Arab Spring, education choices, and a thought experiment with Jane Fonda

View 695 Thursday, October 06, 2011

clip_image002

I had hoped to end the Proscription discussions but there is news:

Proscription

Dr Pournelle,

This article appears to give the detail you were looking for regarding the process by which a citizen gets onto the proscription list:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

How one gets off the list is less clear (well, one way is obvious…)

Regards, Stu

Stu Fleming

The article is well written and detailed. Of course it cites anonymous sources; how could that be otherwise? In essence it says that a secret subcommittee of the National Security Council meets and proposes names. “Look, with a spot I damn him.” The names are made known to the President but no positive action from him is required. He could remove a name from the list, but whether he has ever done so is not known. It isn’t even known that he has ever read the list. The Reuters article says:

“The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

Current and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki, who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to their alleged involvement with militants.”

As to Samir Khan, the second American killed in the drone rocket strike, he was not on the list but was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Suppose that this system were in place in 1972, and the National Security Council committee determined that Tom Hayden, already under indictment for his anti-war rallies and the protests at the Chicago Convention, was determined to be an enemy of the United States; a drone aircraft sees him during Jane Fonda’s visit to the North Viet Nam anti-aircraft station. A Hellfire is launched. Hayden is killed. So is Jane Fonda, who is nearby.

I have a number of friends who would say “Serve them right,” with some glee; but this thought experiment does raise some Constitutional questions.

“Two principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself.”

One presumes that the Tonkin Gulf resolution which permitted Presidents Johnson and Nixon to send the troops to Viet Nam would certainly justify anything that the current Congressional resolution justifies in the way of dealing with enemies of the United States: neither looked like a formal Declaration of War, but apparently both sufficed. So my thought experiment is fantastic only in that we don’t have drones and hellfires and real time satellite observations and thus could not have seen Hayden and Fonda on their pre-marriage Viet Nam tour and ordered a strike. Whether either or both might have been targeted I do not know. I don’t know who is on the committee.

In 1968 I was proposed for an office in the Department of Defense that might well have put me on that committee, but I was rejected by two of the President’s advisors as “inflexible”. (And no, I do not know what that means. My qualifications involved political advice in the area of national defense during the 1968 campaign plus a still active clearance and considerable experience with high tech weaponry. I can guess what the president’s political advisors meant, but I do not know. It came as a surprise: my wife and I thought we would have to leave California for Washington. I’m rather grateful for the rejection, as it happens.) But of course in those days no such committee existed, nor did we have anything like the capability for carrying out such acts. The closest thing we had in those days involved much larger manned aircraft.

Had we had the physical capability, I do not know if Nixon would have employed them, or whether he would have balked at the use of such capabilities against American citizens convicted of no crime even if they were in a war zone.

It is not a question now. Apparently we have an anonymous committee of persons who report to the National Security Council (Vice President, Secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense, and other Constitutional Officers). The committee itself may or may not have members confirmed by the Senate, but the committee itself is unknown to either the Constitution or the Laws.

“targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005

Perhaps I am unduly disturbed by all this.

clip_image003

For those interested in the Middle East situation I can recommend this:

Available on the web and in pdf format at:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201110.kramer.middleeast.html

THE MIDDLE EAST CIRCA 2016

by Martin Kramer

When I received the assignment for today, it reminded me of that 1999 book, Dow 36,000. At the time the authors wrote it, the Dow stood at 10,300, and the book became a bestseller. But today the Dow is only 20 percent higher than it was then-it’s only at 12,700. Last February, one of the co-authors wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Why I Was Wrong About ‘Dow 36,000’.” “What happened?” he wrote. “The world changed.” Well, what a surprise.

Now there was a lot of talk that sounded like “Middle East 36,000” just a couple of months ago. This is a new Middle East, everything you thought you knew is wrong, bet on revolution and you’ll be rewarded handsomely with democracy.

Let’s face it: Americans like optimistic scenarios that end with all of us rich and the rest of the world democratic.

There’s much in the American century since World War Two to foster such optimism. But while you enjoy reading your copy of “Middle East 36,000.” I’m going to quickly tell you what’s in the small print in the prospectus-the part that’s in Arabic. <snip>

 

clip_image002[1]

The LA Times today has an article entitled “Zero-tolerance policies driving up suspensions” in which it laments that anyone is suspended for disobedience or other non-violent behavior. They should instead receive help. “A child who is suspended from school is more than likely waving a red flag for needing intervention and support,” said Dr. Robert Rosa, president and chief executive of the California Endowment. “Metaphorically speaking, this is a time you want to put your arms around a student, rather than push him away.”

Whether this is a good idea for a wealthy school district, it certainly seems inappropriate for a system that is broke and laying off teachers (by seniority, not by effectiveness, of course). We can’t afford to educate those who can be educated and want to be educated and are willing to be polite and self-disciplined; yet we are supposed to dedicate even more resources to those who are unruly and undisciplined? To what end? Of course if “being educated” is an entitlement the taxpayers are required to provide rather than an investment the taxpayers choose to make, that may be the right way to look at it; but given that we can’t afford it, does this make sense?

Our education system is busted, both financially and in effect. It won’t be fixed by admitting that the point of the system is to do what we can for the future citizens and particularly the future productive citizens, but until we understand that it must do at least that much, it will continue to be broke and unfixable.

