Thursday, November 17, 2016

If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts, we will fight them tooth and nail.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Suggestion of the day.

SUGGESTIONS for our new president:
1. Put a list of the 100 things Trump hopes to accomplish on a site labeled “Trump’s 100 goals” and update it regularly to show what he has accomplished.
2. Put a list of what Obama promised to do when he was elected and describe what he did for each item.
Emma L. Cate

It is very likely the first item has been done and is waiting for inauguration; the second may not have been thought of, and coupling them is a good idea. Thanks.

On another thought would be to tax money that is held off shore by American corporations at 10% and use the money for funding for infrastructure or debt reduction. See what happens when you retire, you have soo much time just to think of stuff. ;^)

Tim Bolgeo

Coupling the two might make the tax cut more palatable to Democrats (although presumably not to Ms. Warren); we do have infrastructure problems. Alas, the Trillion spent on stimulus since the 2008 collapse didn’t go to infrastructure improvements; indeed, from here at least, it’s hard to tell who did get all that money. It’s gone and I don’t know where. I make no doubt the incoming administration could keep better track of it; but writing into law some allocations of the new taxes would make sense.

Suggestions for incoming government

I think ADA is here to stay. I expect you have experienced the more beneficial aspects of ADA because of your reduced mobility. ADA works very well when dealing with new construction; we adjusted and now it is ingrained in the design. Where it drains us is when dealing with existing structures. Places that can be retrofitted economically have been completed. So exempt existing structures from ADA compliance.

Greg Brewer

I like that. ADA has its good points but a federal rule protecting the rights of drunks against being fired for being drunk on duty seems a bit extreme; but altering ADA is not simple and will not happen quickly. This could be implemented quickly, and would have an immediate economic effect without being a drastic change in ADA.

I have often pointed out that free trade does promote economic growth: we have the numbers. We also have the remains of our industrial centers, and the rust belt, where once we had thriving industries; we have people who have left the work force and are not officially unemployed – yet they are unemployable and unwillingly on welfare, absorbing tax money paid by those who are employed.

I asked my friend Dr. David Friedman if he had any suggestions for the incoming President. As always, he was forthcoming:

Unfortunately, the best advice I could give he can’t follow, politically speaking. That’s to declare unilateral free trade, the policy of Britain in the 19th century and Hong Kong in the 20th. That would not only be good for the country and set a good example for the world, it would eliminate the current practice of using free trade negotiations to pressure other countries to adopt policies popular with American voters in exchange for the agreement.

Beyond that, most of it is obvious. Support vouchers in D.C.. Get the education bureaucracy to stop pressuring universities to use a civil standard of proof in sexual accusation cases. Permit interstate health insurance sales.

One piece of advice which he might or might not listen to … . A brain drain is a problem when you are the country it is draining out of. It’s a good thing when you are the country it is draining into. If a hundred thousand or so of the smartest people in India and China migrate to the U.S. that is a good thing both in the short run and the long run. In the short run it means we have more smart computer people, more competent physicians. In the long run it means that the average intelligence of the population goes up, even if not by very much.

David

We also have:

Free Trade

I wouldn’t be surprised if all these free trade deals did lead to more rapid economic growth, when measured on a global scale. But the benefits were not so evenly distributed, both among competing countries, and among the workers in our country. Clearly, the damage to blue collar factory workers was considerable. The changes produced by globalization happened too rapidly, relative to the ability of many people to make adjustments to their careers.
Unfortunately, history does not allow do-overs. Even if renewed tariffs or renegotiated trade agreements does shift the balance back toward the US, you know perfectly well that only a fraction of the jobs that left will be coming back, due to automation. And part of the cost of leveling the field for US workers could well be overall slower growth globally. Whether or not the US could escape the impact of a further global slowdown isn’t clear to me.
I will also point to recent article in the New York Times which discusses a little mentioned trend, namely that global trade has been flat, or declining recently:
Craig
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/upshot/a-little-noticed-fact-about-trade-its-no-longer-rising.html

I do remind you: increased productivity leads to a higher paid work force, but a more productive work force produces more goods with fewer workers: that is, increased productivity per worker makes your nation more competitive as compared to other nations, but increased productivity does not automatically lead to new jobs: without economic growth it has the opposite effect.  Increased productivity – robots – can lead to new jobs, but generally that is in new firms. Regulations that discourage startups mean fewer new firms, and in a time of growing capability of robots – increased productivity per human worker – those regulations generally guarantee first unemployment, then what Mrs. Clinton called the deplorables.

 

Free trade and automobiles and the Iron Law

Jerry,

I’m currently a retired union member, and I was one for most of my working life since I got my first job at GM in 1968, right out of High School. 

Speaking from my personal experience of five years (68-73) working at GM, the union (UAW) killed the American auto industry. No one in the entire factory ever worked more than about 70% or 80% of the day. The final hour & a half or two hours of every shift were spent hanging around, reading, BSing, playing cards, drinking coffee and complaining about Japanese cars. When I first started, I tried to work all day. My co-workers sabotaged my equipment, put parts into bins instead of onto the conveyor lines to slow me down and physically threatened me. The UAW supported and defended these actions.

I gave up – I knew I wasn’t going to work there long — I was going to college at the same time — so I just did my quota each day and spent the rest of the shift studying.

My brother is 15 years younger than I.  He also worked for GM and the same dysfunction was also apparent to him.

Management might have been out of touch too, but the unions played their role as well.

Praying for Roberta,

Best,

Tom Locker

Bottom-up view of US auto industry

Dr. Pournelle:
Having a two-generation intimacy with the auto industry, I can vouch for the effectiveness of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy in Detroit, although my second-hand experience was in Cleveland.
My father worked at the Ford engine assembly plant for 30 years and my brother for two while he saved money for college. There was an inverse relationship between the ascendency of the United Auto Workers union and the quality of US automobiles.
When my father started at Ford in the early ’50s, the balance of power between Ford management and the UAW favored management. As the US became richer and more cars sold, Ford’s goal transitioned from producing quality cars at a profit to producing a profit for the least investment.
Along with this, the UAW’s goal changed from protecting its members to enriching and protecting itself. Union feather-bedding grew to nearly unsustainable proportions, both in union management and on the factory floor. Union management was populated by people who’d never set foot on a factory floor, while nearly illiterate line workers filled the ranks of the hourly workers, workers with an entitlement attitude.
My father, who worked in maintenance, told stories of equipment going offline because of parts pilferage and workers finding out-of-the-way places to drink, gamble, or sleep.
My brother’s job was to break down engines that were inoperative and send the parts back through the assembly line; about one in five from his experience in the ’70s. He told stories of missing valves, pistons installed incorrectly, and hamburger wrappers and other trash found inside cylinders.
All the while, wages and benefits skyrocketed as the UAW became de facto management. He told stories of engines with missing parts because female line workers were put into positions where they did not have the strength to install parts, so they just didn’t. Incompetent employees were unfire-able, instead reassigned to less-and-less demanding positions.
Lay-offs were obsolete. Unneeded employees were put in “employee banks” where they were supposed to show up for “work” and sit in employee lounges on the off chance they might be again be needed. Guess how many actually showed up. Those actually laid off were paid 75-percent of their base pay not to work.
My family did benefit from the rising wage and benefits tide, moving from the lower middle class to the upper middle class, but the joke was that when my father died and his retirement benefits ceased the average cost of a Ford dropped $3.
It’s little wonder that better, less expensive, higher-mileage offshore cars brought an end to Detroit.
Pete Nofel

