Public Education in Michigan

The Friday 10/30 edition of the Detroit News carried an oped on Michigan's school system titled "Assessing Michigan's talent future" by Doug Rothwell CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan. Mr Rothwell correctly cites parts of the problem:

"From 2005 to 2015, Michigan's fourth grade reading performance dropped from 30th to 41th (sic) nationally. Fourth grade math performance dropped from 32nd to 42nd. Only 20 percent of our high school students are considered career-and college-ready."

Unfortunately he does not say 'here is why.' Instead he cites action taken by the Michigan government:

      "The good news is that Michigan is taking important steps to set a new course. The governor and Legislature have increased investment in and access to early childhood education programs.

"But perhaps the most important change came in 2010, when Michigan adopted new, more rigorous standards for what Michigan students should learn in each grade level."

 Presumably it is not enough investment--taxpayer dollars--in early childhood programs and the lack of rigorous standards that are a part of the cause.

I want to say here that standards don't teach. They measure. Curriculum teaches. The purpose of standards is to measure how much the student learns and understands. To suppose that student's failure to learn is caused by improper measurement is nonsense.

This whole focus on standards is a smokescreen to divert attention away from a failed philosophy of pedagogy. Common Core, a logical consequence of Progressive Education, is the latest manifestation of an irrational pedagogy going all the way back to John Dewey the father of Prog Ed. What is wrong with Dewey's philosophy of education is a post for another time. Let me say only that Dewey did not like the idea of teaching students to think in terms of principles. Back to the oped:

It doesn't seem to occur to Mr Rothwell that Michigan's government has been running public schools for a long time--and I disagree with his suggested failure timeline of ten years, it's longer--and that such gross incompetence at educating our kids as we both agree has happened, should give pause to anyone who thinks it's a good idea to let the government keep on doing it. But nowhere does Mr Rothwell question the propriety of government owned and run schools.

The only rational solution of course is to completely shut down the Federal Dept of Education and turn all education over to the states. The Dept of Ed is like a military jackboot on the cognitive throats of our children's minds preventing them from developing their ability to think in terms of principles.

The beauty of state control of education is that the states will do things differently from each other. Best practices will of course have best results. These results will be out there for everyone to see and adopt. I can imagine for example some state declaring English to be a phonetic language and will henceforth be taught phonetically and all forms of sight recognition--whole word, whole language--are out.

Another state may introduce strict hierarchy to its math curriculum where kids will master arithmetic before moving on to set theory and algebra. Together, these will represent a trend away from centralized control which I'm sure will continue within the states leading eventually to more real localized control where parents will then have real say in their kid's education. And isn't that what we all want?

The link to the oped is here: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2015/10/29/doug-rothwell-michigan-test/74836082/

Bad climate advice for Republicans.

The Sunday 8/16 Detroit Free Press has an oped by Bob Inglis and Mark Reynolds titled "The right way for Republicans to address climate change." The right way of course is to agree with the Democrats who are all in on the notion that man made global warming is impending doom unless we change our consumption of fossil fuels which cause emissions of carbon dioxide which will cause the alleged doom.


Born global warming, climate change is the new demon we are all supposed to fear and of course from which we are to seek our salvation by relying on an all caring and benevolent institution of legalized force (government).


Since man started forming societies with governments it has always been the aim of government to keep its populace in a state of fear from various demons which will destroy them unless they trust government to protect them. Naturally the government will need taxes to protect them. It's one of the oldest scams in history.


"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken

When I was growing up it was acid rain that was going to destroy the planet unless we humans changed our evil ways. Then it was global cooling that would end all life on earth unless we seriously changed our evil ways this time. (The planet did cool by 2 tenths of a degree celsius from 1940 to 1975 and this 2 tenths of a degree was said to portend of "The coming ice age" as Time Magazine declared).

About the same time another demon was announced: the Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich. He announced in his book by the same name that millions of us were going to die of starvation in the 1970s because the planet simply could not sustain such a large population. His solution was for us to give up our industrial and technical civilizations and return to a more primitive lifestyle i.e. change our evil ways.


That was followed by global warming which will destroy the world by creating a blanket of carbon dioxide (Co2) which will heat up the earth so much it will destroy all life unless we stop emitting Co2 into the atmosphere i.e. change our evil ways. Trouble is, carbon dioxide does not act the way Al Gore and all the government paid scientists say it does.

Did you know that cutting back on our Co2 emissions is actually going in the wrong direction? I've read that if our atmospheric Co2 content ever gets cut back to or lower than 150 parts per million, ppm, plant life will start to die off on earth. Animals of course would follow. Here is an article explaining it. Here is another one on the benefits of Co2.

Did Al Gore mentions this in his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth?" Nope. Must have been too inconvenient. How about Tom Brokaw in his documentary "Global Warming: Everything You Need to Know?" Not there either. Everything? Really?

How about the fact that North America is a net carbon sink? A net carbon sink is an area of the planet that removes from the atmosphere more Co2 than it puts in. Here is an article on that. Did either of the two above mentioned gentlemen mention this? Again, no.


If you would like to know how Co2 works I recommend CO2 Science. The Idso family has been rounding up studies of how Co2 acts in our atmosphere and upon life on Earth for a long time.


Other sites I recommend are:

 Science and Environmental Policy Project or SEPP:


The Climate Depot.


The Climate Audit.


Watts up with that.

Their sites may also contain links to other great sources.

End prevailing wage laws.

The Sunday 7/26 Detroit Free Press caries an oped by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan titled "Paying fair wage is right way to rebuild Detroit and state." The fair wage he's talking about is the prevailing wage put into place by law. It forces companies building public works projects to pay their workers wages equal to union wages whether workers are union or not. It's nothing but a special interest worker benefits plan giving some workers wages not available on the open market. Politicians do this in order to win the labor vote and no other reason. The idea that it guarantees a higher quality of worker is debatable. It implies that non-union workers are less than qualified and less trustworthy. Nonsense.

But a real problem is the cost to taxpayers for this special interest program. An article in the Detroit News in May of this year reports:

"A 2013 study from the Anderson Economic Group highlights just how costly the prevailing wage law is for the state.

Public universities, community colleges and school districts — or rather taxpayers — have to pay an additional $224 million a year, thanks to the law.

In addition to the support of many GOP lawmakers, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan favor repealing the law."

So we see that there is $224 million per year that could be going to Michigan roads, or schools or returned to taxpayers.

But the real problem with the prevailing wage is that it violates the rights of businessmen and workers to negotiate among each other for the fairest wage. The law tries to force workers to be worth more to their employers that they would be in a open market. Of course it is the taxpayers who have to cough up the money not Mr Duggan or the unions.

In another News article from January of this year

"During the mid 1990s, the law was suspended by a federal district court ruling and, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, as non-union construction companies competed on an equal footing for the first time in decades, the state gained 11,000 construction jobs.

Under prevailing wage, union bosses get richer while non-union builders and contractors lose money, taxpayers get charged more, and school children have to do with less."

I agree. It is time to do away with the prevailing wage law and let the benefits of competition ensue.

Foreclose on government control of the economy

The Thursday and Friday, 6/25,26 print editions of the Detroit News carried a series titled "Foreclosures fuel Detroit blight, cost city millions" by reporters Christine MacDonald and Joel Kurth. The on line version is here. It is a very well written article going in depth describing the devastation not only in terms of property but in terms of human misery and suffering.

But I'm afraid it doesn't go deep enough. It seems to confine its focus on appearances, empty and burnt out hulks, some demolished, and the testimony of those survivors relating the depressing experiences they suffered. There are many references to the fact that sub-prime mortgages and loans were the main culprit. And if you confine your vision to the immediately visible, you'd be right.

