Mail 687 Sunday, August 14, 2011
Comments on my Program for Republicans
Business Exemptions
"Double the exemption numbers for small businesses: that is, whatever regulations you are exempt from by dint of having 10 or fewer employees, you will now be exempt if you have 20 or fewer; similarly for larger numbers. The regulations will still apply, but the exemption numbers are doubled."
I’d add one more thing; any business will be grandfathered in to these limits going forward. In other words, the Feds can’t (easily) drop the exemption numbers back down in a year or so. This would encourage people to create new businesses now.
Fred Nixon
Jerry,
I really like the program, and would add one other thing, a sunset law.
In Texas, every agency is subject to a sunset, a date on which the agency will cease to exist unless re-authorized by the legislature and governor.
http://www.sunset.state.tx.us/faq.htm
I would sunset every agency and all their regulations, so that every so often, the agencies and regulations had to be reviewed and re-authorized. I’d like to sunset pretty much the entire CFR and all federal (and state) laws. As part of the sunset procedure, we should be reviewing every single regulation for its effectiveness, costs, etc.
Thanks,
Anthony
Anthony Holder
Agreed
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On the Riots in Britain
Here’s an interesting interview. It might even contain a little hope.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/14/david-lammy-tottenham-mark-duggan>
—
Harry Erwin
So there was a history in the region. It still does not explain the rise of the brutish activities motivated almost entirely by the desire for a new TV or sneakers. As happened in Los Angeles a few years ago, and in Philadelphia recently, as well as England. There is always a criminal element, but in general even the criminals are criminals, not rebels. But when the whole notion of standards is rejected it’s a different matter. Free Societies fall when there are not enough citizens ready to defend them. Tyrannies can hold on much longer that a free society of disillusioned citizens. Battista’s Cuba fell because no one was willing to defend it; Castro appeared to be a savior, and convinced enough followers to throw out Battista, but then there was no one to rescue the country from Castro.
And yet. As you say, there is perhaps a little hope in there. Perhaps.
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Danegeld and Copybook Wisdom
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I saw your recent column in which you compare British hooligans to Danes. I write to remind you that every human culture must, every generation, absorb an invasion by barbarians – a.k.a. the young. Civilizing them is an expensive process, but cutting corners there has consequences. You can call the cost of acculturation Danegeld if you wish; and yes, you’ll never get rid of the young; but remember that you too were once a little Dane. The alternative is to drop the torch, and lose the relay race.
You made a classic error of moral philosophy; confusing ‘is’ with ‘ought’. In particular, to foresee is not to condone. To say that austerity causes civil disorder does not praise civil disorder; it condemns austerity! But I admit that it’s easier to blame the messenger.
And as for the consequences of austerity, consider these copybook sayings: "Penny-wise, pound-foolish." and "What goes around, comes around."
Sincerely,
Nathaniel Hellerstein
I am not sure how to answer that. I can assert that I am well aware that each generation must learn to be civilized, and indeed I would have thought that was the essence of conservatism, and the very essence of Kipling’s poem. We have made war on the American culture for most of my life. When I was young we were surrounded by the symbols of the nation and its culture. They included mangers and menorahs, deliberate respect to the clergy, overt patriotic rituals in classrooms, pledges of allegiance, and a great deal more. I have been warning people that when we throw all that out we sow the wind; and I am not astonished that having done it we reap the whirlwind.
We can now try to bribe people into obedience with more stuff. Open the stash. Hand out the stuff. That won’t last long. The usual remedy to this kind of disorder is far more violent. In Mexico things have gone to the point where something has to give: everyone now wishes for almost anything that will bring back a land in which ten murders in Acapulco in a weekend is a very rare event.
There are many ways to reap the whirlwind. I suppose it will be interesting to see which version Britain gets, and which we get. We have worked hard at ending the Old Republic. We have not given so much thought to what replaces it. For some reason, nothing like the old patriotism seems to have won the hearts of the next generation.
But we have not yet destroyed the Legions. Not yet.
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SF cell shutdown: Safety issue, or hint of Orwell?
