Death in slow motion

Euro Area – The Moment of Truth Approaches

by Peter Tenebrarum

Greece's Government Loses Support

All the relevant figures in the eurocracy have been meeting to discuss their differences over what to do next about Greece, even while in Greece itself, political support for the new austerity measures becomes more precarious by the day. It was never going to be politically easy for a nominally socialist party (Greece's ruling party PASOK) to keep its rank and file united behind a plan that will ultimately shrink government to a shadow of its former size while 'punishing' its natural supporters (i.e., the unions and all the idle hands lounging about in state-owned companies, for instance). In Greece the socialist dream that everybody can live at the expense of everybody else has been thoroughly shattered, but that doesn't keep people from hankering for more of the same. As a PASOK backbencher eager to ensure one's own political survival, one must surely ask oneself when enough is enough – and so PASOK's majority in the Greek parliament has now shrunk from six to four. Prime minister Papandreou already warned his party's members a week ago against voting down the new austerity measures, a sign that he fears a parliamentary revolt. 

 As Reuters reported at the time: 

“Greece's main private and public sector unions, GSEE and ADEDY, have called on workers and the elderly — whose pensions have been cut — to rally in central Athens. Until now dissent has been muted among the ruling Socialists. But Greeks have staged nightly protests for a fortnight in the capital's Syntagma Square to hurl abuse at the parliament building, with numbers hitting over 80,000 on Sunday. Many PASOK backbench members of parliament appear to be taking fright. Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou suffered a roasting when he presented the medium-term plan to senior party members at a meeting that lasted about 12 hours. Greece, which has a huge budget deficit but has been frozen out of debt markets for a year, seems to have no alternative but to depend on the EU and IMF and accept their demands. One PASOK lawmaker, Paris Koukoulopoulos, recognised that the minister's report on achievements so far had been sincere. "But what's important is that we have emptied the banks of deposits and filled the city squares with people," he said. Newspapers reported that Papandreou had ordered his finance minister to take the attacks on the chin and allow the backbenchers to vent their rage, in the hope that they will cool down eventually and vote for the plan. The government wants parliament to decide on the plan before the end of this month. Many PASOK lawmakers would risk losing their seats if early elections were held, meaning that they may have second thoughts about voting against it.”

 And yet, two more defections have just taken place. One deputy resigned, while another announced he would vote against the measures. This means PASOK now has only 154 votes out of 300 left. Meanwhile, the enraged masses on Athens' streets are attempting to cordon off parliament in order to sabotage the parliamentary debate and vote. According to Reuters: 

“Greek protesters vowed on Tuesday to cordon off parliament to prevent deputies from debating new austerity measures, and unions said they would bring the country to a halt in a national strike on June 15. [it isn't at a halt already? ed.] Pressure is growing on Prime Minister George Papandreou's government, which is trying to muster support for a five-year plan that its international lenders say is crucial for them to extend more funding and enable Athens to avoid default. European Union leaders and the European Central Bank are also split over whether private bondholders should share the burden of a fresh bailout plan. Papandreou's Socialist party is due to submit its mid-term plan for discussion in parliament on Wednesday, with the goal of passing it later this month. But protesters staging daily demonstrations that have swelled to tens of thousands in Athens' Syntagma square in front of parliament said they would encircle the building. "Now that the government is putting the medium term austerity programme to vote, we (will) encircle the parliament, we (will) gather and we (will) stay at Syntagma," the self-named People's Assembly of Syntagma Square said in a statement. "Our first stop is the general strike of June 15th. We won't stop until they withdraw it." Public sector union ADEDY, representing half a million workers, said they would march on parliament during Wednesday's strike and join non-union demonstrators in peaceful protest. "The mid-term plan must not be voted. We want them to change their minds and throw the plan in the bin," ADEDY Secretary General Ilias Iliopoulos told Reuters.”

