Rational Review » RRND Commentary

It’s all about independence

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:44:43 +0000

“As we celebrate our own Independence Day, we would be wise to realize the concept doesn’t only apply to us: every nation on earth makes a very big deal out of one day in the year, set aside for touting the virtues of their particular land, its history, its heroes, and its subtle beauties. Each time Washington announces this or that nation has violated ‘international norms,’ and threatens to exercise its imperial prerogatives, the world’s hackles rise. Every presumption of our own superior ability to decide what is best for the world at large — no matter how ‘enlightened’ and representative of ‘modernity’ — is deeply resented by the targets of our self-righteousness. That’s why every declaration of support for the Iranian protesters has a boomerang effect, one amplified skillfully by the hard-line regime in order to generate enough support to stay in power — in spite of their brutality and incompetence.” (07/03/09)

Things to do while boycotting July 4th

Mary Lou Seymour — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:43:45 +0000

“It doesn’t matter whether you think [the Founders’] action was a good, bad, or indifferent thing — they had no business doing it for anyone other than themselves. It was entirely outside the realm of legitimacy for them to make such a decision on everyone’s behalf.” (07/02/09)

Life, liberty, and property are inseparable

R. Lee Wrights — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:42:12 +0000

“Life, liberty, and property were the central, inalienable rights that formed the foundation of the great experiment in self government called the United States of America. The founders of our country never broke apart this sacred triumvirate, because each one of these rights is inextricably bound to the other. No one of these three can exist without the other. Moreover, when all three are secured, it is almost impossible for injustice to exist. Wherever one does find injustice, one invariably finds a violation of one of these three basic rights at its root.” (07/02/09)

Congress declares independence

R. Lee Wrights — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:41:33 +0000

“What a difference a year can make. On July 6, 1775, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking Up Arms. It had been drafted by a radical in Congress, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, but revised — ‘toned down,’ it is said, — by the leading conservative and advocate of reconciliation with the Crown, John Dickinson, the Philadelphia merchant. The timing of the Declaration is significant. The Battles of Lexington and Concord had taken place in April 1775, Bunker Hill in June 1775.” (07/02/09)

Free Bernie Madoff

R. Lee Wrights — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:40:07 +0000

“Bernie Madoff stole billions from the customers of his phony investment funds, running a racket rather than a financial service. People who aren’t even his victims are furious, and nearly everyone enjoyed a 10-minute sense of vengeance when the judge threw him behind bars for 150 years. Let me weigh in with a contrary view. Free Bernie Madoff, I say.” (07/02/09)

Even the Amish fell for the boom

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:39:03 +0000

“Some years ago, I wrote a piece in praise of the Amish view of fighting in wars and how they conduct their affairs, mostly apart from the State. They don’t work for the government, and try to live their lives as far removed from the tangle of the state as one can do in this modern world. Now, this alone hardly makes them virtuous. I don’t believe that having electricity or an automobile makes me a lesser person or less virtuous than someone who uses kerosene lanterns and rides in horse-drawn buggies. Nonetheless, I do think there is something compelling about the Old-Order Amish, and I will say that they are not the people who are encouraging rapacious behavior abroad by U.S. armed forces. Nonetheless, it was not electricity or cars that corrupted the Amish; it was the easy-credit regime produced by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, who are quite removed from the horse-and-buggy world of that corner of the mountains of Pennsylvania.” (07/03/09)

Communist Party considers President Obama a success

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:37:18 +0000

“Generally, the Communist Party spends a lot of time criticizing Democrats running for and holding public office for not being socialistic enough. This appears to have changed since President Obama was elected. ‘In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead,’ writes Sam Webb, Chair of the Communist Party USA. … ‘The new conditions of struggle are possible only – and I want to emphasize only – because we elected President Obama and a Congress with pronounced progressive and center currents,’ adds Webb.” (07/01/09)

