There is no depth of idiocy to which public schools can't sink

Now it's war on chocolate milk. However, this war is hardly new: I've personally experienced it in a slightly different form, when I began elementary school in the Bay Area. Back then it needed no excuse. "We're the school and we'll tell you what you'd better damn well do."

Milk was the sole beverage offered with school lunch. I've always found its taste positively horrid, for the same inexplicable reason that I like broccoli and am oversensitive to salt. So one morning, my father prepared a tiny jar with Quik powder for me to bring to school. With that, I could make the school lunch's milk palatable and therefore not waste it. I never had a chance to get away with what that young boy couldn't fathom was a horrible, horrible crime. The next thing I knew, the cafeteria nanny (a mutated den mother) and principal flanked me at the table, demanding to know what I had poured in. It's no exaggeration to say that with the nature of their interrogation (it could be called no other thing), and their cowardice in brow-beating and threatening an excellent student who never caused trouble, I might as well have been smuggling for a drug cartel.

So they put a very quick stop to my father's good idea, and I returned to not taking the pints of milk. The school officials flatly refused my father's reasonable demand of a credit for what I wasn't consuming, and they refused to give any explanation of the most remote plausibility. They didn't merely not try, they didn't want to try to defend their idiocy. "We're the school and we'll tell you what you'd better damn well do." The solution was that I started bringing my own lunch, which sometimes included milk and the same banned Quik, mixed in at home. What was it, that school milk has such a different molecular formula that it would go critical after adding Quik?

As a practical matter, bringing my own lunch was the only solution. As a matter of principle, it was the only solution, being the right thing to do anyway. Freedom, practicality, efficiency and happiness -- is it any wonder the four are inextricable?

Part of the blame rests on the fellow students, who were jealous they couldn't do the same. Once they saw me enjoying a beverage they didn't have, up went their hands. Yet not a thing in the universe prevented their parents from following suit. They didn't because they lacked desire and original thought to improve the conditions of their children, even when someone showed them something they could easily do themselves. No doubt they've grown up to be the most brain-dead of liberals, demanding "equality" no matter that it means bringing everyone to a rock-bottom level.

God knows what would happen if I had been going to school now. One of my oldest friends and I would have been shot by SWAT for play-slashing at each other with pocketknives, no matter that we never hurt each other. (Mr. Borders knew we never meant harm, so he'd just tell us to behave.) Another friend would have been drugged with Ritalin for ADHD, because in boring classes he'd routinely get caught up in the textbook and ignore the teacher's droning. Students are suspended, even expelled, just for having an aspirin. Do any of you think that part's even new? It's been happening for at least twenty goddamn years. Schools sometimes put up the defense that they would be responsible, but that's just the point: reasonable parents don't ask them to take the responsibility in the first place!

Naturally, when my sister fell during PE and broke several bones in her hand, the school disclaimed all responsibility. The officials even had the chutzpah to blame my parents for not buying the optional health insurance. It didn't matter that she was very much physically coerced into playing: refusing meant punishment by running laps or jumping rope, and if you refused to do that because you knew you had done nothing wrong, you'd fail PE. Remember: "We're the school and we'll tell you what you'd better damn well do."

Note to Charlie: power to you, I hope your kids never see a day of public school in their lives.

"Olympic Village: Athletes Impressed, Taxpayers Angry"

That title alone is all you need to read to understand the nature of the state, but here are the particulars:

Paid for, thank you very much, by the taxpayers of Vancouver. More than any other project in recent Olympic history, the $1 billion residential complex represents the risks that urban governments face when trying to host one of the world's biggest parties. The city planned to invest about $47 million in the project back in 2006. However, cost overruns and the recession forced Vancouver to step in and bail out the private developers who were charged with financing the project. The city avoided the humiliation of welcoming the world with a half-built Olympic Village, but at a great price: in early 2009, new Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson declared that taxpayers were "on the hook" for the $1 billion project. "What ended up happening was that the city became a bank for private-sector development," says Mark Cutler, director of Olympic Village Development for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the body that is operating the complex during the Games. (See what becomes of Olympic stadiums.)

"Bank"? A real bank doesn't want to lend if it thinks it won't get repaid. However, taxpayers as a "bank" fits with the denouement of the movie "The Night Stalker": toward the end, Kolchak finds a victim that the vampire was keeping alive. "His own private blood bank."

Pay very close attention: this is how the state invariably works. It doesn't want to kill you, at least not until you can be replaced. Remember what St. Frédéric taught us: "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else."

When Salt Lake City began a second Olympics bid in the late 1980s, the contemptible Norm Bangerter, Utah's governor at the time, had no problem turning state taxpayers into human collateral. It was then that I learned that modern Olympics bids mean that developers get an implicit guarantee from politicians that taxpayers will pick up the tab for "cost overruns." What I didn't understand then is that when the state makes you pay for something against your will, you are most certainly human collateral: it isn't just your property being taken (or being promised by someone else to yet someone else), it's your very life being stolen, because you will never get back those moments you spent to acquire that property.

Those who don't understand that morality, or refuse to see it, should still be able to see the practical question: what possible motive do the organizers, developers and other Olympic affiliates have, then, to keep costs under control?

Robert Barney, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, has flatly said, "There has never been an Olympic Games that has made a profit...including federal allotments, municipal allotments, provincial or state allotments, it's always been that a debt has to be paid somewhere." His co-director, Kevin Walmsley, has said, "The Olympic Games are not a profit generator and never have been. What is always consistent is, there are always cost overruns." The facts prove them correct. Forget the lies that politicians, Olympics officials and developers feed us. Their accounting methods in the private sector would land people in jail for fraud.

I commented last October over at Alarming News:

Olympics are corporate welfare. Any infrastructure won't be built based on what actually people want and need, but on politics. If it's done in a free market, then businesses and "organizers" would be putting up their own money, and nobody would be forced into it. The reality, though, is that taxpayers are always implicitly put on the hook for any "cost overruns." They'll share in the debt, but not the profits.

Poor Rio. I hate to say "Better it happen to them than us," but how else can you put it?

Jamie, I've known enough to oppose Olympics since I was 12 years old, when I lived in Salt Lake City during the start of its ill-fated quest. No modern Olympics has ever made a profit, once all costs are taken into account. Check here:

MONTREAL, 1976: Debt: >1 billion (globe and mail; abcnews.com)
LAKE PLACID, 1980: Debt: $11 million
CALGARY, 1988: Debt: $910 million
BARCELONA, 1992: Debt: US$1.4 billion
SYDNEY, 2000: Games billed as self-financing by politicians were a $2.3-billion loss (Auditor General New South Wales Report on Sydney (2000) Olympics)
EXPO

The same link notes that:

Officially, Atlanta made US$10 million, but that excludes the US$1 billion taxpayers spent on infrastructure.

Utah tax revenues post-Olympics have fallen so far short of predictions that the state is facing a US$155 million shortfall, has slashed spending, dipped into emergency funding, and may have to order more employee layoffs. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,400008943,00.html

It's a very simple point of logic: if hosting an Olympics is such a great moneymaker for developers and city businesses alike, then why are taxpayers needed to guarantee it?

Bastiat wouldn't need to know anything else about our modern world to tell us the simple answer. He would reply, "Developers already know from past Olympics that they can't do it without taxpayers, whether to guarantee the debt or to pay for infrastructure. Do you not see it also?" The developers are just a modern form of protectionist, whom Bastiat described as petitioning to the government, "Thus, since everyone else uses the law for his own profit, we also would like to use the law for our own profit. We demand from the law the right to relief, which is the poor man's plunder."