Electoral College

In the aftermath of Mr. Trump winning the Presidential election despite having lost the popular vote, there has been a lot written and said lately about States Rights, Federalism, and the structure of the electoral college. While not a deep student of history, I have at least a basic understanding of how the system we have in place came to be. I have an appreciation of how the system was intended to provide protection for the interests of smaller states, and thus gives them some advantages, such as equal representation in the Senate, and extra weight in the electoral college. (The extra weight they have in the House of Representatives seems an aberration of changes made in the early 20th century, and not the handiwork of the founding fathers.)
What occurs to me as I watch this debate play out is that just because something was once historically relevant and important, doesn’t mean it is always remains relevant or important. This was driven home to me recently, reading an essay in National Review in which the author suggested that the popular vote shouldn’t be as relevant as the electoral college, and offered this observation:
Do we want a president who wins by running up the score in one or two states, or do we want a president who wins by garnering narrower victories in a wide array of states?
This was jarring and somewhat bizarre question, because, in terms of my political identity, I have never ever thought of myself primarily as a Resident of the The State of XX, where XX is the code that terminates my address. I have always thought of myself of as an American. The state that I live in just happened to be a side effect of other more important decisions that I have made in my life, or that my parent made. I was born in Wisconsin, and since have lived in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, and then again Ohio. At no point have I ever felt a strong political affiliation or association to any one of those states. Thinking about my news viewing habits, I am far more knowledgeable about what is happening nationally, than I am about local and state developments. I watch mostly national news, read mostly national newspapers. Perhaps this is because the longest I’ve ever lived in any one state was 14 years, and many times my periods of residence have been much shorter.
Perhaps if I had been born in 1750, in the one of the original states, spent my whole life that state, fought in their militia as part of the Revolutionary War, and paid attention mostly to Local and State politics, I would have a different feeling about the importance of States Rights. But that hasn’t been my life. Nor has it been the life of most of my family or colleagues.
So the idea that it should matter to me that a candidate was “running up the score” in another state just seems foreign and bizarre. At a visceral level, I find it hard to accept that a vote cast in California, or New York, or Texas should matter less than a vote cast in Wyoming, or Montana, or the District of Columbia, just because it might have mattered in 1776.
It seems an inevitable consequence of a highly mobile society that people will come to expect that basic rights, and the value of their vote, should remain constant as they move around the country. In particular, as mobility homogenizes the nature of the country, as every state become ethnically and politically more diverse, organizing the electoral college around state geography seems to be more and more antiquated. The big divides these days are not so much defined by state geography as by the divide between rural and urban. So, despite the historical usefulness of the electoral college, it does seem that outcomes like this will eventually have a negative effect on public perception of the legitimacy of the outcome.
Craig

the Electoral College

Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I have encountered people saying that the Electoral College ought to be abolished. Obviously the votes to do it aren’t there. But practicalities aside, the usual argument for doing so seems to be that the Electoral College sometimes produces results different from the outcome of a nationwide popular vote; and this seems to be taken as self-evidently unacceptable.
Really? The United States is a federal state, not a unitary one. In a unitary state, the population votes as a whole (if voting is allowed, of course). But a federal state is made up of subunits, and those subunits have to have some separate influence on political decisions, or they’re no more than a facade. So the claim that not following the nationwide popular vote seems to be equivalent to the claim that federal states are always unacceptable, and only unitary states are legitimate. Do the people saying this really want to claim that every federal state on Earth is illegitimate? It seems a bit arrogant to prescribe that every state must have the same structure, no matter what its founders proposed or its people consented to.

William H. Stoddard

Precisely.

I was born in the Depression (1933) in Louisiana ad we moved to Tennessee when I was a very early age. My Tennessee grade schools had a year of state history as well as a year of national history, and I certainly thought of myself as a Tennesseean as well as American.

There would have been no United States save for the Connecticut Compromise that gave the smaller states some means of resisting the majority votes; just as debate on the electoral college is moot since ¾ of the states will never voluntarily ratify any such amendment. We’ll amplify this subject later, but does it not occur to you that the big problem is we have given the Congress too much to do? Too much power over our personal lives? Made us in our personal lives subject to one (national) rule to fit all, when there are many different and defensible opinions about what are good laws and what are mere opportunities for bureaucrats to mess about in our affairs?

Mr. Trump has often pointed out that Roe v Wade imposed a national rule on abortion, but if that ruling were overturned, the subject would be the responsibility of the States; meaning that local majorities would govern a matter on which there seems to no overwhelming agreement? The result would be different laws in different states; precisely as intended by the Convention of 1787 which did not grant Congress any power over abortion whatever. (Or over a very great many subjects which are now controlled by the Federal Government, making it easier for lobbyists: they only have to give money to 100 Senators and 435 Representatives, not importune 50 different state legislatures. I invite you to contemplate this.)

The War of Northern Aggression

(To distinguish from current calls for repetition of the late unpleasantness…)

Jerry,

As you know, the Civil War was fought for many reasons. Slavery was one, but states rights, and protests of tariffs and taxes on southern agriculture that benefited the industrializing north were among the reasons. The latter part gets forgotten.

I’ve grown up with the Stars and Bars all of my life, and have seen it as a symbol of states rights and defiance against federal overreach, not of racism. Of course, other people will differ in their interpretation of any symbol (just as the swastika started as an Indian subcontinent peace symbol – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika).

Coming from southern Kentucky, I also had relatives who fought on both sides of the “late unpleasantness” (my great-great-grandfather apparently crossed into Tennessee and fought as a Confederate, and one of his brothers died in a Union prisoner of war camp; at least one of their uncles supported the Union); as appropriate, I tend to decorate their grave markers with the Confederate battle flag.

Jim

Tariff very much so. A tropic we will discuss another time.

Dear Jerry Pournelle:
Anthropologists distinguish between ‘honor culture’ and ‘dignity culture’. In honor culture, there are superior persons with honor, and inferior persons without; one must earn the privilege of being treated with respect. In dignity culture, respect is a right, had equally by all; it denies that there are superior or inferior persons. Honor cultures tend to exist in places without prosperity or reliable rule of law; dignity cultures tend to exist in places with those blessings.
Therefore dignity culture denies that there  are superior and inferior persons; yet considered as a culture, it is manifestly superior to honor culture! And conversely, honor culture demands that all under it must earn the privilege of being treated with respect, but when compared to dignity culture, and if you go by results, then it has clearly not earned that respect!
There is a chicken-and-egg problem here; are honor cultures that way because they’re too poor to afford a working rule of law, or do they lack effective rule of law because they’re that way? Does dignity come from prosperity, or does prosperity come from dignity? I suspect that the flow of causation is to some extent circular.
This also involves a fallacy of composition. Characteristics of the individual are not necessarily characteristics of the society.
– paradoctor

I will publish this with comments, but I do not concede your “therefore” that the second paragraph is proven by the first. 

Query: is an army company an honor or a dignity community?

The Dignity/Honor Paradox

I’m not sure. Ask an anthropologist. Within the company, it’s all for one and one for all; that’s dignity. But rank does have its privileges; and the company’s purpose is to rudely defend the honor of the nation. So equality and inequality intertwine; the altruism of individuals supports the egotism of the collective.
Maybe I was too judgmental about entire ways of life. But where would you rather live: Sweden or Pakistan?

I grant that the ‘therefore’ between paragraphs 1 and 2 is incomplete; the causation probably also flows in the reverse direction. Folk in lands without law or wealth must defend their honor; and honor culture in turn ensures that the land acquires neither law nor wealth. (This is a memetic/cultural variant of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy: cultural memes have a vested interest in the evils that make them necessary.)
And conversely: does innovation and prosperity support a culture of inherent worth, or does a culture of inherent worth support innovation and prosperity?
Like many paradoxes, the Dignity/Honor Paradox can be darkly comic. Consider the spectacle of the Limousine Liberal, who preaches equality and thus attains superiority. Now consider his dark shadow, the Deplorable, who preaches the existence of inferior persons, and proves it by his example.

I will do this as a dialog, but I do not accept that dignity and honor are mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive. Of course I would rather live in Sweden, and would have even in the days of Gustav Adolphus.  Of course my ancestors left to go defend Normandy for the French.

Perhaps ‘dignity’ is not the exact term. “Principle” may be closer, or “self-worth”. “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me”; not an honor-culture concept. And just as honor culture sins by pride, self-worth culture sins by vanity.
I agree that opposite concepts can coexist in societies and even individuals. Honor is emotional, dignity is intellectual; and emotion and intellect often coexist at cross-purposes in individuals – and even societies.