 What all of this illustrates is something we first mentioned about a year ago: the necessary reforms will turn out not to be politically doable. It is almost comical to see the eurocrats in acrimonious debate over how to proceed while the intended victim, err, bailout recipient, is apparently descending into chaos. One should note here that while one must have sympathy for ordinary Greeks suffering through an economic depression, the striking masses appear to have a very muddled perception of what they can possibly achieve. Here is what will not happen, regardless of their protests: there will be no more 'free money' from the State. Perhaps the hope is that Greece will simply revert to default mode, as has been the case for roughly half of the time it has existed as a modern nation state, then return to the drachma and devalue its way back to 'prosperity'. However, this would mean that all Greek savers and depositors would lose a large percentage of their wealth. It would also mean that the country would take one giant step closer to becoming relegated to third world status – as there is no 'prosperity' that can be bought with devaluation. We have to drag up Argentina again as a warning. At one time Argentina was the 5^th wealthiest country on the planet in GDP per capita terms. Its governments have eventually turned the country into what is now a hyperinflation-prone and corrupt backwater – a road that was paved with devaluations and defaults, so perhaps avoiding a similar fate should be at least considered.

Readers may well ask 'so what should be done'? Clearly the creditors will have to accept a haircut. Adding more debt atop the existing mountain of debt isn't going to solve anything. Austerity as such is a necessary and positive policy, but it needs to be accompanied by measures that support the revival of the economy. We want to quote Dr. Jim Walker of Asianomics on the subject, as he has put it very succinctly in a recent missive: 

“Adding more debt to a nation with contracting production activity and shrinking income flows is, to put it diplomatically, an invitation to an even deeper condition of debt distress down the road. If there was good reason to presume the new debt will spark production growth and expanding income flows in Greece, it might be a different story. Unfortunately, we have no reason to believe the new subsidized loans that are currently under discussion will have anything to do with jump starting private sector growth in Greece. Indeed, since the condition for a second round of subsidized lending to Greece was the acceptance by Prime Minister Papandreou of an additional 78 billion euros in fiscal cuts, with no discussion about how to make it easier for the private sector to mobilize the productive resources (such as meaningful deregulation or growth inducing tax policy changes) that will be freed up by further fiscal austerity, odds are nominal income flows in Greece will shrink at an even more disturbing pace.”

 Meaningful deregulation or growth-friendly tax policy changes both seem to be out of reach. The austerity packages after all not only prescribe spending cuts, but also tax increases. The latter are clearly a disincentive to private sector activity. Meanwhile, as a member of the EU, Greece has become a recipient of a great many subsidies, while at the same time being bound by the 100ds of thousands of regulations invented by the eurocracy in recent years (some 290,000 new regulations over the last decade alone). This is a typical welfare state type dependency, only at one remove from the citizen-State relationship. In this case it describes the nation state-to-supranational bureaucracy relationship. The problem with this is that it has become impossible for people to help themselves – the entrepreneurial spirit is simply crushed by this thicket of regulations. This is by no means a problem particular to Greece  – but in Greece's case it is now a huge obstacle that stands in the way of recovery.

Bourgeois Dignity

Wave of Unrest Rocks China

Threats to Social Order Increasingly Hit Cities, Bringing Iron-Fist Response

By Jeremy Page

A wave of violent unrest in urban areas of China over the past three weeks is testing the Communist Party's efforts to maintain control over an increasingly complex and fractious society, forcing it to repeatedly deploy its massive security forces to contain public anger over economic and political grievances.

The simultaneous challenge to social order in several cities from the industrial north to the export-oriented south represents a new threat for China's leaders in the politically sensitive run-up to a once-a-decade leadership change next year, even though for now the violence doesn't appear to be coordinated.

In the latest disturbance, armed police were struggling to restore order in a manufacturing town in southern China Monday after deploying tear gas and armored vehicles against hundreds of migrant workers who overturned police cars, smashed windows and torched government buildings there the night before.

The protests, which began Friday night in Zengcheng, in the southern province of Guangdong, followed serious rioting in another city in central China last week, plus bomb attacks on government facilities in two other cities in the past three weeks, and ethnic unrest in the northern region of Inner Mongolia last month.

Antigovernment protests have become increasingly common in China in recent years, according to the government's own figures, but they have been mainly confined to rural areas, often where farmers have been thrown off their land by property developers and local officials.

The latest unrest, by contrast, involves violent protests from individuals and large crowds in China's cities, where public anger is growing over issues including corruption and police abuses.

There is no evidence to suggest the recent violence is part of a coordinated movement—the party's greatest fear—nor do the events threaten its grip on power given the strength of China's security apparatus, and its booming economy, analysts say. They are nonetheless troubling for China's government which, unnerved by unrest in the Arab world, has detained dozens of dissidents since appeals for a "Jasmine Revolution" in China began circulating online in February. The Mideast uprisings so far haven't inspired similar mass protests in China.