Once again we see liberals' "fiscal responsibility"

Some schmuck, a Democrat, campaigning for local office was touting himself on the local news as fighting for government that's more transparent, more responsible, more accountable. As one example, he fought an 8.9 percent tax increase down to...8 percent. Yeah.

On a national level, the Democrat are again demonstrating their commitment to "fiscal responsibility." That is to say, "fiscal responsibility," as in all cases with government, without exception, means that the government spends, and "we the taxpayers" are given the responsibility of paying for it. Republicans were more than bad enough, raising the national debt "ceiling" whenever they needed more money to spend, and they were in no way hindered by Democrats who were only too eager to join in the frenzy -- including then-Senator Obama.

The House just voted to raise the national debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion to a nearly inconceivable $14.3 trillion. The Senate already passed it, so it's now ready for Obama to sign into law. Since 1917, federal law has set a "debt ceiling" for Congress, which is simply amended by new legislation. Of what use is a restriction when the entity being restricted is the one setting the rule? The analogy "Dad, I need to push my curfew back to 3 a.m." isn't quite right, because that phrasing is one of seeking permission. The federal government's effective tone is "Dad, I'm pushing back my curfew."

The previous increase was via H.R.4314 ("To permit continued financing of Government operations."), sponsored by the execrable Charlie Rangel. It was passed by Congress last December 24th and quietly signed by Obama on the 28th. It was largely ignored by the mainstream media, as was the fact that it was far from the first time Obama broke his campaign promise to wait five days before signing bills, so "the people" can view it. While mainstream news bombarded us with "health care reform" twaddle, H.R.4314 quietly raised the debt ceiling from $12.104 trillion to $12.394 trillion. Democrats were originally seeking $1.8 trillion, so how "fiscally responsible" that was! And "merely" a few hundred billion dollars is no problem, right? The Federal Reserve can always create new money to buy more Treasury bonds.

There's also the nonsense of "PAYGO," that supposedly the feds will be restricted to spending money only as it's coming in: any spending increases must be balanced by spending cuts elsewhere, or by...tax increases. And which do you suppose will happen?

We should not be surprised at any of these lies being fed to us. This is the age where Obama can say with a straight face that he'll use TARP money, by definition borrowed money, to reduce our debt. That never came to pass, of course, and quite the opposite: Obama recently abandoned that idea and wants to lend $30 billion of TARP money to small businesses.

So much for your promises
They died the day you let me go even before you were inaugurated

Even more apropos words are later on, for every idiot who thought Obama could de:

Woke up to reality
And found the future not so bright
I dreamt the impossible
That maybe things could work out right
I thought it was you who would do me no wrong
And now you've given me, given me
Nothing but shattered dreams, shattered dreams
Feel like I could run away, run away
From this empty heart

Lending TARP money is utterly irrational. (It's more importantly immoral because taxpayers will be forced to repay the borrowed money that they didn't want lent out, otherwise they'd be lending it themselves without government prodding them, but that's a subject for another post). As I recently blogged, irrationality with other people's money is because it's other people's money. "Rational" does not mean the decision is always the correct one, but it means the decision was made using a logical, methodical process to avoid systematic errors. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, government is spending Other People's Money on yet other people, so why should any care be taken how much is spent and on what? The private sector doesn't want to lend to these small businesses for a very good reason: lenders are afraid of not being paid back.

Some time ago, a store owner I know lamented that his credit line was cut to a third of what it was. He's a nice guy, but "nice" doesn't guarantee sales, and his particular business is very dependent on people's extra income to buy non-essentials. Thus it's perfectly understandable that his bank decided not to trust him with a high debt limit. It started questioning his very business model of recycled debt. In a speech last year, Obama claimed that the federal government needed to stimulate lending so that companies can meet payrolls. Ask yourself: how can any sustainable business survive on the idea of perpetual borrowing to meet its obligations? That's understandable for the first few years while it's being established, but not continually. It defies all business sense, but it fits with the idea of government spending being irrational.

Of course, the real answer is for government to stop taxing businesses, which would then not have to worry about borrowing money, but heaven forbid that anyone should keep his own property.

No, this isn't The Onion: Obama wants to use TARP to...reduce the deficit

Lost in the major headlines is something Mark Levin mentioned on his show tonight. Are we in an Orwellian nightmare, that government is now saying with a straight face that borrowed money, which already added to existing debt, can be used to reduce total debt?

White House Aims to Cut Deficit With TARP Cash
By DEBORAH SOLOMON and JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration, under pressure to show it is serious about tackling the budget deficit, is seizing on an unusual target to showcase fiscal responsibility: the $700 billion financial rescue.

The administration wants to keep some of the unspent funds available for emergencies, but is considering setting aside a chunk for debt reduction, according to people familiar with the matter. It is also expected to lower the projected long-term cost of the program -- the amount it expects to lose -- to as little as $200 billion from $341 billion estimated in August.

A $210 billion surplus in TARP funding could be used to reduced the U.S.'s towering national deficit. WSJ's Deborah Solomon says the move follows criticism of the Obama administration's approach to debt.

The idea is still a matter of debate within the administration and it is unclear how much impact it would have on the nation's mounting deficit levels. Still, the potential move illustrates how the Obama administration is trying to find any way it can to bring down the deficit, which is turning into a political as well as an economic liability.

This is all borrowed money, whether from foreign nations or the Fed creating money out of thin air. The federal government did not cut from any other spending to compensate for TARP expenditures, therefore TARP was using all newly borrowed money. The claim is that the money won't be spent, but who really believes that will happen? It will be quietly paid back to the lenders, giving Congress a mere several of weeks before they again approach that farce called a "debt ceiling"?

Let's look at the numbers. Last month, Reuters reported $138 billion left in TARP. The latest numbers I can find are from Scripps News, which agrees with the WSJ's figure of $210 billion. However, that's inflated: it's counting the expected $50 billion in repayments over the next 12 to 18 months. Sure, sure. And when you apply to a bank, hedge fund or other entity that asks for your net worth, do you think you can factor in the next year and a half of "expected income"?

The higher figure doesn't cover much past the October deficit alone ($176 billion), anyway. The national debt as of tonight is $11.99 trillion. That's 11,995.7 billion dollars. Even if this money had come from Santa Claus, it still wouldn't make a dent.

If a private company told its stockholders anything like reducing its debt via borrowed money that's part of the overall debt, any executives putting their names to those documents would be going to jail for accounting fraud. Why aren't we holding federal officials, and yes I'm including Obama, to the same standard?

The Scripps article concludes, "The whole $210 billion would probably not even cover the deficit we've run in the last six weeks but even a symbolic gesture is at least a start."

Symbolic? That's like Brad DeLong making a token gesture of dieting by ordering a burger without cheese...then adding a slice he bought elsewhere.

Finally, note that the Treasury expects that taxpayers will lose "as little as $200 billion" from TARP. So much for Bush's claims of taxpayers making a profit, and Barney Frank's own lies. Tim Cavanaugh debunked the Obama administration spin of last September, and on the flip side are absurd profit projections by the New York Times that that fool Yglesias gobbled right up.

Anything the government can do, the free market can do better, part III

Shucks, Mike, your kind words are much appreciated. For a couple of years I haven't blogged as often as I'd like, but I do what I can. I started reading Billy's blog after his first link to me a few years ago. He's taught me a lot, not always directly, but he got me thinking through certain assumptions I clung to, which nearly all young Americans develop in a public education. They essentially boil down to this one: "But at minimum, don't we need government for ___?" It's a problem that many "libertarians" have.