Mexico’s Diplomatic Network

You have this quotation you like to use, “immigration without assimilation is invasion”. Through that lens:

<.>

Mexico has 50 consulates in the United States, the largest diplomatic network deployed by any single country in any other worldwide.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were 11.6 million Mexican immigrants in the United States in 2014. Of those, 5.8 million were undocumented, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are also more than 23 million U.S.-born people of Mexican origin, most of whom could be eligible for dual citizenship under Mexican law.

</>

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mexican-government-launches-plan-to-protect-immigrants/ar-AAknOmR?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

A diplomatic network of 50 locations that services 11.6 million of its citizens and potentially 23 million more dual citizens? This is significant.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The current immediate policy is to deport all the illegal aliens convicted of felonies, and to do so as soon as possible. Since there are up to two million of these this will be complex and expensive. It will also cause a fair amount of internal stress and disaffection, but there is an overwhelming popular agreement that it should be done – extending well into the American-Latino communities who are the victims of many of the crimes that got these people convicted in the first place. What will be done with “status offenders” – those whose only known crime is being here without papers – particularly those who were brought here well before age of consent – will be subject to considerable discussion and I suspect negotiation, and won’t happen immediately anyway.

I repeat, voting without citizenship is a federal crime, and how much of that actually happened will influence the debate on status offenders.

The Media’s Mea Culpa

The NYT’s soul searching would be rather more believable if they had a soul.

Cordially,

John

NYT “rededication”

The thing about the NYT “rededication” is that after going powder puff easy on Obama for eight years and pushing Hillary and trashing Trump, they will “rededicate” and trash Trump for four or eight years. They’re not apologizing, they’re laying groundwork in the guise of being almost an “apology”.
J

Porkypine’s Analysis:

(MK 2 revised version) (long) Porkypine on Brexit Effect & Vote-Manufacturing

(Rewritten, as I noticed a pattern in the iffy states after sending the

original.)

Jerry,

Indulge me while I start this off with a bit of bragging on election predictions I made privately to you the night before. They’re also useful background for what follows, but yes, I’m enjoying myself for a moment here.

“If the current RCP state-by-state poll averages are dead-on, Clinton wins tomorrow, 272-266. In the national polls, her lead has crept back up to 3%. I’m deeply suspicious of that number, as it includes a whole bunch of recent-days 4, 5, 6, 7% leads from polls that had her up by double digits two weeks ago. But, it doesn’t matter if it’s 3% or (my

guesstimate) 1-2%, other than for her odds of winning the popular vote while (one hopes) losing the election.” (I was too conservative – Clinton’s latest popular vote lead is 0.6%.)

I went on to describe the amount of “Brexit Effect” (under-polled Trump

voters) needed for him to win as being around 1% if there were no surprises whatsoever, but multiple points if any losses in the nominally closest states caused him to need some of the less close ones – Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, etc.

Yeah, I wimped out and put his overall odds of getting enough Brexit Effect at 60:40 against. But I called the course the win actually took pretty closely – there was 0.9% Brexit Effect in RCP’s “Battleground States” overall, with 3.1% in Pennsylvania and 3.7% in Michigan enough to overcome the anti-Brexit surprise losses in New Hampshire and Nevada.

(I’ll freely admit that Wisconsin also coming in at Brexit 7.5% just gobsmacked me. Do NOT mess with Scott Walker.)

Cheating!

All that said, let me bring up one earlier prediction I also made to

you: That the election would hinge on how much Trump’s Brexit Effect might exceed the Dem “margin of cheating” – that typical 1-2% edge in close elections they hold in states where they have major vote-manufacturing operations. Places where it can look close, till the late tallies from Chicago or Philadelphia come in with just enough graveyard votes for a D win.

My view, FWIW, is that this goes on in a LOT more places than Chicago and Philadelphia these days. Any place local law enforcement turns a blind eye (IE Dem-controlled urban enclaves) there are dead people voting, illegals voting, busloads of people from the next state over voting, collected loads of mail-in ballots marked straight D, voting machines mysteriously tallying D votes for R button pushes… There’s a reason DOJ has been rabidly anti-citizenship proof for registering and anti-ID requirement for voting for the last eight years. (Try that on Customs or the TSA.)

Ah, but can I prove it? Well, I was watching the numbers pretty closely this year for other reasons, but I had that in mind too.

Clue #1: The final RCP national average showed 2.7% Brexit Effect. The ten best-polled battleground states (nobody really expected Minnesota or Missouri to flip) averaged 0.9% Brexit effect, only one-third as much.

Say WHAT?!

Now, states vary. (That’s a major reason for having them.) But you’d think that a sample of ten states out of the fifty, as “battlegrounds”

by definition right across the middle of the political spectrum, polled intensively by most of the same national pollsters, really ought to come in reasonably close to the overall national poll average.

But we see almost two points less Brexit Effect in the core battlegrounds than nationally. Both sides were campaigning all-out there, which should roughly even out. Even with the huge effective sample sizes, I’d not be surprised by a point of slop. But two points?

What else might account for near two points of pro-Dem difference in the most closely-contested states? Hmmmmm.

Not proof yet, no. But indicative.

Diving deeper into the numbers, there’s more.

A given number for Brexit Effect is actually the difference between two

numbers: How much Trump exceeded his final RCP poll average, minus how much Clinton exceeded hers. Tabulating those numbers separately, by state, gets interesting.

Nationally, Trump’s final RCP poll average was 42.2%, his (latest) national vote total 47.1%, so he beat his final polls by 4.9%.

Clinton’s final national poll average was 45.5% (a 3.3% poll lead) and her latest vote total 47.7% (an 0.6% popular vote lead) so she beat her final polls by 2.2%.

Keep that national ratio in mind: Trump beat his final polls by 4.9%, while Clinton beat hers by 2.2%. (The difference is our 2.7% national Brexit Effect.) Call it a ratio of a bit over 2:1, magnitude roughly 5% to 2%. Again, you’d expect the closely-polled middle 20% of contested states to at least be close to this, with some individual state variations. You’d expect.

What you actually get is this:

(TBPb is % Trump Beat his Polls by, CBPb is % Clinton Beat her Polls by, states are listed in Brexit-Total order,and a fixed-width font makes it all come out readable.)

Brxt TBPb CBPb

MI 3.7 5.6 1.9

PA 3.1 4.5 1.4

NC 2.8 4.0 1.2

FL 1.1 2.5 1.4

GA 0.9 2.1 1.2

NH 0.4 4.6 4.2

AZ 0.1 3.2 3.1

VA 0.1 2.7 2.6

CO 0.0 4.0 4.0

NV -3.2 -0.3 2.9

Again assuming about a point of slop, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina all look reasonable in light of the national numbers. Brexit totals are all close to the average, Beat-Polls ratios all somewhat over 2:1, Beat-Polls magnitudes all within a point or so of 5% to 2%.

(Regarding PA, turnout in Philly was not outrageous – looks like the Philly machine may have assumed it wasn’t really needed. Ditto Detroit.)

Florida and Georgia both come in at Beat-Polls ratio a bit under 2:1, with magnitudes also a little low, and Brexit totals quite low – I’d guess some possible Broward County/Fulton County effect.

Arizona, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia, now, there’s something quite odd going on. All show roughly equal Trump and Clinton Beat-Polls-by totals. Where’d the extra point or two of Clinton votes come from? Maybe peculiar local demographics. Maybe not.

Some thoughts:

– Clintonista Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored voting rights to

60,000 felons right before the election, over 1.5% of the total voting.

– Colorado has universal vote-by-mail, lax controls over who can collect and return ballots, and a largely Dem-ruled metro area around Denver. CO looked to be in play late, so local Dems had reason to make sure it wasn’t.