This is not Lake Wobegon. Half the students are below average. Half of those below average are getting a great deal of attention – some would say at least as much as the other 75%. Is this a rational allocation of scarce resources? It may make one feel good to spend a lot of time helping a spastic child of low IQ, and it is a noble thing to do: but can we afford that, and what will be the effect on the future economy? Will the nation be better off having mainstreamed a disabled child from the 35th percentile to the 40th, or by having taught calculus in high school to a 90th percentile child of very low income?

The answer to that would be different if there were a lot of money; but there isn’t. We’re broke. Every single one of us owes $47,000 on the national debt. That must be paid, and the rest of us will have to pay the shares that those who will never earn that much money will not be able to pay. Education decisions must be made with that stark fact in mind.

Salve, sclave.

clip_image002[2]

clip_image002[3]

clip_image005

clip_image002[4]

Steve Jobs RIP; education, space, proscription, and debt. Lots of debt.

Mail 695 Wednesday, October 05, 2011

clip_image002

Steve Jobs

There was plenty to dislike about Jobs but it cannot be denied that he had a major effect on the world that makes him a member of a very small club. And far too many members got there by killing lots of people rather than making things people like.

Jobs’ accomplishments stand as a refutation of the insane tirade recently delivered by Elizabeth Warren. By her philosophy, a Steve Jobs owes it to the world to pay ever higher taxes because he owes everything to the world for having built the roads and other infrastructure to make his business possible. But it is the reverse that is true. Without the drive and talent to create an Apple, what purpose do the roads serve? Where are you commuting to if nobody is creating stuff that leads to employment opportunities? Left to the government, you’d probably live in a barracks on the factory grounds. It’s terribly efficient.

And the contribution to the tax base by a person like Jobs is hugely underappreciated by Warren and her ilk. She again gets it backwards by focusing on all the non-producers the wealthy are somehow obligated to support at even greater levels than they already do. But what of the legion of people who became high earning employees of Apple and companies selling parts and materials to Apple? Warren says nobody ever got rich on their own.

It’s true but not in the way she wants voters to believe. Other than by pure theft, nobody ever got rich without bringing a lot of other people into wealth as well. Trying to determine the volume of people who got rich by working at Apple or just investing in the company would likely take a goodly chunk of time. All of these people in turn pay their taxes in a much higher bracket than the average citizen. No doubt many of those people would have been successful in a world without Apple but I’ve also no doubt that many of them would have settled for doing a lot less without the necessary spark.

A significant piece of the tax base that contribute far, far more more than median earners came into existence because Steve Jobs was a man who lead people to create desirable things that might never have existed or at least never achieved the same quality without him. Leadership really matters. We’ve seen far too many collections of talent that could never deliver to their full potential for lack of the right person turning a talented group into a team.

Eric

Well said,

clip_image002[1]

An Exchange of views from another conference:

The left ought to be asking if Jane Fonda would have been on the list, if there had been a list in 1972 when she visited Hanoi.

And the right ought to be asking themselves quite carefully just how safe they feel, living in a world with such lists. I don’t think Rush has anything to worry about, but as we should all remember, the Department of Homeland Security’s 2009 report on right-wing extremism shows how easily a left-wing administration could criminalize what some of us call patriotism.

. png (Peter Glaskowsky)

I’ve always felt the appropriate treatment for Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden would have been exile. Do what you want but you’re no longer welcome in this country. As it is I find it remarkable there was no crime with which to formally charge her. Or perhaps there was, if she had a different father.

I don’t know how much further into treason she could have gone without committing espionage or taking up arms against the US.

Eric Pobirs

Well, I think Fonda could have gone a lot further without being unambiguously guilty of treason, though she was certainly deep into the gray area and undoubtedly guilty of criminal stupidity and naiveté.

But the question is, if Nixon could have dealt with her by putting her on a list, would he have– and if not, where’s the line, and how comfortable is everyone about the idea of even HAVING a line?

I think I’d just feel better about the whole thing if there was some formal, adversarial process to go through.

I understand the Seventh Amendment carves out a pretty big chunk of lawful authority for the military "in time of War or public danger", but the circumstances of this particular execution aren’t exactly what was meant there.

. png

Which sums it up fairly well. With Nixon and Fonda it was not an option. Would it be now?

clip_image002[2]

On Climate Change

Back to the drawing board… again

But a new study by a University of Michigan paleoclimatologist and two colleagues suggests that the deep ocean was not an important source of carbon during glacial times. The finding will force researchers to reassess their ideas about the fundamental mechanisms that regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide over long time scales.

"We’re going back to the drawing board. It’s certainly fair to say that we need to have some other working hypotheses at this point," said U-M paleoclimatologist David Lund, lead author of a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111003180440.htm

RW Salnick

I do not think our models are sufficiently well validated to justify betting trillions of dollars on their accuracy.

http://www.ktvu.com/news/29385123/detail.html

A cold weather front took aim at Northern California Tuesday, packing a potent punch with as much as 10 inches of snow for the Sierra peaks, the earliest return of winter conditions to Tahoe since 1969, according to weather forecasters

And Winter is coming early in Central California. Are we warming or cooling?

‘Climate change’ comes to Tahoe.

<http://www.ktvu.com/news/29385123/detail.html>

Roland Dobbins

clip_image003

FEMA

Here is a message sent to my wife by one of her fellow choir members who lives in the Magnolia community. It is a bit long, but interesting. My comment to friends about it was that FEMA wants (needs?) everyone to be "Grasshoppers" not ants. (Recall the Aesop’s fable) That gives them power.