In recent comments I linked to something that I was meaning to blog about for months, but I kept forgetting. I almost never listen to Rush Limbaugh's show, but I had the day off and was driving to meet someone for lunch. He talked about this story of rebuilding Polihale State Park's access road, which was destroyed by flooding. Hawaii's state government said it would cost $4 million and require two years of construction, and there was no money for it. Locals, then, did it in eight days and at their own expense. So much for two years!

Was it all out of charity? No, as the article clearly states. Business owners got involved because repairing the road was to their benefit -- decreased visitors, or none at all, meant they weren't making money. And so what if they had that motive? It was their money. Better that they invest their own, rather than the immoral situation of everyone having to pitch in for something not everyone would equally benefit from.

It's reminiscent of when Donald Trump was so disgusted with the lack of progress in rebuilding Central Park's Wollman skating rink that he spent his own money to do it. Six years and $13 million later, the city government just couldn't get anything right. A big problem was the insistence on using freon, supposedly for energy savings, rather than the salt water systems that have worked so well for years (like at Rockefeller Center, which to my knowledge has never failed to open its rink during the winter).

Trump devoted an entire chapter of The Art of the Deal to this:

I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it....

I knew nothing about building ice-skating rinks, but I did know something about construction. If it took me two and a half years to put up a major skyscraper, surely it was possible to build a $2 million ice-skating rink in a matter of months.

Yet no rational person should be surprised that his project succeeded so well, and the first time around. He had his money and reputation on the line. "If I failed--if I was even one day late, or one dollar over budget--my plan was to pack my bags and take the next plane to Argentina. There was no way Ed Koch or anyone else would ever let me live it down." Trump explained how he asked around to learn who was the absolute best, most trusted company in rink construction. He didn't bother with soliciting bids from contractors.

The city government, on the other hand, knew that even if voters remembered news reports, who could be blamed and ousted? The city commissioned a report that itself took 15 months to complete, and in the end no one responsible for the fiasco was ever named. Trump had already offered to take over the project, always at his own expense, with the promise that any profits would be donated to charity. What was there to lose, and who could lose?

Union workers, that's who could lose, and the city council members who received their generous campaign donations. That's no small reason why public projects are inevitably constructed so slowly and shoddily; the rest is pure incompetence. When I lived in Utah, Syncrete was an infamous example of government's desire to "experiment," since, after all, it's someone else's money being risked.

Syncrete proved to be less than the superior surface it was advertised to be, and the freeway surface began crumbling shortly after the project's completion. In the end the UDOT tore out the syncrete and admitted that the experiment had been a failure.

"Less than the superior surface it was advertised to be"? That's putting it mildly. The stuff immediately started falling apart as if it were styrofoam, for crying out loud. I was young then, but old enough to understand the TV news showing these chunks all over the road. Who knows how many windshields were cracked because some semi kicked them up like any common rock.

By contrast, as I keep mentioning, I come home to a private road so excellently constructed that it's been years -- before I moved into the neighborhood -- since its last paving. Similarly, I don't remember exactly when my neighbor across the street had his driveway repaved, maybe a couple of years ago. I came home from work one day and saw it was just finished. Compare that to the week it takes just to fill in a couple of potholes on the typical public road, or the months it's taken to redo Route 6 in Putnam County.

If you scroll near the end in these comments, I was telling our new liberal troll about the pedestrian bridge near the Metro-North train station at Chappaqua. Since it began last year, I can't help but notice how slowly it's going. Since it's a public project, there's no incentive for it to be done quickly or efficiently.

An example in my county is the Tappan Zee Bridge, the biggest joke in Westchester next to Andy Spano's "governance." The bridge opened in 1955 and, I recall, cost $500 million (approximately $4 billion in today's dollars). It's not even six decades old yet is already falling apart. Even the second London Bridge, surely built with inferior technology and materials, lasted over 130 years before it needed replacing.

Instead of repaving, raised metal plates are used for repairs, such utter crap that they don't even rise to the level of "makeshift" or "jury-rigging." I drive across the bridge once in a while, and I can assure you that 1.5 inches wreaks havoc on your car, no matter what "ramp plates" are claimed to use. The ramps up and down make the surface effectively sinusoidal. The amplitude is relatively small, certainly, but at vehicular speeds it's jarring enough that you must slow down. And that slows down the driver behind you, the one behind him, and so on.

This is a bridge where a simple repair has caused one-hour delays, stretching 13 miles back into Rockland County. The repair crews closed two of the four Westchester-bound lanes just to repair one pothole, and in the middle of the morning rush hour! Oh, and in case you don't notice it from the article, the crew didn't even fill in the pothole: they put another metal plate over it!

Update: look here to see what the plates look like, and here for a picture of them installed. You really have to drive over them to experience how terrible they are. And who is surprised that there are "cost overruns"?

This would have never happened in a free market, which is based on freedom and competition, not politics and favoritism. Someone else would have started building a competing bridge, and the better one would be getting all the business. At the very least, the bridge's owner-operator would have done such a repair only until after rush hour, or late at night, and certainly not by putting another damn metal plate over it.

In a free market, one private party contracts with another, and each side has to eat any "overruns" on his end. Thus it's to both sides' benefit that the contracts is negotiated honestly, with all expected costs and timetables taken into account.

The central planners, though, are as stupid as ever. They're looking to build a new bridge. Of course, it's easy for anyone to advocate building an entirely new one when it's not his money at stake:

Mark Kulewicz, director of traffic engineering and safety service at the Automobile Club of New York (the local affiliate of the AAA), advocated a new bridge as follows:

Instead of spending $1 billion to patch up a bridge that is already straining to handle the region's growing traffic volume, why not avoid all those years of messy construction delays and invest $4 billion in a modern structure that can serve more commuters, and in new ways?

Actually, the plan announced last September was for a $6.4 billion bridge, which tells us we should count on at least $10 billion before it's done.

Ask yourself: what could the free market do for $4 billion? What could it have done for the $286 billion highway bill, which Congressional Democrats are aiming to increase to $400 billion with its successor?

Update: here's a Times article that puts the total cost of a new bridge, plus expanded train and bus lines, at $16 billion:

Officials also looked at the possibility of rehabilitating the current bridge, which was built 52 years ago, but [State Transportation Commissioner Astrid Glynn] said that was a costly and complex project.

And $16 billion for the replacement is not costly?

Liberals make it self-evident, that they are lying cowards

So my resident troll "DocWashboard" keeps repeating the same lies, ignoring the world around us that proves "Anything government can do, the free market can do better." Well, as a veteran of Usenet flamewars, and BBS flamewars before then, I love few things better than laying down the smack on such morons.

For the umpteenth time, I've challenged him on what he dare not include in his replies, because he knows I fisk every single word he writes. Do you see how liberals try to "reason"? I use quotation marks because you can't call it true reasoning: when confronted with facts that prove them wrong, liberals deny them and attempt to obfuscate the discussion. They have no grasp of reality and refuse to view the world outside of their warped concepts. The sad part is that this one knows it only too well. He knows he's a liar, he knows he's a hypocrite, he knows he's a coward, and he'll use all three simultaneously by making vague replies in the hope he can't be pinned on anything, although his nature is that he can't help lying about what anyone has said.

Even the arch-liberal of liberals, John Maynard Keynes, was smart enough to say, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" Clearly, my latest troll just sticks his head in the sand -- or is that up his ass? I've had to change my mind; I admit it freely. One can see that by looking at my earlier blog entries. But I'm not a hypocrite: I won't attempt to whitewash history by deleting or modifying them, instead leaving them as evidence of my evolution into a free man.