But nowhere in the report is the question asked; what caused banks and mortgage companies who had been for decades been loaning only to those whom they thought had a decent chance of repaying the loan, suddenly go irrational and start lending to people they knew unlikely to pay it back? One answer proffered is:

     ""The stage was set with gross irresponsibility by the banking industry, and I still think that they ought to be made to pay cities that are left to clean up the mess," said Frank Ford, a senior policy adviser for the Thriving Communities Institute, a nonprofit land protection group based in Cleveland that has studied vacant land and foreclosures in northern Ohio. "This was done by people making bad decisions, repeatedly, in some cases knowingly.""

Again, why did people who seemingly made rational decisions in the past start making irrational ones from 2005 (the report's timeline start) on up?  No answer given. The existence of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are mentioned as foreclosures of homes and as buyers of mortgages but not much more about their role in creating the housing bubble. In fact, the concept housing bubble was not even mentioned. This is why I think the article's timeline should go back even farther than 2005 to when other Federal agency players came into existence. But the authors only covered the era of foreclosures.

Also there is no mention of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which was modified to a ratings agency under Clinton so that any bank or mortgage company that wanted to expand its business had to show it loaned a certain amount to low income people thus encouraging risky loans by those banks. For a more detailed look at the CRA see this article.

There was no one single cause of the 2008 mortgage crises. It was a combination of the Fed keeping interest rates way too low, the CRA encouraging risky loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being encouraged to buy up those risky loans and mortgages, bundle and resell them in the market spreading the risk in ever widening circles. There was also this notion of "too big to fail" which I think was the promise to the banking industry that Fannie and Freddie will take care of them and their sub prime loans. There were other smaller contributors to the meltdown but these were the major players.

Although well written regarding the extent of damage to life and property, this report misinforms the public as to the real causes. Thus the public will continue to believe that the mortgage crisis was caused by the bankers who did it all on their own with no incentives from government. The public will continue to call for more regulations despite the fact that the banking and finance industries are the most heavily regulated industries in the nation and that such regulation did not protect the citizens from harm but rather increased its likely hood.

Republican bashing at its best.

The Sunday May 17th Detroit Free Press was in full assault mode on the GOP in its editorial page. Editorial editor Stephan Henderson pens an oped titled "How the poor stay that way'" subtitled 'Holding Michigan Back.' It has a cartoon drawing of the state capitol as a monster snatching up citizens presumably to be eaten. This monster is flying a flag that reads "GOP war on the poor." This is more of a bashing of Republicans than a concern for the poor. My comments are in brackets.

      "Policy-making is the way we send messages about priorities in our system of government. [Who is 'we'? As a citizen I haven't been in on any policy-making so 'we' must refer to the politicians and professional pundits who advise them like Mr Henderson. These priorities then are] "What's important and what's not. Who's first in line for the fruits of democracy and who's last."

['What's important and what's not' asks an answer to the question  'important' to whom? Citizens or government? If he means citizens then they should get to chose what's important to them and therefore need the freedom to pursue it. If government, then it decides what is important and forces it on the citizens, a progressive ideal.

Now I know that pundits often write in metaphors but look at the one Mr Henderson presents; it is a basket or pile of fruits of democracy for which citizens must line up to get, so the message for policy-makers is only who goes first and last. Does that sound like picking winners and losers to you? It does to me. It's also an image of  'the fruits are here. How did they get here? Not important. What's important? How to distribute them more fairly than the citizens would if left free to do so.']

     "So if you're poor, and particularly if you're among the working poor--people who earn paychecks too meager to sustain a family, much less get ahead--what message do you imagine you're being sent by the people of Michigan and their representatives these days? From where I sit, it looks like this: Drop Dead."

[Evidently the poor and working poor are not part of the 'people of Michigan' but are a separate group victimized by them. This is of course a slap in the face to all citizens; the working poor for choosing a wage so obviously unjust it won't move them up the ladder and raise a family (which itself is debatable); and to the rest of the evil citizens and their representatives who voted for this unjust system and are telling them now to drop dead. I think a profound contempt for citizens being free to choose their own decisions and actions could not be much more obvious.]

     "Let's review a few headlines that rolled out over the last two weeks.
     On Wednesday, the state Senate passed a package of bills that would strip prevailing-wage requirements out of government construction contracts. It's important to note that the law sets rates not only for experienced contractors, but for apprentices--young people, many of them poor, trying to get into construction trades, but who need training before they can work full time."

[So you see the poor are everywhere and that's why the prevailing-wage is noble and virtuous! One can easily get the impression that if all Americans were millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires, the millionaires would be the new poor. For my comments on the prevailing-wage I'll only say here that government should not be mandating anyone's wages anywhere. Wages should be decided by voluntary agreement to mutual benefit between worker and employer and/or those chosen to represent them.]

     "At the same time, a House committee is considering a bill that would make it illegal for any local government in Michigan to mandate wages higher than the state minimum wage, provide paid or unpaid leave time, participate in any educational or training programs, or regulate hours or scheduling. For low-wage workers, that pretty much ensures you'll stay low-wage, no matter where you live in Michigan."

[I think I would agree to the mandate part of that bill. Local governments should have the freedom to choose what they can afford to do. But it's unclear about why participation in educational and training programs would be illegal. I would take that with a grain of salt. But the GOP is in control for now so coloring as suspect everything they do or even consider is par for the progressive course.

After bemoaning the defeat off Prop 1 and the failure to reinstate the Earned Income Tax Credit Mr Henderson goes on to say;]

     "The average credit in 2013 was $138; recipients almost always put that money back into the economy, and for poor families, that modest influx of cash can be instrumental for an emergency car repair, medical costs or paying the rent."

[The EITC is nothing more than throwing some crumbs back to the poor to keep them voting Democrat. It is designed to keep the poor poor. It certainly will not help them "sustain a family or get ahead" as Mr. Henderson admonished earlier. Besides it is not the government's job to pay anyone's bills. To really help the poor would be to protect their freedom to provide for their own welfare. The proper job of government is "to secure these rights" per our Declaration of Independence, and not try to be the great provider of everyone's daily bread.(crumbs)

His oped is too long to critique every paragraph. It is however more of the same old threadbare Marxist notions that capitalism creates poverty by way of the rich exploiting the poor. The fact that capitalism has created the greatest explosion of wealth the world has ever seen completely escapes Mr Henderson. Or, if it doesn't, he refuses to see the cause of that prosperity, political and economic freedom. He does not say why the poverty he cites exists except, like president Obama, to blame it on Republicans.]

     "Here in Michigan, the Republican-led Legislature seems hell bent on making things worse for the working poor, which raises key questions about not only policy, but morality and and the faithfulness of democratic representation."

[Translation:' the Republicans are evil and immoral and only us Democrats are moral.' Progressives have always used the moral argument against the GOP but hiding it behind the shield of pragmatism. They claim they are not ideologues but just being pragmatic. But if you press them hard enough you'll hear their moral insinuations just like the above.

 My retort to that is, advocating policies that hurt the poor like regulations on business, minimum wage laws, prevailing wage laws, Quantitative easing by the Fed, destroying children's minds through Progressive Ed's intentional abandonment of the hierarchical nature of learning, making them dependent on the state through all the welfare programs etc, etc, is a strange way to show a moral concern for poor people. The prevailing wage raises the costs of education construction making education as such more expensive--an odd way to show a moral concern for poor children.

Mr Henderson does a good job of demonstrating how poverty seems to be growing throughout the state citing data that claims to show 40% of the state is now in poverty. But lets not forget that poverty in America is relative. Poverty for a family of four is now over $24,000, a level considered wealthy in third world countries where poverty is absolute.

Today we have more welfare programs on our books to help the poor than ever before yet we are told the poverty rate keeps growing. You would think that a person genuinely concerned for the poor would look at this and be motivated to question his premises and perhaps ask are our efforts to help the poor actually creating more of them?