Here are some stories about the Tricounty fire in Montgomery, Grimes, and Waller County, Labor Day week, 2011.

My neighbor across the road has a sister named Kenna. Labor Day, when she saw the huge column of smoke over our homes, she left a birthday party at my neighbor’s house to meet with her friend Tara at the Baseball complex in Magnolia. She called the owner of the complex and got permission to use the warehouse there as a staging area for donations for the fire fighting effort.

They put a notice out on facebook that they were going to be taking donations on their facebook pages. That night as they were setting up tables and organizing, News2 Houston came by and saw the activity, investigated and left with the phone numbers and a list of suggested donations.

The facebook notice propagated faster than the fire. By dawn they had 20 volunteers, bins, forklifts, and donations were pouring in. I stopped by with my pitiful little bags of nasal wash and eye wash, and was amazed. There must have been 20 trucks in the lot, offloading cases of water, pallets of Gatorade, and people lined up out the door with sacks of beef jerky, baby wipes, underwear, socks, and you name it. School buses and trailers from many counties around were there offloading supplies, students forming living chains to pass stuff into the bins for transport to the command center and staging areas. If the firefighters had requested it, it was there. What do you give the guy out there fighting the fire that might engulf your home? Anything he or she wants. Including chewing tobacco and cigarettes.

Kenna moved on to the Unified Command Post at Magnolia West High school. She looked at what the fire fighters needed, and she made calls and set it up.

Mattress Mac donated 150 beds. Two class rooms turned into barracks kept quiet and dark for rest. The CEO of HEB donated 2 semi trailers full of supplies, and sent a mobile commercial kitchen at no charge to feed all the workers, but especially our firefighters, 3 hot meals a day. An impromptu commissary was set up, anything the firefighters had requested available at no charge.

As exhausted firefighters (most of them from local VFDs with no training or experience battling wildfires) and workers came into the school after long hours of hard labor, dehydrated, hungry, covered with soot and ash, they got what they needed. They were directed through the commissary, where they got soap, eye wash and nasal spray, candy, clean socks and underwear, and then were sent off to the school locker rooms for a shower. HEB then fed them a hot meal and they got 8 hours sleep in a barracks, then another hot meal, another pass through the commissary for supplies to carry with them out to the lines, including gloves, safety glasses, dust masks and snacks, and back they went.

One of the imported crews from California came into Unified Command and asked where the FEMA Powerbars and water were. He was escorted to the commissary and started through the system. He was flabbergasted. He said FEMA never did it like this. Kenna replied, ”Well, this is the way we do it in Texas.”

Fire fighting equipment needed repair? The auto shop at the High School ran 24/7 with local mechanics volunteering, students, and the firefighters fixing the equipment.

Down one side of the school, the water tankers lined up at the fire hydrants and filled with water. Down the other side there was a steady parade of gasoline tankers filling trucks, dozers, tankers, cans, chain saws, and vehicles.

Mind you, all of this was set up by 2 Moms, Kenna and Tara, with a staff of 20 simple volunteers, most of them women who had sons, daughters, husbands, and friends on the fire lines. Someone always knew someone who could get what they needed – beds, mechanics, food, space. Local people using local connections to mobilize local resources made this happen. No government aid. No Trained Expert.

At one point the fire was less than a mile from the school, and everyone but hose volunteers were evacuated. The fire was turned.

The Red Cross came in, looked at what they were doing, and quietly went away to set up a fire victim relief center nearby. They said they couldn’t do it any better.

FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go, that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They stayed.

FEMA threw a wall-eyed fit about chewing tobacco and cigarettes being available in the commissary area. Kenna told them the firefighters had requested it, and it was staying. It stayed. FEMA got very nasty and kept asking what organization these volunteers belonged to – and all the volunteers told them “Our community”. FEMA didn’t like that and demanded they make up a name for themselves. One mother remarked “They got me at my boiling point!” and suddenly the group was “212 Degrees”. FEMA’s contribution? They came in the next day with red shirts embroidered with “212 Degrees,” insisting the volunteers had to be identified, never realizing it was a slap in their face. Your tax dollars at work – labeling volunteers with useless shirts and getting in the way.

The upshot? A fire that the experts from California (for whom we are so grateful there are no words) said would take 2-3 weeks to get under control was 100% contained in 8 days. There was so much equipment and supplies donated, 3 container trucks are loaded with the excess to go and set up a similar relief center for the fire fighters in Bastrop. The local relief agencies have asked people to stop bringing in donations of clothing, food, household items, and pretty much everything else because they only have 60 displaced households to care for, and there is enough to supply hundreds. Again, excess is going to be shipped to Bastrop, where there are 1500 displaced households. Wish we could send Kenna, too, but she has to go back to her regular job.

John Pennell

Your tax dollars at work. Bush was fried for what FEMA did in New Orleans. The Obama FEMA has learned nothing and forgotten nothing, but the media don’t notice. Abolish FEMA and restore civil defense.

clip_image002[3]

Letter From England

Quiet week.

"Unter vier augen"–I remember those days. The KGB was working hard to remove demented hands frozen on controls and steering wheels and wondering if they could preserve the Soviet Union. Andropov died unexpectedly, which is why Gorbachev was in charge. KGB analysts were showing up at western research conferences looking for insight into what was going on.