Anything government can do, the free market can do better, part II

Over at QandO, McQ blogged about New York City forcing a tobacco shop owner to remove its $9000 coffee machine, because the shop doesn't have a food license.

Skorj left a comment, "I think it’s totally reasonable that the government can impose safety regulations, including requiring food handlers’ certs, whenever food would pass between you and a stranger – even in a soup kitchen."

No. Not even that much, as I pointed out in my reply: "Skorj, if you don’t like how someone prepares your food, then you have the freedom not to go there. However, someone else may not mind, so don’t infringe on their freedom to do business with whom they want."

Regular commenters Steverino and looker, for all their talk against big government, don't see that they still don't mind feeding the beast. Being state-worshippers, they advocate standards: government-enforced standards. As I said a few nights ago, you don't have to be Paul Krugman to worship the state. You need only believe the falsehood that we need government to accomplish certain (good) things. Their argument is that the private sector can't enforce standards, which in and of itself is true. The private sector has no power to force a business to close. Private citizens cannot legitimately make a shopkeeper cease business, or imprison and/or fine him if he does anyway.

But their fallacy is that since the private sector cannot do something, then government must. This is not true in the least. They also don't understand my point about not forcing standards on anyone. The private sector's powers are to let competition and consumer choice work unhindered so that standards can come into existence on their own. It would mostly be a matter of trust: sellers would have earned reputations, good or bad. Also, within the private sector, it's perfectly possible for a trusted entity be relied on for judging others, even though it doesn't have the force of government. McQ kindly reminded us of Underwriters Laboratories, and I pointed out McAfee's website certification.

My key rebuttals:

Most establishments are clean enough, but not because of law. It’s because our wealth, courtesy of capitalism, allows us to be clean without much cost, and it’s to a restaurant’s best interest to maintain a reputation — or at least not develop a bad one. Most everyone in New York heard about that KFC with the rat problems. The government didn’t need to shut them down, because they’d have shut down from a lack of business.

...

Cleanliness is a good thing. A government that tries to enforce “cleanliness” via arbitrarily standards is not a good thing. But I already knew you worship at the feet of the state. You might talk a good line on this and that, but in the end you rely on what law provides you.

...

It’s [government] not enforcing standards. It’s the myth that the standards can be enforced all the time. So people grow reliant, and they presume that any place they walk into will be ok. More often than not, they’ll be fine. It’s that occasional occurrence, however, that proves the state’s inability to protect us.

The problem with your reliance on government-set standards is a form of the so-called “market of lemons.” Akerlof’s basic argument applies here in the sense that government enforces — or pretends to enforce — a minimum standard of quality. You’re now expected to assume that any given food handler is clean, however, you don’t really know that. Government has said, “Any used car sold must be in certified good mechanical condition,” but buyers can no longer properly judge what’s worthwhile and what is not. They can’t tell if a seller is pulling a fast one, unless they inspect for themselves.

Look at the outbreaks the FDA failed to prevent. Do you understand now why they occurred? Because people gave trust that was not truly earned, and some died because of it. “The government wouldn’t allow this to be sold if it weren’t safe.” Instead of checking how and where a toy was made, parents bought all the toys with lead-containing paint. The plain fact is that government cannot enforce the “standards” you cling to, which creates (in food, transporation and a host of other things) a false sense of security.

...

In a free market, sellers of goods and services would be too scared to give anything but their best. They wouldn’t dare let anything slide. They would compete not on the basis of meeting some standard set arbitrarily by a government official, but on the basis of reputation: which one is setting the highest standard (service, trustworthiness, etc.) becomes the standard by which everyone else is measured.

My employer is one of the most respected firms in the financial industry, and we exceed every “standard” the government sets for transparency and accountability. That’s because we want to compete so effectively that we’ll be considered THE standard.

But as I said, when you have government supposedly enforcing standards, it can never do so as effectively as the free market. Government’s “standards” are set by politics and ignorance, by the bureaucrats who make arbitrary decisions and/or don’t know the industry. The “standards” are met without too much difficulty by many participants (this truism is proven by modern history), thus making “standard” a very low bar to clear. It might put enough fear into food handlers, but fear of government punishment is never as great as fear of losing your customers. If you really were in the restaurant industry, you’d know that a place needs a helluva track record to be shut down. Otherwise, well, fines may be issued but are rarely publicized more than obscurely.

The Old West is popularly imagined as a violent society, but it was actually a very polite one. If you shoed someone’s horse poorly, no one would trust you anymore unless you redeemed your name, or unless you charged so little that a customer knew he would get what he was paying for. Even then, you might get shot by someone’s friends if your customer got thrown after his horse lost a shoe. There were no “standards” enforced, so every seller of goods and services was extremely careful to do a good job.

There was a lot of dancing around the fundamental issue of freedom, which I brought us back to:

How is it YOUR right, or anyone else’s, to prevent that transaction? You’re being nothing more than a busy-body, trying to save the buyer from himself. It’s his right to be stupid: you can try to persuade him from something that harms himself and no one else, but you have no right to force him.

Looker asked, "who has the authority to tell you to cease and desist in a completely government free market." It's easy to figure that one out. My reply:

The individual has the authority, either by not returning or not going there in the first place.

As an individual, you have the power to shut down any business — to the extent of your own business with it, and that should be the extent of the “authority.” Do you see that what you and Steverino are advocating is that one person or a few individuals can act on behalf of “society,” forcing a business to shut down just because some people don’t think it’s good enough? Neither of you have yet addressed the fundamental question: by what right can you to force people to do business only by your standards and not their own? If they agree to a peaceful, private transaction that harms no one else, what is it to you?

You argue, in essence, that people might not know a place is dirty. What, though, if someone fully knows what he’s buying and wants it anyway? Whether he’s ignorant or deliberate, you can try to persuade him, but do not force him. If he refuses, then what is it to you? It’s not harming you or anyone else. Let him go his own way and don’t lose any sleep.

There are people who can’t sell particular kinds of meat, or even butcher it for their own use, because of “health codes.” Unfortunately it’s been argued on the basis of “religious freedom,” instead of on the basis of freedom, period.

...

Without health codes, people would scrutinize establishments more carefully. They’d rely on newspaper reviews and Zagat ratings, perhaps late night news segments about the latest dirty restaurant.

Do you see the paradox that Michael and I have been trying to tell you? When government enforces standards, it in fact does not make anyone implicitly trustworthy, but rather makes it dubious that any given entity is truthfully adhering to the standards. Government can never be effective in making sure everyone follows the rules. There are health code violators no matter what government tries, just like it can never rid the road of bad (let alone drunk) drivers.

Looker also asked, "Can we really go back, especially in the case where many people can be, for want of a better term, poisoned, to Caveat Emptor?" I replied affirmatively:

We not only can, but we must. It’s the only way for a free people to live. And it won’t be some Stone Age world; you’re just not giving capitalists enough credit. It would be an opportunity for the smart ones to bill themselves as the cleanest operations.

I’ve seen signs in Third World fast food joints touting their “Clean restrooms,” and they were. In fact, they were in better condition than most in the States. We take such things in the U.S. for granted, not because of laws, but because our greater wealth already made possible what laws later mandated.

Now, “caveat emptor” is half inaccurate because it implies that sellers may suffer no consequences. Buyers should beware, but as I’ve been pointing out, a free market has solutions for people who harm others. If you sell me a pie that you advertised as “cherry” but it contains small stones, then regardless of what “warrant of merchantibility” laws are on the books, I regard it as implicit that the pie won’t break my teeth.