But they won't ask that question because they haven't bothered to ask the more fundamental question, what kind of creature is the human being? What are the requirements for his survival and happiness? Our founders knew those requirements were political and economic freedom. It wasn't government welfare that created America's wealth. It was freedom. Progressives want the poor to be dependent on them. It makes them feel morally good. Political freedom destroys that illusion, and is the only way to really help the poor.]

We knew this was coming.

Now that Proposition 15-1 went down in flames at the hands of Michigan voters the response from the political and intellectual establishments is oh so predictable. From editorials bemoaning the voters reluctance to "do the right thing" (hammer ourselves into austerity) to scolding voters for bringing this (crumbling roads) upon themselves, and chastising the politicians for not doing their job (jamming higher taxes down our throats) legislatively.

     The theme the intellectual establishment (MSM) is putting out is that Prop 1 was just too complicated for us presumably dim witted voters (it was complicated) to comprehend and if only it were dumbed down sufficiently for us to understand we would have been eager to part with 2 billion of our dollars.

     Stephen Henderson is the editorial page editor for the Detroit Free Press. He starts his editorial with:

     "Self defeat is never pretty.

               And if you're sitting around thinking that the spectacular death of Proposal 1 at the polls marks a

     defeat for anyone but us, the people of Michigan, then you are sorely deluded."

     No sir. We are not deluded. This was a defeat for the politicians for not managing our taxpayer money responsibly. Prop 1 was initially sold to the public as a fix for the roads. Only after concerned citizen groups started reading it and pointing out that 40% of the $2 billion was to go to other interests like schools, local municipal governments, transportation, pay off transportation debt and add to the general fund, did voters begin to question it.

     Then the government proponents ran ads showing a chunk of cement from a bridge supposedly fallen through the windshield, laying on the passenger seat of a car. A school bus with a slab of concrete laying on the partially crushed cab was trucked around the state saying this could happen to our kids if we don't cough up the dough they wanted for roads. It was scaremongering taken to a new and disgusting level.

But what's disconcerting to me is how the state government and the media refuse to think outside the box of government control. For instance, if the roads have decayed to the point of a serious threat to citizens while under the control of government, don't you think some thinkers would question the wisdom of letting government continue to run them? It's time to consider taking responsibility for roads away from the government. There are lots of private roads in this country and they're maintained nicely. But the thinking by politicians and pundits that government should be the provider of our daily paved bread is just too irresistible.

     Mr Henderson concludes with two paragraphs: (my comments in parenthesis)

     "What we can't do is continue to make decisions that punish ourselves in the name of striking out at poorly thought-up initiatives, or at legislators. (If we don't strikeout at poor thinking, it will continue.--MN) Prop 1 was a way forward--a difficult, deal-laden, complicated way forward, but that's the way the system works"

"That's the way the system works" is the box out of which they are unable or unwilling to think. More:

     "If we want to do better, if we want to force legislators to confront this issue in the short term and the future, in a more thoughtful way, it's up to us to say so. (We just did! On May 5th--MN) Otherwise, we'll suffer with exactly what we've got. And no one should be proud of that."

Today's, May 7th Detroit News--whose editorial page of 5/3 or 5/4 was all for Prop 1--has an oped by Joe Lapointe, a free lance writer, titled "Michigan needs toll roads." In it he make the point that:

     "In 40 years as a traveling journalist, I've rented cars in three dozen states. I've seen many tolls roads work efficiently with EZ-Pass, an electronic windshield device that records where people get on and get off the toll roads and bills them accordingly."

There can be many ways to finance roads other than taxes and all of these need to be examined. But that will require thinking in different terms. And THAT is what Michigan voters just said they want.

    

Here we go again. The CRA to the rescue.

We can get an idea of how collectivists think from this oped in the Detroit News of 2/27/15. The author, Ms. Kathleen Rogers, is president and CEO Earth Day Network, a left wing environmental group. The title is "The meaning of community reinvestment" and it is revealing in terms of the statist principle it represents: government intrusion into the market place to achieve some alleged social good.

The theme of the oped is that "...25 percent of the energy used in schools is wasted" and if that waste can be eliminated by getting schools to go green then there will be money that can be  "...used for desperately needed funding for additional teachers and school resources."

Ms. Rogers gives several examples of schools that have benefited from going green then suggests ways to find the funds for the poorest schools to go green.

"What if we could secure billions of new, private dollars for school energy-efficiency projects in low-income disadvantaged areas and allow the resulting energy savings to remain with each school?"

So, what does "secure billions" mean? Is it asking for private loans or voluntary donations? Nope.

"The next frontier of green school funding could come from banks through the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a federal law that requires (read 'forces'-MN) banks operating in low-income areas to invest significant amounts of money in these areas, usually in the form of loans and grants for economic development projects, low-income housing projects and community centers."

How is it that banks "operating in low-income areas" have all these billions just laying around waiting for the right altruist to come along and point a legislative gun at their heads for such a noble and virtuous redistribution? How did the billions get here? Blank out! It's just here in banks. Notice that all these billions of private money are viewed as the "next frontier" to be "secured". But this frontier is not a new one. It was used before with equally, noble intentions but with disastrous results.

"From 1996 to 2008, banks invested more than $1 trillion in community development and small-business loans in low-income areas in part to score CRA points."

This is certainly true but that trillion dollars, through credit expansion has morphed into many trillions more in derivative debt held all throughout the economy which can't be repaid. This fact was a key player in the mortgage meltdown of 2008 throwing millions of people out of their homes and jobs. You'd think that someone in the educated class would call for the repeal of the CRA if for no other reason than the human suffering it caused. But no, the desire to use the brute force of government to achieve some social good is irresistible to the collectivist/altruist mind. And so it continues:

"Banks take the CRA requirement seriously because the (obedience-MN) points they earn are a determining factor when regulators review requests for mergers and acquisitions." 

I would take a legislative gun pointed at my head seriously too.

"The litmus test for whether banks will receive CRA points is satisfied only if the "benefits" that accrue from these investments remain in the low-income communities.

Now the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the bank's regulator, has proposed a clarification that will allow banks to get CRA credit for investing in energy efficiency in low-income communities."

Great. Another noble cause for which we can use the CRA to "secure billions"! Ms.Rogers concludes with:

"Leaving those energy savings with the school, which allows banks to invest in energy retrofits under the CRA, would open the door to low interest loans or grants. It's a win-win proposition for our nation's poorest schools."

Actually, no it isn't. It will just be another boondoggle. How will the banks get their money repaid if it is to stay with the school? And this notion that banks have billions just laying around not invested in anything is well, absurd.

 The real meaning of community reinvestment is wealth redistribution by force, or as Ayn Rand once said, a policy of have gun will nudge.

Finally, the social system in which businesses (like banks) are nominally privately owned while the right of ownership-the right of use and disposal-is retained by the government, is fascism. That is where we are headed.

Jeb Bush is 2016 material, if you can forgive.

My Friday edition of the Detroit News carries an oped by deputy editorial director Ingrid Jacques titled "With Jeb Bush, look beyond Common Core." Sorry, I can't do that. Common Core is such an egregious example of mind destruction and increased government control of education that one cannot treat it as nothing more than an innocent, forgivable mistake. Mistakes of this magnitude are not made innocently.

Jeb Bush, like the rest of his family, is a neoconservative (neocon), a former liberal turned conservative. But, like them, still has progressive leanings. One of them is a firm belief that government should own and control education. No it shouldn't.

Government is force. It has nothing to offer citizens except the management of force (and the threat of using it). When government controls education it will control what is taught and how it is taught and this will be forced onto teachers and students, and parents.

Don't fall for the notion that parents have elected representatives to appeal to. Those representatives are also part of the government that thinks it knows what is best for your kids better than you do. Yes there has been an increase in parents loudly protesting aspects of Progressive Education and even Common Core. But this only gets the powers that be to back off a little bit and only temporarily. The real backing off is to be done by the parents.