Jerry;
Niven never imagined that his flash mobs would be so criminal and violent.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9P3FGQG0&show_article=1
It is an interesting civil rights question. Is it permissible for government to jam communications that coordinate civil unrest? How about monitoring the communications feed to identify which messages were used to coordinate unrest and who received them and are therefore suspected of participating?
Mubarak took too long to pull the plug on cell phones.
Jim Crawford
When you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind. I think you underestimate what people will embrace when the choice is disorder. Note what happened to Germany under Weimar when they sought to destroy the old culture. National Socialists were perfectly happy to help destroy the old. But as Chesterton said, when a man ceases to believe in God, he does not cease to believe – he will now believe in anything. When a people lose faith in their culture, they do not lose faith entirely – they will seize on something else. I can easily see a time when the “freedom” of free speech and easy communication is hated, not defended.
Mubarak did not really control the Mamelukes. He wanted to install his son as Pharaoh. That was not acceptable to the colonels, many of whom now wish they had acted differently. We have not yet seen what will replace him. Or Qaddaffi. Or the Taliban. Or Saddam.
And lest we find too much hope, note Mark Steyn on the riots:
Lessons for us from London in flames:
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/london-311857-want-book.html
“If you were born into such a household, you’ve been comprehensively "stimulated" into the dead-eyed zombies staggering about the streets this past week: pathetic inarticulate subhumans unable even to grunt the minimal monosyllables to BBC interviewers desperate to appease their pathologies. C’mon, we’re not asking much: just a word or two about how it’s all the fault of government "cuts" like the leftie columnists argue. And yet even that is beyond these baying beasts. The great-grandparents of these brutes stood alone against a Fascist Europe in that dark year after the fall of France in 1940. Their grandparents were raised in one of the most peaceful and crime-free nations on the planet. Were those Englishmen of the mid-20th century to be magically transplanted to London today, they’d assume they were in some fantastical remote galaxy. If Charlton Heston was horrified to discover the Planet of the Apes was his own, Britons are beginning to realize that the remote desert island of "Lord Of The Flies" is, in fact, located just off the coast of Europe in the northeast Atlantic. Within two generations of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, a significant proportion of the once-free British people entrusted themselves to social rewiring by liberal compassionate Big Government and thereby rendered themselves paralytic and unemployable save for nonspeaking parts in "Rise of The Planet Of The Apes." And even that would likely be too much like hard work.”
"In Britain, everything is policed except crime.
“Her Majesty’s cowed and craven politically correct constabulary stand around with their riot shields and Robocop gear as young rioters lob concrete through store windows to steal the electronic toys which provide their only non-narcotic or alcoholic amusement. . . . Yet a police force all but entirely useless when it comes to preventing crime or maintaining public order has time to police everything else. When Sam Brown observed en passant to a mounted policeman on Cornmarket Street in Oxford, "Do you know your horse is gay?", he was surrounded within minutes by six officers and a fleet of patrol cars, handcuffed, tossed in the slammer overnight, and fined 80 pounds. Mr. Brown’s "homophobic comments," explained a spokesmoron for Thames Valley Police, were "not only offensive to the policeman and his horse, but any members of the general public in the area." The zealous crackdown on Sam Brown’s hippohomophobia has not been replicated in the present disturbances. Anyone who has so much as glanced at British policing policy over the past two decades would be hard pressed to argue which party on the streets of London, the thugs or the cops, is more irredeemably stupid. . . . This is the logical dead end of the Nanny State.”
"For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. . . . The evil of such a system is not the waste of money but the waste of people. Big Government means small citizens . . ."
Just thought I’d brighten your day.
Ed
We have sown the wind.
"It’s J. G. Ballard’s World, We Just Live in It"
"After the events of this week, who can deny that J. G. Ballard is enjoying a wry chuckle from the grave? "
http://www.fantasticalandrewfox.com/2011/08/12/j-g-ballards-world-we-just-live-in-it/
Billenium is the Ballard story that has stuck with me for over 40 years, with all its flaws. Anyway, is Fox right?
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Review of Imperial Stars 2
Dr Pournelle
I reviewed Imperial Stars 2: Republic and Empire on my blog today. http://thelogoftheantares.blogspot.com/2011/08/sunday-ebook-review-imperial-stars-2.html
It is one of the best sf short-story collections I’ve ever read.