I will again quote Bastiat:

Do those worshippers of government believe that free persons will cease to act? Does it follow that if we receive no energy from the law, we shall receive no energy at all? Does it follow that if the law is restricted to the function of protecting the free use of our faculties, we will be unable to use our faculties? Suppose that the law does not force us to follow certain forms of religion, or systems of association, or methods of education, or regulations of labor, or regulations of trade, or plans for charity; does it then follow that we shall eagerly plunge into atheism, hermitary, ignorance, misery, and greed? If we are free, does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God? Does it follow that we shall then cease to associate with each other, to help each other, to love and succor our unfortunate brothers, to study the secrets of nature, and to strive to improve ourselves to the best of our abilities?

Liberals need only speak or write to prove their stupidity

Look here for one of my favorite hobbies: giving a smackdown to a liberal turd who has no brains, has no balls, and has no grasp of reality.

Over at ThreeSources, Silence was silenced by my simple exposure of his state-worshipping. This liberal "DocWashboard" (who uses other handles to sockpuppet) just couldn't leave it alone, and that's when I have fun.

Anything government can do, the free market can do better

That is, anything peaceful. Government will always have comparative and absolute advantage in aggression (e.g. wars and conscription, subjecting people to "law enforcement" when they have committed no crime, and seizing people's homes).

When it comes to creating prosperity and promoting true peace (as opposed to military stalemates), the free market does it just fine on its own, because it works purely according to what individuals want and their subsequent voluntary exchanges to attain their own individual happiness. The alternative, government, works purely by forcing people against their will: decisions are made arbitrarily, and whether they are done with caprice or careful calculations, whether they are based on politics or intentions of the greatest benevolence, they are ultimately immoral for forcing the individual against his will.

Over at Three Sources, a commenter going by "Silence Dogood" defended government as able to provide the infrastructure that makes the free market possible. This is not so, and I refuted his arguments one by one, demonstrating that everything he credited to government could be supplied and supplied better by a free market.

Old Ben must be rolling in his grave at someone using his pseudonym. Like most people, "Silence" doesn't believe that it's possible for a free market to provide things like roads and other infrastructure. He outrightly refuses to believe it, not even giving the free market a chance. Now, you don't have to be Paul Krugman to worship the state; it only requires a belief that certain things -- good things -- can result only from government's direction. As Bastiat put it:

Do those worshippers of government believe that free persons will cease to act? Does it follow that if we receive no energy from the law, we shall receive no energy at all? Does it follow that if the law is restricted to the function of protecting the free use of our faculties, we will be unable to use our faculties? Suppose that the law does not force us to follow certain forms of religion, or systems of association, or methods of education, or regulations of labor, or regulations of trade, or plans for charity; does it then follow that we shall eagerly plunge into atheism, hermitary, ignorance, misery, and greed? If we are free, does it follow that we shall no longer recognize the power and goodness of God? Does it follow that we shall then cease to associate with each other, to help each other, to love and succor our unfortunate brothers, to study the secrets of nature, and to strive to improve ourselves to the best of our abilities?

And then over at Karol's, one of her guest bloggers was, shall I say, unfortunate enough to talk about credit default swaps when he doesn't really know how they work. He was even more unfortunate to talk about "reforms" and creating "transparency" in financial exchanges -- via government, so I had to set him straight. Let me just say that I know a thing or two about CDS: they're not the maligned financial instruments so many people think they are, nor are they traded with very little information. A specific CDS implicitly requires the buyer to know what he's getting into. Now, there have been cases of fraudulent misrepresentation with some Collateralized Debt Objects, but that's entirely different.

Re-read what Bastiat said above, and think of how Wall Street began. There was no law to tell certain stock traders what to do, so how did those individuals know to congregate and formalize their association? Or was it, in fact, that God has given us the ability to think, to reason, and that humans for thousands of years have been able to trade and associate voluntarily without needing overlords to direct us?

Government's record is that of the anti-Midas touch, continually ruining everything it meddles with, from charity to the financial system. In the event it ever "fixes" something, look for how it created the problem in the first place. Even then, the solution will never be as effective as keeping government at bay and letting the free market clean up the mess that the state created.

"The Conscience of a Liberal": as mythical as the unicorn

The Tagalog phrase "walang hiya ka" (which you may have seen me saying lately to some twit commenters) literally means "you have no shame" but is quite strong in connotation. It's appropriate here: Krugman has no shame whatsoever. The hypocrite and partisan hack wrote last April about "overpaid bankers." Not once did he mention Robert Rubin, who received $115 million for his 10 years on Citi's board. (In return, Rubin did the wonderful job of increasing Citi's risk-taking, contributing in no small way to its financial woes.) But his biggest hypocrisy is predicting "A fiscal train wreck" in 2003, after the second round of Bush's tax cuts.

Well, the problem was never the cut in taxes, but that Congress actually increased spending at the same time. Now that the budget has gotten Really, Really Bad, painfully obvious to anyone paying attention, what is Krugman saying? Well, as I wrote in May, when a Times op-ed says "Fiscal Suicide Ahead" while a Democrat is in the White House, you know Krugman didn't write that.

Yesterday he blogged about how the debt is bad but not that bad, with the title, "How much is $9 trillion?" What happened to the self-professed "alarmist" Krugman of 2003? If you put the two pieces side by side, there's no way in hell you could think it was the same person. The difference is obvious to anyone who understands Krugman: as long as Democrats are in power, Krugman's the Monty Python Black Knight when it comes to the burgeoning federal debt. "It's only a flesh wound!"

"But what's really scary — what makes a fixed-rate mortgage seem like such a good idea — is the looming threat to the federal government's solvency." - Paul Krugman, March 11, 2003

"Right now, federal debt is about 50% of GDP. So even if we do run these deficits, federal debt as a share of GDP will be substantially less than it was at the end of World War II. It will also be substantially less than, say, debt in several European countries in the mid to late 1990s. (There are some technical issues in comparing these various numbers — gross debt versus net (mainly about Social Security) and overall government debt versus federal, but they don’t change the basic picture.)" - Paul Krugman, August 23, 2009

My, my, what a difference an administration makes!

Actually, the picture is even worse than is commonly calculated, because the "percentage of GDP" debt ratios typically do not count the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. When you factor in what Krugman deliberately ignores (because with a Democrat in power he doesn't want to admit it's that bad), the debt situation is far worse than World War II. Starting in 2016, Social Security payouts will exceed payroll tax revenues, and this country will see problems it never has before.

I will, though, admit that Krugman finally did get one thing right. Part of what he wrote in 2003: "But my prediction is that politicians will eventually be tempted to resolve the crisis the way irresponsible governments usually do: by printing money, both to pay current bills and to inflate away debt." Was he listening to Austrian economists at the time?

Then again, he said it only in hypocrisy. The Federal Reserve is buying up trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities, far more than it ever did in the Bush years. But while Democrats are in control of the executive and legislative branches, Krugman's criticism is nowhere to be found.

Prices are not rationing, not in any way

It's bad enough that liberals believe that "the price mechanism is a form of rationing goods and services," leading to their argument that health care can't be worse if government rations it. (Note that some liberals deny that government-run health care will be or will require rationing, demonstrating that one side is lying, and the other is a bunch of fools.) We have enough of these idiots in the world. We don't need twits like McArdle, who dare to call themselves "libertarian," who also believe that prices are rationing.