On April 13 213 Melissa Harris Perry  on the Huffy Post said  "we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to their communities." Please understand what this means: parents are not part of the community! Got that?

So what does this have to do with Mr. Bush?  Ms Jacques informs us that since Jeb Bush is a staunch supporter for the Common Core education standards we should look past that fact because he has done well supporting education in Florida. 

"Bush's willingness to embrace the best options to improve learning are a refreshing departure from the Obama administration's playbook, which has tried to squelch true school choice programs."

Evidently, Jeb Bush does not consider auctioning off schools to unregulated private enterprise or even nonprofits where, like IT products (smart phones and such), quality constantly goes up and costs go down, to be one of his 'best options.'

One of the arguments used to maintain government control over our children's minds is the notion that schools must be accountable. But please notice that this accountability is to be directed to government bureaucrats not parents. This is based on the premise that the parents are not competent to determine if their kids can read, write, do basic math and learn history and science and that only government has such wisdom.

The theme of this oped is that even though "Jeb Bush hasn't made it official that he's a 2016 presidential candidate..." we should overlook his Common Core boo boo and consider him for 2016. No we shouldn't.

Skeptical of global warming? You must have faith.

I was surprised to see the Macomb Daily, a newspaper for the county of Macomb, a suburban county just northeast of Detroit, print an editorial from the liberal Bloomberg editorial board. As a rule, the Macomb Daily is a tad conservative on its editorial page so I wondered if they were just being facetious or what.

The title is "Pope Francis could help push climate treaty over the top."

"But of course" was a voice in my head. This is so appropriate. Both the Catholic Church and the global warming alarmists are totally committed to faith not facts. To obfuscate this truth though the article declares:

"He is not the first Pope to sound the alarm on climate change: Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI did so, and in 2011 the Vatican's Academy of Sciences issued a report that called on "all people and nations to recognize the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming" caused by human activity."

I didn't know the Church had an Academy of Sciences. A religious academy of sciences? Now there's an oxymoron for ya. But what better place for the warmers to go for support for their dogma than to another  institution geared to the acceptance of tenets on faith?

Where are all the reasons?

In the Dec. 14 edition of the Detroit News Editorial Editor Mr. Nolan Finley penned an editorial "Where are all the black people?" He was referring to the opportunities provided by the comeback atmosphere in Detroit which seems to be absent a sufficient number of black people. He fears that Detroit could become two cities "...one for the upwardly mobile young and white denizens of an increasingly happening downtown, and the other for the struggling and frustrated black residents."

Now on the face of it I would call this blatant racism. But Mr. Finley writes an entire paragraph assuring readers he is not racist and would rather "have a stick for my eye." I for one tend to believe Mr. Finley harbors no actual racial hatred. But hating for racial reasons is not the only form of racism. People who don't harbor any real racial hatred can still practice racist principles. Before I go any further, I want my readers to understand what I mean by the concept of racism.

My Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary says: "A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." We can see that racism then is a form of determinism which says that your character is not determined by your own values and decisions but by your race or skin color and that this results in notions of superiority or inferiority.

Mr Finley then gives a few examples of why he fears the 'two cities' scenario: "It's a clear red flag when you can sit down in a hot new downtown restaurant and nine out of ten tables are filled with white diners, a proportion almost exactly opposite of the city's racial make up." But I ask why is the city's racial makeup important to Mr. Finley? He continues:

"It's a warning signal when you go to holiday events for major Detroit cultural institutions and charities, and you can count the number of African-American revelers on both hands." Again, why are racial numbers important? And one more:

"It should stop us in our tracks--as it did me the other day--when a group of 50 young professionals being groomed for future leadership shows up to hear advice from a senior executive, and there's only one black member among them." For the third time I'm saying so what? Why are racial quotas important? Why should a city have the same number of races in every social gathering? This is pure racism.

Maybe most blacks don't like the food at that hot new restaurant or can't afford the price. Maybe they don't go to holiday events because their leaders have convinced them not to celebrate white man's holidays. I just don't know. Maybe they don't want to participate in rebuilding downtown while their own neighborhoods continue to deteriorate. Maybe most of the black job creators (businessmen) have left the city for the same reasons white ones did, job destroying taxes and regulations. Whatever the reasons are, they are not mentioned.

There is a lot of rationalizing and evasion in this editorial. For example, what does the notion of "upward mobility" mean? Is that something that automatically accrues to white denizens but not blacks? A nine year old can testify that to step up on a simple foot stool takes some effort. Are we to understand that blacks somehow lack this effort? Use of the term upward mobility evades the reasons for said mobility. After telling us that most of the new kids coming to rebuild downtown are white and that he is not disparaging this fact, he then states:

"We can talk all day about why African-Americans didn't do the same thing. It doesn't matter." What? It sure does matter! Mr Finley is treating the racial numerical differences as the given, as if they are, like upward mobility, causeless, not to be questioned or examined. But everything has causes. To pretend they don't matter is evasion on a large scale.

He continues that paragraph with a veiled threat: "We have to understand that we're buying trouble if we don't encourage more black participation." Really? What kind of trouble? No answer. And what does encourage mean in this context? Does it mean at the point of a legislative gun like forced busing? Or does it mean economic favors like subsidies, loan guarantees or other favors? He does answer this: "This isn't about handouts or set asides or affirmative action. Nor is it about gentrification, an absolutely ridiculous concern in a city that needs so much rebuilding. I don't even believe it is about racism." So government incentives are out. So what is it about?

"Rather, it's about downtown employers making sure they're truly cognizant of the diversity of their workforces, and stretching a bit more to recruit and train native Detroiters, who will then fill the lofts and nightspots." To be cognizant of the diversity of their workforces means to be conscious of the races of ones workforce i.e. race consciousness, exactly what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not want.

"It's about encouraging black entrepreneurs to come to or stay in the city, and recognizing there are cultural and opportunity gaps that have to be closed to create a vibrant base of small business started by people drawn from the city's neighborhood." Again we see another phrase 'opportunity gaps' that doesn't seem to have a cause. Who is to do the encouraging of black entrepreneurs? Since he doesn't mention government it can be assumed that other private citizens are to do it though he isn't very specific about that.

I think it would have been a good editorial if it had noted all the racial discrepancies then focused on their causes. For example why are the black residences struggling and frustrated? Why aren't they attending more cultural events and eating at the hot new restaurants? Why aren't they hastening to take advantage of the new growth opportunities? There are reasons and they need to be identified and addressed.

Off the top of my head I can think of several. 1. The  insane War on Drugs has turned inner cities into gang laden fiefdoms where a kill or be killed sense of life dominates. 2.The equally perverse welfare state has destroyed the black family and made dependency on handouts a way of life. 3.The long waits for police to respond to crime calls and other unresponsive city government departments has caused the almost complete destruction of confidence in the police and the city as such. 4. The government policies aimed at reducing racial tensions--multiculturalism, egalitarianism, diversity, affirmative action and race consciousness--are themselves based on racist principles. I think it would have been a good idea to walk through a black neighborhood and ask them for reasons.

The collapse of Detroit did not happen overnight. It took a long time. Its recovery will take time too. It will only happen when the government stops treating blacks as a herd, a collective and starts treating them as individuals with the full protection of individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing less will do.

What I wish the President had really said.

It has been awhile since I posted here and I apologize for that. I promise to post a lot more often.
This is some wishful thinking that I sometimes like to do. My president's speech on immigration.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I come before you tonight to address an important problem, immigration and to explain the way I see this problem and what our nation should do about it.

But first, let me say that we are a nation of immigrants and the freedom to immigrate here is one we should want for all people. Our first founding document properly says that "all men are created equal" meaning equal before the law. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness then, belongs to 'all men.' And so America has always had an open door policy regarding immigration. I too believe we should have such a policy.