Compulsory retirement abolished in the UK <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15127835>

All cats are grey. <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/30/dont_bother_with_it_degree/> A bog-standard computing degree in the UK isn’t worth getting–mostly because it doesn’t teach that much.

Harry Erwin, PhD

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Benjamin Franklin, 1755)

UK Stories

Nothing exciting. Some interesting.

NHS hospitals coming under fire for poor emergency surgery. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15098114 Death rates about 4xAmerican.

Problems with the student loans system. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15090178

Article on the metal theft problem. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15062064 . Theft of a £50 copper cable can do hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage. Copper pipes used to connect gas mains to gas meters are stolen, resulting in gas explosions.

60 babies adopted last year in the UK, down from 4000 in 1976… The adoption process now takes more than two years. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/29/60-babies-adopted-england-last-year

You want it bad; you get it bad. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=417583&c=1 Current Government policy is to discourage foreign students (and their money).

Why I use a Macintosh: Eccl 12:3 "those who look through the windows see dimly" (Crossan’s translation).

Harry Erwin

clip_image003[1]

Buffett and the Ultra Rich

Hi Jerry,

Seems to be a day for sharing stories. Buffett now claims that he’s only talking about taxing the ultra rich (400 richest americans).

http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1192505402001

I still don’t understand what’s keeping him from writing a check to the government, and convincing the rest of those folks to do so. It’d take less than a year if he just called 2 of them every day (and they’d probably take his calls).

Cheers,

Doug=

I thought that the alternative minimum tax was supposed to take care of this sort of thing? In any event, I would rather that the super rich had the money than that it go into the pot to keep the 7% annual exponential growth of government spending going. Buffet may not invest wisely, but he does invest; money paid to the government is just spent.

5% surtax on million / year earners

Sounds so reasonable. After all, how can someone earning 1 mil a year notice 50K in more tax? But wait, they just might invest the 50K in someone’s startup. Or, give it to the church, or… In any case, what reason do we have to believe that the federal government will use it wisely? Past performance? Current performance? Crystal ball? I believe the republican strategy should be to starve the beast in any way possible.

Phil

I would prefer that if they are going to take that money they would convert it into hundred dollar bills and drop them from airplanes rather than giving it to the government to continue the out of control spending. It would go for better use if simply thrown into the wind. But I suspect it would be better not to take it at all.

clip_image002[4]

In case you missed this:

Subj: Video: Elon Musk of SpaceX on the future of human space flight

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/SpaceFligh

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Elon was at the National Press Club luncheon today

I caught the last half. He was very good. His stance on global warming was reasonable based on his pro-solar bent. There is an animation on the space x website showing how they will reuse all stages of the Flacon 9 / Dragon. Each stage has it’s own re-entry powered descent capability. Since the stages are mostly depleted of fuel and hence weight, they don’t need that much remaining fuel to brake themselves. I have not done the math, but assume space x has. The second stage and the dragon both use a heat shield for the gross braking and then turn over and use their existing boost engines to do the final deceleration. Actually, Dragon does not have a boost engine so it uses side mounted thrusters, which are also the launch escape system.

Elon mentioned that if shuttle like safety is all that is required, then Dragon could carry people on the next launch. A launch escape system is considered highly desirable by NASA and will take 2 to 3 years. Since we flew all of the shuttle missions without it, and only one, STS51L (Challenger) killed the crew due to a lack of a launch escape system (which probably is not true – it was the SRB leak which Falcon does not use), it seems reasonable to not need one in the interest of getting back into space and adding it later.

Phil

NASA’s Ultimate Legacy

<i>"It is probably time to phase NASA out in its present form. There is still talent at NASA, and it is still important to have space science and space research: the question is whether NASA ought to do that or contract for it."</i>

This is the crux of the matter and I happen to agree with you, though with trepidation. I have seen nothing in the last 5 years that leads me to believe that the Iron Law has not subsumed the spirit of exploration at NASA, and that unless they are reduced in number by at least 30% (those most senior being the first to walk) and given firm goals, timelines, and budgets, there is little they can accomplish that will not be unacceptably expensive for the amount of actual exploration returned.

Everything, from robotic explorers to asteroid visits, needs to be put out to bid or (as you have suggested) achieved through a X-prize style cash payment for successful completion.

America needs to admit that adopting a Soviet style bureaucracy for HSF was a bad idea, and that it simply doesn’t work – not if you actually want space exploration.

Best regards,

Bennett Dawson

clip_image002[5]

Mead on Higher Education

Walter Russell Mead has an excellent, brief essay on the role of higher education in modern society.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/29/just-because-they-start-doesnt-mean-they-finish/

The essay echoes the reasoned arguments that you and Charles Murray in Real Education have made over the years.

Jim Ransom

Education has this dilemma: most of the students are not a great investment in the sense that their education will result in all that much return to the society. Most innovation and economic growth comes from fewer than 20% of the population, and the highest returns on education investment comes from the top. Raising a 40th percentile student to 50th percentile is good for the student, but the effect is not particularly noticeable on the society; while raising a 90th percentile student to 95th percentile can change a lot. We all know this.

If education is a right, then it is a duty to pay taxes to support it: but whence came the obligation for a childless couple to pay for the effort to teach a 20th percentile child and devote as much effort to that child’s education as is given to, say, the 85th percentile child? Or even the 50th? The only way people are equal is in the sight of God; does the duty to pay for the special needs of the special education student come from God but is enforced by the tax collector?