Testing, testing …

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:11:24 +0000

“A year ago, the idea of setting national education standards was a lot like the idea of legalizing marijuana: Despite all common sense, it just wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t matter that No Child Left Behind proved that when states are allowed to define their own standards, most dumb them down. … Yet on June 1, the National Governors’ Association announced that 49 states and territories have signed on to an agreement, called the Common Core Standards Initiative, to develop national standards in math and English. For education reformers across the political spectrum who have long urged that the United States join its developed world peers in articulating national standards, the news is a major victory.” (07/02/09)

Happy Dependence Day

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:10:30 +0000

“This is probably not the best week to air any reservations about the American passion for independence. After all, we don’t have fireworks for Dependence Day. We don’t hold parades to celebrate Interdependence Day. Our allegiance to independence as a nation is Yankee doodle dandy. But I’m wondering whether our ode to independence as a people is a bit over the top. We foster an unrealistic view of the way we live, not just in the designated years of caring for our children but in the undesignated years when we care for our elders. Maybe independence is too crisply defined as ‘exemption from reliance on, or control by, others; direction of one’s own affairs without interference.’” (07/03/09)

A “coup” in Honduras? Nonsense!

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:09:41 +0000

“Sometimes, the whole world prefers a lie to the truth. The White House, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and much of the media have condemned the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya this past weekend as a coup d’etat. That is nonsense. In fact, what happened here is nothing short of the triumph of the rule of law. To understand recent events, you have to know a bit about Honduras’s constitutional history. … It has endured because it responds and adapts to changing political conditions: Of its original 379 articles, seven have been completely or partially repealed, 18 have been interpreted, and 121 have been reformed.” (07/02/09)

Drug manufacturers: $80 bil in Rx savings … but what’s their angle?

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:08:40 +0000

“Prescription drug manufacturers, represented by their trade and lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), have one of the most powerful and successful lobbies in Congress. Seeing them willing to give away $80 billion over the next ten years shows just how strong the push for health care reform is now and how much more savings could be had from prescription drug costs. Otherwise, PhRMA would just keep up its pressure on Congress to forestall any legislation that affected its members’ bottom line, as it has in the past. One of the drug lobby’s most significant victories came when the 2003 Medicare law, which added a long-awaited drug benefit to the program (Part D), was passed.” (07/02/09)

Iran’s Green Wave

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:07:52 +0000

“Just before midnight on a Friday evening a week before Iran’s much-disputed June 12 election, the initial tremors of the earthquake that has shaken the country to its core were palpable deep in south Tehran, a gritty, working-class section of the city with a reputation for being a stronghold of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Past shuttered shops and empty, debris-strewn sidewalks, a late-night stream of cars, trucks and motorcycles, engines revving, horns honking, roared along the wide boulevard.” (07/01/09)

The stupidity of “smart” phones

Steve Trinward — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:06:55 +0000

“Apple’s iPhone looks good enough to eat. I’ve yet to take a bite of this ’smart’ phone, but know that once I do, there will be no going back; I’ll be reaching for it before I get out of bed and updating my Facebook status from yoga class. … The temptation to join the growing legions of iPhone admirers is strong. So what’s stopping me from signing up? Purchasing an iPhone means I have to become an AT&T subscriber. The company has an exclusive deal with Apple to provide wireless service to iPhoners — I’m backed into a corner. If I don’t like AT&T, or it’s not available in my area, I’m facing a digital impasse: no service, no phone.” (07/02/09)

Pirates: No leftist utopians, they

Mary Lou Seymour — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:14:43 +0000

“Last year in Ideas, Joanna Weiss wrote that the George Mason economist Peter T. Leeson was at work on a book that would demonstrate that ‘the democratic tenets we hold so dear were used to great effect on pirate ships. Checks and balances. Social insurance. Freedom of expression.’ Leeson’s book is finally here, ‘The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates.’ And, true enough, the economist gives democratic aspects of pirate life their due. (Pirates elected their captains, for example, and could depose them by a vote.) But what most stands out is just how eager Leeson is to rescue pirates from the clutches of left-wing historians and social theorists, and to claim them as avatars of right-wing economic theory. Pirates, Leeson suggests, were avid Hayekians a full two centuries before the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek was born.” (0630/09)

Networked dissent?