– Half of Arizona – Maricopa County – has on-request mail-in ballots, a now-Dem controlled city (Phoenix) at its core, a one-day judge-imposed window when bulk collection of mailings wasn’t a felony, and an all-levels Dem effort to beat Sheriff Arpaio (successful.) Arizona as a whole still went for Trump, but don’t count on that lasting on current trend. There was also (premature) talk of AZ being in play, and optimistic local Dems were apparently trying hard to tip it this time.

– New Hampshire has easy absentee ballots, was a crucial state in the

270-268 Trump narrow-win scenario (his only obviously plausible path to winning as of Tuesday morning) and also hosted a close Senate race.

Given those, I wouldn’t rule out a significant Dem vote-manufacturing project in NH even if it does seem out of character.

As for Nevada’s results, all I can say is it looks as if something deeply wrong happened in metro Las Vegas last Tuesday. Harry Reid may be soon finally gone, but his legacy lives. Nevada was, FWIW, also a crucial state in the Trump 270-268 narrow-win scenario, and also had a close Senate race.

Conclusion

Widespread fraud proven? No. But far too probable, by the numbers and the circumstances, to be ignored.

I’d say that merely stopping DOJ’s current war against states trying to ensure their elections are kosher – this DOJ notoriously opposes proof of citizenship to register and proof of identity to vote – isn’t enough.

I’d really like to see a post-cleanup DOJ protecting the rest of our voting rights by actively going after local vote-fraud operations in Federal elections. (This may take a thorough purge of the pro-fraud ideologues currently running that part of DOJ.)

Given that some of these probable fraud efforts may have been done in a last-second rush, I’d think New Hampshire and Colorado – both states only became close late – might be fruitful grounds for investigation.

And given the sheer egregiousness of the results, Nevada might also.

Porkypine

Afterthought: No campaign has unlimited resources. OH and NC Clinton’s campaign apparently just conceded. Organized cheating in FL, NV, and NH makes sense as attacks on the most vulnerable parts of Trump’s narrow path to 270. CO and VA would have been insurance against his taking the most obvious alternatives. And GA and AZ were just an attempt (delusional, it turns out) at spiking the ball, running up her totals.

Trump meanwhile punched deep into their rear and took PA, MI, WI, and almost MN. Looks like they never really believed any of those places were actually at risk. If they’d gone all-out in PA and MI instead of digressing to AZ and GA… Hmm. WI gives Trump the 270 win anyway, 10 EV countering loss of NH’s 4 and NV’s 6. They’d have had to have the imagination to go all-out in WI as well.

No surprise – it looks like Clinton was done in by complacency and lack of imagination.

Thank you. This warrants study.

It is important to investigate voter fraud involving illegal – undocumented – aliens because that really is an act of invasion and it is a federal crime. I suspect some of the places where it was widespread (if it happened) would not affect the electoral college vote, but will affect the narrative about “we won the popular vote” – whish is about the only consolation Democrats have from the train-wrecks for them that were the last two elections. Governorships, statehouse, mayors, even dogcatcher elections…

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Suggestion of the day for the incoming government:

There are many regulations with employment level triggers: this regulation (or law) applies only to those firms with 10 or more employees; or 20 or more employees; or 50, or 100, and probably more. DOUBLE those numbers, particularly the smaller ones. Laws that apply to firms of 10 or more now apply only to places with 20 or more; 20 becomes 40; etc.  This would immediately allow small businesses to grow, and doubtless many would do so.  We know that the laws are not vital in the sense that workers cannot live without them, because we permit it for firms of say 19 employees; adding a 20th would greatly increase  costs, which is why the business doesn’t grow. Etc.; surely the point is obvious.  This could be done on the first day of the new Congress, passed by both houses and signed by the President; and it may well have a dramatic effect on the growth of the economy.

 

I invite readers to send their own suggestions.  I will publish those I can agree with.  Someone might notice.

 

 

It’s been a while, and I apologize; I have a lot to do. Just had lunch with Larry and Steve, and Steve came up with a significant plot point that should bolster our growing book on interstellar colonies quite a bit. It took some discussion to get it right, and all’s well. Progress is being made. As it happens, at lunch we met a neighbor who had read all our books, but had never met Larry or Steve.

Roberta looks better than ever, and there is a glimmer of progress with her right hand. Her speech is noticeably better each day, she’s eating better, and her blood pressure is better. Monday I had an appointment at Kaiser, which is more than half way to Holy Cross, so I proceeded out to Holy Cross on my own, then back to Chaos Manor, all on surface streets. No incidents, but it is exhausting, which is why I didn’t have anything Monday. Yesterday was more complicated, but I got some work done after a visit to Roberta thanks to Mike Donahue.

Much of this morning was eaten by simple household problems, none serious, like changing batteries in a wall clock: getting the clock down and changing batteries was simple, but getting the clock hung back on the wall was more than I, or Larry, or Steve could do. I think I just figured out a way but now I have to wait for the Elmer’s Glue-All to dry to see if it worked. Ah well. Obviously I can write this without a clock on the wall. I suppose it could be said I don’t need one at all, but the big wall clock is easier to see than the tiny time and date at the bottom of the computer screen, and that’s not always visible anyway.

As you would suppose, Washington DC is a boiling kettle of turmoil just now as they must fill about 4,000 political appointments, inevitably disappointing some job seekers but more importantly their backers and followers; Trump’s majority is not a loose and variable a collection of minorities and interest groups as is the Democratic Party which is a loose coalition of interest groups, some of whom hate each other. The first appointments I thought masterful: the Vice President Designate as head of the Transition Team, Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff, and Stephen Bannon as “Chief Strategist”; I gather that a Chief Strategist is to a Chief of Staff as a Chief Scientist is to a Chief Engineer: you have to listen to Chief Scientist, but they have no line authority. On the other hand, they have access, and more time to be persuasive.

This is an interesting set of appointments. Mr. Priebus has good friends in Congress, and considerable “establishment” experience; Mr. Bannon is of course an old line advocate of states rights and gets along very well with Mr. Trump’s early and most enthusiastic supporters. Mr. Bannon will cease not to remind Trump that a vast majority of those who voted for him want him to drain the swamp and get the arrogant New Class government officials out of the people’s lives; while Mr. Priebus will remind him that government must go on, and it is important to have experienced civil servants who can do those things necessary and proper for the United States to function.

Put that way, I do not see what the controversy is: there are certainly bureaucratic excesses, regulatory agencies that exist mostly to give work to the regulators and their enforcement agents without regard to the need for the regulatory activity– bunny inspectors come to mind – and we may be sure that the mood of the civil service is fear for losing their jobs. This is not a new controversy, and few of my readers will find anything to regret in having a White House advocate continually reminding the President of who elected him; and I suspect not many who do not understand that some Federal activities are necessary and proper, and some are even vital to the health and even survival of the United States.

Much of the rest of the controversy over Mr. Bannon is artificial and purely political. I suppose there are some who genuinely hate the Confederate Flag, and I have some sympathy with those offended by it flying over their state Capitol buildings; but surely Americans who choose to display the Stars and Bars in front of their own homes have as much right to do that as do Americans of Mexican descent to display the Mexican flag? I was brought up to venerate the Confederate Flag, but not to fly it above the American Flag. I know that many of the troops in Korea during that war fought under the US Flag, but carried Zippo cigarette lighters adorned with the Stars and Bars, some with an old southern Colonel muttering “Forget, Hell.” And quite a few were buried with Confederate Flags although the flag over their coffins (if there was time to get one, which was not often at first) was the Stars and Stripes. Yes, I understand that some still would prefer slavery, although I have never met anyone who would admit it. Some would prefer Jim Crow, and I do know some of them although they never bring it up around me.

I was taken with Robert Burns and “A man’s a man for a’aa that” in high school, and was despised by some of my classmates (but not the Christian Brothers teachers) for doing so; but I had ancestors on both sides in the Civil War, and I have no desire to urinate on the graves of any of them; nor to despise the flags of either side. My generation will soon be gone – most already is – but I for one do not despise those who died defending Lookout Mountain and Atlanta any more than I despise the children of those freed. It was after all a long time ago.

