Tuesday, December 30, 2003

I wish I could make this stuff up LOL:

Monday, Dec. 29, 2003 4:13 p.m. EST
N.Y. Times: No Evidence of Halliburton Profiteering

A comprehensive investigation into Halliburton's multibillion-dollar contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure shows "no evidence of profiteering" by the Houston-based oil services company.

That's the verdict by the New York Times, which assigned its Whitewater sleuth Jeff Gerth and investigative ace Don Van Atta to lay bare all the tawdry details of how Vice President Dick Cheney's former company was reaping big-bucks profits from sweetheart deals imagined by Democrats.

One problem: Gerth and Van Atta found almost nothing for Dems to hang their hats on. In fact, not only couldn't the Times find any evidence that Halliburton was stuffing its pockets under the table – even the above-board revenue collected by the company hasn't been much to write home about.

"So far this year, Halliburton's profits from Iraq have been minimal," the Times admitted. "The company's latest report to the Securities and Exchange Commission shows $1.3 billion in revenues from work in Iraq and $46 million in pretax profits for the first nine months of 2003."

That's a slender 3.5 percent margin, hardly enough to make any self-respecting war profiteer look twice. No wonder this story hasn't been leading TV and radio news reports all day.

To be sure, Times editors did their best to make it sound as if something fishy was going on. The report's front-page headline – "Halliburton Contracts in Iraq: The Struggle to Manage Costs" – gave no clue to the exoneration that followed.

And subheadlines like "Little Public Disclosure" and "An Absence of Competition" hinted darkly of shady deals where Cheney's friends were lining their pockets with blood money.

But even the Times had to admit that Halliburton's original Iraq contract was won "in a bidding process in December 2001."

What about that widely cited report last month claiming the company had overpaid by as much as 100 percent for Kuwaiti gasoline? Turns out that news is pretty much a political bust, too.

Company spokeswoman Wendy Hall explained that the Army Corps of Engineers needed the fuel imported to Iraq within 24 hours – not much time to launch a competitive bidding process.

"There's a premium for getting it done fast," explained Gordon Adams, a military procurement expert at George Washington University.

Anyone who disagrees ought to try sending all their mail by next-day air and see what happens to their postage budget.

Another factor that sent job cost estimates through the roof: sabotage by terrorists.

"As the war wound down, more work came [Halliburton subsidiary] KBR's way, mostly because of acts of sabotage on pipelines and Iraq's oil facilities," the Times noted. "When security problems made the production of fuel inside Iraq even more difficult – leading to shortages – the government asked Halliburton to import fuel."

If the Times' report on Cheney's old company is the best the Democrats can do, it's time for Terry McAuliffe to begin searching for a new campaign boogeyman ASAP.

coming close to the end of the year:
Two earthquakes
Thomas Sowell (archive)


December 30, 2003 | Print | Send


Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world -- an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different.


The deaths in Iran have been counted in the tens of thousands. In California, the deaths did not reach double digits. Why the difference? In one word, wealth.

Wealth enables homes, buildings and other structures to be built to withstand greater stresses. Wealth permits the creation of modern transportation that can quickly carry people to medical facilities. It enables those facilities to be equipped with more advanced medical apparatus and supplies, and amply staffed with highly trained doctors and support staff.

Those who disdain wealth as crass materialism need to understand that wealth is one of the biggest life-saving factors in the world. As an economist in India has pointed out, "95 percent of deaths from natural hazards occur in poor countries."

You can see the effect of wealth by looking at the same country at different times. The biggest hurricane to hit the United States was hurricane Andrew in 1998 but it took fewer than 50 lives. Yet another hurricane, back in 1900, took at least 6,000 lives in Galveston.

The difference was that the United States was a much richer country in 1998. It had earlier warning from more advanced weather tracking equipment. It had better roads and more cars in which to evacuate before the hurricane struck, as well as more and better equipment for digging victims out of debris, and better medical treatment available for those who needed it.

Those who preen themselves on their "compassion" for the poor, and who disdain wealth, are being inconsistent, if not hypocritical. Wealth is the only thing that can prevent poverty. However, if you are not trying to prevent poverty but to exploit it for political purposes, that is another story.

There is another side to the story of these two earthquakes and their consequences. It gives the lie to the dogma being propagandized incessantly, from the schools to the media, that one culture is just as good as another.

It is just as good to lose tens of thousands of lives as not to? What hogwash! It is just as good to lack modern medicine, modern transportation, and modern industry as it is to have them? Who is kidding whom?

This dogmatism prevails at home as well as internationally. Cultures that lead to most children being born to single mothers are just as good as cultures where children grow up with two parents -- if you believe the dogma.

