'Wise Guardians' and the 'Unwise Rest of Us'

The Downfall of the Elitist

by Robert 

The two-tiered socialist system is, actually, the most basic sociopolitical system on Earth. It's essentially tribal, set up to ensure stability. To prevent the disruption of change it moves its authority into an essentially hereditary mode. You have the 'Anointed' (upper tier) . . . and the 'Unanointed' (the vast majority in the lower tier).
There's no means of movement between these two groups. One class, the anointed, are deemed by birth, education etc. to be Guardians, Rulers, Wise Men. These 'Noblesse oblige' feel they have a duty and a right to govern the unanointed lesser people.
In days past it would be the tribal elders of one clan that ruled over the other clans. In the feudal period it would be the nobles and the church. The elite prevented the lower class from gaining power; kept them uneducated, dependent on the financial and 'saviour' powers of the nobles/church who owned all the means of production (the land), owned all means of hope and salvation from your supposed sins (the church), all knowledge.
Keeping the unanointed peasantry down became difficult only when the population increased beyond the 'organizing capacity' of such a two-tiered system. After all, you have to enforce a system where the peasantry can't become educated, can't get enough knowledge or fiscal power to control their own lives, can't own land, aren't allowed to read, can't own businesses, etc.

Notice in the Middle East - keeping knowledge out of the hands of the ordinary people and confining them to subservience has become difficult with the electronic media. The Middle East is going through its own transition from a two-class to a three-class structure. Not easy, as the two-class is all about the security of stability, while the three-class is about risks and change.
In Canada, the Liberals were dominant for so long because Canadians were kept passive peasants by the Ottawa government which was focused around the crony big businesses in Quebec and Ontario. But with the rise of the West, the ability of Ottawa/Liberals to keep people down became weak. The Liberals were run as an Elite Governance, a set of insiders who all knew each other, were shareholders in the same big businesses located in Montréal-Toronto, used the government to subsidize themselves, and kept Canadians passive. But the West and the increased population and the rise of small businesses changed all this. The Liberals didn't adapt; they kept to the two-tiered structure with themselves as the Elite. They simply settled in this mode, without policies or programs. That's why they've imploded.
As for Layton's NDP and Quebec - that was just a protest vote against the Bloc. Both the Bloc and the NDP are similar: Socialist. Quebec is socialist because it is cocooned within the Canadian economy. Like a spoiled teenager it can pout and insist upon special treatment, knowing that the parents will eventually give in and hand over all the treats. I think there'll be trouble in La Belle province for Layton with Mulcair.

In our Western world, we have the Elite as the 'intellectuals': the arts and humanities grads who so often move into the civil service and run our world. They are isolated from reality, cocooned in their tenured government jobs, with their pensions, their untouchable isolation from accountability. Their ability to live an economically secure life isn't dependent on their ability to run a store, bake a cake, set up a business, etc. It isn't dependent on their willingness to take risks - and a middle class growth economy absolutely rests on individuals taking risks in setting up and competing for new business ventures.

Shocked, shocked, she is, as they say in Casablanca.

^{Where Dreams Die}

^{by Victor Davis Hanson}

I was given a great gift — but see below — to travel throughout California the last week, by land and by air over the state. It was hard to determine whether the natural beauty of the landscape or the ingenuity of our ancestors was the more impressive. The Sierra is still snow-locked and towers in white above a lush valley floor below. The lakes of the 1912 Big Creek Hydroelectric Project — Shaver, Huntington, and the still snowbound Edison and Florence above — belong in Switzerland. The squares of grapes and trees below look like a vast lush checkerboard from above.

I prefer the beauty of the Napa and Sonoma valleys to Tuscany; the former lacks only the majestic Roman and Renaissance history of the Italian countryside. Human genius in just a half-century has almost matched 2500 years of Italian viticulture. The California coast — the hills, beaches, and landscape — could be in the Peloponnese and easily stands the comparison. When early summer finally comes to the state in late spring, as it did last week, the result is almost divine: warmth and light without high humidity, daily rains, or high winds.

They say the Central Valley is the ugliest part of the state; I disagree. Last week from my great-great-grandmother’s upstairs balcony I could see snow capped mountains tower just thirty miles away; in-between were millions of green trees and vines and the water towers of small towns in every direction. Nothing in Spain or southern France is prettier. A man would have to be mad to leave such beauty, and the brilliant work of his predecessors who as artists built the dams and canals, laid out the agrarian patchwork, founded these communities that serve as bookends to the works of architectural and municipal genius in San Francisco, or Los Angeles and San Diego. Yes, a man would have to be mad — or quite rational — to leave paradise lost.