My Viking ancestors used to raid Ireland for slave girls. By some Christian magic they found they had acquired wives, and then a celibate priest was telling them when they could sleep with them. Now in the Scottish Isles, they celebrate Viking holidays as well as the traditional Christian holidays; and both are civilized, with no screaming thralls cast into the peat bogs in Sweden nor Denmark nor Scotland nor Ireland nor Shetland.

I can only wish those offended by flags, and even insults, that they be spared confronting enemies with swords and bombs; and to assure them that my generation and those after me were willing to risk their lives in the belief that we were in fact sparing them that.

No doubt Mr. Bannon has said many things I disagree with. I would have thought he has every right to do so. So have most Democrats, and certainly both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have.

Abolish Electoral College?

The left is still upset that democracy, despite their best efforts, didn’t go their way. Now they want to abolish the electoral college; Reid was making some noise about it but Boxer actually put in a bill:

<.>

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who is also retiring at the end of this year, introduced a bill Wednesday that would abolish the Electoral College.

</>

https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/reid-urge-lawmakers-hold/2016/11/16/id/759279/

Doesn’t this require a Constitutional Amendment?

Abolishing the electoral college will allow increased pandering and it generates a perception of diminished States’ rights. I doubt such notions are popular in the current political climate. Is diminishing States’ rights their objective or does is this simply because they lost one time too many?

And it will be most interesting to see who supports this, parrots it, popularizes it, and funds any activities associated with it. I’d like to know if this is the last hoorah of some old folks at their retirement party or if this is cause for concern.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Of course it requires a constitutional amendment, which requires not only super majorities in both houses of Congress (the President has no say), but also ¾ of the States. The electoral college, which gives each state at least three votes, was part of the compromise that induced the smaller states to accept the Constitution; at the time Virginia was huge (in population) compared to most other states. If you look at the map of the election, you will see that this is unlikely. A bill to abolish the college will not even receive a vote; a resolution of amendment could not possibly gather 2/3 of each house, nor ¾ of the states.

 

Where was the Secret Service when #AssassinateTrump and #RapeMelania were trending?

As all eyes in America remain trained on the persistent anti-Trump protests spread across several cities and states — there’s a war unfolding in the virtual world that has shockingly remained unaddressed by law enforcement agencies.

 

Free trade and automobiles and the Iron Law

Dear Jerry –

In your discourse on free trade, you wrote, “A lot of this changed when Japanese and German cars began to be more common, and the improvement was obvious. I put that down to the competition from free trade.” I offer a slightly offset view. One of the assumptions behind free trade analysis is that both parties are economically efficient. In the larger sense, this was not true of Detroit – arrogance and complacency were on full display.

One of my fraternity brothers worked for a summer at the headquarters of GM in the mid 70’s, when the better quality and gas mileage of foreign cars (especially the Japanese) was beginning to give Detroit serious heartburn. He reported that the executives were honestly puzzled by the situation. It turns out that all of the high-level execs had company-provided cars. These cars were, of course, replaced each year with the latest model. Furthermore, each day their cars were refueled and serviced. Gas mileage? Not a problem in their world. Reliability? Their cars ran just fine. Their personal experience contradicted the reports which they were receiving, and in such cases personal experience tends to dominate. At least until the inconvenient external reality comes crashing down on them.

I submit this as an unintentional example of your Iron Law. The organization, in providing for its members (or at least the top level) produced an organization which was ill-equipped to adapt to changes in its market, and thus interfered with the organization’s nominal function – selling cars.

Regards,

Jim Martin

 

Oh but I completely agree.  One reason Detroit became a rust belt was lack of competition from startups; automation of automobile construction was well developed but Detroit was still using pre-war plants and assembly lines. Germany and Japan had no pre-war factories to preserve. Their competition doomed Detroit.  It is a dirty little secret, apparently: America still makes things and produces goods, and in plenty; but it takes far fewer workers to do that. Workers laid off could seek work in startups, but the political system is rigged to require heavy investment in regulatory compliance officers and experts before a single product is built.  Someone who wanted to hire laid off assembly line workers to work on some new product would have to bear the burden of regulatory costs before beginning; and of course he couldn’t begin a new automobile company. Germany and Japan got new auto plants. New ones could not be started in America.

 

The robots are coming. Make no mistake. They are inevitable. Productivity will grow. The number of products made will grow. The number of workers required to make them will fall. More things will be made by fewer employed people.

 

 

Newt Gingrich on the New York Times

Questions for the New York Times

Originally published at Fox News.

On Sunday, the publisher and the executive editor of the New York Times published a letter to the paper’s readers, promising to “rededicate” the paper to its “fundamental mission”. That mission, they said, is to “report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you.”

This is as close as the Times is likely to come to apologizing to its readers for a year and a half of unbalanced–and often unhinged–coverage of the presidential race.[snip]

C:\Users\JerryP\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\INetCache\Content.Outlook\HTVHUGHO\email.mht

The rest is worth reading if you have any interest. We’ll see.

 

Steve Bannon 

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

My facebook feed has been blowing up with various people falling into tizzies over Trump’s seeming appointment of Steve Bannon, head of Breitbart, to a key position.

Given this fact, I think it appropriate to listen to what Mr. Bannon says in his own words.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.pcvbjRJAZ#.tnJMJKG8P

I don’t think this is white nationalism. At least, not unless “white nationalism” has become synonymous with “western civilization”. He obviously thinks that atheism is bad and the world would be a better place if it ran by Catholic principles, but he seems to want to marginalize the racist elements of UKIP and related groups while defending traditional civilization against the tide of secularism.

He seems a lot less objectionable in person than he does in, say, the pages of national review.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442189/steve-bannon-trump-administration-alt-right-breitbart-chief-strategist

Respectfully,

Brian P.

 

I never met Mr. Bannon, and I pretty well disregarded National Review after it became the bi-weekly Trump bash, so I’m really not familiar with him. I have not found a charge and specification that renders him an unperson as the Left seems to be making him. After reading the buzzfeed interview, I find him strongly reminiscent of my (correspondence)  friend the late Sam Francis.  Long time readers of this View will recall that I have often said that unrestricted capitalism will inevitably result in human flesh for sale in the marketplace.

I have now read most of the National Review article linked to, and I do not find it appealing or well reasoned, and felt no need to finish it; I regret to say I have lost most of my confidence in National Review.

[

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Friday, November 11, 2016

Veterans Day

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

I am a bit harried today, but I will attempt a ramble on free trade.

 

The costs and benefits of Free Trade.

Traditionally (prior to 1950) the Democratic Party policy was “Tariff for revenue only”, while the Republicans favored protective tariffs to encourage and strengthen domestic industry. I was taught this in fifth grade.

Economists use models with some reality checks to argue that free trade – no tariff at all – is best for both trading partners. They can come up with examples to show where nations have benefitted from free trade in the real world, and most economic models and theories are based on David Ricardo’s 1817 analysis and his theory of comparative advantage. What is to be compared is the cost of producing various goods within your country, not between the two countries. If you are more efficient at making widgets than gadgets, while your trading partner is more efficient at making gadgets than widgets, then both countries will be able to consume more if they make the good they are best at, and buy the other from their trading partner. You should make widgets, not gadgets, and sell them to your trading partner, while he builds gadgets and sells them to you, thus earning the money to buy widgets from you. It can be shown mathematically that both countries will have more widgets and gadgets to consume with free trade, than without it even if you can make gadgets cheaper than he can (but you’re much better at making widgets than gadgets). This is said to be counter intuitive.

The theory makes the explicit assumption that there are differences in labor productivity between the two countries.

It also makes a number of assumptions not usually revealed, and are assumed to be externalities. They may be important: for example political entitlements; but they are not part of the economic model. There are also assumptions involving transportation costs, the mobility of labor, and the costs of disrupting communities. We will return to these assumptions later. The theory of free trade is more rooted in the differences in costs of labor and labor productivity between the two countries than anything else.