Unhappily, it is very, very hard to find the Imperial Stars collections on Baen’s Books. They are not listed under your catalog name or by title. The easiest way to find IS2 is to go to my blog and chase the link I give. The alternative is to go to Baen’s Books webscription sitemap http://www.webscription.net/sitemap.aspx and scroll down to your name; the Imperial Stars titles are listed there.
Indeed, chasing the link attached to your name gives http://www.webscription.net/s-83-jerry-pournelle.aspx . This link yields titles not found in your Baen’s author catalog http://baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=jpournelle .
One thing’s for sure, anyone who finds Imperial Stars on Baen’s site is a committed fan. Getting to these collections is like performing a tonsillectomy through the rectum.
Live long and prosper
h lynn keith
Well, I can hope there are readers who will try. Volumes I and III were pretty good too. I was quite proud of Imperial Stars.
EBook versions of all three Imperial Stars volumes can be found at http://www.webscription.net/p-923-imperial-stars-1-the-stars-at-war.aspx. Volumes Two and Three are also available from that page. Alas, they are not available as Kindle instant downloads. I wish they were. But they do work on the Kindle format, and it’s not all that hard to get them there. Clearly it’s simpler to be able to go to the Kindle Store, particularly if you are on an airplane and only have the Kindle.
The three Imperial Stars volumes have some of the best essays I ever wrote and all were edited by Jim Baen himself; the results were pretty good, if I do say so.
==
Niven & Pournelle books in the NPR Top 100 SF/F poll. (priority one)
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
_Ringworld_, _The Mote in God’s Eye_, _Lucifer’s Hammer_.
Roland Dobbins
I have several messages on this. Two out of the top one hundred isn’t all that bad…
More ice, so naturally ‘unrelated’ to so-called ‘global warming’.
Roland Dobbins
Surprise.
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Constitutional rights, of course, are actually privileges, and sovereign immunity is what is actually inviolate.
………….Karl
Sent to you by Karl via Google Reader:
Denver Media Outlets Fail to Cover Multitude of Juicy Stories Behind Recent Rabbit Farm Raid <http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BigGovernment/~3/szszKytUGnY/>
via Big Government <http://biggovernment.com> by Bob McCarty on 8/12/11
Since breaking news <http://bobmccarty.com/2011/08/10/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> about a July 21 raid on a farm 12 miles north of Denver that resulted in local law enforcement officials seizing 193 rabbits from a nationally-recognized rabbit expert, I’ve learned more disturbing details about the case. Perhaps least shocking was my discovery that members of the Denver-area news media appear to have swallowed everything thrown at them by the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/sheriff/index.htm> .
<http://bobmccarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Six_Bell_Farms_Raid_1.jpg>
Before pressing on, I’ll recap the lowlights of what transpired after someone placed an anonymous call — the first ever, according to officials with the Sheriff’s Office — to a new statewide Crime Stoppers hotline that had been set up in June, specifically to take reports from citizens of suspected animal abuse:
1. Without a warrant, officials with the Sheriff’s Office descended upon Debe Bell’s Six Bells Farm Candle Factory and Rabbitry <http://sixbellsfarm.com> at approximately 10:30 a.m., accompanied by three veterinarians and several volunteers from the local branch of the House Rabbit Society <http://www.rabbit.org/> — a nationwide group comprised of people who, according to Bell, think rabbits need to be raised like small children.
2. During the next three hours, according to Bell, the throng of law enforcement officers, veterinarians and volunteers opened the doors of her 600-square-foot barn, turned off the water to the swamp cooler (an air conditioning system for the barn) and caused the temperature in the barn to rise to 84 degrees.
3. Some six hours after they arrived, Sheriff’s Office officials produced a warrant which spokesperson Mark Techmeyer said was obtained after they convinced a judge that they had seen “what they believed to be some issues” at Six Bells Farm.
4. During the next four hours, according to Bell, the same throng loaded her rabbits in cardboard boxes, put them in a horse trailer and hauled them off to the county fairgrounds. There, the rabbits were placed in dog and cat crates with solid-bottom floors, meaning, “The minute they urinate, they’re standing in their own urine.”