You see, here is the situation in California. Tens of thousands of prisoners are scheduled by a U.S. Supreme Court order to be released ^[2]. But why this inability to house our criminals when we pay among the highest sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation? Too many criminals? Too few new prisons? Too high costs per prisoner? Too many non-violent crimes that warrant incarceration? God help us when they are released. We know what crime is like now; what will it be like if thousands are let go? I doubt they will end up in the yards of the justices who let them out.

I think I have a clue to what’s ahead. Here is an aside, a sort of confession of my last six months in the center of our cry-the-beloved state:

December 2011: rear-ended by a texting driver; I called 9/11 and the police; she called “relatives” who arrived in two carloads. You get the picture. Luckily the police got there before her “family” did, and cited her. Still waiting to fix the dented truck.

March 2011: riding a bike in rural California, flipped over a “loose dog,” resulting in assorted injuries. Residents — well over 10 in various dwellings —claimed ignorance about the dogs outside their homes: no licenses, no vaccinations, no leashes, no fence. Final score: them: slammed door and shrugs; me: ruined bike, injuries, and a long walk home.

"Anti-government" public "employees" in action

Viva, err… what, exactly?

"It is flagrant self-flattery for the young people who have been camping out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square in the run-up to Spain’s municipal election to compare their protests to the angry revolts that have swept across the Arab world. Placards that bluster such slogans as ‘From Tahrir Square [in Cairo] to Madrid, World Revolution’ call to mind the deluded black British Labour politician of the 1980s who tried to put his election as MP for South Brent on a par with the Soweto uprisings against apartheid. Yet these lazy parallels have been echoed in reports of the Spanish protests from the BBC and other serious news outlets."

by Mick Hume

What do events in Europe and the Arab world have in common? It is certainly true that both political situations illustrate a yawning chasm between the ruling elites and large sections of the ruled. It is also unfortunately true that the protests of the ‘Arab spring’ and those in Spain and elsewhere are each characterised in different ways by an absence of clear political leadership or coherently radical demands.

But the contexts and the consequences of these protests are very different. While the Arab peoples’ alienation from discredited dictatorial regimes has inspired them to rise up and demand more democracy in a real and often-bloody struggle for power, the Spanish protestors’ disaffection with their own bankrupt political Euro-class so far appears to have led to little more than a collective emotional wail of anguish and abstention from the old politics. And where the absence of political principles and leadership risks holding back a far-reaching democratic revolution in the Arab world, on the quieter streets of Spain and elsewhere in Europe it means there appears little prospect of the movement for democracy making it out of those laid-back city square campsites and storming any palaces just yet.

The sit-in protests began in Madrid last week and spread to other Spanish towns and cities as the municipal elections approached, in defiance of a rule barring political demonstrations on the eve of elections – albeit a rule which the insecure authorities made little or no attempt to enforce before polling day. They quickly became the focal point for those seeking a public expression of anger about Spain’s dire economic and financial crisis, which has pushed the official unemployment rate above 21 per cent - more than double that for young people - while the Socialist government imposes public-sector wage cuts and tax rises to appease the financial markets.

Much of the world’s media has been so taken by these nice, well-behaved protestors that reports have even credited them with embodying a new national spirit of political change and helping to inflict the unprecedented defeat suffered by the ruling Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain’s weekend elections; the Socialists were hammered in cities and regions across the country and even lost control of such strongholds as Barcelona, Seville and Estremadura.

The tale of two tales

Bill “Chicken Little” McKibben

by DON BOUDREAUX

Writing in today’s Washington Post, Bill McKibben blames deadly recent weather events on climate change.  And he snarkily dismisses as naive the argument that humankind can adapt well to such change.

Let’s look at data from the National Weather Service on annual fatalities in the U.S. caused by tornados, floods, and hurricanes from 1940 through 2009.  Naturally, these data show that the number of such fatalities varies from year to year.  For example, in 1972 the number of persons killed by these weather events was 703 while in 1988 the number was 72.  On average, however, the trend is clear and encouraging: the number of such fatalities, especially since 1980, is declining.