Our Courts have said that young illegal immigrants have a right to public education. The argument does not cite any section of the Constitution that mentions education at all. The people of California passed a state constitutional amendment saying that illegal aliens do not have the right to public money but the federal courts ruled that unconstitutional. The exact basis whereby this is a Constitutional right was not made clear. It does not seem to be by consent of the governed.

clip_image002[6]

China’s first space station

Sir,

I thought you might appreciate this news story on China’s preliminary stepping stones towards a space station.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/29/china-space-station-launch

"

China http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/china is preparing to take its building boom into space <http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/space> on Thursday night by putting a first research module – the "Heavenly Palace" – into orbit The unmanned Tiangong-1 laboratory, which will be launched into the skies above the Gobi desert, is a stepping stone towards a bigger, fully-fledged orbiting platform that China expects to be cheaper than the US and European-backed International Space Station http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/international-space-station .

The 10.5m-long cylinder will ride around 220 miles (350km) into space on board a Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan satellite launch centre and remain in orbit for two years."

Might be a good time to brush up on your gorram Chinese

http://smallcultfollowing.com/firefly-chinese-slang.pdf

Respectfully,

Brian P.

As Mr. Heinlein was fond of saying, the universe does not guarantee that the language of space shall be English.

clip_image003[2]

German Currency Reform 1948: Summary of the "First Law…"

http://www.cvce.eu/obj/first_law_on_currency_reform_20_june_1948-en-a5bf33f8-fca0-4234-a4d2-71f71a038765.html

Alas, I have not yet been able to find the conversion rate for the subsequent exchange of old money for new.

Is this the approach to currency reform we want to take in the US?

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Probably not. If we can grow the economy, then normal market acts will take care of the rest. But so long as we must every year spend another 7% more of money that we don’t have, there is no way out from the coming crash.

Immediate suspension of regulations would start a boom but nothing else will.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

I’m largely inclined to agree.

We need *both* to suspend regulations *and* to throttle the growth of government spending.

Suspending regulations — even firing all the regulation-mongers — won’t by itself throttle the growth of government spending, though: only a small fraction of government spending is spending on regulating. It’s the entitlements that are driving the growth in spending.

I doubt we can throttle the growth of government spending before the Federal debt gets so large that the only way to deal with it is by repudiating it. Since outright repudiation would run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, the only way we’ll be able to repudiate it is by inflation — about a 1000% inflation, I’d guess.

Of course, that will destroy all the savings of the people like me, who saved for several decades, hoping to start businesses of their own without losing control of them to vulture capitalists and/or lenders.

Only the super-rich will retain enough wealth to finance start-ups.

Will they bother?

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

Each of us owes $47,000 on the national debt as of this moment. That’s a lot to be paid off. Economic boom times can do it, but only if we stop the spending. Since we consider a 0 growth budget a drastic cut balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, it may be that – what? Each of us, every single one of us, owes $47,000, and confiscating all the wealth of the super rich will not reduce that below $30,000 – and it sure will eat up a lot of investment capital.

The normal state of mankind is poverty for most: a single set of clothes, one meal a day, poor to no medical services. For most of human history that is the way 80% of the population lived. Read the novels of Dickens and when reading Christmas Carol pay attention to the way Bob Cratchit – lower middle class, almost a gentleman – lived.

We have worked at throwing away what we had. With enough greed and political rapacity we can throw the rest away. But at some point there will be default. Watch Greece for a picture of the future of the United States. Watch the United States spend money to help Greece. Perhaps the Chinese will help us. Or perhaps God almighty will.

At 7% exponential growth each of us will owe about $100,000 twelve years from now. And the beat goes on.

 

clip_image003[4]

clip_image005

clip_image003[5]

It’s Sister Jenny’s Turn to Throw the Bomb

View 695 Wednesday, October 05, 2011

 

Today’s Headline:

Labor Unions Join Wall Street "Occupiers" for Mass Rally

The cavalry has arrived in Lower Manhattan. Representatives from no fewer than 15 of the country’s largest labor unions will join the Occupy Wall Street protesters for a mass rally and march today in New York City.

The AFL-CIO, United Auto Workers, and Transit Workers’ Union are among the groups expected to stand in solidarity with the hundreds of mostly young men and women who have spent the better part of three weeks sleeping, eating, and organizing from Zuccotti Square.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/labor-unions-join-occupy-wall-street-york-rally/story?id=14673346

The revolution enters the next phase. It could be serious, but it can also be farce: it’s not at all clear which of the conflicting demands coming from the Occupy Wall Street protestors the unions support. It is doubtful that real auto workers are in favor of the tax raises that would be required to forgive student debts, but that hardly matters. The entire “American Autumn” is a community organizer event intended to draw attention away from the Tea Party; something for the media to play with. The Arab Spring events are serious but disorganized. These “American Autumn” events are actually fairly well organized even if they appear to be something else. No one took them very seriously. They certainly weren’t demanding the overthrow of Obama. They weren’t demanding a military coup. Mostly it was farce.

Some of it was a bit amusing, even appealing. After all, the IWW, the International Workers of the World, have endorsed Occupy Wall Street. All 12,000 of them, among them the folk singer Leslie Fish, who will emotionally and rather appealingly tell you that the Wobblies are still around. You can hear her here. (It might take a bit of time to download; be patient. And you may find some other songs at that site, such as Let us Go A-rambling…) After all, it’s time to throw the bomb…

But it is farce no longer. The entry of organized labor, which claims to speak for more than 10% of the US population and which has a highly favored place in Federal law and regulation, makes this a more serious matter.