The plain fact is that prices are not rationing. I always meant to link to my comment at QandO a month ago but never got around to it. I reproduced it here, which you should check out for my latest exposé of McArdle's idiocy.

Slightly clarified, let me explain that it is a pure fallacy that a price system is "still rationing."� Prices allocate who gets goods and services, but that is not the same as "rationing." Rationing implies an attempt at equal shares, whether an individual's consumption over time or a population's aggregate consumption, whereas allocation can and often is unequal. Rationing is a system that forcibly controls demand, no matter that buyers are able and willing to pay what suppliers ask. By contrast, allocation by price means that whoever has the ability and willingness to pay (that is, for what sellers have and at their asking price) will buy what he wants, based purely on his own perception of his needs and desires.

Now, any distribution of goods and services by government depends 100% on rationing. There's no way about it, because government creates nothing on net. As Bastiat taught us 160 years ago, it can produce nothing except by taking an equal amount from the private sector. So government's resources are finite by definition, and because government distributes on the arbitrary basis of politics rather than someone's ability and willingness to pay, government must try to institute some sort of rationing system so that supply does not exceed demand.

We can see how well that works with Social Security and Medicare, which the NCPA reported two months ago have "unfunded liabilities" of $107 trillion, as of 2009! The NCPA reported in 2008 that the unfunded liabilities were $101.7 trillion then. Year-on-year, the unfunded liabilities grew at over a third the size of the current U.S. economy. This, clearly, is not sustainable. But did we really expect government to be "efficient" when it steals from Peter to give to Paul? At some point Peter will have to be taxed more, and/or Paul will have to accept less.

It would be nice to live in a world of infinite resources, but we don't. Given the choice between government choosing how much to give me, and the freedom to pay for it myself, there's no question for me: as someone who is an economic producer, I'd much rather depend on myself. At least it's up to me to develop my talents to improve my situation in life and afford more (including health care). Therefore I have influence over how much I earn, perhaps not complete influence, but I can't say I have any influence at all over how much a bureaucrat will decide to give me.

I make no excuses whatsoever for liking that "money talks."� It's precisely how people can get the resources they need badly and when they need them, instead of waiting for "their turn." This summer, both my wife and I had to go to the doctor for insect bites. My wife's developed a bacterial infection, and some bug gave me a virus that left me lethargic with terrible chills. We've never had anything like those before in our lives, but no matter, we paid cash. Because the doctor required payment, it allocated his limited time only to those who deemed it worthwhile to pay his fees. Quite modest fees, too. Thinking about his costs of taxes, paying the staff, maintaining the building, I wonder how much he really made. But it was clearly a beneficial trade for him, and for us. Government could never perform such a marvelous feat.

Imagine if (when?) Obama and Co. get their dream of an Canada-like system with 100% government-provided health care and a ban on private care. It was patently obvious to me at 17 years old, when the Clintons were pushing for universal health care, that everyone would want a doctor's appointment for the slightest cough, since "after all it's free." Meanwhile, "saving money in the system" -- like Obama's recent rubbish of "rewarding doctors for quality, not just the quantity, of care that they provide" -- will mean government reducing what it pays to health professionals, driving them out of the health care system into other jobs, further reducing supply and increasing wait times.

But no matter, right? Just wait your turn for a "free" appointment. We can look at the present UK system for how we'll develop: in some cases, that appointment will only be with your undertaker. "The doctor will not be seeing you now...or ever."

"1 gallon of chocolate milk, 1 gallon of normal milk, 3 dozen donuts, 3 cases of mountain dew, and 2 packages of cookies"

Remember who I called the welfare state's new posterwhores? Maybe they haven't been supplanted today, but they've certainly been equaled. Good lord.

A friend just told me that his wife was grocery shopping, and the fat woman ahead of her in line was buying all those things enumerated in the title. With food stamps. I don't know how long ago it started, but the old stamps have been phased out in favor of debit cards, because supposedly "we the people" don't want people to feel "ashamed" for being on "public benefits." That's just the thing, they should feel ashamed. They should feel lower than scum to spend so much as a penny of other people's money that wasn't willingly given.

The woman had to pay a dime over the total (I guess her card didn't have enough of a balance), apologizing, and the checker said, "It all spends the same." Only to them. Thieves and those they trade with don't care where the money comes from. They never once consider, or if they do they dismiss it, that it's not at all "the same" to us who labor and have part of it stolen to be given as faux "charity."

This reminds me of something I forgot to mention from last year. Three Hispanic women were ahead of me in line at the grocery store, and they spoke exceedingly little English. They must have swiped their card a dozen times, at one point even insisting the cashier punch in the numbers, but it was always declined. This wasn't just swiping a card and getting a read error, either: this was swiping the card, then waiting 10 seconds to get the "Declined" message. So this took a very, very long time, and I didn't notice how, but they eventually paid some other way.

The cashier was so patient throughout. When it was my turn, I asked her what was the three's problem. She explained that their card, a food stamps debit card, had only $4 left. And the putas actually asked why it had so little left!

Yeah. America, "what a country" indeed.

The silencing of Willie Revillame

Previous:
No tears here for Cory Aquino
You have nothing to apologize for, Willie Revillame

(Updated 11:45 p.m.)

What more proof does any rational person need? Democracy is all about subjecting the individual to tyranny. Now, it happens to involve a tyranny of the majority (or a voting plurality), but tyranny is tyranny nonetheless, whether the rule is by one, a thousand, or a billion people. That Willie Revillame has been silenced is only the latest example. It's downright tragic how it came at the "outrage" from the majority of Filipinos, whipped into a frenzy by their masters (especially the powerful Cojuangcos and Aquinos).

What I heard tonight on TV Patrol World (a decent news roundup on the Philippines' ABS-CBN channel, but I see it half a day after the original airing) was that Willie was taking a "voluntary" "leave" -- but the fact is that it's as "voluntary" as handing a wallet to a mugger so that you aren't shot. This, though, reports it as a "suspension," which implies it wasn't Willie's decision. I wonder if that person actually watched either the Wowowee episode or the news broadcast, because he calls Willie's statement an "outburst."

It was hardly an outburst. Here's a transcript of what he said, which shows Willie's excellent point: how is he supposed to host a game show, implicitly about happy and fun times, when they're showing footage of Aquino's funeral in the corner?

But what Willie said is a red herring. Even if he did have an "outburst," the government has no right to silence him. Willie has the right to express himself -- God-given rights don't appear and disappear just because you cross or are within certain borders -- and if his employers (the station managers and owners) don't like it, then they can fire him. If everyone else doesn't like it, they can change the channel, they can insult him, but they have no right to force him to be silent. Unfortunately that isn't what happens in the Philippines. As I pointed out in the previous entry on Willie, the Philippine national government's Movie and Television Review and Classification Board has the power to shut down, fine, and even imprison a person for what they deem "objectionable." And that's what's happened to Willie (again).

There's no simple irony here, but outright hypocrisy that Cory Aquino's supporters want to use this law. They are without shame, every last one of them. Ferdinand Marcos made the law in 1985 by presidential decree, as I pointed out. Aquino, that alleged champion of Philippine democracy for overthrowing the Marcos regime, made no effort to repeal the law, and now her supporters have no problem using it themselves. Hypocrites!

Kris Aquino, a good friend of Willie's, accepted his early apology but refused to comment further. That's a lot of class on her part, and her family would do well to follow her lead. Also featured on TV Patrol World was this bastard, "Senator" Noynoy Aquino, claiming he doesn't want the issue to continue. What a miserable son of a bitch, smiling smugly. Good lord, most Filipinos have no clue how easily they're being manipulated.