The average annual number of such fatalities over this entire 70-year span is 248.  In each of the four decades prior to 1980, the average annual number of fatalities was higher than 248; in particular:

1940-49: 272

1950-59: 308

1960-69: 282

1970-79: 296

The average annual number of such fatalities over the full 40 years 1940-1979 was 290.

But in each of the three decades starting in 1980, the average annual number of fatalities caused by tornados, floods, and hurricanes was lower than 248; in particular:

1980-89: 173

1990-99: 171

2000-09: 238

The average annual number of such fatalities over the full 30 years 1980-2009 was 194.  (This number falls to 160 – just over half of the 1940-79 number of 290 – if we exclude the deaths attributed to hurricane Katrina, the great majority of which were caused by a levee that breached a day after the storm passed.)

By all means

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

--Joseph A. Schumpeter

RACE, CULTURE, AND EQUALITY¹

by Thomas SowellDuring the 15 years that I spent researching and writing my recently completed  trilogy on racial and cultural issues,² I was struck again and again with how common huge disparities in income and wealth have been for centuries, in countries around the world-- and yet how each country regards its own particular disparities as unusual, if not unique.  Some of these disparities have been among racial or ethnic groups, some among nations, and some among regions, continents, or whole civilizations.

In the nineteenth century, real per capita income in the Balkans was about one-third that in Britain.  That dwarfs intergroup disparities that many in the United States today regard as not merely strange but sinister.  Singapore has a median per capita income that is literally hundreds of times greater than that in Burma.
    During the rioting in Indonesia last year, much of it directed against the ethnic Chinese in that country, some commentators found it strange that the Chinese minority, which is just 5 percent of the Indonesian population, owned an estimated four-fifths of the capital in the country.  But it is not strange.  Such disparities have long been common in other countries in Southeast Asia, where Chinese immigrants typically entered poor and then prospered, creating whole industries in the process.  People from India did the same in much of East Africa and in Fiji.
    Occupations have been similarly unequal.
    In the early 1920s, Jews were just 6 percent of the population of Hungary and 11 percent of the population of Poland, but they were more than half of all the physicians in both countries, as well as being vastly over-represented in commerce and other fields.³  In the early twentieth century, all of the firms in all of the industries producing the following products in Brazil's state of Rio Grande do Sul were owned by people of German ancestry: trunks, stoves, paper, hats, neckties, leather, soap, glass, watches, beer, confections and carriages.⁴
    In the middle of the nineteenth century, just three countries produced most of the manufactured goods in the world-- Britain, Germany, and the United States.  By the late twentieth century, it was estimated that 17 percent of the people in the world produce four-fifths of the total output on the planet.
    Such examples could be multiplied longer than you would have the patience to listen.⁵
    Why are there such disparities?  In some cases, we can trace the reasons, but in other cases we cannot.  A more fundamental question, however, is: Why should anyone have ever expected equality in the first place?
    Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that not only every racial or ethnic group, but even every single individual in the entire world, has identical genetic potential.  If it is possible to be even more extreme, let us assume that we all behave like saints toward one another.  Would that produce equality of results?
    Of course not.  Real income consists of output and output depends on inputs.  These inputs are almost never equal-- or even close to being equal.
    During the decade of the 1960s, for example, the Chinese minority in Malaysia earned more than a hundred times as many engineering degrees as the Malay majority.  Halfway around the world at the same time, the majority of the population of Nigeria, living in its northern provinces, were just 9 percent of the students attending that country's University of Ibadan and just 2 percent of the much larger number of Nigerian students studying abroad in foreign institutions of higher learning.  In the Austrian Empire in 1900, the illiteracy rate among Polish adults was 40 percent and among Serbo-Croatians 75 percent-- but only 6 percent among the Germans.
    Given similar educational disparities among other groups in other countries-- disparities in both the quantity and quality of education, as well as in fields of specialization-- why should anyone expect equal outcomes in incomes or occupations?

"Do you know who I am?"

Strauss-Kahn's pals bid to pay off woman's kin

By ORON DAN, LAURA ITALIANO and BOB FREDERICKS

The family of the Guinean woman who says the former International Monetary Fund chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, tried to rape her in a New York hotel, in their home village of Tchiakoulle.

Friends of alleged hotel sex fiend Dominique Strauss-Kahn secretly contacted the accusing maid's impoverished family, offering them money to make the case go away since they can't reach her in protective custody, The Post has learned.

The woman, who says she was sexually assaulted by the disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund, has an extended family in the former French colony of Guinea in West Africa, well out of reach of the Manhattan DA's Office.