It is also a sign of desperation. And maybe, just maybe, those who pay their union dues will stop to consider that this may be a more serious matter than they supposed. It’s one thing to pay dues and watch money go to liberal causes. It’s quite another to identify oneself with rebels. Next it may be your turn to throw the bomb.

clip_image002

No news on the CERN faster than light neutrinos. Without that observation all the speculations about relativity are fairly idle talk: as Russell Seitz reminds me, most physics professors have a peach crate full of well reasoned refutations of Einstein’s theory of relativity sent by smart people, and there’s not a lot of point in reading them because there’s no need for a new theory: what we have works to cover the data we have. Beckmann’s Einstein Plus Two is interesting if the FTL particles are “real” (repeatable observations by different teams with different equipment, etc.) because we need a new theory because if FTL happens then light speed really isn’t invariable; but without that observational data, it’s just another book in the peach crate. That’s still the way to bet, of course. But I sure could use faster than light for my stories….

clip_image002

clip_image005

clip_image002[4]

Proscription, regulation, XCOR, and other mail

Mail 695 Tuesday, October 04, 2011

clip_image002

Durbin to Bank of America Customers: ‘Get the Heck Out of That Bank’ – ABC News

Just what we need, politicians orchestrating a run on a bank.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/durbin-to-bank-of-america-customers-get-the-heck-out-of-that-bank/

Do these idiots not understand that this could plunge the US into a Depression!

Jim Crawford

Note that Senator Durbin was involved in the regulation that caused BoA to impose this fee:

Summary of the Durbin Interchange Amendment

As Modified for the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Conference

• The Durbin amendment would bring reasonable regulation to the $20 billion per year debit

interchange fee system. Interchange fees are received by the card-issuing bank in a debit card

transaction. However, Visa and MasterCard, which control 80% of the debit market, set the

debit interchange fee rates that apply to all banks within their networks. Every bank gets the

same interchange fee rate, regardless of how efficiently a bank conducts debit transactions.

Visa and MasterCard do not allow banks to compete with one another or negotiate with

merchants over interchange rates, and there is no constraint on Visa and MasterCard’s ability

to fix the rates at unreasonable levels. This system is effectively an unregulated $20 billion per

year transfer of wealth from merchants and their customers to card-issuing banks.

• The amendment will require that for transactions involving debit cards issued by banks with

assets over $10 billion, any interchange fee charged on the transaction must be reasonable and

proportional to the cost incurred in processing the transaction. Visa and MasterCard currently

charge debit interchange fees of around 1-2% of the transaction amount. These fees are far

higher than the actual cost of processing debit transactions, and they mean that small

businesses and merchants always get shortchanged when they accept a debit card for a sale.

• The amendment will permit card-issuing banks to receive debit interchange fee adjustments to

cover reasonably necessary fraud prevention costs. However, as opposed to the current

interchange system where banks receive a guaranteed level of interchange revenue no matter

how effectively they deal with fraud, the amendment will require banks to demonstrate that

they have met fraud-prevention standards and taken effective steps to reduce fraud in order to

receive an issuer-specific interchange adjustment that will cover their necessary costs.

http://www.fmi.org/docs/interchange/Summary_of_Durbin_Amendment.pdf

I will note that the best way to make the US economy grow would be to suspend for five years all Federal Regulations on commerce. Let the states deal with it. You could provide that the suspension will take place in 180 days, and the Congress has those 180 days to reinstate any regulations it sees fit, but one at a time, not en masse. They would probably keep the US Department of Agriculture meat inspections and some programs like that rather than leaving such matters to the states. Some programs would never even be considered, like bunny inspectors. Give them 180 days to restore the necessary and all the others go. The result would be an economic miracle, but of course that will never happen.

clip_image002[1]

National Space Prize

Dr. Pournelle,

Your idea has merit, which means it will never be considered by our government. I wish I weren’t so cynical, but I am.

There could be an added fiscal benefit: non-essential NASA facilities could be sold off to the private space industry. I know that wouldn’t make a dimple in the national deficit, but it’s still cash inflow. And the private space industry would get some good facilities here and there.

Thanks!

Martin L. Shoemaker

clip_image003

civil defense

There is an excellent video on pjtv talking about our vulnerability to biological attack. A movie was made this year, Contagion, that while being a movie, still made good points on some of the gaps in the system. The Hudson Institute fellow that was interviewed talked about the great strides we have made in the last ten years to handle an outbreak. However, he kept mentioning the "government" as the planner and executioner. It occurs to me that the old civil defense organizations would be far better at handling the local problems of an outbreak. One of the problems brought out in the movie and confirmed in the video was distribution of the vaccine and the problem of getting first responders to show up when it gets really bad. In both cases, the old CD organization would probably circumvent those problems. As you have said, they get titles and uniforms and get to strut around, and then one day they become heroes and you can have as many of them as you need.

Just another reason vector to reform CD.

Phil

To reform CD we will first have to abolish FEMA. FEMA is a very good example of how not to organize for disasters. It does not encourage local volunteers, and it tries to manage everything from far away. Abolish FEMA and restore Civil Defense, including commissioning locals to take command on declaration of an emergency. Work with local authorities. Make it clear that the first responsibility is local because Washington just can’t do it all.