Facts say the opposite. Whether it is education, crime, or poverty, there are huge differences between single-parent families and two-parent families. Even race doesn't make as much difference in outcomes. The poverty rate among black married couples is in single digits. The infant mortality rate among black married women with only a high school diploma is lower than the infant mortality rate among white unmarried women who have been to college.

None of this makes a dent in those who promote the big lie that one culture is just as good as another. What does it even mean to say that? Does it mean that facts fit the dogma? Or does it just mean that they choose to use words in a certain way? It may not make any difference in their theories, but only in the real world.

None of this means that one culture is better than another for all purposes. The cheap vulgarity and brutal ugliness of so much of our media is a legitimate complaint at home and abroad. The sheer silliness of our fad-ridden public schools is a national disgrace.

By the same token, cultures that are less advanced in some ways often have contributions to make in other ways. We all take different things from different cultures to create our own personal lifestyles. We need to stop pretending that it makes no difference when all the facts show that it makes a huge difference, from poverty to matters of life and death.



©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Friday, December 26, 2003

Xmas Present From Progressives: Starvation (Horowitz)
Town Hall.com ^ | 12/25/2003 | David Horowitz


Posted on 12/26/2003 4:34:29 AM PST by mollynme


Xmas Present From Progressives: Starvation
David Horowitz



December 25, 2003


How many poor people have progressives starved since 1917? It's a good question and somebody should do the research and publish it.


Russia was the breadbasket of Europe until progressives seized power in that year and started instituting policies to "share the wealth." For the next 70 years until socialism collapsed, Russia was a net importer of food always on the brink of famine. In the 1930s, Stalin instigated a calculated famine in the Ukraine to rid himself of approximately 10 million political enemies.


His crime was protected by the progressives at the New York Times and on the Pulitzer Prize Committee (they control both institutions to this day). Because soft progressives cover for hard-line progressives like Stalin, Castro and other political monsters -- preferring to demonize George Bush and John Ashcroft instead -- these atrocities continue.


The left's inability to understand the most basic economic fact -- that people need an incentive to produce -- has caused the unnecessary deaths of tens of millions of people -- mostly poor -- in the last 75 years. But thanks to a politically corrupted media and educational system, their pig-headed pursuit of socialist fantasies goes on.


A few years ago when Robert Mugabe, the leftist dictator of Zimbabwe began his race war against white farmers to the cheers of progressives here (including such luminaries of the social justice cause as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton), I had a correspondence with a black journalist friend of mine who writes for all the leftist news outlets that pretend to care about black people but really care only about their destructive leftwing agendas.


I suggested that he might get his friends to protest Mugabe's bloody racism and brain-dead Marxism before poor black people began starving in Zmibabwe as a result of these criminal policies aimed at the most productive segment of Zimbabwe's economy.


Naturally my friend defended the murders and thefts as "social justice" and turned a blind eye to the racism since it was only directed against whites, whose parents of course had been "imperialists." In this he was expressing the majority of world progressive opinion, for example that of the dictatorships and radical organizations that attended the Orwellian UN Conference Against Racism in Durban in September 2001, an orgy of racist attacks on whites and Jews.


America and Britain which led the world in ending slavery and even attempted (futilely) to end it in Africa were put in the dock at the UN and held up for "reparations," while the Muslim Sudan which maintains slavery today and the League Of Arab States whose ancestors enslaved more black Africans than all the Europeans and Americans put together were not; Israel the only democracy in the Middle East whose Arab citizens have more rights than Arabs in all the Arab states was attacked for racism, while the Arab states which forbid Jews to set foot on their territory were not.


Now the progressive chickens are coming home to roost in Zimbabwe. On Christmas Eve the Wall Street Journal ran a front page news story on conditions in Mugabe's Marxist police state. The title of the Journal story said it all: "Once a Breadbasket, Now Zimbabwe Can't Feed Itself." Corn production -- the staple diet -- has declined by two-thirds in the last three years and 6 million Zimbabweans are on the verge of starvation.


US Ambassador Tony Hall nearly got it right when he said, "Zimbabwe stands alone as an example of how a country can be ruined by one person." Actually, Zimbabwe is one of many such countries, and it was not ruined by one person but by one person supported by a global movement of arch reactionaries who call themselves progressives and who have killed 100 million people in the last century in the name of "social justice" and learned nothing in the process.