"They already talked with her family," a French businesswoman with close ties to Strauss-Kahn and his family told The Post. "For sure, it's going to end up on a quiet note."

Prosecutors in Manhattan have done their best to keep the cleaning woman out of the reach of Strauss-Kahn's supporters, but the source was already predicting success for the Parisian pol's pals.

"He'll get out of it and will fly back to France. He won't spend time in jail. The woman will get a lot of money," said the source, adding that a seven-figure sum has been bandied about.

While the DA's office has sequestered the maid -- and is even monitoring her phone calls -- her extended family lives in a village that lacks paved roads, electricity and phone lines.

The average monthly income is $45, which is near-starvation, and some of her family members can't even afford shoes.

They live so off-the-grid in a remote village that they didn't know the maid was allegedly nearly raped until reporters trekked to the village to inform them.

The alleged victim, who lives with her 15-year-old daughter in The Bronx, came to the United States from Guinea several years ago after her husband died. She has received some financial help from her sister and brother-in-law living in New York.

The DA's office has warned local family members not to accept calls from associates of Strauss-Kahn. Even without the maid's testimony, however, prosecutors claim they have plenty of damning evidence to prosecute Strauss-Kahn, including her videotaped statement, grand-jury testimony, statements from fellow hotel employees and semen samples found on the hotel room carpet.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, remains under house arrest in a pricey lower Manhattan pad secured by his billionaire wife, Anne Sinclair. He must wear a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet and have armed guards to prevent him from escaping.

Meanwhile, in another development yesterday, it emerged that Strauss-Kahn allegedly shouted, "Do you know who I am?" as he assaulted the victim, according to a new report.

"Don't you know who I am? Don't you know who I am?" Strauss- Kahn repeatedly inquired during the incident, according to Fox News.

"Please, please stop. No!" she cried as he pinned her to the bed, law-enforcement sources said. "Please stop. I need my job, I can't lose my job, don't do this. I will lose my job. Please, please stop!"

In a heartless reply, Strauss-Kahn, allegedly told her, "No, baby. Don't worry, you're not going to lose your job," sources said, adding that he again repeated, "Don't you know who I am?"

While she begged him to stop, he allegedly pressed the attack, dragging her down the hall and forcing her to perform oral sex.

The maid finally escaped by pushing him into a piece of furniture in the $3,000-a-night Sofitel suite, she said. Sources said that the Frenchman has a gash on his back where he hit the armoire and that blood was found on the sheets.

Investigators also confirmed a DNA match between Strauss-Kahn and a semen sample found on the maid's shirt.

Meanwhile, Strauss-Kahn faces a deadline this morning to vacate the apartment at 71 Broadway where he's been under house arrest since he was sprung from Rikers on Friday.

He is now hunting for a townhouse so he doesn't have to deal with belligerent co-op and condo boards, and has a $50,000 monthly budget, sources said.

"He has been calling around, but no broker wants to work with him," a top broker said. "He wants to find a broker who will help secure a place for him with more privacy so he won't be harassed, and he is not particular about the neighborhood."

We are all doomed

Drive to drop paper coffee cup brews in Seattle

by Sandi Doughton

Along with whalebone corsets and mimeograph machines, another anachronism will be displayed in museums of the future if Karin de Weille has her way: the disposable cups that fuel today's culture of coffee and convenience.

Against odds that would discourage a less optimistic soul, de Weille on Saturday launched a campaign in the heart of caffeine country to get people to kick the paper habit.

"I think Seattle can push the frontier," she said at Green Festival, the two-day celebration of eco-friendliness where the effort got its official start.

Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin endorsed the initiative, which urges participants to whip out their own reusable cups for mochas on the go, and opt for ceramic over paper when ordering "for here."

"Let's show that we can do this, and our success will be duplicated in other cities," Conlin said in a statement.

Co-sponsors of the initiative include Sustainable Seattle, Zero Waste Seattle, Caffe Ladro and several other local coffee shops.

Americans go through 56 billion paper cups every year, according to statistics compiled by International Paper. Starbucks alone gulps up 3 billion.

The thin plastic coating that keeps most cups from turning to mush complicates recycling. Only a handful of cities try, including Seattle. But even if cups are recycled, it still requires enormous amounts of energy and resources to manufacture and ship them, de Weille said.

"Because we recycle, it actually becomes easier to throw stuff away," she said. "But recycling should be a last resort."