I would not call retired majors and commanders working to build a local civil defense organization as strutting.

clip_image002[2]

Bleephead Rock and Absentia Proscription

Dear Jerry Pournelle:

Regarding the (excuse my language) "Niggerhead Rock" story… evidently

it’s a bigger deal for some than for others. That is in the nature of

slurs. Imagine, if you please, your least favorite American politician

leasing a ranch with the name "<Bleep>head" painted on a rock; where

bleep = a violent slur against your own personal ethnic group. (I can

think of a few for mine, I don’t know any for yours, and I don’t care

to find out, though I’m sure they exist.) Wouldn’t you object? Even if

it happens that the slur also has a non-insulting meaning?

Call it PC if you wish, or plain good manners. In general it is prudent

to not insult random strangers gratuitously; or, at least, not

strangers who count. When people who didn’t count start to count, then

suddenly some words reveal meanings previously ignored in polite

company. Perry may or may not be a racist, but he’s definitely a jerk.

Regarding proscription lists: The trouble with terrorism is that it

exists in the grey area between criminality and statecraft. Indeed,

merely by existing, the terrorist demonstrates the continuity between

the two. But states have privileges and citizens have rights; what then

does the terrorist have? Do we try to arrest and try them like

criminals, or blow them up from afar like warriors? I propose a

compromise; that proscription for treason be (partially, badly)

tempered by this expedient; trials in absentia. I don’t like it either,

but it’s better than just taking the President’s word for it.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Hellerstein

My apologies. I tried to reformat this, but it was too much work.

How in the world could it be anything but manners? Voters generally do not want presidents who act like swine. But manners are both local and temporal. What was mannerly in 1983 for the son of a rancher who leased a hunting lodge is one thing; that was a time when there were Niggerhead rocks in many places across the South, and I know of at least one in Springfield Ohio that existed in 1950; I do not know when it was renamed, but I assume that it was long ago. In 1983 Rick Perry told his father that the rock was inappropriate, and they painted over it.

In 2011 it is artificially conventional to assume that the very hint of the existence of the word nigger is so offensive that everyone ought to be shielded from seeing or hearing it. Joseph Conrad’s novel The Nigger of the Narcissus was published in the US under the title The Children of the Sea, not because the title under which it was written was considered offensive, but because the publisher didn’t think anyone would buy a novel about black people; today the name would have to be changed for other reasons. Mark Twain’s greatest work has to be bowdlerized. This in a time when black rap artists routinely use every offensive word known to humanity in a deliberate attempt to shock; but it is racist to notice that. As to what is ‘racist’, the ‘right’ to define that is of the very essence of modern politics, and has little to do with rationality.

Oddly enough I still believe in rational discourse.

The whole situation is absurd. Governments cannot and should not attempt to remove all traces of verbal insult from a society. It is certainly bad manners to inflict insult on people, but it is equally bad manners to assume offense where none is intended and often is not even felt. When I grew up, it was polite to say “Negro”. It was a term I used because it was not supposed to be offended, but on one occasion it seemed to be.

“I just thought I ought to be offended,” said one black friend back in my undergraduate days when I still used many of the verbalisms I had grown up with in a legally segregated society. This was in a party in Iowa City hosted by a black barber at which Count Basie was the guest of honor. Basie laughed his head off at the time, and oddly enough my friend was mildly rebuked for his manners while Basie was handing me a beer. That probably did more to raise my sensitivities than any sensitivity training ever could.

The Niggerhead Camp rock, long ago painted over, is a manufactured incident intended to give those who want to feel offended an excuse for doing so. That is not good manners, and I do not think it is good politics. I suspect that dredging this up does no one any good at all. And I will repeat that assuming offense where none is intended and little is felt is neither good manners nor good citizenship.

I agree with you on trials in absentia; they need not be in open court, and they might be military tribunals as were the trials of the World War II saboteurs that resulted in their execution; that would be a lot better than proscription lists.

clip_image002[3]

XCOR ballistic people-mover.

<http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/new-space-venture-could-bring-every-city-on-earth-within-two-hours-travel-20111103-ncx>

Roland Dobbins

DCX was a scale model of SSX, which was designed to be savable, reusable, and to launch from any azimuth and any latitude. DCX was something of a proof of concept.

clip_image002[4]

Proscriptions

The rationale you stated seems a bit incomplete. From what I can surmise (as a random guy on the internet), the criteria for inclusion on the proscription list (assuming there is a list and these things aren’t decided ad hoc) are as follows:

1) an active participant,

2) in a country/organization we are at war/AUMF with,

3) in a location inaccessible to US personnel (without killing people and breaking things),

4) sheltered by a government unwilling or unable to affect capture.

High value targets only need apply, as the cost of a Predator is well into the seven figures. Had Al-Awlaki been so gracious as to hop on board a commercial aircraft, presumably he would have been arrested, shipped off to Club Gitmo, and tried (eventually) under military tribunal. Samir Khan may or may not have qualified as an HVT himself (underwear bomb manufacturer), but getting two for the price of one can be considered as a "happy coincidence" if you believe in that sort of thing.

Kenneth Anderson has a series of posts on the drone attacks at volokh.com.

Lee Stillman

Arrested on what charge?

So far as I know there was no indictment. Makes more sense just to kill him than to charge him in court.

His correspondence with Hassan may or may not be grounds for arrest and trial for treason, but that hasn’t been shown.

His companion so far as I know was only a publisher. He made speeches.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

Charges? We don’t need no steenking charges!