The recent violence, however, has exposed the limits of the government's ability to control the urban population using a sophisticated array of tools from Internet censorship to surveillance—part of what party leaders refer to as "social management."

Authorities have turned to displays of raw power, deploying paramilitary police and armored vehicles in at least three cities in as many weeks, to prevent the violence from spiraling further as protesters have repeatedly directed their anger at government buildings, often ostentatious symbols of power.

What connects the violence is the way that a flashpoint—in the case of Inner Mongolia, the death of a Mongol at the hands of a Han Chinese truck driver, and in southern China, the assault by security personnel on a pregnant migrant worker—sets off much wider conflagrations.

The disturbances could reflect badly on President Hu Jintao, who has tried to promote the concept of a "harmonious society" and who is due to retire as party chief next year.

"There's an increasing sense of frustration that [leaders] are unable to put out a consistent, unifying message, even within the Party," said Kerry Brown, head of the Asia program at Chatham House, who met senior party officials last week. "Local officials are overreacting partly because of a lack of clear leadership at the top."

But the unrest is likely to strengthen the clout of Zhou Yongkang, who technically ranks ninth of nine on the Politburo Standing Committee but wields huge power as he oversees the police, intelligence agencies, prosecutors and courts.

Social unrest has been rising steadily in recent years: In 2007, China had more than 80,000 "mass incidents," up from above 60,000 in 2006, according to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, although many involved no more than a few dozen people protesting against local officials. No authoritative estimates have been released since then, though analysts citing leaked official figures put such incidents at 127,000 in 2008.

Since February, Messrs. Hu and Zhou have called for tighter restrictions on the Internet, which provides a conduit for people to share anger at government policies and malfeasance and learn about unrest.

Horror Stories

ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΣ ΔΑΠΑΝΕΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ ΚΥΒΕΡΝΗΣΗΣ ΓΙΑ ΤΗΝ ΠΕΡΙΟΔΟ 2002-2009

του Γιώργου Προκοπάκη

Ανάλυση της εκτέλεσης των προϋπολογισμών των ετών 2002-2009[1] (τα χρόνια του ευρώ), όσον αφορά τις πρωτογενείς δαπάνες, αναδεικνύει τα παρακάτω.

1.  Σύνολο πρωτογενών Δαπανών, αύξηση 115%   (€27.3 → €58.8 δισ)

2.  Δαπάνες μισθοδοσίας Δημοσίου, αύξηση 66%   (€11.2 → €18.6 δισ)

3.  Δαπάνες συντάξεων Δημοσίου, αύξηση 97%      (€3.36 → €6.61 δισ)

4.  Επιχορηγήσεις Ταμείων/ΔΕΚΟ[2], αύξηση 277% (€5.52 → €20.8 δισ)

Ενώ για μισθοδοσία και συντάξεις τα κονδύλια στις πρωτογενείς δαπάνες ανταποκρίνονται στο σύνολο των σχετικών δαπανών, στις δαπάνες επιχορηγήσεων δεν συμπεριλαμβάνονται καταβολές για χρέη (ευθείες ή με ομόλογα), κάλυψη κατάπτωσης εγγυήσεων, κλπ. Το σύνολο δαπανών μισθοδοσίας, συντάξεων, επιχορηγήσεων αποτελεί το 74% (2002) έως 78% (2009) του συνόλου των Πρωτογενών Δαπανών. Η εξέλιξη παρουσιάζεται παρακάτω:

Πιο κάτω ακολουθούν οι ιστορίες διαχρονικής τρέλλας των εκάστοτε Ελληνικών κυβερνήσεων σε διαγράμματα

Spending other people's money

End Game

By Peter Schiff

Economic data over the past weeks, punctuated by last week's dismal employment reports, confirm the diminishing impact of the stimulus efforts orchestrated by the Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve. In what must be a huge disappointment to Keynesian enthusiasts, the record doses of both monetary and fiscal narcotics did not produce the desired results. In fact, the size and scope of the "recovery" of the past two years was weaker than would have been expected in a typical business cycle recovery without any stimulus whatsoever. Indeed our current recovery is the weakest on record, despite the biggest jolt of government stimulus ever administered.