Abraham Lincoln talked about free trade. He said that if he bought a shirt from England, he got the shirt; the money went to England. If he bought a shirt made in America, he would pay more, but the money stayed in the United States, where it could be taxed. I am not aware of his carrying this further, but he could very well have observed that if he bought the shirt in the United States, that money would be paid to American workers, and anything not paid to the workers (profit) could not only be taxed, but might be invested in improving productivity.

Lincoln was a Republican, and favored protective tariffs to build American industry. That preference stayed in the Republican Party at least until 1950, when I left the South, and stopped thinking about the problem. I was taught in grade and high school that the Republicans and the northern states preferred high tariffs on all the goods they made, including cotton cloth and clothes they made from cotton; they also imposed staggering tariffs on much industrial machinery, thus prohibiting the South from industrializing; this was one reason for the “Solid South” which always voted overwhelmingly Democrat in local, state, and federal elections. There were a number of standing jokes, such as the county sheriff discovering a Republican vote, putting it aside for a while, then finding another and saying “He must have voted twice.” Republicans never put up yard signs, or otherwise indicated that they were that unusual. I was through high school before I discovered my parents were Republicans. They moved, first to Ohio, then Alaska, in my last year of high school.

Thus I pretty well grew up favoring “free trade”. I never thought much about it. I went into sciences and engineering and operations research which is either engineering or mathematics depending on how you look at it, and I thought about economics even less.

During the 50’s and 60’s there were many books disparaging “Detroit”, a word used to most of the US automotive industry, and its economic dictatorship and its stranglehold on American automobile consumers. Books like “The Insolent Chariots” for example. They were well written and sold well, and were persuasive. I don’t recall American cars being so badly designed, but in those days I didn’t buy new cars, and the old ones I could afford tended to be basic, without gull wings or tail fins, and they ran well and were reliable except for the voltage regulators which always seemed to die on long trips and need replacement. Tires weren’t so good, either, and a road trip of a thousand miles or more was practically guaranteed to have at least one flat tire incident, and very likely a blown out voltage regulator.

A lot of this changed when Japanese and German cars began to be more common, and the improvement was obvious. I put that down to the competition from free trade.

Back then, Detroit was synonymous with industry and productivity. We were a world power because of Detroit, and we had won the War because Detroit existed to be converted into a war production city, turning out tanks, artillery, rifles, and trucks and jeeps; the Wehrmacht still had mules and horses for much of their transportation, and motorized infantry was rare; the United States had no leg infantry. It was all motorized, and we motorized much of the Russian and British armies as well.

That was then. Now Detroit is largely a wasteland convertible into nothing. So is much of the so-called rust belt, formerly the heartland of American light industry. We have free trade; but we don’t have the factories that made the field guns for cannon company in infantry and cavalry regiments. Days after Pearl Harbor we had trained workers who could man the new machinery resulting from the conversion of, say, Saginaw Wheel Division of General Motors; and we buried the Germans and he Japanese in ships, tanks, aircraft, trucks, guns, bombs, and ammunition. We entered the war at the beginning of 1941; we ended it in fall of 1945.

Whatever the advantages of free trade, they did not cripple us.

Of course that’s not the whole story, but you don’t need to be an economist to see that something’s wrong; and that an economy with a large part consisting of opening shipping containers of stuff from China and paying for them with money borrowed from the next generation may not be optimum for resolving policy differences with China. Exporting the industrial base without replacing it may not be an optimum path for either military or diplomatic stability. I do not believe the economic models include that.

Another assumption in the theory of free trade assumes mobility of labor. The theory does not pay much attention to the economic costs of transporting that module labor; and pays none at all to the social costs of disrupting communities. Regard for social stability may be higher among conservatives than among liberals, but surely there is some even among policy wonks?

And finally there are the very real costs of entitlements for those who no longer work. The immediate cost, unemployment compensation, is obvious, and at least some economists are becoming aware of it, though I know of none who add that cost into the models of free trade. Beyond unemployment – when the worker is no longer considered part of the work force because he – or she – is no longer expecting or looking for a job – the entitlements get bigger and become eternal. Food stamps, welfare, health care, visits to the emergency room all come to mind, and I am sure there are more. Poverty in the United States is not defined as it is elsewhere; many of the world’s working people think of American Poverty as a goal they can never reach; as wealth beyond avarice. And no comparative advantage model I know of includes those costs in the costs of free trade.

Would we all be better off paying more for the domestically made shirt than if the worker who made it was no longer employed and paid no tax, but the customer for the shirt had to chip in to support that worker through taxes? Of course we have paid for some of those entitlements by borrowing the money, but somebody will have to pay it back some day. I suppose we could simply default some day, but that does not seem very admirable – and it can be done only once. And now we have made the disemployed garment worker a thief without his consent.

And I think that is enough for the day.

Perhaps fitting for Veterans Day

Gurkhas – pipes and drums

And kukris.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1J9sW6wAio

I’ve never seen that rocking marching step before, but wow.

Further words are superfluous.

Cordially,

John

The kukri’s are about half way through the film and are gone at the end.

 

I still have seen nothing of this in the mainstream media or Fox, but I do not think it was faked:

http://louderwithcrowder.com/watch-liberals-attack-trump-supporter-just-voting/

 

sc:bubbles]

Evening Jerry,

Glad to hear she’s making progress.  We’ll keep you both in our prayers.

I admit to being stunned.  I figured the polls were skewed, as usual, but taking the rust belt was a complete surprise.  Imagine what it’d have been like if we had a less-objectionable non-establishment candidate.  I’d said we managed to nominate the only candidate Hillary could beat.  Evidently the Dems did the reverse instead.

The liberal press (see bloomberg.com) is all full of advice about what Trump should/must/need to do, and most of it involves going back on campaign promises.  They all talk about diversity, but clearly those don’t include American exceptionalism or conservative views. 

Reports of Bolton being considered for SecState are somewhat frightening – I didn’t expect Trump to go down the Neocon route.

I wonder if the renegotiated NAFTA will simply remove Mexico, and replace it with the UK.  North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement has a nice ring.

One last thought:  all the fragile little snowflakes throwing tantrums, being excused from exams, getting counseling from their employers, and so forth make me sick.  When did we get to be a nation of wimps?

If Clinton had won, the next morning conservatives would have….gone to work.

Cheers,

Doug

I would not think Bolton a neocon, and certainly Trump is not. Bolton is an experienced cold warrior, but I doubt he is eager for conflict with Russia.

Idea–GoFundMe campaign to fund airline tix and relocation expenses for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Jerry:

Last July Ruth Bader Ginsburg quipped that if Donald Trump were elected, it would be “time to move to New Zealand.”

I’d like to see a GoFundMe campaign to fund airline tickets and relocation expenses for her.  I’d donate.

I also hope that Cher, Barbara Streisand, Lena Dunham, Miley Cyrus, Amy Schumer, Chelsea Handler, Al Sharpton, Whoopi Goldberg and the rest make good on their promises to leave the country.  I’m  not quite sure how Cher is going to get to Jupiter, though.  Maybe the EmDrive is involved.

Best regards,

Doug Ely

Now that would be an interesting fund…

400 year old shark?

Dear Jerry,

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, once again, the sharks come out on top:

http://site.people.com/pets/earths-oldest-animal-400-year-old-greenland-shark-could-claim-title/

“Sorry tortoises, you’re losing seniority.

Scientists believe they have found Earth’s oldest creature with a

backbone: a Greenland shark living in the icy waters of the Arctic.

According to the Associated Press, a female Greenland shark, who just

recently passed away, was estimated to be about 400 years old at the

time of her death.”

Previous record holder was a 211 year old Bowhead whale. Living in a

cold, micro gravity environment seems to be a good idea. Kind of like

Old Charlie in “The Rolling Stones”.

Petronius

SUBJ: In a real revolution . . .

Apropos of nothing specific. I just love a good quote. 🙂

As you have wisely said before – those who start a revolution are seldom those in charge at the end of the revolution. The following fills in some of the details.

“In a real revolution, the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards come the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement, but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its

victims: the victims of disgust, disenchantment–often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured–that is the definition of revolutionary success. There have been in every revolution hearts broken by such successes.”