Cultural shifts can take generations, but psychological research suggests it takes only about three weeks for individuals to change a habit. So de Weille set up an online platform called New World Habits where people can sign on to the challenge for three weeks and chart their collective progress.

"Even if you believe in it, something like kicking the cup habit is easy to put off," she said.

Setting a three-week deadline provides motivation, as does knowing you're not alone. New World Habits also offers tips on getting coffee shops and bistros involved.

Disposable cups are an expense and hassle for businesses, said Laura Musikanski, executive director of Sustainable Seattle. Most coffee shops already offer discounts to people who bring reusable cups. For the disposable-cup challenge, Caffe Ladro raised the rebate from 10 to 25 cents at its 13 locations.

De Weille didn't try to get Starbucks on board, but the coffee giant is struggling to boost recycling and reduce the use of paper cups. Less than 2 percent of Starbucks beverages are served in reusable cups, and the company's website says it may not be able to meet the goal of increasing that fraction to 25 percent by 2015.

Many folks are in the habit of toting reusable grocery bags, but the scene at Green Festival showed how deeply entrenched disposables have become, even at an eco-conscious event. Vendors served samples of soy milk, blood-orange juice and wine in paper and plastic. Cleanup crews hauled away bags bulging with cups.

Nicole Robbins, of Kitsap County, sipped a latte from a paper cup and admitted Americans have become addicted to convenience. "We're very conditioned to it," she said.

She uses a glass water bottle regularly, but as an infrequent coffee drinker hasn't made the leap to a reusable mug. "Somebody needs to make a mug that folds down, that you can fit in your purse," she said with a laugh.

Lori Bonner, of Kenmore, had her stainless-steel coffee mug. She's been using it for three years, and usually keeps it tucked in her bag despite occasional drips. "I feel bad if I forget it," she said.

When de Weille was weaning herself off disposable cups, she relied on sticky-note reminders. When she forgot her mug, she would walk back to the car to fetch it — using the mindful stroll to reinforce the new habit.

Now she always carries spare mugs in the car. Her small backpack has a cup holster. And she doesn't beat herself up for occasional lapses.

"We don't have to be perfectionists," she said. "But this something we can all 

King's Gambit

“Bibi” Votes Republican

by Patrick J. Buchanan

Not since Nikita Khrushchev berated Dwight Eisenhower over Gary Powers’ U-2 spy flight over Russia only weeks earlier has an American president been subjected to a dressing down like the one Barack Obama received from Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.

With this crucial difference. Khrushchev ranted behind closed doors, and when Ike refused to apologize, blew up the Paris summit hosted by President de Gaulle.

Obama, however, was lectured like some schoolboy in the Oval Office in front of the national press and a worldwide TV audience.

And two days later, he trooped over to the Israeli lobby AIPAC to walk back what he had said that had so infuriated Netanyahu.

“Bibi” then purred that he was “pleased” with the clarification.

Diplomatic oil is now being poured over the troubled waters, but this humiliation will not be forgotten.

What did Obama do to draw this public rebuke? In his Thursday speech on the Arab Spring and Middle East peace, Obama declared:

“We believe the borders of Israel should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. … Israel must be able to defend itself — by itself — against any threat.”

Ignoring Obama’s call for “mutually agreed swaps” of land to guarantee secure and defensible borders for Israel, Netanyahu, warning the president against a peace “based on illusions,” acted as though Obama had called for an Israel withdrawal to the armistice line of 1967.

This was absurd. All Obama was saying was what three Israeli prime ministers — Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert — have all recognized.

To get Palestinian and international recognition for a united Jerusalem and Israel’s annexation of the settlements around the city, Israel will have to trade land for land.

Obama was not saying the 1967 borders were to be the end of negotiations but the starting point. Indeed, where else would one begin land negotiations if not from the last recognized map?

Undeniably, Netanyahu won the smack-down. The president was humiliated in the Oval Office, and in his trip to AIPAC’s woodshed he spoke of the future peace negotiations ending just as Israelis desire and demand.

Nor is this the first time Obama has been rolled by the Israeli prime minister. Obama came into office demanding an end to all new or expanded settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and subsequently backed down from each and every demand.

Fed up, his Mideast peace negotiator George Mitchell has quit.

Politically, too, the president has been hurt. To the world, and not just the Arabs, he appears weak.

In Israel, Netanyahu is seen as having stood up for Israel’s vital interests and forced an American president to back down. His right-wing coalition is cheering him on.