But despite the gathering gloom Austan Goolsbee, the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, argued over the weekend that the economy is on the right track and that the recent salvo of horrific economic reports were not significant. The poor numbers, he said, resulted from external factors like the Japanese earthquake and the downgrade of European sovereign debt. I don't know if he really expects anyone to buy his story, but admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.

In a sign that Mr. Goolsbee may have been getting increasingly uncomfortable with his job of economic propagandist, he abruptly resigned this week. He will be returning to academia where I'm sure he is hoping to avoid blame for the coming economic train wreck.

Although I have made these comparisons before, the parallel between drug addiction and the reliance on economic stimulus is just too strong to ignore. And as with drug addition, an economy builds up a tolerance. Each time the government successively stimulates with printed money or deficit spending, ever larger doses are needed to achieve the same result. Lest we forget, coming into the Crash of 2008, the economy had been on the receiving end of years of over stimulus. President Bush and Alan Greenspan never fully weaned the economy of their shock treatments that followed the dot.com crash and the shock of September 11th.

This time around, the stimulus-fueled recovery is so mild that the economy is already relapsing into recession before the Fed has even begun to tighten. This puts Bernanke in a very difficult position. He either follows through on his loudly trumpeted plans to end quantitative easing this summer, or abandon those plans in favor of more stimulus. Both choices are unappealing.

It is happening right now

Twelve Men in Brief

by Yoani Sánchez 

El Roque, Perico, Matanzas

Saturday, June 4, 2011

DOCUMENT OF DEMAND TO THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT

Given the high centralization of power and decisions in our country, we hold the Cuban president, Army General Raul Castro Ruz, responsible for meeting the three related demands as follows:

1. To allow an international multidisciplinary team, immediately, to exhume and examine the corpse of peaceful activist Wilfredo Soto Juan Garcia and impartially rule on the actual causes of death. This would help all parties.

2. To prevent the imminent death of the peaceful activist and Nobel Andrei Sakharov prize winner, Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, from the hunger strike he is undertaking.

3. To cease the repression, beatings, acts of repudiation and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against peaceful pro-democracy and Cuban society activists.

In expectation of an appropriate response, according to current circumstances, the undersigned endorse this document:

Pedro Argüelles Morán
Eduardo Díaz Fleitas
Iván Hernández Carrillo
Librado Linares García
Angel J. Moya Acosta
Guido Sigler Amaya
Oscar Elías Bicet González
Diosdado González Marrero
Arnaldo Ramos Lausurique
Hector M. Maceda Gutiérrez
Félix Navarro Rodríguez
José Daniel Ferrer García

As a child whenever I heard the name of Perico*, a town in Matanzas Province, I ended up with a pain in my stomach from laughing so hard. Until I learned that a part of my father’s family was from that area and the joke didn’t seem so funny to me any more. Last Saturday I was invited to go back and see its dusty embankment and dilapidated train station once again, but the departure of my sister left me paralyzed here on the fourteenth floor, not wanting to go anywhere. I very much regret not going, because twelve of the ex-prisoners of the Black Spring were waiting for us there, hosted by a good-natured hard-working peasant named Diosdado Gonzalez, who offered his home and his table for this important meeting.

Initially it was to be a get together to strengthen friendships, meet each others’ families, share of piece of that more than seven years the Cuban government had seized from them. However, Guillermo Fariñas’ decision to begin a hunger strike, totally changed the tenor of the day. The idea of relaxation was transformed into concern and the stools that were meant to support the festivities bore, instead, the weight of their worries. In brief and between sips of coffee–refilled from time to time by Alejandrina–the reunion became a civic staff council, where rather than maneuver plastic soldiers on a war map, they rearranged ideas on an historic statement.

Afterward, Pedro Argüelles read over the phone to me the approved text of that day, and once again I regretted not having been there. Among their demands, the signatories called for a serious investigation into the cause of death of Juan Wilfredo Soto. Also they call for avoiding the death of Fariñas and–in my judgment the most difficult to achieve–the cessation of repression and acts of repudiation against opposition activists. But this time the ears of power seem more reluctant to listen than they were a year ago. My fear, also, is that the body of the Sakharov 2010 Prize winner will not survive another prolonged fast. Hopefully life will surprise me and something will be done, and Perico will cease to be a village with a delightful name and become the place where words, civic conscience, and unity won over a stubborn and long-standing authoritarianism.