— Joseph Conrad, via ChicagoBoyz

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/53595.html

It may bring a smile to picture Bernie Sanders in the first tumbrel cart after the revolution he dreams of comes to fruition. Cold comfort, though.

But such as he will be swayed neither by history nor reality for:

“Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.” – from _O Lucky Man!_

Cordially,

John

P.S.

“The trouble with quotes on the internet is they are so often simply

fabricated.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Oh, really?” Karl Marx

Space manufacturing and space “safety”

Jerry,

I thought you’d find this interesting.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/13/made-in-space-plans-to-create-a-superior-optical-fiber-in-microgravity/

And since I can’t find a mention of Rand Simberg’s “Safe Is Not An Option” on your site via Google, I thought I should point that out, too.

http://safeisnotanoption.com/

Calvin Dodge

I inadvertently overlooked this some time ago, but it remains interesting.  And I understand that Mr. Trump is very interested in commercial space.

sc:bubbles]

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Bringing us together.

Trump has called for national unity. Historically, that hasn’t worked in the past few decades. The Liberal Democrats are perfectly willing to work with Republicans so long as the Republicans adopt the Liberal agenda, but genuine compromise usually ends in “We won. Get used to it.” Congressional compromise offers have been met with “I’ve got a phone and I’ve got a pen, and I don’t need you.”

The national news media doesn’t report it that way, but that is what I’ve seen. I wish Trump well in trying to bring the parties closer together, but if one side believes that compromise means the other side surrenders, it’s impossible.

There were protest marches against the election results in many big cities. Apparently, there are those who do not accept the results of the election, despite Mrs. Clinton’s concession. Most were – relatively – peaceful, but some street activity was not. One was in Chicago. You may Google “You voted Trump. You gonna pay for that shit” to find this video: http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-black-mob-viciously-beats-white-trump-voter/ . There are others, although many have been taken down.

It is reported that Chicago police are investigating; I have no reports of arrests. This is not likely to encourage national unity.

Apparently, at least one Wall Street Journal columnist who misunderstood Mr. Trump for most of the campaign has been enlightened:

How Donald Trump Pulled It Off

His most-revolutionary move was to lighten up the campaign and keep his audience riveted.

By

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Donald Trump probably won’t get credit, even from those bending over backward to be charitable to last night’s winner, for his most-revolutionary endeavor—namely his effort to lighten up campaign rhetoric.

Even now many Republican anti-Trumpers continue to fume over his remark about John McCain: “I like people who weren’t captured.” It was disrespectful, yes. It was also a joke; a wisecrack, offered in response to Sen. McCain’s equally flippant dismissal of Trump supporters as “crazies.”

Mr. Trump never stopped being an entertainer in his campaign. Though his approach went over the heads of the media, in one way it was genius: He basically stopped trying to convince anybody soon after his famous escalator ride in the Trump Tower in Manhattan. He figured out early that his voters didn’t need any more explanation or justification. His argument was completely embodied in “Make America great again” plus his outsize public persona. He only needed to keep his fans jollied up, and fired up, for the long wait ’til election day.

The biggest embarrassment of this campaign has been the sodden pundits who kept insisting on taking oh-so-seriously his every remark. They never understood that Mr. Trump did not speak to lay out a platform. He was inventing almost daily a new episode of the 16-month Trump-for-president reality show to keep his audience from drifting off. [snip]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-donald-trump-pulled-it-off-1478680736

Mr. Jenkins is hardly my favorite columnist, but he does seem to have learned. I was disturbed by the McCain remark until I heard that the Senator had called all of Trump’s supporters “crazies.” Then it made sense. If you joke about me, I am free to joke about you. I would never have said what Trump said, but on reflection it was so obviously wrong – whatever you think of McCain as a Senator his service is unquestionable and Mr. Trump has to know that – that the humor of the exchange of remarks escaped me, as it did many people. After all, it is no less absurd or degrading to say that all those who support you must be crazy. Fortunately Senator McCain did not choose to escalate. I suspect they will eventually see mutual interests.

This was written just before the election. It remains true:

The Antonin Scalia Election

We cheapen politics when we look to courts at the expense of the ballot box.

By

William McGurn

When Americans find themselves inside the voting booth on Tuesday, for many the decisive factor will be which candidate— Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton—should fill Antonin Scalia’s empty seat on the Supreme Court.

This is no small thing. Still, whose vote will replace Scalia’s on the high court is only half the Scalia story, and perhaps not the important half. Beyond even his jurisprudence, this was a man whose wisdom was to appreciate that American liberty is rooted in the separation of powers—and that the chief means of accountability is the ballot box and not the criminal courts.

The left abandoned this principle long ago. From the special prosecutors who dogged Caspar Weinberger and Scooter Libby to the outrageous “John Doe” probes in Wisconsin of conservative groups such as the free-market Club for Growth, the left has a history of criminalizing political differences for electoral advantage. This year, alas, some on the right likewise pinned their hopes for Tuesday’s election on an indictment or news of a crime that would knock Mrs. Clinton out of the race.

Let’s stipulate that Mrs. Clinton may well deserve to go to jail. But look how the focus on “lock her up” has turned out: with disruptive, 11th-hour pronouncements by FBI Director James Comey first opening and then closing an investigation into newly discovered Clinton emails.

Truth is, Mr. Comey’s real outrage was his acquiescence to the handcuffs the Justice Department put on FBI investigators throughout the Clinton email investigation—especially Justice’s refusal to go to a grand jury, without which investigators have no good way to compel evidence and testimony. The principled stand for an FBI director would have been to inform the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, that unless she gave his agents the standard tools of an FBI investigation, he would resign and tell the American people why.

Instead, Mr. Comey proceeded with the constraints and then showboated with a July press conference absolving Mrs. Clinton of any prosecutable wrongdoing. Never mind that an indictment was not his decision to make.

No doubt Ms. Lynch would not have indicted Mrs. Clinton. But had Mr. Comey kept his mouth shut, she, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton would be answering for the decision—not to mention for the highly unethical meeting between the attorney general and Mrs. Clinton’s husband that would have remained secret but for an intrepid reporter. Now all Mr. Comey has to show for his concern for his personal reputation is to have added the FBI to the list of government institutions the public no longer trusts. [snip]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-antonin-scalia-election-1478564889

Scalia was a scholar who revered the original intentions of the Constitution, but as Mr. Justice Holmes once observed, the Court does read the newspapers. Of course the newspapers he read in his day had a variety of opinions and positions; they weren’t so monolithic as the main stream media are today. Replacing Scalia with someone similar would seem to be fair, but I doubt that Senator Warren and the Senate Democrats will allow it. This leaves Trump with his first big test, which is also a test for the Senate majority: they did little or nothing during Obama’s Presidency despite having majorities in the Congress for much of it. They pleaded that Obama would shut down the government and make them take the blame for it.

They do not have that – excuse? – now. They hold majorities, Trump has won the election and will be President, and the balance of the Court majority is at stake. The Democrats will plead that Trump should appoint a compromise candidate. Trump has promised to appoint as near as possible a Scalia clone. There can be no “compromise” or reaching across the aisle here. This will be a key issue. I am sure Mr. Trump knows this. I am not so certain about the Republican Senate leadership, although it has certainly behaved well under considerable pressure in refusing to confirm Mr. Obama’s “compromise” candidate. I look forward on this with both anticipation and a bit of fear.

Conclusions drawn from Results of US election

Hi Jerry
Great to hear of Roberta’s continued improvement. I am providing a Part 2 submission from Conrad Black regarding the US election. This time his focus outlines a succinct analysis of the results you and your readers may find interesting.
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/conrad-black-donald-trumps-assault-on-both-parties-will-make-america
This is a positive appraisal of the results, and provides a nicely summarized critique of why this event occurred.
Take Care
Sam Mattina

It is a good analysis. It also contains some truths. Here is one of them.