But such a policy, like any other policy, needs a structure and a method of operation. In other words, to have an open door policy we must first have a house with a door that can be opened and widely so. Right now we don't have that. Now, the question becomes what would this door look like? Would it be an iron door like the Soviet Union's Iron Curtain? Absolutely not. So what would such a door look like?

I envision a streamlined border crossing with a lot more agents and check points to efficiently and rapidly process immigrants and perhaps even with facilities for holdovers for further examination if needed. These checkpoints are needed because we must face the reality of the world around us. There are diseases that threaten to come here and enemies that want to destroy this country. We have to be cognizant of external threats. The streamlined check points will help do this.

What will the new border look like and how will it be operated and funded? Folks, these are the kinds of ideas that should be discussed and debated by our Congressmen and Senators on the floors of their respective chambers. That's not happening now. It will during the rest of my administration.

It is my hope that this new look border will be temporary as we move to address the rest of the problem. Yes, the rest of the problem. You see immigration has traditionally been treated almost exclusively as a domestic problem. It isn't. It's also a foreign policy issue and we need to address this aspect of it.

We need to find out why our neighbors to the south are not creating the conditions in their nations that exist here in the US so their citizens don't have to come here to be free and prosperous. Again, this is something that needs to be discussed not only by our congressional houses but by the State Department as well. Foreign Policy is this Department's domain. It needs to be developing policies with perhaps incentives or even disincentives to be applied to and/or negotiated with our southern neighbors. This isn't happening right now. It will going forward.

Our immigration problems are largely of our own making. Irrational immigration laws, poorly enforced by some law enforcement and ignored by politicians is just part of the problem. We have a terrorist threat because our past leaders have lacked the moral clarity and courage to destroy our enemies once and for all. We have a contagious disease problem because we have been shamefully negligent--even apologetic--about the one social system that has been number one is eradicating disease, capitalism. We need to be proud of our social system and shout its value from the roof tops and stop agreeing with the rest of the world that we are greedy and selfish and therefore evil. We aren't evil. We should lean on them to adopt individual rights. That is the concept that makes it all happen.

The State Dept has already started on this and I'll be submitting proposals to congress within the week.But one thing is for sure, we can't stay with the status quo.

Thank you and good night."

That's what I wanted to hear. Alas, well, maybe someday.

Sander Levin's latest statist efforts

Today (July 21) I received his newsletter from my US Congressman Sander Levin D District 9 Michigan. In it he reports, New study:  "Affordable Care Act (ACA) lowers uninsured rate" according to which 9.5 million additional adults ages 19 to 64 are now covered by insurance, and the national adult uninsured rate declined from 20 percent to 15 percent. He adds that according to this Commonwealth Fund study "a large majority of enrollees report that they are generally happy with their health care coverage."

Well, I don't trust these numbers because the Commonwealth Fund is part of the Commonwealth Foundation which did a major part of the research for the Affordable Care Act so they have a vested interest in reporting rosy numbers. I'm interested in what's missing, the not so rosy numbers. I have been told directly by a few and have read many others complain that their health care premiums have increased along with deductibles. Where are those numbers?

Mr Levin continues with his support of "Not My Boss' Business Act" (H.R. 5051) or formally, Protect Women's Health from Corporate Interference Act. (Should be government interference) He claims "Access to contraception helps to prevent unintended pregnancies, control timing of planned births and treat medical conditions like endometriosis. Yes these are desirable things. So what? I desire lots of things. Can I get the government to force someone to give them to me? But Levin is claiming that the Hobby Lobby decision allows Hobby Lobby to deny access to birth control for women.

Now look at what Mr Levin is really saying: if a company fails to provide employees with anything, it is then guilty of denying access to those things and is guilty of a crime. Congressman Sander Levin has made a living inventing crimes like denying access to just about anything. People don't have access to affordable health care, affordable education, now it's affordable birth control. Nowhere does he show anyone's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness being violated. That's because there are no such violations. He is ignoring the fact that all those things that are no longer affordable are due to the policies he has legislated in the past. Government financing and regulation of education has made education more expensive not less. Same with health care and insurance.

If armed gunmen stood at the doors of your doctor or your insurance company and said no admittance, that would be denial of access. But not having enough money to pay for something or worse yet, not having someone forced to give it to you, is not denial of access. Businessmen have a moral right to decide what if any benefits they want to offer to employees. Employees have the moral right t decide what wages and benefits to accept. Government has no moral right to interfere in this activity except where rights may be violated. Mr Levin has also invented other crimes like predatory this or that or unfair this other thing. But that can wait for another post.

Lastly, the Congressman bemoans a Supreme Court decision that he says "...undercut the VRA{voting rights act-MN}by invalidating a key section of the law." He doesn't identify that key provision so I can't say exactly what he's talking about. But I have a feeling it's about the ruling that states can require ID for voting eligibility. Now why would he not want states to verify voting eligibility?

Mr Levin has been in office for over 30 years and should, like his brother Senator Carl Levin, retire.

Why Republicans Keep Losing to Democrats

It's not often that an article will provide glaringly obvious proof of why conservatives and Republicans have been impotent at stopping or even slowing the liberal's march to dictatorship.  Ayn Rand has said repeatedly that conservatives keep losing to liberals because conservatives share the same moral values as the liberals but don't preach those values as consistently as the liberals do. "In any conflict between two men (or groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins." From the essay Anatomy of Compromise.

In the April 3rd Detroit News is an oped by Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. It is titled "Social justice a conservative cause" in which he asks:

"Who owns the term 'social justice'-conservatives or progressives?
Michigan's progressives desperately hope you say they do."

Well, I don't think Michigan's progressives are desperately hoping for any such thing. It's pretty much in the bag. Progressives have always owned the 'social justice'issue. But it's only a successful issue for them because the conservatives don't know how to respond to it. 'Social justice' is of course a collectivist concept based on the notion that the individual has no right to life--no life value--except for his value to the collective; that the group may do with the individual anything it wishes so long as it can claim some social good.

But America was founded on the principle of the supremacy of the individual not the collective. Man's right to life was held as unalienable, that is, politically and morally absolute. But not anymore. The concept of individual rights was and still is so poorly understood that most politicians did not know how to defend it. The Democratic Party has never embraced the ideal of individual rights. The Republicans did for awhile but only half-heartedly so, until the Goldwater defeat at the hands of progressive Johnson after which they dropped all loyalty to it and became the me-too party.

This op-ed by Mr. Brooks reeks of me-tooism. It's as if he's saying "See see! Us conservatives believe in the progressive idea of social justice too. We can be just as collectivist as they are. Never mind their admonition that America can't afford to wait for us conservatives to accomplish the same goals as the progressives can accomplish much faster through physical force. Ignore that. We want the same thing except through kinder, gentler, more voluntary methods." Is that the kind of rallying cry that would inspire hoards of followers?

Mr. Brooks correctly points out that the policies of the Obama progressives have failed to achieve their social justice goals.

"The simple fact is that intentions don't equal results. The left's policies aren't working - which means it's time for conservatives to step up to the social justice plate."!!!

Wow, where to begin. First, if those policies aren't working, don't you think a sharp conservative pundit would want to enlighten voters as to why they're not working, or that there might be something innately wrong with the concept of social justice? Nope, not happening. Ok failing that, wouldn't a half-sharp conservative pundit wonder how, since liberal policies are failing, is it in the interests of conservatives to 'step up' and make them work? Should conservatives be eager to beat the progressives to the punch?

Mr. Brooks is saying in essence that the progressives are going about it all wrong and that:

"Conservatives should start by asking the downtrodden what they need the most. In the conversations I've had over the years, I've identified three things: moral transformation, material relief and opportunity. These are the central components of a real social justice platform."