Moron in charge

President Ludd

E. Frank Stephenson

President Obama is now blaming ATMs and airport kiosks for unemployment. I guess we should expect his next policy proposals to include mandates to replace backhoes with shovels (or spoons), requirements that tractors be replaced by mules, and the like.

The Sign of Four

Signs of tyranny

Washington Times Editorial

If the government can dictate what you can put in your own window, there’s no limit to what it can do. The Institute for Justice was forced last week to end its constitutional challenge to a Dallas city ordinance that prohibited small businesses from displaying large window signs advertising specials or even specifying the store’s hours of operation. To prevent the case from going to trial, Dallas bureaucrats threatened a mom-and-pop vacuum store, travel agency, uniform store and dry cleaner each with $300,000 in fines.

The ordinance specifies that no sign may appear in the upper two-thirds portion of any window or glass door. In the space that remains, signage may not take up more than 15 percent of the available window space. The ordinance carefully carves out an exemption for artistic and political speech. So a gigantic “Vote Obama” sign is acceptable, but one that states “20 percent off on Wednesdays” is not. “To claim that the citizens of Dallas were harmed to the tune of $300,000 per business is just ludicrous,” Institute for Justice attorney Matt Miller told The Washington Times.

Typical big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have plenty of money to advertise specials and mail out flyers that inform customers about upcoming sales. For the little guy, a notice in the window is often the only cost-effective way to entice passersby to try out their products or services. That’s why the small shops in the case only asked for $1 in damages. Their only goal was overturning an ordinance they believe violates the First Amendment. Rather than allowing the case to go to a jury, the city unleashed code-enforcement officers who levied $1,000 in “nuisance” fines for each of the 300 days the businesses were in violation of the ordinance during the litigation.

It’s hard to imagine who is harmed or offended by a large “open” or “sale” sign, but the city actually asserted the sign ordinance “promotes safety by preventing signs from obstructing firefighting or police surveillance or creating traffic hazards.” That absurd claim was sufficient for a federal judge to refuse to issue a preliminary injunction while the case was pending. “It’s surreal to have a conversation about this,” Mr. Miller said. “The last thing this city needs to be doing is harassing small businesses. They have been here for 10, 20, 30 years. They’re good businesses, they’re good public citizens.”

The cumulative effect of countless - and pointless - petty rules imposed by busybodies at the federal and state level on down to cities and towns takes a massive toll on the people who are trying to fulfill the American Dream. While the 7.7 percent unemployment rate in Dallas is below the national average, it ought to be much lower. It makes no sense to maintain a regulation whose sole effect is to cut off business opportunities for the types of firms most vulnerable in a weak economy. It makes even less sense to use vindictive, mob-style tactics to gain advantage in a constitutional disagreement.

Instead of wasting time looking for new ways to micromanage the use of private property, Dallas ought to look for ways to make the city a more welcoming place for entrepreneurs to come and set up shop. Repealing this ordinance would be a sign of progress.

Aristotle and capitalism

We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby

By Steve Landsburg

I haven’t been able to find the exact quote, but unless my memory is playing tricks, Martin Gardner once posed the question “What modern artifact would most astonish Aristotle?”, and concluded that the answer was a Texas Instruments programmable calculator that could be taught to execute simple series of instructions. That was, roughly, 1975.

Here is what my iPhone does: It listens to the radio and tells me the name of the artist, song and album. It scans bar codes and tells me where to get the same item cheaper. It gives me step by step directions to anyplace I want to go. It points me to the nearest public bathroom. It recommends restaurants, based on cuisine, price, and proximity. It plays any music I want it to play, and it recommends new music based on what it’s learned about my preferences. It shows me a photograph of the entire earth and lets me slowly (or quickly) zoom in on my (or your) front porch. It takes pictures. It takes videos. It lets me edit those pictures and videos. It photographs 360 degree panoramas. It plays movies. It plays TV shows. It displays pretty much any book, newspaper or magazine I want to read. It reminds me where I parked my car. It lets me draw rough sketches of diagrams with my fingers and makes them look professional. It allows me to accept credit cards. It takes dictation. It checks the stock market or the weather with the push of a button. It reminds me of my appointments. It lets me browse the Web. It shows me my email. It locates and summons nearby taxicabs. It turns itself into a carpenter’s level. It turns itself into a flashlight. It makes phone calls. It makes video calls. And, oh yes — it has a calculator.