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Friday, December 19, 2003

finally its FRIDAY!!!! and hopefully the interview went well.. more good stuff:

Saddam: Arab Honor or Dishonor
Walid Phares, Ph.D (archive)


December 19, 2003 | Print | Send


I remember from the days in Beirut, which I left in October 1990, how many called Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein: Al-Jassur. It means "The Darer," "The Courageous," and "The Macho." A few months earlier, he had ordered the invasion and plundering of Kuwait. Arab nationalists in Lebanon and throughout the region praised his conquest of its small neighbor. "No more borders between the Arabs!," (la hudud bayna al-arab) they shouted.

See when a big Arab fish eats a little Arab fish, he becomes a hero in the eyes of the radicals. The Ruler of Baghdad had always portrayed himself as a sword of the Arab nation, its soul and its avenger. He projected a leader who was on the footsteps of the great conquering Caliphs. In few words, the embodiment of what is known as al-sharaf al-arabi, or Arab honor.

Saddam knew all too well the delirium tremens of the political elites in the region. They were the product of a failed development, of crumbled empires and of trapped evolution. The writings of Pan-Arabists, the poetry of social-nationalists and the slogans of ruthless leaders shaped the ideological minds of thousands of political cadres of the Baath partisans, Nasser supporters and, later on, Jihadist militants of the region.

Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, liberal trends were crushed under the yoke of those so-called "Arab nationalists." Instead of social development, democratization and emancipation of minorities, the new rulers of the Arab world erected dictatorships in the newly established nation-states. In each one of these entities, a powerful man emerged. Each one of these dictators declared his messianic dimension. In each capital from Tripoli to Baghdad, dictators self- appointed themselves as the Saladin of the Umma. (the nation).

As the famous Lebanese-American writer Khalil Joubran put it so well, "Beware the disaster of nations, in which each piece believe it is the entire nation." So was the case with the rulers of the region. Nasser of Egypt, Kadhafi of Libya, Assad of Syria, Arafat of Palestine, Turabi of Sudan and Saddam of Iraq. Each man thought they were the unique saviors of the Arabs, all the Arabs on all Arabs lands. Hence, their will was endless, their desires unstoppable and their crimes unpunished.

Their existence on Earth was legitimized by one word: Honor. Read honor of the Arab nation. They were chosen to defend and embody that pride. It replaced democracy, development, equality, security, stability, prosperity and, above all, justice. The region lived off what the Pan-Arabist elites have divinely defined as al-sharaf al-arabi, Arab honor. Under this honor, regimes killed, tortured, raped, invaded, and ordered all sorts of inhuman behavior.

Nasser invaded Yemen, Kadhafi conquered Chad, Assad occupied Lebanon, Arafat subverted Jordan, and Turabi cleansed southern Sudan. Millions were killed, millions were jailed, and millions were tortured - - from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. All of that under one word: Honor.

Wars were started with Israel, but could never be ended because of Honor. Women were deprived from basic rights in Saudi Arabia and under the Taliban, because of pride of ideologies. Students are suppressed in Beirut and Tehran because of dignity of regimes. And when reformists, activists or critics would attempt to raise these inhumane issues internally or internationally, they were accused of injuring Arab Honor.

In Mesopotamia, the supreme commander of the social-nationalist Baath exulted honor as a state-ideology. With Baathist pride, he ordered the Kurds to be gazed. And responding to Arab dignity, he threw half a million Shiites into mass graves. Saddam's honor eliminated thousands of Sunni opponents after savage torture. And yet, the irreducible Baathists of Iraq and the Arab world still believe in the superseding doctrine of honor.

Is it unique in history? Not really. In the middle of the past century, millions were assassinated for the pride of the Nazi Third Reich and for the Fascist Empire. When Mussolini was hanged, followers were horrified. And when the Fuhrer committed suicide, supremacists raged. How dare the world injure Nazi and Fascist honor? They attempted to associate German and Italian nations with the injury, but not to avail. The World already understood the crimes that Adolph and Benito had committed. It was too late to play the pride game.

After the capture of Saddam this past weekend, followers of Arab National-Socialism and Jihadism raged. They condemn the images shown of their leader, simply because they identify with him. He is them, but he is NOT the Arab world. The game is over. Millions of men and women have been liberated: 14 million Shiites; four million Kurds; and two million Assyrian and Turkomen.

Arab Sunni in Iraq and Kuwait and many, many more are freeing their voices in this large region of the world. They are just discovering that the honor of Saddam is the dishonor of the Arabs. He now embarrasses even those who were pleased with the dictator's ambitions. He pledged Arab unity, yet attacked a brother country, Kuwait. He vowed to destroy Israel, but attacked Iran instead. He lived off a legend of courage, yet didn't die in fighting as Uday and Qusay did several months earlier.