Presumably, these three things are all to be provided by the government, not by the people themselves as envisioned by the founders.

"Personal moral transformation is the most important."

Let's look at the first of these, moral transformation. A moral code is a set of principles we humans use to guide our actions through our daily life. So what are we supposed to be transforming from and to?

"To illustrate this point, (the importance of moral transformation-MN) I used the 2010 General Social Survey - the country's best sociological database - to identify what makes people happy."

But what makes people happy is such a broad and out of context standard as to be meaningless. Happiness is not doing whatever makes one feel good like whim worship. So what set of principles does this General Social Survey offer us? None. Just a picture.

"Take the example of two men identical in age, education, race and income. The first is religious. He's married with two kids. He also works more and participates in his community more than 90 percent of the rest of the country. The other man meets none of these qualifications. The first man is nearly 400 percent more likely to be happy."

In other words, real social justice must encourage people to participate in faith, family, community and work. Nothing wrong with that as such, but the encouragement here is of course government encouragement, i.e. force. But America is being destroyed by a thousand encouraging cuts. Millions have lost their homes due to government encouragement of home ownership. Right now government is 'encouraging' health care with ObamaCare, 'encouraging' education through Common Core not to mention the philosophy of progressive education as such, 'encouraging' our participation in NSA information gathering, 'encouraging' the destruction of the purchasing power of the dollar with Quantitative Easing.  It goes on and on endlessly. Nowhere in this op-ed is there a call for 'encouraging' politicians to provide citizens with the political and economic freedom that would enable them to provide for their own happiness.

Mr. Brooks' desire to hang on to the welfare state is revealed next:

"Moral transformation goes hand in hand with material relief. No less a libertarian than Friedrich Hayek argued that government should provide "some  minimum of food, shelter and clothing."
Right, and that's why I no longer consider Mr. Hayek to be a credible advocate for Capitalism. Again, people should be free to provide for their own welfare. Private charity has always been up to the task for those in need, except of course when government decides to step into the market with its 'encouragement' bubbles.

"The final piece of the social justice puzzle is opportunity - the path from welfare to well being. Opportunity is under attack everywhere you look."

True enough. He cites the need for education reform that will provide for our children's futures but says nothing about getting government out of education.

In closing the op-ed says:

Conservatives can speak powerfully to these issues. Transformation, relief, opportunity - we have the principles that form the basis of real social justice policies."

And that's why conservatives will keep on losing. Oh there may be a swipe at the progressives in this 2014 election as in the Reagan presidency but I don't see a love fest for conservatives on the horizon.

Nobody should want to own the issue of social justice because there is no such thing. That concept is an intellectual or cognitive package deal designed to destroy a valid concept - individual justice, the only kind of justice that exists, and replace it with the invalid concept of social justice. It permits its advocates to commit individual injustices in the name of all sorts of imagined unfairness such as those invented under egalitarianism. For example, John makes more money than Fred so fairness (social justice) requires that we take some of John's money (an individual injustice) and give it to Fred.

America was not founded on the principle of sacrifice but rather on the principle of rational self interest, a self interest that respects the same rights of others. Conservatives need to 'step up to the plate' of individual rights if they ever hope to win big again.

Congressman Sander Levin's Republican Bashing

My US Congressman Sander Levin of Michigan sent out his Congressional Connector newsletter this week and like usual never misses a chance to bash Republicans. Here is his first paragraph:

House Leaders Push Through “Polluter Protection Act”

"Instead of taking action to create jobs, or restore benefits to the 2 million Americans who have been cut off from Emergency Unemployment Compensation since December 28, the Republican Leadership of the House of Representatives brought a bill [H.R. 3826] to the House Floor on March 5th to strip the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to address carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants – the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States. The House approved the measure on a vote of 229 to 183."

First of all let me say that the reason unemployment benefits were cut off is because the emergency benefits legislation expired. Also Mr Levin's President Obama keeps telling us we are and have been in a recovery for several years so why the need for all the emergency benefits?

I'm glad the House passed HR 3826 to strip the authority from the EPA to shut down coal burning plants. First there is nothing in the Constitution giving government the right to manage the nation's power supply. The market would do that nicely if left free to do so. Second, the EPA is one of the biggest violators of property rights in the nation. It's mission is to protect the environment of every creature except one--man. The amoeba, earthworm, spotted owl, et al have a right to their environment. Man does not.

Remember eleven years ago when the eastern half of the grid went down for three days and we found out that most of our capacity was running just under max? Do you really think shutting down 4 more plants as has been done without any new ones built is a sign that Mr Levin cares about the integrity of the grid, that is, your environment and mine? I think that Mr Levin's desire to let the EPA keep shutting down plants and putting all those workers in the unemployment line where Obama's economic recovery now requires emergency benefits is a strange way to show a concern for the unemployed.

Mr Levin's anti-free market bias isn't confined to the environment. It's found in health care as well.

"Also on March 5, House Republicans voted for the 50th time to undermine health care reform. Speaking against the bill on the House Floor, Rep. Levin said, “This time it's the 50th time that House Republicans have brought up legislation to repeal or to undermine the Affordable Care Act.... Just look at this -- 50 votes. With zero votes to raise the minimum wage. Zero votes to renew unemployment insurance. Zero votes to guarantee paycheck fairness. Zero votes to pass immigration reform.” The House passed the bill on a vote of 250 to 160, but – as with the previous 49 attempts – the measure is not expected to advance further and become law."

Wow! 50 times? I admire their persistence even though it's been an exercise in futility. I say futility because the republicans keep limiting themselves to the practical arguments that ObamaCare doesn't work, is a practical disaster and so on conceding the moral argument to the Dems. The Democrats don't deserve the moral high ground. There is nothing moral about ObamaCare. But the moral argument terrifies the Republicans. They won't pick it up because they secretly believe the Democrats are right, morally right. Well they're not and the Republicans need to discover it soon and help the various Tea Parties educate the public. The reason they don't help the Tea Parties and seek to 'crush them' instead is because they're terrified of discovering they share the same anti-capitalist, anti-free market, anti-American collectivist premises as the Democrats.

Yes, the Republicans need bashing but not for the reasons Mr. Levin cites. The Democrats are misleading the people with false ideas as to what is in their interests. The Republicans need to tell the people that things like the minimum wage, welfare programs, subsidies to business and all economic regulations not to mentions this latest notion of guaranteed paycheck fairness[!!], are not in their interests and then explain why; that the history of capitalism in our school books is in error and demonstrate that fact. It will be an uphill fight for sure since the Democrats control the education system. The Republicans need to end that control. Education belongs to the free market not any political party.

The Anti-Philosophical Nature of Today's Intellectuals

With a few minor changes I repost this from the New Clarion.

In the introduction to Ayn Rand's book "Philosophy: Who Needs It" heir to her intellectual estate Leonard Peikoff wrote "Ayn Rand was not only a novelist and philosopher; she was also a salesman for philosophy--the greatest salesman philosophy has ever had." Boy was she ever. The first of her writings I read was the title essay of her book "For the New Intellectual." Her nutshell compression of philosophic history in terms of Attila and the Witch Doctor immediately oriented me to the fact that if I wanted to understand the world's problems and by implication, their solutions, I must look at philosophy. And so I did.

But I feel like a Cassandra when I try to urge others to study philosophy and all I get is lowered eyebrows and remarks like "Philosophy! Who studies that nonsense?" And so it goes. Now I don't really mind it coming from other non-academics like myself. After all I thought that way myself until I read FTNI. But what really amazed me is the utter anti-philosophical orientation of today's educated class. They seem to think only in terms details i.e. this detail caused that detail and so on. There is no reference as to what principle caused the first detail. Here are two examples:

In the Jan. 9th Detroit News is an oped by Jennifer Carlson, assistant professor in the dept of sociology at the University of Toronto titled "Gun debate misses the mark in Detroit." The theme of the article is "Does Detroit need more guns, or more gun control? Both alternatives ignore the city's bigger problem - the culture."