Now who would have been more astonished? Aristotle confronted with Martin Gardner’s calculator, or the Martin Gardner of 1975 confronted with my iPhone?

I’m going to say it’s a close call.

More with Less

Phenomenal Gains in Manufacturing Productivity

By Mark Perry

The chart above show annual real manufacturing output per worker from 1947-2010 using data from the BEA for manufacturing output by industry and data from the BLS on manufacturing employment. 

In 1950, the average U.S. manufacturing employee produced $19,600 (in 2010 dollars) of output, and by 1976 the amount of output per worker had doubled to $38,500.  During that period manufacturing productivity was growing annually at 2.63%.  Output per worker doubled again to $75,000 by 1997 (21 years later), as productivity per worker increased to 3.23%.  Manufacturing output per worker approximately doubled again to $149,000 by 2010, but it only took 13 years because worker productivity accelerated to 5.42% during this period.

This is an amazing story of huge increases in U.S. worker productivity in the manufacturing sector.  In fact, the growth in manufacturing worker productivity more than doubled from 2.63% per year in the period between 1950 and mid-1970s to 5.42% annually between 1997 and 2010.  Whereas it took 26 years for output per worker to double during the first period (1950-1976), it only took 13 years during the more recent period (1997-2010).

We are constantly hammered with bad news about the decline in the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S., but we never hear the good news about why that is happening: Manufacturing workers in America keep getting more and more productive, which then allows us to produce more and more output over time, with fewer and fewer workers.  That's a great story about an American industry that is healthy, successful and thriving, and not an industry in decline. 

By continually increasing worker productivity and productive efficiency, the American manufacturing sector has been hugely successfully at achieving one of the most important economic outcomes of being able to "produce more with less." In the process, those efficiency and productivity gains have helped conserve scare resources, including human resources, more effectively than almost any other industry, except maybe farming. It's hard to overstate how much the efficiency gains achieved by U.S. manufacturing have contributed to the improvements in our standard of living by making manufactured goods more affordable over time.  We should spend less time complaining about fewer workers in manufacturing, and more time celebrating the phenomenal gains in manufacturing worker productivity.    

Staunch allies and perpetual enemies

Sowell’s Attack on Obama’s Foreign Policy is Misguided

By Paul Gottfried    

Although I’ve usually benefited from reading Tom Sowell, his recent syndicated column “Obama hides his ideology” leaves much to be desired. According to Sowell, “Obama’s ideology is an ideology of envy, resentment, and payback,” and nowhere is this supposedly more evident than in his conduct of foreign affairs. Driven by “a vision of the Haves versus the Have Nots,” the former community organizer elected to the presidency happily insults those countries he views as privileged: “He flew to Moscow, shortly after taking office, to renege on the American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, in hopes of getting a deal with the Russians.” He also treats Israel as “one of the Haves” and has decided that “Israel is not simply to have its interests sacrificed and its security undermined. It is to be brought down a peg and—to the extent politically possible—insulted.”  Obama even “downplays” “visits to the White House by the prime minister of Britain, our oldest and staunchest ally.” He constantly “curries favor with our enemies” while spurning our friends.

One can easily read into Sowell’s complaints a recent polemic by AEI publicist Dinesh D’Souza, depicting Obama as the resentful son of a Kenyan revolutionary who inherited his father’s hatred for English colonialism. Consumed by anti-colonial feelings, Obama treats the English passive-aggressively and insults the Israelis, who are running a democracy in the Anglo-American tradition. This theory explains nothing at all. Many of Obama’s foreign policy initiatives, whether good or bad, are not specifically anti-Western or necessarily leftist. They are in fact popular on the non-neoconservative Right, for example, with Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, and such maverick conservative publications as the American Conservative and the Taki’s Magazine website.

Although the Bush Two administration supported the Israeli nationalist Right, the Bush One administration under Jim Baker tilted at least as noticeably as Obama toward the Palestinians.  Whether or not George H.W. Bush was right in this case, he certainly didn’t take on the American Israeli lobby because of a Kenyan father or his fondness for the “Have Nots.” There is also considerable debate on the right (although not much of it gets into the media) about whether the US should upset the Russians by ringing their country with missiles and establishing alliances with Russia’s “democratic neighbors.” This policy, which seems near and dear to the heart of Mitt Romney, is also popular with Sowell’s colleagues at the Hoover Institute. But it is not the only policy toward Russia that one hears in conservative discourse.  Obama’s failure to embrace Romney’s ideas about foreign policy may indicate good sense rather than a vengeful spirit.