Indeed, the issue is not whether Obama has been hurt, but why Bibi, raised in the U.S.A., who knows American politics better than any previous Israeli prime minister, did it. Why wound Obama like that?

Why would the leader of a nation of 7 million that is dependent on U.S. arms, foreign aid and diplomatic support choose to humiliate a president who could be sitting in that office until 2017?

The one explanation that makes sense is that Netanyahu sees Obama as more sympathetic to the Palestinians and less so to Israel than any president since Jimmy Carter, and he, Netanyahu, would like to see Obama replaced by someone more like the born-again pro-Israel Christian George W. Bush.

And indeed, the Republicans and the right, Mitt Romney in the lead, accusing Obama of “throwing Israel under the bus,” seized on the issue and, almost universally, have taken Netanyahu’s side.

This could be a serious problem for the president and his party in 2012. For, consider:

In 2008, Obama won the African-American vote 95 to 4, or 16 to 1. He won the Jewish vote 78 to 21, by 57 points, a historic landslide.

These are arguably the two most reliable of Democratic voting blocs.

And while the Jewish vote may be only one-seventh of the black vote, it has proven decisive in the crucial state of Florida. Moreover, Jewish contributions, by some estimates, may make up half of all the contributions to the Democratic Party.

If, after hearing an Israeli prime minister berate Obama for ignorance or indifference to the cold realities the Jewish state faces, Jewish folks decide Obama is bad for Israel and close their checkbooks, the impact in a tight election could be critical.

On the other hand, for African-Americans to see the first black president treated like some truant third-grader by a prime minister of Israel whose nation is deeply dependent on this country has to grate.

In the short run, Bibi won the confrontation, hands down. Like no other leader before him, he humiliated a U.S. president in front of the world, forced him to revise his remarks of four days previous, then graciously accepted the revision.

But a second-term Obama is unlikely to forget what was done to him.

Feral Progressive State

Supreme Court Backs Cuts In California Prison Population

May 23, 2011 

The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly endorsed reducing California’s cramped prison population by more than 30,000 inmates to fix sometimes deadly problems in medical care, ruling that federal judges retain enormous power to oversee troubled state prisons.

   The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is “required by the Constitution” to correct longstanding violations of inmates’ rights. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the system’s designed capacity.

   There were more than 143,000 inmates in the state’s 33 adult prisons as of May 11, meaning roughly 33,000 inmates will need to be transferred to other jurisdictions or released.

   Justice Anthony Kennedy, a California native, wrote the majority opinion, in which he included photos of severe overcrowding. The court’s four Democratic appointees joined with Kennedy.

   “The violations have persisted for years. They remain uncorrected,” Kennedy said. The lawsuit challenging the provision of mental health care was filed in 1990.

   Justice Antonin Scalia said in dissent that the court order is “perhaps the most radical injunction issued by a court in our nation’s history.”

   Scalia, reading his dissent aloud Monday, said it would require the release of “the staggering number of 46,000 convicted felons.”

   Scalia’s number, cited in legal filings, comes from a period in which the prison population was even higher.

   Justice Clarence Thomas joined Scalia’s opinion, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a separate dissent for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts.

   Michael Bien, one of the lawyers representing inmates in the case, said, “The Supreme Court upheld an extraordinary remedy because conditions were so terrible.”

   State officials did not immediately comment on the ruling.

   Eighteen other states joined California in urging the justices to reject the population order as overreaching. They argued that it poses a threat to public safety. State attorneys general said they could face similar legal challenges.

   Alito said he, too, feared that the decision, “like prior prisoner release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims. I hope that I am wrong. In a few years, we will see.”

   The California dispute is the first high court case that reviewed a prisoner release order under a 1996 federal law that made it much harder for inmates to challenge prison conditions.

   The case revolves around inadequate mental and physical health care in a state prison system that in 2009 averaged nearly a death a week that might have been prevented or delayed with better medical care.

   The facilities were designed to hold about 80,000 inmates.

   The state has protested a court order to cut the population to around 110,000 inmates within two years, but also has taken steps to meet, if not exceed, that target. Kennedy said the state also could ask the lower court for more time to reach the 110,000-inmate target.

   Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that would reduce the prison population by about 40,000 inmates by transferring many low-level offenders to county jurisdiction. The state legislature has yet to authorize any money for the transfer.

