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Wednesday,
February 4, 2009 I am off to the oncologist. I expect this is
routine.
=================
1400: It was routine. They have taken blood to look at proteins, but my
next visit is scheduled for six months. The MRI shows nothing of
importance. The Lump is gone and the wreckage is fading away. I still have
some balance problems, and my voice sounds funny to me, but that's
apparently mostly due to brain sunburn, so to speak.
So now to get back to work. If I'm going to live a few more years, I'll
need to make some money.
The police have arrested a glazier for breaking a bunch of windows;
apparently he intended to go offer his services to those whose windows
were broken. He used a slingshot. The window of my Explorer was broken a
few weeks ago by a small pellet (or rock, but something small). I had
assumed a pellet gun, but a slingshot would be just as likely. I doubt it
was the same person or the same motive.
It reminds me of Bastiat, That which is seen and that which is not
seen. Google is taking forever to do anything today -- ah, here it is.
http://www.econlib.org/
library/Bastiat/basEss1.html Read it. It won't take long, and it's
worthwhile.
============
The bad news is that the "stimulus" bill, which is the largest
appropriations bill in the history of the world, is still on track for
passage. It nationalizes a lot of the economy, and once those steps are
taken, the Iron Law of Bureaucracy will see to it that the institutions
created by it will remain. Forever. I have a few
more words on that over in mail.
The tax cut provision of the "stimulus bill" seem aimed at solidifying
party control: most of it is transfer payments to people who don't now pay
taxes. In the US 40% don't pay federal taxes. If any large number of those
are given money as transfer payments they will learn to rely on them. At
which point they will be motivated to vote. And community organizers will
see that they do vote. Now understand: many of those who get negative
income taxes do necessary work and they aren't very well paid. The
question becomes, is that a federal problem, and should it be dealt with
by transfer payments? Because once this is instituted, it's going to be
pretty permanent. Those affected by it will be mobilized to defend it, and
it will mean more to them than it does to those opposed. So it goes.
It does look as if we are going to have a sea change, a fundamental
change in the relationship between the United States and its people. There
was such a change during Roosevelt's time, when Washington went from being
a small town in Maryland to the Capital of a Federalized United States.
There sill be another, I think, now.
The Daschle story illustrates it nicely. Here is a Senator from a small
state, a man of charm and ability. He failed of reelection, went to work
for a law firm although he is not a lawyer, and the firm thought enough of
his abilities that it put at his disposal a limousine and driver at a cost
which we can estimate from the fact that Daschle's taxes on that
perk came to some $128,000. He became a multi-millionaire in a short time
after leaving the Senate in 1994. (He spent 4 years in the Air Force as an
Intelligence Officer, and the rest of his career from 1978 is in the House
and Senate.)
His skills, in other words, are in government. Naturally he was hired
by a lobbyist firm after he was defeated for Senate; and one notes that
his skills as a lobbyist were worth millions, on which he mostly paid
taxes except for overlooking the use of his limousine and driver. Why were
his skills worth so much money? Because no firm dares not hire someone
like Daschle. Bill Gates tried that for a while: at one time the only
Washington office Microsoft maintained was a sales force. This continued
well into the 1990's when the government began to annoy Gates and try to
break up Microsoft. Naturally. Government hates being ignored. Gates was
not paying his feudal fees to the Lords of Washington, and had to be
punished for it. He learned his lesson, and now Microsoft spends millions
on Washington lobbying, with parties for Congressional Staffers,
"information trips", and the whole panoply of perks that government
employees in all branches -- Legislative, Executive, and Regulatory --
have come to expect.
The flow of money to Washington continues and grows, and always will.
No one can escape paying tribute to the Lords of Government. The "stimulus
bill" will bring change we can believe in -- change in the same direction
as before, under Roosevelt, under Johnson, under Clinton, under Bush:
greater growth in government, larger government payrolls, more perks for
the Lords of Washington.
And I need to remember to be thankful. I am cancer free. Despair is a
sin. I am free to write this essay and you are free to read it. And
Moore's Law continues to empower individuals. We each of us have more
computing power than the government ever had before the turn of the
Millennium. Perhaps we will learn to use that. And some day we will open
up a new frontier. Frontiers always have more freedom. There are novels in
that. Come to think of it, Charlie Sheffield and I wrote one of them...
Now back to work.
============
Is anyone else finding Google very slow? Actually, I think, the problem
is FireFox.
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