Equally questionable is Sowell’s division of humanity into staunch allies and perpetual enemies. One is reminded at this point of Charles de Gaulle’s sober comment that nations have interests rather than permanent friends. Recent GOP rhetoric about England being our best democratic pal, except possibly for the Israelis, differs significantly from the dominant Republican attitudes of the Eisenhower era.

Education was once understood as training for freedom

How to Raise Boys Who Read

By THOMAS SPENCE

When I was a young boy, America's elite schools and universities were almost entirely reserved for males. That seems incredible now, in an era when headlines suggest that boys are largely unfit for the classroom. In particular, they can't read.

According to a recent report from the Center on Education Policy, for example, substantially more boys than girls score below the proficiency level on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls. The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.

The good news is that influential people have noticed this problem. The bad news is that many of them have perfectly awful ideas for solving it.

Everyone agrees that if boys don't read well, it's because they don't read enough. But why don't they read? A considerable number of teachers and librarians believe that boys are simply bored by the "stuffy" literature they encounter in school. According to a revealing Associated Press story in July these experts insist that we must "meet them where they are"—that is, pander to boys' untutored tastes.

For elementary- and middle-school boys, that means "books that exploit [their] love of bodily functions and gross-out humor." AP reported that one school librarian treats her pupils to "grossology" parties. "Just get 'em reading," she counsels cheerily. "Worry about what they're reading later."

There certainly is no shortage of publishers ready to meet boys where they are. Scholastic has profitably catered to the gross-out market for years with its "Goosebumps" and "Captain Underpants" series. Its latest bestsellers are the "Butt Books," a series that began with "The Day My Butt Went Psycho."

The more venerable houses are just as willing to aim low. Penguin, which once used the slogan, "the library of every educated person," has its own "Gross Out" line for boys, including such new classics as "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger."

Workman Publishing made its name telling women "What to Expect When You're Expecting." How many of them expected they'd be buying "Oh, Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty" a few years later from the same publisher? Even a self-published author like Raymond Bean—nom de plume of the fourth-grade teacher who wrote "SweetFarts"—can make it big in this genre. His flatulence-themed opus hit no. 3 in children's humor on Amazon. The sequel debuts this fall.

Violence and degradation

Why TSA, Wars, State Defined Diets, Seat-Belt Laws, the War On Drugs, Police Brutality, and Efforts to Control the Internet, Are Essential to the State

by Butler Shaffer

The title of this article encompasses topics that arouse attention and criticism among persons of libertarian persuasion. The discussion of such matters usually treats each issue as though it were sui generis, independent of one another. Most of us respond as though the woman who is groped at the airport has no connection with the man who is tasered by a police officer; that the person serving time in prison for selling marijuana is unrelated to the men being held at Guantanamo. The belief that one person’s maltreatment is isolated from the rest of us, is essential to the maintenance of state power.

What we have in common is the need to protect one another’s inviolability from governmental force. When we understand that the woman being groped by a TSA agent stands in the same shoes as our wife, mother, or grandmother; when the man being beaten by a sadist cop is seen, by us, as our father or grandfather, we become less willing to evade the nature of the wrongdoing by invoking the coward’s plea: “better him than me.”

The state owes its very existence to the success it has had in fostering division among us, a topic I explored in my Calculated Chaos book. Divide-and-conquer has long been the mainstay in political strategy. If blacks and whites; or Christians and Muslims; or employees and employers; or “straights” and “gays”; or men and women; or any of seemingly endless abstractions, learn to identify and separate themselves from one another, the state has established its base of power. From such mutually-exclusive categories do we draw the endless “enemies” (e.g., communists, drug-dealers, terrorists, tobacco companies) we are to fear, and against whom the state promises its protection. By becoming fearful, we become existentially disabled, and readily accept whatever safeguards the institutional fear-mongers impose, . . . all for our “benefit,” of course!

Look at the title of this article: do you find any governmental program or practice therein that is not grounded in state-generated fear? Each one – and the numerous others not mentioned – presumes a threat to your well-being against which the state must take restrictive and intrusive action. Terrorists might threaten the flight you are about to take; terrorist nations might have “weapons of mass destruction” and the intention to use them against you; your children might be at risk from drug dealers or from sex perverts using the Internet; driving without a seat-belt, or eating “junk” foods might endanger you: the list goes on and on, changing as the fear-peddlers dream up another dreaded condition in life.