"Arrogance can help you end your career." This is true, but what MissAiE doesn't appear to understand is that people should be free to hang themselves. If you don't like it, change the channel and/or complain to the station. Don't be so eager to trample on other's rights, don't be such a mini-tyrant, that you want to use the force of government to silence someone with whom you disagree.

And again, it's not just irony, but outright hypocrisy being displayed by Aquino supporters. Look at the fools here, calling for a boycott of Wowowee not in support of Willie, but to oust him:

I'm with you Even Demata in your advocacy to punish the man who killed democracy in television as the late President Corzon Aquino initiated to us a couple of years ago. Let us join hands to boycot this show not only tomorrow but remove it in our watching habit. According to willie, this is only a simple matter, but for us filipinos who also fought for democracy with the late president, this is unfair and truly a disrespect to the mother of democracy.

How did Willie "kill democracy in television"? How does he force anyone to watch him? And there we go again, that "democracy" word. They know enough Filipinos don't care enough to affect the show: they'd value Willie's suspension about as much as a carabao dung heap. That's why they have to claim "disrespect" and have government do their dirty work.

I scoff at these people who claim things like they "fought with" Cory Aquino. There's a version of an old joke in the Philippines. "How much is a billion?" "The number of Filipinos who claim to have been in the Bataan Death March."

Aquino supporters have been flooding websites like this with their anti-Willie diatribes, which is their right. At the same time, though, they don't believe others have the right to disagree. At first they'll use mob tactics to try to intimidate opponents (remember what they did here on the Eidelblog, hypocritically denouncing my freedom of speech when I allow them to mostly exercise theirs on my turf?), and if that doesn't work, they'll use government.

Yeah. If any of them make it to the United States, they'd make perfect Democrats.

You have nothing to apologize for, Willie Revillame

(Updated 10:08 p.m. with a few extra links I found.)

"It's not good for us to have fun here while the whole country grieves. I cannot make people laugh at the same time that this part of the funeral of our former president is being shown."

Willie was absolutely correct, but for making that objective and true comment, he could now be the most hated man in the Philippines. He has earned my respect, though, for daring to question the establishment, for daring to split from the tens of millions of Filipinos worshipping a woman who did plenty of damage on her own to her own country.

Willie has now apologized, under considerable pressure from the ABS-CBN network that broadcasts his show, not to mention the politicians looking to censor him. I hope he was 100% insincere about it. The letters to TV Patrol World were as contemptuous as I've ever heard, saying Willie should be "taught humility" and outrightly calling for government involvement.

The Aquino family spokesman said, "It is regrettable and a crass attempt to desecrate the memory of the beloved Tita Cory." How? From any perspective, he was simply saying the funeral video was inappropriate to the game show.

Ricardo Lo of the Philippine Star made a half-assed defense, acknowledging Willie was correct but saying Willie was still "disrespectful." That reminds me, in the opposite way, of Louis Farrakhan defending one of his cronies with faint criticism: "While I stand by the truths that he spoke, I must condemn in the strongest terms the manner in which those truths were represented."

And here are 14448 idiots (and counting) who are "petitioning" online to have Willie removed. They're not calling for a voluntarily boycott of viewers, they're calling for government to step in! "I am calling the attention of the MTRCB to be more vigilant, so that this lowest form of personal attack by a tv showbiz talk show host, for her/his personal agenda, will not happen again"

This is the law he's being threatened with, Presidential Decree 1986, made on October 5, 1985, that created the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. Previous government censorship wasn't sufficient, so they created a new body:

Section 3. Powers and Functions. - The BOARD shall have the following functions, powers and duties:

a) To promulgate such rules and regulations as are necessary or proper for the implementation of this Act, and the accomplishment of its purposes and objectives, including guidelines and standards for production, advertising and titles. Such rules and regulations shall take effect after fifteen (15) days following their publication in newspapers of general circulation in the Philippines;

b) To screen, review and examine all motion pictures as herein defined, television programs, including publicity materials such as advertisements, trailers and stills, whether such motion pictures and publicity materials be for theatrical or non-theatrical distribution, for television broadcast or for general viewing, imported or produced in the Philippines, and in the latter case, whether they be for local viewing or for export;

c) To approve or disapprove, delete objectionable portions from and/or prohibit the importation, exportation, production, copying, distribution, sale, lease, exhibition and/or television broadcast of the motion pictures, television programs and publicity materials subject of the preceding paragraph, which, in the judgment of the board applying contemporary Filipino cultural values as standard, are objectionable for being immoral, indecent, contrary to law and/or good customs, injurious to the prestige of the Republic of the Philippines or its people, or with a dangerous tendency to encourage the commission of violence or of wrong or crime, such as but not limited to:

i) Those which tend to incite subversion, insurrection, rebellion or sedition against the State, or otherwise threaten the economic and/or political stability of the State;

ii) Those which tend to undermine the faith and confidence of the people in their government and/or the duly constituted authorities;

iii) Those which glorify criminals or condone crimes;

iv) Those which serve no other purpose but to satisfy the market for violence or pornography;

v) Those which tend to abet the traffic in and use of prohibited drugs;

vi) Those which are libelous or defamatory to the good name and reputation of any person, whether living or dead; and

vii) Those which may constitute contempt of court or of any quasi-judicial tribunal, or pertain to matter which are sub-judice in nature.

Section 11. Penalty. - Any person who violates the provisions of this Decree and/or the implementing rules and regulations issued by the BOARD, shall, upon conviction, be punished by a mandatory penalty of three (3) months and one day to one (1) year imprisonment plus a fine of not less than fifty thousand pesos but not more than one hundred thousand pesos. The penalty shall apply whether the person shall have committed the violation either as principal, accomplice or accessory. If the offender is an alien, he shall be deported immediately. The license to operate the movie house, theater, or television station shall also be revoked. Should the offense be committed by a juridical person, the chairman, the president, secretary, treasurer, or the partner responsible therefore, shall be the persons penalized.

There you have raw, unadulterated tyranny in the guise of protecting public morality and people's good names. The board's chairman directly said, "It's really a violation of PD 1986 and the [Kapisanan ng Brodkaster ng Pilipinas] Code. He should have had respect. He should gone off air."

Notice the date: Marcos made the decree! In 24 years, Cory Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo never so much as suggested repealing the law. And why not? Because they're all the same. Because no matter what post-Marcos presidents claim about "democracy," they will use Marcos' own methods of using government to silence anyone critical or "disrespectful." And Filipinos generally want to have so much "pride" in their country and famous kababayan (the equivalent of "paisan") that most of the lot think this is a good law. Remember how, in their blind worship, they spammed my blog and villified me on their own forums, just for daring to call someone "overrated." It's still a nation where you can hand out a few pesos apiece to children, and you'll instantly have a thousand protesters to make your cause look good.

Ayn Rand's observation is continually and everywhere proved true: "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."

"Tita" Cory, bah. She was no more "Tita" to the nation than Mussolini was "Zio Benito" to his own. Does that mean I can never enter the Philippines again?

No tears here for Cory Aquino

Aquino was sick for over a year and passed away Friday. I don't think so many Filipinos have cried together since Manny Pacquiao's 2005 loss to Erik Morales. But the truth is that tears are being shed unnecessarily for someone who did so much damage to that country.

I'm reminded of that line from "JFK": "They're bawling like they knew the man. Makes me want to puke." It's one thing to weep over someone you actually know, but the vast majority of Filipinos are weeping over someone whose "legacy" is nothing more than a fanciful construction. She was the Philippines' equivalent of Jimmy Carter: a seemingly "nice" person, pleasant in appearance, but incompetent, and forgettable except that she succeeded a completely corrupt president.