Seriously, I doubt there would really be much of any law enforcement procedures followed. CIA: we want him. Airport security: okay, there he is. No cameras, no lawyers, no Miranda warning, no phone call.

Lee Stillman

I believe that the technical name for that kind of government is “police state.” It is hardly what the Philadelphia Constitution had in mind.

clip_image002[5]

Hit lists and Prizes

Dr. Pournelle;

The proscription list that you describe probably is an artifact of the cooperation between the Judge Advocate Generals office, the UCMJ, and the Office of the President / Commander-in-chief bureaucracy. The poor sap executing the order is sure to have a chain of command that has assured him that the order is legal, and one would assume the order was vetted by the chain of command and JAG, so you would have to look to some secret presidential order or ( more likely) a bureaucratic determination based on some method such as was used to excuse water-boarding by the previous administration.

On a different note, I would like to comment on your idea of offering prizes to get the best bang for the buck. I don’t think you have taken it far enough. Why not offer prizes for trimming government excesses? Write it up so that anyone who can show why a law is unconstitutional gets ten percent of the savings caused by rescinding that law. Even if a law is constitutional, if it can be shown to have effects contrary to the spirit of the original law – and it gets removed – then some monetary reward or compensation would be offered. All of the above would be run through the congress, not the courts. As the congress is creating the mess – they should clean it up. There is no reason a committee couldn’t recommend to the whole assembly that a law be rescinded, after convincing arguments have been presented.

Mr. B.

clip_image004

Proscription worries

Dr Pournelle

Your worries over the proscription of two American al-Qaeda members seems to me to be valid but perhaps academic. I am not certain, but I think it may be a fruitless quibble.

It is clear that there is no language in the Constitution which authorizes proscription. It is explicit that Congress may not exercise such power. I cannot imagine the judiciary has such power, but perhaps that says more about my imagination than it does about the judiciary.

What we are left with is that the power is inherent in the Executive; that is to say, it is extra-constitutional.

Clearly such powers exist. President Lincoln used them to quell the rebellion. There is no language in the Constitution that authorized the President to raise troops against a rebellion, suppress the writ of habeus corpus, or order the army and navy to make war on some of the several States. There is no language in the Constitution by which the President may proclame slaves emancipated and deprive citizens of their property without a hearing. But it was done.

I am reminded of my reaction to Justice Souter’s concurrence in the judgment of Nixon v. United States, 506 U.S. 224 (1993). A federal judge, Walter Nixon, had been convicted of perjury. He refused to resign his office. The House impeached him. The Senate referred the matter to a committee for findings of facts and then, upon hearing the report of the committee, removed Nixon from office. Nixon petitioned the Supreme Court on the grounds that he had not been ‘tried’ by the Senate. Souter, in his concurrence wrote

If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results, convicting, say, upon a coin toss, or upon a summary determination that an officer of the United States was simply " ‘a bad guy,’ " . . . judicial interference might well be appropriate.

(Full decision and concurrences at http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-740.ZS.html .)

My Constitutional Law professor asked us what we thought of this. I said Souter was an idiot. He asked why I thought so. I said that if things were so bad that US Senators would decide the fate of men by tossing a coin, then the Republic was already lost and, thus, ‘judicial interference’ was a farce.

While I appreciate your concern, I do not fear for the life of the Republic because President Obama or officers acting for him ordered a missile strike on two Americans whose allegiance to al-Qaeda outweighed their allegiance to the United States.

Were you instead to talk about the flagrant misuse of federal power to raid the Gibson guitar factory while letting alone Gibson’s Democrat-contributing competitors, I would readily join with you.

Live long and prosper.

h lynn keith

I hope you are correct. My own suspicion is that the Gibson raid is not actually unrelated to the use of missiles against enemies of the people, but that may be because I have an over active imagination. Once you abandon the notion of prescribed powers where do you stop?

clip_image003[1]

Russian proscription.

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8802732/PIC-AND-PUB-PLS-Leaked-document-reveals-plans-to-eliminate-Russias-enemies-overseas.html>

Russia ‘gave agents licence to kill’ enemies of the state

The Russian secret service authorised the "elimination" of individuals living overseas who were judged to be enemies of the state and ordered the creation of special units to conduct such operations, according to a document passed to The Daily Telegraph.

By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent 10:23PM BST 02 Oct 2011

The directive refers specifically to the European Union and western Europe and appears to be signed by the head of counter-intelligence of the FSB, the successor to the KGB.

It is dated March 19, 2003 – four years before the killing of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London. It sets a provisional deadline of May 1 2004 for the new units’ work to begin….."

clip_image004[1]

Bills of Attorney

Just a minor quibble with your excellent post on state actions against individuals; the UK has not completely given up on bills of attainder in modern times. A good example can be found here: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/legislation/scotland/ssi2006/20060512.htm A news story on that legislation can be found here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1536449/A-grim-legal-first-killed-this-firm.html

Cheers,

James

James Spiller

Now that is interesting.

clip_image002[6]

Scott Adams on Taxes, the Wealthy and a Return to the Ocean – WSJ.com

Jerry,

Driving the rich to sea?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204138204576601000374936460.html

I seem to recall a certain Sci Fi author who wrote a series of stories premised on the idea that the wealthy would escape to space.

Jim Crawford

Thanks

clip_image002[7]

clip_image002[8]

clip_image006

clip_image002[20]