It is not sufficient to the interests of the state that you fear other groups; it is becoming increasingly evident that you must also fear the state itself! Governments are defined as entities that enjoy a monopoly on the use of violence within a given territory. Implicit in such a monopoly is the recognition that there be no limitations on its exercise, other than what serve the power interests of the state. In relatively quiet and stable periods (e.g., 1950s) the state can afford to give respect to notions of individual privacy, free speech, and limitations on the powers of the police. In such ways, the state gives the appearance of reasonableness and respect for people. But when times become more tumultuous – as they are now – the very survival of the state depends upon a continuing assertion of the coercive powers that define its very being.

Detroit, The Model City

Detroit’s Socialist Nightmare Is America’s Future

by Porter Stansberry

One of the most important things to remember about socialism – or coercion of any kind – is it fails eventually because human beings have an innate desire for liberty and a strong need for personal property rights. In fact, the origins of government lie in the need of agricultural communities to protect themselves from violence and theft. So it is particularly ironic that in more recent times, it is government itself that has more frequently played the role of bandit. When you start taxing people at extreme rates to pay for socialist “benefits,” when you start telling them which schools their children must attend, when you start giving jobs away to people based on race instead of ability… you quash human freedom, which bogs down productivity… and if continued for long enough, leads to social collapse.

I find it perplexing that only 20 years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West continues to implement laws that mimic all of the failed policies of our former “communist” foes. In fact, our current president won the election by promising to “spread the wealth around.” But… truth be told… we don’t have to look to Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union to find a society destroyed by coercion, socialism, and the overreaching power of the State. We could just look at Detroit…

In 1961, the last Republican mayor of Detroit lost his re-election bid to a young, intelligent Democrat, with the overwhelming support of newly organized black voters. His name was Jerome Cavanagh. The incumbent was widely considered to be corrupt (and later served 10 years in prison for tax evasion). Cavanagh, a white man, pandered to poor underclass black voters. He marched with Martin Luther King down the streets of Detroit in 1963. (Of course, marching with King was the right thing to do… It’s just Cavanagh’s motives were political not moral.) He instated aggressive affirmative action policies at City Hall. And most critically, he greatly expanded the role of the government in Detroit, taking advantage of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Model Cities Program” – the first great experiment in centralized urban planning.

Mayor Cavanagh was the only elected official to serve on Johnson’s task force. And Detroit received widespread acclaim for its leadership in the program, which attempted to turn a nine-square-mile section of the city (with 134,000 inhabitants) into a “model city.” More than $400 million was spent trying to turn inner cities into shining new monuments to government planning. In short, the feds and Democratic city mayors were soon telling people where to live, what to build, and what businesses to open or close. In return, the people received cash, training, education, and health care.

The Model Cities program was a disaster for Detroit. But it did accomplish its real goal: The creation of a state-supported, Democratic political power base. The program also resulted in much higher taxes – which were easy to pitch to poor voters who didn’t have to pay them. Cavanagh pushed a new income tax through the state legislature and a “commuter tax” on city workers.

Unfortunately, as with all socialist programs, lots of folks simply don’t like being told what to do. Lots of folks don’t like being plundered by the government. They don’t like losing their jobs because of their race.

No more breakdowns

Cedar Falls Bureaucrats Demand Universal Lock Box on Properties

by Dave Blount 

The oligarchical collectivist ruling class that has been taking sledgehammers to our liberties mainly infests the coasts, but the Heartland is no refuge from encroaching totalitarianism. Last week we learned about Tennessee criminalizing posting any photo online that offends anyone. Now we hear that the City Counsel of Cedar Falls, Iowa is following in the footsteps of the Indiana Supreme Court and law enforcement by passing an ordinance by a vote of 6-1 that requires keys for a universal lock box for commercial properties, apartments, and rental buildings.

This demand that Big Government be given a key to private homes and businesses is on the verge of becoming law. A final vote is scheduled for tonight.

Next homeowners will be required to install two-way Telescreens as in 1984, or maybe glass walls so that the authorities can see what we're up to as in Evgeny Zamyatin's We. As the last of our liberties crumble under the boots of advancing statism, no violation of our privacy and our property is too outrageous to be inflicted.