The housewife's only "qualification" to seek the Philippine presidency was that her husband, Benigno Aquino, then-president Ferdinand Marcos' chief rival, had been assassinated a few years earlier. It would have been fine had she done no more than lead the "People Power Revolution" that eventually toppled Marcos, step down disappear into private life. That would have been a legacy worth remembering, but she believed she could actually wield real power over people.

Her efforts at economic controls did nothing but set back what private progress struggled to achieve in the post-war years. Marcos' attempts to force rapid development were bad enough, taxing the productive (and borrowing from foreigners) to "invest" in his pet projects, but Aquino did much the same thing. Her "land reform" purported to break up the huge lands held by the "oligarchy" and redistribute them to the lower classes, but history had already proven by 1986 the inevitable disastrous results of central planning. Moreover, as oppressive as the wealthiest Filipino landowners have been for centuries (mini-tyrants during Spanish colonial rule, and corrupt today via vote-buying), the "reforms" also targeted honest families who happened to amass more than a few hectares. So this was hardly "taking back from the rich what they stole from the poor."

Her Executive Order 229 of July 22, 1987 implemented the "Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program" of her earlier Presidential Proclamation 131. History had already proven the inevitable disastrous results of central planning, but Aquino had promised "agrarian reform," and her administration thought they could devise a way. Department Administrative Order #3, issued in October 1987, required compulsory registration of lands and estimated production. The only purpose for a government to know such things is so that it can exercise control; nothing less. It also included the onerous provision: "The citizenry, in general, and farmer's organizations and other non-governmental organizations in particular, will be encouraged to participate in the campaign, particularly in creating social pressurs on those who, intentionally or otherwise, do not register or declare false information."

Then Republic Act 6657, passed on June 10, 1988, applied reforms to all lands, including privately owned land: the landowner would be "allowed" to keep five hectares (about 12 and a third acres), and each child over 15 who was actively working or managing the land could keep three hectares. The government would let the families choose which sections of the land -- how gracious!

Then there's the price tag, originally set at 50 billion pesos -- approximately U.S. $2.4 billion, a huge amount for such an impoverished country! The money was needed partially for administration, and mainly to "compensate" landowners (hence the registration requirements mentioned above) for what was seized. How did Aquino propose to pay for it? No problem, because her people had a plan: recipients of the land transfers would have to buy the land outright, via 30-year loans at 6% interest from the government. The government would be making money there, and Aquino's administration figured that any losses could be covered by...foreign aid!

The Philippines still suffers today. Current president Arroyo has her windmills, and she's destroyed food production by encouraging ethanol: farmers are turning from rice and vegetables to sugarcane, which would otherwise not be as profitable, but now Arroyo's government is giving them money. Is it any wonder that sugar and rice production have gotten worse, forcing the Philippines to import both? It's true: the Philippines must import sugar, and it's the biggest rice importer among Asian countries. It's not just the growing population, or the lower production compared to American farms with advanced machinery. It's all the government intervention, from "encouraging" less profitable industries to outright property seizure. Similar to Zimbabwe, the government "redistributed" land to those who didn't know the first thing about managing agriculture. Because government placed its own valuations on land, people could no longer make a rational decision between, say, continuing to plant sugarcane or building a house.

Even so, there were ways around the land redistribution. A family could incorporate its holdings and then transfer shares of stock in lieu of giving up actual land. By transferring no more than a minority of the shares outstanding, the family could retain effective control. Aquino's own family, the powerful Cojuangcos, were the first to use this trick. Suits were filed against them, but the Philippine courts conveniently dismissed the litigation. Meanwhile, the smaller, still-wealthy families had neither the loopholes nor the political connections to preserve their holdings. "Reform," then, was a perfect means for the biggest landowners to drive out their mid-size competitors.

And yet this woman is being remembered, and will probably be remembered for decades to come, as incorruptible and some sort of saint. Unbelievably, she's been compared to Joan of Arc.

Millions of Filipinos will disagree with this, and they won't want to hear this, but the truth hurts.

"Führer" Bloomberg's hypocrisy: because "some pigs are more equal than others"

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has pushed an ambitious green agenda and cast himself as a national environmental leader, routinely runs afoul of his own anti-pollution policy by letting his official SUVs idle, sometimes for more than an hour."

Did we expect something different?

"All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others."

nyc.uncivilservants.org

Check it out.

Pigs will always be pigs

Vito Corgine had the temerity to fly the American flag upside down on his own property, so a bunch of police goddamn Nazis trespassed on his property and took stole it. They've since returned it, but who else would like to bet that appropriate criminal charges will not be forthcoming?

The sheriff admitted that the mere act isn't illegal, but "It is illegal to cause a disruption," and supposedly it was making certain people "upset." Really, and just who was "upset"? Congine's boot-licking neighbors who are part of the government system bent on bankrupting him?

Ayn Rand was so right. "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." Some people didn't like it, so law enforcement just needs a vague statute to control someone's behavior.

It's actually the pigs and their supporters who are continually defacing the flag and the freedom it represents, not Congine. It doesn't matter that Congine is a veteran. It doesn't even matter that he was protesting; he can do it anytime he wants, for any or no reason at all. It's his land, and the flag is his private property. Period. If anyone was truly so outraged, then they should have, as private individuals, quietly gone to Congine and offered to buy the flag (with their own money, mind you, not the taxpayers' money), with a formal contract forbidding him from just flying another one.

Such an action would be the free market at work: the free exchange of property between private individuals. It would also show just how much they value not seeing someone flying an upside-down American flag. However, I'd lay good money that the true value people would place is zero. It's virtually free for people to be mini-tyrants instead, using government to control their neighbors.

Everyone involved in the theft of Congine's property, from the flag to destroying his would-be business, deserves impalement in a manner similar to what Vlad Tepes did: a high flagpole right into their anuses.

And then a friend sent me this, about the D.C. police chief being upset that drivers can avoid traffic cameras and police checkpoints with iPhones and GPS-utilizing apps. Actually, this is a good thing. The cameras, by definition, aren't at quiet intersections, and God knows that they don't actually do anything to prevent unsafe velocities in the first place. An iPhone with the relevant app, though, can audibly get someone's attention that he needs to slow down. It's doing the same work as the camera, except better because it's preemptive.

As far as sobriety checkpoints, that's a bunch of bull. The app would need a frequently updated data stream, and if driver is drunk enough to be a menace on the road, odds are he won't be too coherent and using his phone.

All this proves is that the pigs' motive is purely revenue. "Safety" can take a back seat.

So much for "the most open and transparent" administration

A White House blog post, January 20th: "Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise."

The headline yesterday: "Obama blocks list of visitors to White House"

Now why wouldn't they want the public to know who's coming to dinner? Jeremiah Wright? Bill Ayers? This reporter Dedman had better not dig too deeply, or this Chicago-rooted administration will do a Vince Foster and make him just like his name sounds.

Just this once, I wish Islamic terrorists had succeeded

Target: Jimmy Carter. Supposedly. It could just be an attempt by Hamas to look like "good guys" to the ignorant.

"Nobody in Gaza will touch this man [Carter]," Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said. "He is on a noble mission. Everyone here respects him."

That there speaks volumes.

But like the exchange in "A Few Good Men" where Kaffee asked Jessup why the transfer was necessary if he'd given an order, if nobody in Gaza would touch Carter, then where did the bomb come from?