So where is the honor that al-Jazeera and its commentators are mobilizing the region for? Was Arab honor tarnished when Saddam's teeth were examined? Where was Arab honor when tens of thousands of skulls, canines and skeletons were unearthed from Basra to Halabjah.. Indeed, to the millions of innocent victims, Saddam is not the embodiment of Arab honor, but of the dishonor made to the Arabs by their dictators.

Walid Phares is a Professor of Middle East studies and an MSNBC Middle Eastern and Terrorism analyst.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

If there is any area in American public life where liberals hold nearly total sway, it is public education, which is sacred to them. Liberals are always able to win more "spending on education." And one of their key interest groups, the teachers unions, has a hammerlock on education policy and its implementation.


Consider, then, what Ted Kennedy and Co. have wrought:

--The typical black high-school graduate has, in effect, only an eighth-grade education.

--The typical black student scores below 80 percent of white students on tests. A majority of black students score in the lowest category -- Below Basic -- in five of the seven subjects on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

--Seventy-seven percent of white students read at a higher level than the average black student. Only 23 percent of black students, on the other hand, read at a level equal to or better than the average white student.

--During the 1990s, average black math scores fell dramatically. Despite two decades of spending and "reforms," black students' achievement in math is at its 1978 level.

--The average black student knows less about science than 90 percent of white students.

If these numbers make you queasy, they should. America has an educational system worthy of David Duke. Its effect is to perpetuate and exacerbate the country's racial divide, disadvantaging blacks (and Hispanics) and blighting their prospects. The above figures are from Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," a damning account of how the public schools fail black students.

The Thernstroms explain one of the more vexing statistics in American life: Whites consistently earn more than blacks with equal years of schooling. This is taken as a sure-fire sign of racial discrimination. But the Thernstroms point out that the equal years of schooling are meaningless as long as blacks and whites have learned a different amount during those years. "A number of sophisticated studies," they write, "demonstrate clearly that whites and blacks who are truly equally educated are equal earners."

They bat away the easy explanations for the racial disparity in academic achievement. Socio-economic factors explain something, but far from all. Actually, the racial gap between black and white children of college-educated parents is worse than the gap at large. Nor can standardized tests be dismissed as racist. Black students at elite colleges actually get lower grades than their SAT scores had projected.

What, then, is to be done? The Thernstroms destroy the solutions advanced in popular cliches, such as "reducing class size." Class sizes are already relatively small in schools with a high proportion of black students, and class sizes have steadily shrunk since 1992 with no effect on black performance. The problem with reducing class sizes is that it means hiring more teachers, who will usually be less skilled than those already in the profession. California, for instance, gained almost nothing from a massive program to reduce class size in the mid-1990s.

Amid all the bleakness, the Thernstroms find hope in a few scattered schools across the country -- like the KIPP Academy in the South Bronx -- that work for black kids. The schools emphasize standards, testing, accountability and high expectations. They are invariably charter schools free of the numbing constraints imposed on the rest of the public school system by the teachers unions. They point the way forward, if only we have the political will to follow.

One cannot read the Thernstroms' book without wondering: Where are the civil-rights marches protesting the public schools? Where are Jesse Jackson's angry denunciations? Most black leaders have simply sold out the future of black kids to teachers unions. And most other people are happy to avert their eyes from the sort of ugly numbers mustered by the Thernstroms.

It's time to face the facts and find a way to make the universally held aspiration to "Leave no child behind" apply to black kids as well.


Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group
more good stuff :)
Socialist Pipe Dreams and the Assault on Capitalism
National Anxiety Center ^ | 12/17/03 | Alan Caruba


Posted on 12/18/2003 10:42:28 AM PST by presidio9


A lot of very bad ideas, philosophies, and economic theories seem to have a life of their own. No matter that history has demonstrated their failure, they continue, inculcating each new generation. Such is the case with socialism, but in a strange twist of fate, socialism has come to embrace capitalism as the best means to further its goal of redistributing wealth. Without the success of capitalism, socialism simply would not have the means to advance itself.

Socialism, however, once in control, stifles capitalism and brings whole nations to their knees when it becomes clear that the ever-expanding matrix of laws that redistribute wealth cripples the means by which that wealth is created. America is now a nation with a capitalist economy and a socialist system of government. That process began in earnest during the years Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office and has continued apace ever since.

Socialism is the economic system of Europe and the United Kingdom. In China, its communist leadership has abandoned its failed system to embrace capitalism so long as the party remains in power. All around the world, capitalism has proved its power to increase prosperity and all around the world socialism struggles to gain control of that prosperity.