She writes:

"On the one hand, guns exacerbate a culture in which human life is treated as valueless and disposable."

Unlike so many other modern intellectuals she happily does not blame inanimate matter, guns, as the cause of Detroit's crime but, rather perceptually, cites the culture. She is right.

But like so many thinkers of today she does not ask the next logical question: what causes a culture to be the way it is? To answer that question I think we should ask what is a culture? My dictionary says it's the concepts, habits, skills, arts and institutions of a given people in a given era. So we see that a culture is a dynamic mixture of the ideas and beliefs of many individuals, so by culture we mean the ideas and beliefs that dominate that society even though some are opposing views. Another way to say this is that the dominant ideas and beliefs are that society's prevailing philosophy.

It would be great if today's intellectuals would identify the dominant philosophy in Detroit, Michigan and the nation but they won't. Why? They believe philosophy to be irrelevant. Here is another example:

In the Thursday Mar 6th Detroit News, editorial director Nolan Finley penned an oped "America is on the path it chose". In it Mr Finley cites polls that show while Americans mostly don't like big government, they also don't want to cut the various welfare programs. He writes:

"Because he (Obama) believes that despite what they say they want, Americans prefer indulgence over sacrifice. The concept of smaller government appeals to them, but the reality of actually cutting programs makes them squeamish."

It's unfortunate that Mr. Finley uses the word indulgence, a pejorative term usually projecting the image of a glutton or one who is serving himself. I would have used the phrase self interest over self sacrifice. But for now I want to say that throughout the editorial Mr Finley does not ask the next logical question: Why do people vote perceptually against that which they want conceptually? Why are the culture's perceptions at war with their conceptions? Is there a field of study that can integrate man's perceptions and conceptions so that he doesn't act in contradictory ways? Yes. That field of study is Philosophy.

Philosophy is a broad science having five divisions of study, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. In a nut shell, philosophy studies the nature of everything but in terms of principles, principles that us humans use to guide our lives.

That said, if you look at modern philosophy and see things like post-modernism, post-post-modernism, deconstructionism, and others you would probably conclude that it is all unintelligible drivel. And you'd be right. So, is regarding philosophy as irrelevant the proper attitude for our intellectuals to take?

Imagine for a moment you stepped into a time machine and were transported 100 years into the future. Upon arrival you discover life has deteriorated significantly. People are sick and dying all over the place. You inquire as to why they don't go to a doctor or hospital and are greeted with astonished looks and statements like "That doesn't do any good" and "Modern medicine doesn't make any sense." So you decide to check it out yourself by going to several hospitals. There you see doctors waving rattles and wands over the beds of sick and dying patients, nurses singing chants and incantations alongside patients. You are informed that it is like this throughout the nation.

So, Would you conclude that the science of medicine is irrational and is to be ignored? Or would you, based on your knowledge of 100 years ago, conclude that now it is more urgent than ever to study the science of medicine to discover the turning point at which it went irrational? Naturally you would decide the latter, hopefully. That is where philosophy stands today. It is not my intent here nor would it be appropriate to go into a history of philosophy nor do I have an extensive knowledge of it. I'll just say that the last major turning point where philosophy plunged into irrationality began with the writings of Immanuel Kant. There is no doubt that Rand's philosophy of objetivism marks a turning point toward a rational philosophy. But is there time for it to spread? I think so. Yes, philosophy needs salesman, lots of them and now more than ever before.

It's the Principles, Dtroit

I'm re-posting this from The New Clarion in case any of my readers don't read the Clarion.


The Thursday 12/19 Detroit News carried an editorial by Reynolds Farley who once conducted the Detroit Area Study at the University of Michigan. Titled "The often-overlooked roots of Detroit's bankruptcy" it looks at these 'roots' only in terms of details, of concrete particulars as if no underlying principles were involved. This detail caused that detail which in turn led to this other detail. But no one asks the obvious question: "What gave rise to the first detail?"

Mr. Farley declares that "Long term economic and demographic trends brought Detroit to its present condition." After reeling off a plethora of depressing numbers of jobs and people leaving the city, all of which are true, he declares as a cause the fact that: "First, Michigan's system of financing local government and schools is broken. In 1911, the Legislature adopted a Home Rule Law encouraging communities to organize their own governments, generate their own tax revenue and pay for their own services. The law gave local governments no incentives to cooperate with one another in solving common problems and , over the years, the law was amended to make it difficult for communities to annex or merge."

I for one don't believe this to be the case. I have lived most of my 71 years in a Detroit suburb and can testify to the fact that local communities have often got together to solve problems. Nor do I accept the notion that it's the State's fault for not being foresighted enough to see that locals would eventually need incentives to cooperate.

But the point I really want to make is look at the cognitive pattern: the details of'economic and demographic trends' caused Detroit's demise. But what caused those trends? The detail of the 1911 Law we are told. But the 1911 Law is not an economic or demographic entity. It's a political one. Politics is a science that deals with the principles of social organization. Thus what is left out of the discussion is any mention of possible political principles that could have had a causal effect on Detroit's suicide. The 1911 Law is not a principle. It is a concrete law based on a principle, the principle of self government which I believe the 1911 Legislature was acting upon and wanted to encourage.

Detroit's failure to its citizens was not caused by an endless string of details but by the principles that gave rise to all those sad details. The main principle behind Detroit's sorry state is the principle that government--a political entity--should provide economic goods and services instead of the market place--an economic entity of voluntary trade to mutual benefit. Government has a legal monopoly on the use of force. It is not an economic entity. Political principles are not the same as economic principles and cannot be mixed. Our Declaration of Independence identified the political principle on which governments at all levels are to operate: "To secure these rights governments are instituted among men." The City (and State) abandoned its role of rights protector long ago and has tried to be the provider of economic services. The mixed economy is Detroit's state. Its real often-overlooked roots are the political and economic principles Detroit has tried to live by. It must now relearn the political and economic principles that actually created a once free and prosperous city. The principles of laissez faire capitalism.

The Real Zombies Are in Washington

It seems to me that Hollywood's creation of modern Zombies has taken on a new life. Not just for horror movies any longer, they are showing up in TV series like The Walking Dead and even on bumper stickers. Recently I saw one such sticker declaring "My zombie child just ate the brains of your honor student." Of course that was in jest, I think. But what is it with Zombies being portrayed as essentially brainless? Where did this idea come from? My 1967 Webster's collegiate dictionary says in part

"In west Indian superstition, a supernatural power through which a corpse may be brought to a state of trancelike animation and made to obey the commands of the person exercising the power.

Wow! Does that ever sound like Washington or what?

Now in most of my 71 years observing politics and human nature, I seriously doubt there is any supernatural power guiding the creatures roaming around Washington (or Lansing for that matter). But a recent movie I was informed of gave me a hint. In that movie, the zombies were created by a virus which killed the thinking part of the brains of otherwise normal people leaving only their automatic bodily functions still alive. Now to me that sounds plausible (almost). Except that in today's real world the virus would not be a physical one but rather a cognitive one, you know like a computer virus. If one of these enters your computer the whole thing dies instantly. Bang! Dead. It won't even add 2 & 2. This seems to support my theory that since it is a cognitive pathogen, then like computer viruses, there are different strains of it.

I think I have detected two different strains of this malady: the programmed and the non-programmed. The programmed virus injects into its victim a program of self destruction whereby its recipient has no choice but to follow a path that will lead to its own demise. It does this by implanting the impulse that destruction and death are good, things to be achieved. This strain is prevalent in humans calling themselves progressive or liberal or leftist. They are found in both political parties but mostly in the Democratic Party. They ignore the past. For example, the fact that no society on fiat money has ever avoided collapse means nothing to them. They stagger on.

