Profits:

All of the conversations revolve around what this or that government is going to do to solve the problems. This has the problem exactly backwards. Governments generate nothing, they only spend their nation's profits. Everything comes from profits. While austerity measures are all well and good, perhaps the more important issue is how to increase profits and how much they need to increase. Let's take the US as an example.

Read the rest about how punishing and disincentivizing profit-making by businesses both big and small is probably not such a hot idea at the link above.

And here's the object of a BwD man-crush on the subject of "free" making the dude with probably no less than a half-dozen degrees look like a 3rd grader. Profits allow for the illusion of free stuff. Somebody, somewhere is subsidizing what you formerly thought was free.



No free lunch

It's the freedom, stupid

President Obama is insistent that health care legislation gets passed through Congress and on his desk for his signature… Now! This, despite the fact that the majority of the provisions contained therein won’t take effect for 3 or 4 more years (except the taxes… count on those immediately).

It’s apparent that porkulus, cap and trade and health care reform aren’t as advertised. Porkulus wasn’t really about stimulating the economy as the administration now admits but rather about payoffs and establishing a baseline for all future spending. Cap and trade is not really about controlling carbon emissions but instead, increasing regulation of “unsavory” energy sources in favor of “correct” alternative energy and flat-out guilt for this country achieving the highest standard of living on the planet. And health care reform is certainly not about improving the quality of health care and controlling the costs but rather it is about establishing a framework by which government can intrude more and more into your personal matters.

So what gives? Why are proponents of the President’s agenda rushing at full speed to see their implementation when they themselves can offer no coherent defense of each new chink in the armor that is seemingly revealed on a daily basis?

What we are witnessing with the Obama agenda cram-down is a manifestation of the basic and fundamental distrust that statists hold for people exercising their freedoms and living lives largely unconstrained by proper rules of etiquette as outlined by them. Do they not know that bearing more than two children, grilling red meat, drinking Lite beer and driving SUVs is simply a shameful lifestyle?

We’ve held for years that the contempt the Wal-Mart haters have for America’s largest private employer does not have so much to do with Wal-Mart being non-union but rather the people inside, both the employees and the customers. Employees that have the temerity to declare they actually enjoy working for Wal-Mart and the customers with their children, aunts, grandfathers, etc. in tow, snatching up the bargains, eating at the in-house McDonald’s, buying silk plants and box wine and which all contribute to the ramshackle, outdoor bazaar feel to the place on a typical Saturday afternoon.

Wal-Mart at rush hour is the very picture of diversity that statists pay lip service to yet the white coastal effetes that dictate statist policy are loathe to recognize, let alone, admit… that’s America, mom-jeans and all.

We never thought that buying a horribly loud Hawaiian shirt for $8 could also be a delightful act of socio-cultural defiance… so make that two horribly loud Hawaiian shirts.

H/T: NRO

P.S. Absolutely no rhyme or reason for the picture of the '58 Chevy Bel Air taken at the weekly La Mesa car show a couple weeks back. It just felt right.

Quote of the Day

“We, the Chinese human-rights activists, are like the Jews were in Nazi Germany. We can be arrested, jailed, killed at any moment at the Communist Party’s whim. Why the Western media, political leaders, and intellectuals do not support us more is a mystery to us. When we all disappear, you will ask yourself why you did not do more. But it will be too late then.”

It has become conventional wisdom in some quarters that the Maoist brand of communism is derived from the Chinese culture itself, that the Chinese Communist Party is heir to ancient cultural traditions within China.

However, in East Asia that is home to disparate cultures and societies that have nevertheless witnessed human disasters as Mao’s Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution in China, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the boat people of Vietnam and the concentration camps of North Korea, there has been only one constant: Communism.

As we noted with respect to the ironies of Keynesian economics, the irony of the Chinese urban bourgeoisie maintaining their standard of living on the oppression of the rural Chinese would not be lost on one Karl Marx.

But ideology only counts for so much when it is power and stability that is sought by government rather than freedom and liberty being protected by that government.

T.R.M. Who?

Howard also understood the relationship between tyranny and gun control and kept his household protected from white supremacists with a submachine gun and a pistol in his waistband. The first gun control laws in America were actually imposed in the post-Reconstruction South, where they were tied to rolling back the rights that blacks had been granted as an outcome of the Civil War and the 14th and 15th amendments. (As an aside, many odious pieces of the liberal orthodoxy; gun control, prevailing wage laws and discriminatory policies towards private schools, for examples, have their origins in racist and bigoted motives.)

B-Daddy has more about a civil rights leader you may have never heard about, here.

Entrance Question

At what point does this cease being Bush’s economy and start becoming Obama’s economy?

No doubt, the Bush administration’s spending in his 2nd term and his fateful decision to pursue Bailout Nation in the fall of last year will continue to have far reaching effects but the fact remains that the Obama recovery plan and recent budget proposal has overwhelmed already the reckless spending of the Bush administration.

Since Obama unveiled his budget last week the stock market has not plunged wildly only to rebound in a similar fashion in a groping attempt to predict the effects of the budget but it has embarked on an steady and uninterrupted downhill grind. This grind indicates the market knows exactly what is in store for the future and remains wholly unenthusiastic about its prospects.

Then again, what would one expect when the “stimulus” plan is devoted to social programs rather than infrastructure upgrades and expansion and when his budgetary vision is centered around income redistribution rather than incentives to expand the economy and improve the economic quality of life for the American worker? Witness the illusory promise of a middle class tax cut that will be given right back to the government and then some because of other fees and taxes such as incoming state and federal carbon taxes and emissions regulations that will be both direct (at the pump or in your car) and indirect (passed-along costs from the energy and auto industry).

We are at the 15 month mark of this current recession (about the average in terms of length and job loss of the last 3 big post-war recessions) and there has been some good news with respect to falling home prices and increased home purchases as well as a steep fall-off of the price of oil and other commodities that has remained fairly stable for a while now. There has been no external bad news for the economy to absorb and process for months now – the reacting the market has done of late has been to internally-generated actions: continued haphazard handling of the financial crisis and an economic vision that is class-warfare driven and top-down and statist in nature.

There are signs that a recovery is imminent. Will this recovery be allowed to blossom? Its up to Obama but we’re not holding our breath.

Slumdog's Millions

Since the early 1990s, India has cut its poverty rate in half. About 300 million Indians—equivalent to the population of the entire United States—escaped the hunger and deprivation of extreme poverty thanks to pro-market reforms that increased economic activity.

Yet here in America we're turning away from market reform. Says Dalmia, "It's just this great conundrum that at the same time that deregulation and markets have produced such dramatic results in India, they are falling into suspicion in America." Dalmia's prescription for India is at odds with what politicians have chosen to "stimulate" the United States. "What India needs to do is continue apace with its liberalization effort, but expand it to include the poor. Release them from the shackles of government corruption and government bureaucracy."

Read more and watch video here from reason.tv