5. For several days after their arrival at the fairgrounds, Bell said, the crated rabbits were kept in a non-air conditioned concrete-stalls horse barn until officials with the Foothills Animal Shelter — a group tasked by the Sheriff’s Office with caring for the animals — decided that wasn’t working out and obtained a swamp cooler.
<http://bobmccarty.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Six_Bell_Farms_Raid_2.jpg>
As of today, neither the Denver Post <http://www.denverpost.com/> nor CBS Denver <http://CBSDenver.com> has seen fit to report on the raid more than one time despite the fact that it contains a plethora of “low-hanging fruit” story angles any investigative reporter worth his salt would die for. For instance:
A. Bell is known statewide and nationally as a top rabbit expert, and she’s relied upon by families involved in at the county, state and national level as the go-to person for children and families in need of help with and knowledge of rabbits. Surely, it would be newsworthy if a woman like her all of the sudden “went bad” like the star of the AMC television series, “Breaking Bad.” <http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad>
B. According to Berthoud, Colo., attorney Elizabeth Kearney, there was only one dead rabbit in her client’s barn, and all of the other dead rabbits were in her freezer. Why? Because Bell provides rabbit meat to the local zoo and to several raptor rescue groups. That has to be newsworthy, right?
C. Twelve of the seized rabbits belong to 4-H <http://www.national4-hheadquarters.gov/> kids who were planning to show them at upcoming fairs — two at the Jefferson County Fair <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/fair/> that started Thursday and the remaining 10 at the Colorado State Fair <http://www.coloradostatefair.com/> which runs from Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 in Pueblo. I guarantee Barbara Walters could get those kids to cry and send the ratings through the roof!
D. On the Constitutional rights front, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has explored the subjects of whether it’s lawful for law enforcement agents to (1) step foot on someone’s property without a warrant and (2) seize someone’s private property (livestock) based solely upon an anonymous phone call to a hotline that pays up to $2,000 for tips. Lawyers, please form a line.
E. With animal rights activism forever on the increase, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has explored the possibility that animal rights activists — who would love to see people like Bell put out of business — made the anonymous hotline call. Perhaps the media outlets are afraid of blowback from the animal rights wackos?
F. The shortage of participants at this year’s Small Animals Show <http://www.coloradostatefair.com/index.php?page=small_animal> at the Colorado State Fair is so severe that officials extended the deadline for entry and, in order to prevent animal rights activists from collecting the names of rabbit owners, officials are planning to not display the names of rabbit owners alongside their rabbits. Why? Because rabbit raisers in Colorado are scared they might suffer the same fate as Six Bells Farm and are not going to show their animals at the Colorado State Fair, Bell said. That has to be news, doesn’t it?
G. Finally, one has to wonder why no one in the Denver news media has reported on Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey <http://www.co.jefferson.co.us/da/index.htm> ’s role in this case. One year ago last month, Storey charged an 82-year-old man with attempted first-degree murder <http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-elderly-man-shoots-thieves-txt,0,2612691.story> after that man fired two shots at thieves who he said had tried to run him over with their truck while stealing his flatbed trailer. In short, as reported by Denver’s CW2 channel <http://www.kwgn.com/news/kdvr-elderly-man-shoots-thieves-txt,0,2612691.story> , the district attorney seems to have a propensity toward overcharging people. Is he too powerful to expose?
Yes, instead of pursuing this story with so many rich story angles available, two of Colorado’s largest media outlets took passes.
Instead of investigating the news, Shaun Boyd of CBS Denver <http://denver.cbslocal.com/2011/07/22/200-rabbits-seized-in-animal-abuse-investigation/> and Liz Navratil of the Denver Post <http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18598053> merely passed along to their audiences what they were fed by Sheriff’s Office spokespersons Jacki Kelley and Mark Techmeyer.
CLOSING THOUGHT: Since publishing my first report <http://bobmccarty.com/2011/08/10/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> , the story has appeared at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com <http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2011/08/11/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/> and garnered quite a bit of attention throughout cyberspace. I’ve even seen suggestions that all loyal, freedom-loving Americans should begin raising rabbits. That in mind, shall we form a “B Party”?
More to come.
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BigGovernment/~4/szszKytUGnY>
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