   A person appointed by federal judges now oversees prison medical operations, but the judges have said the key to improving health care is to reduce the number of inmates.

   At the peak of the overcrowding, nearly 20,000 inmates were living in makeshift housing in gymnasiums and other common areas, often sleeping in bunks stacked three high. Another 10,000 inmates were in firefighting camps or private lockups within California.

   In 2006, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used his emergency powers to begin shipping inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. More than 10,000 California inmates are now housed in private prisons out of state.

   Schwarzenegger also sought to reduce the inmate population by signing legislation that increased early release credits and made it more difficult to send ex-convicts back to prison for parole violations. Another law rewards county probation departments for keeping criminals out of state prisons.

   One result of those changes is that the state has been able to do away with nearly two-thirds of its makeshift beds, although more than 7,000 inmates remain in temporary housing.

"Reality is not optional"

Greek protesters: Ready to face reality about the debt crisis?

Greek protesters are angry and in denial. But there’s no denying the consequences of spending beyond your means.

By Donald J. Boudreaux

Dear Angry Greek Protesters:

Your country is hailed as the cradle of Western civilization. This honor is justified, not least because of the unprecedented flowering there, 2,500 years ago, of that most wonderful, unique, and useful of all human abilities: reason.

Alas, your behavior over the past few days will severely tarnish Greece’s reputation as a home to reason. You are behaving childishly and thoughtlessly – that is, unreasonably.

Screaming in the streets, waving banners, and tossing homemade explosive devices at the police do absolutely nothing to address the very real problem your country faces. That problem is that your country is not as wealthy as you would like it to be. Nor is it as wealthy as your government led you (and others) to believe it was.

In short, your economic pie is too small to satisfy all of your demands. Railing madly against this reality, however, does nothing to increase that pie’s size. Resources and wealth are produced neither by angry sloganeering nor by simplistic denials of the facts. Quite the contrary.

For decades your country has lived well beyond its means. Thirty years ago, your government’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 34.5 percent. Today that figure stands at 154 percent. In other words, for decades your government borrowed money to provide you with goods and services that you couldn’t afford.

Living on credit is fun while it lasts. But reason tells us that it cannot last forever. Now that the bills are coming due, you must somehow pay them. This requirement is unavoidable.

No reasonable adult is shocked or angered when the bill for the lavish meal that he enjoyed last week arrives in his mailbox today. Paying that bill is never pleasant, but it must be done. The reasonable adult pays. He doesn’t scream in anger at the bank that loaned him the money to pay for the meal. He doesn’t blame others for his debt obligations. And he doesn’t demand that people who are in no way responsible for his decision to buy that expensive meal, and who didn’t share it with him, nevertheless help him to pay for it.

The reasonable adult also knows that if he refuses to pay his debt, he might keep a few more euros in his pocket today, but only by sacrificing his future ability to borrow. And he knows that his resulting reputation for forcing others today to pay his expenses will diminish the willingness of others tomorrow to deal with him economically.

In short, the reasonable adult doesn’t clamor for something-for-nothing. Instead, he works and saves, knowing that, over the long-run, nothing is free.

In your defense, I realize that the steady stream of goods and services that your government bestowed upon you until recently seemed to come out of nowhere. This illusion perhaps misled you into supposing that whenever government borrows to pay for goods and services, it does something fundamentally different from what private individuals do when they borrow to pay for good and services.

In fact, though, reason informs us that government, being a human institution, is subject to all the laws and constraints that bind every other human endeavor. Despite appearances, the past few decades’ massive spending of resources that allowed you to consume more than you produced has made you poorer today (for those resources are now, well, spent – gone – used up). And this deficit spending has burdened you with debt from creditors who quite justifiably wish to be repaid.

While I do not excuse your government for misleading you about its powers to spend without constraint, I cannot excuse you – you from reason’s crib – for your present stubborn and mad refusal to accept the reality of your government’s near-bankruptcy.

Your government simply does not have available to it all of the resources that are required to satisfy all of your demands.

Your only reasonable course of action, then, is to work harder, save more, and adopt wiser public policies that promote wealth creation. Chief among these policy changes is to reject the socialism that you have been infatuated with for too long now. You need greater respect for private property. You need entrepreneurship. You need competition. In short, you need free markets. Without these, you will never become more prosperous.

If you wish, of course, you can continue to deny this reality – a reality that is now slapping you in your face. But as the economist Thomas Sowell is fond of pointing out, reality is not optional. He is both right and reasonable.