The latter group, including a number of the conservative intellectuals who stormed out of the Republican party and noisily slammed the door behind them, are claiming to be prophets who will be honoured, are proud of the martyrdom they have (unintentionally) chosen, and warn darkly of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. Such tendencies are less pronounced in the president-elect’s character than in the personality of his chief opponent, and the whole concept is nonsense, given the robustness of the constitutional strength of the legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government. (All three branches have performed poorly during the past 20 years, which is ultimately why Donald Trump will be the next president, but they are at least proficient in ensuring they are not overrun by the other branches.)

The Republic is strong, and with the new Supreme Court will remain so.

“The unbearable smugness of the press”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugness-of-the-press-presidential-election-2016/

—

Phil Tharp

Comment would be superfluous.

Robert Reich gets it.

‘The power structure is shocked by the outcome of the 2016 election because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. Perhaps it also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in enabling the presidency of Donald Trump.’

<http://robertreich.org/post/152998666340>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Amazing that he would make that comment; but no one has suggested that he is stupid.

Press Already Unhappy with President-Elect Trump

Associated Press

President-elect Donald Trump left New York for a White House meeting with President Obama on Thursday morning. He took off through a salute of water provided by airport fire safety personnel, but he didn’t take the press corps with him. Apparently, that has the media upset, because he’s breaking away from “how things are always done” with the press corps.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation’s leader.

Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that “pool” of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect.

Trump’s flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday.

Trump’s meeting with Obama on Thursday will be recorded by the pool of White House reporters, photographers and TV cameras who cover the president.[snip]

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=16974?omhide=true

I don’t know what this means, but it is likely to be significant.

President-Elect Trump, Paul Ryan and Wisconsin

Greetings from that part of “flyover land” known as Wisconsin. So glad to be able to say that this election my home state got it right.
Yesterday you stated that ‘Paul Ryan did yeoman work in delivering Wisconsin for Trump’ – actually not so much. After release of the Access Hollywood Ryan refused to campaign with or even be in the same location as Trump. I would say that Scott Walker, Sean Duffy & Ron Johnson helped to move WI to the Trump Train.
Best wishes and prayers for Roberta’s continued recovery – and yours as well.
One fiction question I’ve been meaning to ask – How did Grand Senator Bronson end up being from Wisconsin?

Tony Sherfinski

Unlike Rockefeller in 1964, Ryan did urge voters to vote the straight ticket. That was very likely the key to Trump’s win there. The Republican ground organization is strong in Wisconsin, and it urged the straight ticket vote. That too was significant. I am sure that Mr. Trump knows this.

Proxmire?

The Trump Presidency

Dear Mr. Pournelle:
I’m still processing this, but I think one thing needs to be said early: President Obama and Hillary Clinton are right that we now need to work together to make a Trump presidency successful.
I do not like him, trust him, or respect him. That is all irrelevant. Our United States need a successful president, and I need to work for that.
As a beginning: Mr. Trump has recently stated two priorities which, if we can achieve them, would be enough (if he doesn’t precipitate disasters) for me to consider him a good president. First, do no harm: but after this, if this election leads to a better result for blue collar Americans and also leads to a rebuilding of our infrastructure, that would be enough for me.
Caveats: Mr. Trump has promised to be a voice for people who have been forgotten. Yes. We need that. I have a hard time believing it. But perhaps this is his Prince Hal moment, when responsibility leads to a change change in direction. I will hope for that, I will pray for that, and if it happens I will support that with enthusiasm.
Mr. Trump promises to rebuild our infrastructure, our roads and our rails. Excellent. That’s been a long time needed. My caveat: that will be expensive. Fine. It would be money well spent. But where is it coming from? If it comes from more debt, that will scare me: although, even then, if it’s well invested the risk could be worth it.
I’m sure you understand that I remain concerned. From my perspective: I am looking at a presidency in which all three branches of government are controlled by a single party, with no effective checks and balances in sight, all led by a megalomaniac bully. What could possibly go wrong?
But I hope that discussion will never be needed. For now: what might be done to make the Trump Presidency successful for all Americans?
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

To begin, I think that it would be good to stop talking about megalomaniac bullies. I can think of many appellations to be made about others, many at present in high office, but I do not think this is the right time to be saying them. Why present them with remarks that would make them appear cowardly if overlooked?

Fortunately, Mr. Trump is accustomed to dealing with people who disagree with him to various degrees, and whose interests are not exactly his, nor his theirs; yet they must work together to get anything done. We will see.

I would not have run the campaign as Mr. Trump did – and I would not have won either nomination nor election. Clearly he understands those who voted for him – and those who voted against Mrs. Clinton and another term for Obama – quite well. He also knows that without Congress – people in both parties – he can get little done. He is said to understand the art of the deal. For now, I suspect we live with that.

Sharpton: ‘We Are Not Going Down Without a Fight and Donald Needs to Know That’

Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in reacting to Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Al Sharpton said, “We are not going down without a fight and Donald needs to know that.”

Sharpton said, “I think that we are in a real moment like Nixon. I mean, if you look at the backlash after the Great Society and of a lot of the unrest, that is what defeated Hubert Humphrey and brought in Richard Nixon. I was a kid. I remember it like it was yesterday. You had assassinations of Kennedy, King. Unrest. People go for extreme measures to respond. Trump played to that. I said that. He did all of the dog whistles. This is not Bernie Sanders populism. This is George Wallace populism that he’s doing. And I think that many people have got to call it the way it is. Now the question is how will he govern? But he cannot say he did not run a campaign that has created a lot of racial fears and a lot of divisiveness and he played to the crowd and he knew what he was playing to. I know him here in New York. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was playing to the worst elements. The question is now what are you going to do?”

He added, “And I think that there’s going to be — rather than going to a blame game, we need to analyze, this man’s going to be president and all that many of us have fought for during our lives is at stake. And we are not going down without a fight and Donald needs to know that.”

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/11/09/sharpton-not-going-without-fight-donald-trump-needs-know/

Not unexpected. See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/booming/revisiting-the-tawana-brawley-rape-scandal.html or http://nypost.com/2013/08/04/pay-up-time-for-brawley-87-rape-hoaxer-finally-shells-out-for-slander/

Tawana Brawley seems to be missing from the official biography of Mr. Sharpton.

 

 

going forward

Just a thought, what will we call the “Clinton News Network” now?
Driving the volunteer medical van in my town I’ve listened to a lot of Seniors during the campaign, I can tell you that there was no love for Hillary there. In fact I can’t remember anyone expressing an intention to vote for Hillary. But at the end of the day, she handily won the vote in my town and the state.
I think my youngest friend is barely forty, I really don’t move among the 18-49 crowd at all. But winning this election with the full support of ‘Last Century” voters is not a future winning strategy.
My hope is that Trump succeeds in proving that less regulation, less federal interference and more personal responsibly can improve the lives of everyone, including that damn 18-49 crowd. They can’t remember what they have never seen. So let’s show them.

John The River

sc:bubbles]

Reactor that produces liquid fuel from CO2 in the air to be tested in portable pilot plant

I wonder what the efficiencies of this process are. If they are fairly good, this would be a way to store excess production from solar/wind/etc. for later use.

The fuels we burn add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. A new compact power plant is starting up in Finland that could help combat the problem by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide itself into usable fuels. The transportable chemical reactor uses solar power to convert CO2 from the air and regenerative hydrogen from electrolysis into liquid fuels.

http://newatlas.com/carbon-dioxide-fuel-pilot-plant-finland-kit-ineratec/46362/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=2369704afd-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-2369704afd-88920025

John Harlow

I’ve never heard of this, but I have written about other energy alternatives. I have no great desire to add CO2 without limit to the atmosphere; I’d be glad to see it stable. Of course with more nuclear power and space solar power satellites, we could determine just how much CO2 we want, testing various levels until we find an optimum. We don’t have to burn fossil fuels. For less – much less – than the cost of the Middle East Wars, we could have built fission reactors and told the Arabs we no longer need their oil – while paying retirement wages to the coal miners put out of work.

But I wrote all this forty years ago, and again when we contemplated the first desert war.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.