The non-programmed virus leaves its victim with complete cognitive dissonance. These are mostly found in the Republican Party. That is why Republicans are often seen wandering around aimlessly, with no purpose, nothing to achieve, making herky-jerky motions and incoherent utterances, having no goal except to eat the brains of Democrats.

Now I want to add that there may be other strains of the virus. I suspect one has infected our news media with a particularly virulent submissive, obedient, unquestioning, pied piper form. But I'll leave that for other investigators to examine. Zombies, like all effects, have a cause and it's becoming obvious that this cause lies in academia. That is where the queen bee of brain deadness resides. They are the powers pulling the strings of media and political corpses.

Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz Right?

I repost this here for those of my readers who don't go the The New Clarion.


Gary North, former staff economist for Ron Paul, has a blog called Tea Party Economist in which he posts links to current political and economic news. His latest posting carries an article on Debbie Wasserman Schultz's claim that the Democrats will win in 2014 because they will stand solidly behind the Affordable Care Act aka ObamaCare. For those who don't know, Ms. Schultz is the national chairwoman of the Democrat Party.

Judging by the article's comments and other reactions around the web Republicans and conservatives are having knee-slapping guffaws over her announcement. But they shouldn't be in such a hurry to dismiss her words. There is a method to her seeming madness. You see she understands that the moral argument always wins over the practical argument. Her party and its sycophants in the media have been arguing that ObamaCare is a "moral imperative" and other moral platitudes. The Republicans have been confining themselves to the practical argument that ObamaCare doesn't work and in doing so have conceded the moral high ground to the Democrats.

She further knows that Obama will present himself to the voting public in a very presidential way. He will campaign against all the disastrous results of the ACA and promise to fix or get fixed all the problems. The public will vote for his Party because they will still think it cares about them which caring they consider to be of uber importance. They will not see the Republican's claim that ObamaCare is bad because it doesn't work, as having no more moral importance than fixing a flat tire. They will go with the Dems.

Unless that is, the Republicans learn to retake the moral high ground from the Dems. It's not that hard to do. For example, the next time a news anchor or politician or academic confronts a Republican with "you don't care about the needy" or homeless or uninsured or whatever malady is in vogue this week, he should reply with something like "hurting the needy is a strange way to show you care for them" and then back it up with an explanation of how government policies do in fact hurt the needy. There are many variants on this theme, and the evidence for them is all over the place. Republicans must give up the notion that free markets are evil because they are greedy and selfish. To do that Republicans must learn that such concepts (greed and selfishness) are fraudulent concepts designed only to destroy rational self interest.

But before the Republicans can take back the moral argument they must learn that it is theirs for the taking. The Dems never had a right to it. To defend capitalism and free markets is to defend man's unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that this is the morally right thing to do.

Some Citizens Get It.

I normally post on editorials or news stories in the media but today I want to post on an excellent letter to the editor in the Nov 1st Detroit News titled "blame the media" by Walter Konarzevski. It's in response to an editorial by News editor Nolan Finley criticizing the White House press core's way overdue ability to criticize the President. Mr. Konarzevski writes in part:

"You did not cover Sen. Barack Obama objectively; if you did he very well would not have become president. You cheered his campaign, smeared his opposition, hid who he was and what he believed. You in fact support him in his falsehoods.

Now you are reporting on things that should have been reported on years ago. Too late, you should have told the truth to start with. You should have been reporters, not political operatives."

So true. If I knew Obama was a collectivist back in 2008 the News could have known it too. Mr. Obama was sworn in on Jan 20th 2009 and on that day the Detroit News editorial said in part:

"We have serious doubts about and major philosophical differences with many of the new president's idea for meeting those challenges, but debating those differences is for another day.

Today we join the nation in celebrating Obama's historic rise to the White House and are heartily encouraged by the tremendous faith and hope such a large portion of the nation has in him. We can't recall anything in modern politics to match the jubilation over Obama's ignauguration."

Yes there were a lot of high hopes that day. But I didn't have any. I could see jubilation over the first black man as president but skin color and ideas are two different things and I didn't like any of his ideas. The title of the editorial was "Bold leadership will make Obama presidency historic." Why would the editor believe Obama capable of bold leadership when it was common knowledge he had never managed anything?

Above the headline was a picture of Obama speaking that previous Sunday which was captioned:

Barack Obama has promised to try to build a broad consensus for America's revival. The theme at the Lincoln Memorial pre-inaugural event in Washington that Obama spoke at Sunday was "We are one.""

It wasn't long afterward that "We are one" became "We won." So much for unity. But while the press was all agog over Obama at least some citizens like Mr. Konarzevski and myself could see behind the curtain.

More of the Same Old Detroit

I'm re-posting this from the New Clarion where I posted it yesterday.

Ever since Detroit filed for bankruptcy in July of this year there has been a flood of articles in the media on the suggested causes of Detroit's demise and almost as many on suggested solutions. The solutions invariably call for more of the same poison that made Detroit sick in the first place: a political institution, city government, trying to provide economic services--something the marketplace is supposed to provide if left free to do so.

Let's remember that government is force. It has nothing to offer citizens except the management of force. It is not an economic entity. It cannot provide anyone with economic benefits unless it takes them from some citizens and doles them out to other citizens. On net balance the city does not gain anything.

You would think that someone would stop and say hey, lets re-examine this basic notion that government (force) is the only or at least a good way to provide economic services like roads, lighting, schools, parks, libraries, recreation and others. But no one is even hinting at having that conversation. Instead, judging by the endorsements for Detroit Mayor and city council members in the Detroit Free Press Sunday Oct 27th paper, the candidates are offering more of the same old tonic: a top down control of everything with only minor tweeks in the forced dosage.

According to Freep writer John Gallagher's article mayoral candidates Mike Duggan and Benny Napoleon "Each candidate says he believes that better management of existing city resources will lead to success." In other words same old/ same old just under new management. Mr. Gallagher continues: "Duggan says he will appoint a single Department of Neighborhoods to oversee all service delivery, while Napoleon said a police officer assigned to every square mile of the city will act as an ombudsman for neighborhood needs and complaints, with the mayor's office still responsible for coordinating service delivery."

Wow! That's all Detroit needs is another bureaucracy needing taxpayer funding--this one consisting of little neighborhood czars (evidently following Obama's czarist formula). Folks, this is how the politics of buck passing works in a mixed economy. Duggan will pass the buck to the Department of Neighborhoods and when it fails in a few years (next election) he will call for a better manager. Napoleon will pass the buck to the poor cop patrolling one square mile by himself for which he will need not a squad car but a tank. And when he fails to give the mayor the right data he'll get replaced too.

Other cities in financial trouble have privatized some if not all economic services and have or are returning to balanced budgets. There are benefits to be had from privatization. You see privatization introduces the profit motive. When people are free from the initiatory force of regulations they will offer the best quality for the lowest prices. It is in their interest to do so. Politicians and their bureaucrats have no skin in the game. They have nothing to lose for doing a bad job and, because of that, have no point in doing a good one.

If Detroit had a laissez faire economy the Detroit Institute of Arts would be privately owned and there would be no need to sell off its priceless works of art. Selling off such art is just one example of the unintended bad consequences of politicians with allegedly good intentions. Just look at the cell phone and iPod industries which are only lightly regulated. The quality keeps going up while prices keep falling. Detroiters can have that for their city services. How?

Whichever of these two men, Duggan or Napoleon, become mayor, it is up to the citizens of Detroit to demand he privatize, privatize, privatize. It won't be easy because the desire of politicians to be the providers of our daily bread (crumbs) is irresistible to them. It is the citizens who must tell them they no longer want their daily bread from them but rather, the political and economic freedom to provide their own.