Mary Lou Seymour — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:06:46 +0000

“On 13 June the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared winner of Iran’s presidential election, with a reported 64% of the national vote. His nearest rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, won (according to official figures) just under 34%. Mousavi and his followers immediately disputed the results; and widespread protests mushroomed throughout Iran, of a size and nature not seen since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. As the protests grew in strength, the Iranian authorities cracked down on foreign media reporting in the country, disrupted cell phone use and text-messaging, and restricted internet access, making it hard to get information out of Iran. Enter Twitter and Facebook, which rapidly became vital tools to relay news and information on anti-government protests to people inside and outside Iran. Although the authorities had banned access to Facebook during the run-up to the elections, users found ways around the restrictions and, during the demonstrations, Mousavi himself used Facebook to contact supporters and the outside world.” (07/02/09)

Wal-Mart embraces fascism

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:05:30 +0000

“The Wall Street Journal explains Wal-Mart’s motivation in benign-sounding terms: ‘Wal-Mart — which provides insurance to employees’ — ‘wants to level the playing ﬁeld with companies that don’t.’ This is a sugary way of saying that Wal-Mart wishes to use the aggressive controls of the state to force ﬁrms smaller than it to provide what they may or may not have the resources to provide. Those ﬁrms that are unable to continue operating under the state’s new regulations will, of course, be forced to go out of business (unless they’re able to procure bailouts — this is also problematic), thus leaving less ﬁrms with whom Wal-Mart will need to compete. This is bad not only for workers but also for consumers. We shouldn’t really be surprised by Wal-Mart’s recent move. As Mr. Lew Rockwell reported in 2005, Wal-Mart called for an increase to the minimum wage so as to impose a higher cost on smaller competitors.” (07/02/09)

Today’s employment situation

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:03:01 +0000

“First of all, let’s compare the current situation with employment with what the Obama Administration told us would happen if we didn’t pass the stimulus package. As has been obvious for some time now the stimulus is not — as we repeatedly predicted — substantially impacting the employment situation. Instead, employment has risen by more than 3%.” (07/02/09)

Public expenditure — cutting to the chase

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 01:01:30 +0000

“The horrific public borrowing forecast for this year of £175 billion — and the consequential £220 billion of projected gilts issuance — are certainly concentrating minds, especially those of credit rating agencies. The reality is that, irrespective of whichever party wins the next General Election, major public expenditure cuts will be obligatory; various percentages are currently being bandied about. The key figure is the projected £671 billion of Total Managed Expenditure (TME) for 2009/10 — prior to interest payments. Future public finance policies should be based on implementing real cuts to that number.” (07/02/09)

Cap and pollute

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:59:33 +0000

“The House passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act Friday was billed as a narrow victory for President Obama and the green lobby. But was it a victory for real environmentalism? Sadly, no. The legislation’s many loopholes that had to be added to secure its passage will make it far less effective — to be charitable. The “cap and trade” regime that the bill would create promises to ratchet down carbon emissions over time but creates a dangerous precedent for the environment. Cap and trade essentially creates a property right out of polluting.” (07/02/09)

Rush Limbaugh is still a big fat idiot

Thomas L. Knapp — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:58:30 +0000

“It wasn’t surprising when, after seven months of legal wrangling, the Minnesota Supreme Court declared that Al Franken had won the 2008 Senate race against incumbent Norm Coleman. Still less surprising (although vastly more entertaining) was the simultaneous breakdown of nearly all of Franken’s adversaries on the right, whose regurgitated insults, whining complaints and exploding noggins revealed nothing about him or his victory — and everything about them.” (07/03/09)