In October, the XXII Congress of the Socialist International met in San Paulo, Chile, "to promote a new world order based on a new multilateralism for peace, security, sustainable development, social justice, democracy, respect for human rights and gender equality." Who is against peace? Democracy? But who understands that "sustainable development", a term ginned up by hardcore environmentalists, conspires to thwart economic growth?

Few seem to understand that environmentalism, hiding behind the mask of noble sounding goals, is in fact socialism with its goal of destroying property rights, the very pillar of capitalism! Without property rights there can be no capitalism. Without the right to save, spend and invest one’s earnings, the individual ceases to be a capitalist and becomes merely the means by which socialism is advanced in the name of "social justice", "protecting the environment", and "human rights."

Who among us would oppose such noble goals? I am often accused of not understanding, nor supporting the need for clean air, clean water, and other environmental goals. What I oppose is the use of these goals to achieve what is, in fact, a vast matrix of laws and regulations that destroy property rights by requiring homes, farms and other structures be sold to the government in order to create "a viewshed", i.e., an area "returned" to its natural state or to declare property to be a "wetland" because the occasional migrating bird may show up.

I oppose the use of "endangered species" laws to deprive property owners of the right to improve a site or deny the development of structures such as hospitals, schools or the building of new corporate campuses, factories or retail outlets that generate jobs and expand the economic base of a community.

I oppose the unnecessary mandated cost of having to "recycle" waste that is often more expensive than merely creating additional landfills. This is the case of laws that require people to separate glass and plastic, and to bundle newspapers.

I oppose the expansion of purely socialist programs such as Social Security or Medicare that deny people the right to allocate their own money to their own needs. These programs not only are running out of funding, but in the case of Medicare have now added trillions to an existing system rife with waste, further denying people choices about health providers. These programs in effect undermine personal responsibility in the name of "social justice" and, in the case of Social Security, not only is the money taken from one’s paycheck (nearly half of every earned dollar), it is then taxed again as income.

At the San Paulo Socialist Congress, the primary message was the advocacy of "global governance" when anyone paying any attention to the failure of the United Nations to achieve any peace anywhere in the world is there for anyone to see. This is the same UN that wants the power to tax all financial transactions, have its own private military and a judicial system that would supercede our own. Moreover, the UN’s roster of member nations is filled with those that are either outright despotisms as in the Middle East or which are communist dictatorships as is the case of Red China, North Korea, and Cuba.

The Socialist Congress declared, "The global divide between poverty and wealth has reached intolerable proportions" and decried "the mounting pressure on natural resources" that makes "the current model of globalization unsustainable." This ignores the fact that the Western model of capitalism works and those nations that do not embrace democracy and capitalism suffer for that failure. Only the expansion of democracy and capitalism can insure that Third World nations can catch up, but many are rife with tribalism, superstition, despotism, and other impediments that impede the creation of jobs, entrepreneurism, and wealth.

The Socialist Congress called for "global ecological balance" whatever that means! There is no way to achieve ecological balance in areas of the world where vast deserts exist. There is no way to create wealth in areas where timber cannot be harvested. There is no way to create wealth where access to natural resources such as coal, oil and gas is denied. Wealth that is seized by tyrants like Saddam Hussein and other oligarchies leaves the people of these nations impoverished and denies them justice.

What the Socialist Congress offers is a program of ever-expanding government control of the lives of everyone on the Earth, ignoring the fact that government at any level unfailingly does a poor job by comparison with the free market forces that respond to the real needs of people and does so affordably because they must be competitive. The world does not need "global government" and Americans clearly need far less government involvement in every aspect of our lives.

There is no greater tyranny than that imposed "for your own good." That is the antithesis of freedom. That is the essence of socialism. Our government, "conceived in liberty", cannot survive the tender mercies of socialism. The recent Socialist Congress, totally unreported by our mainstream media, demonstrates that this destructive, regressive economic system remains the ultimate threat.

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

December 17, 2003 | Print this page

Devaluing the Black Family

by Anthony B. Bradley

Forty-three percent of black pregnancies end in abortion, according to a recent study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a leading research and advocacy organization promoting sex education. Nearly 70 percent of all black children are born out-of-wedlock. These two facts taken together should be perceived by everyone as clear evidence of a marriage and family crisis in black America. But don’t count on it. During the upcoming presidential campaign, while we can expect to hear a lot about affirmative action and racial injustice, we’ll likely hear nothing about this crisis.

For demagogues, such unbalanced racial statistics necessarily imply discrimination. Employing this popular political logic, the numbers suggest that abortion providers are racist and that states racially discriminate when issuing marriage licenses. The explanation lies elsewhere.

If nearly half of all black kids in America are being aborted, we must start asking different questions about the moral climate of America in general and what incentives lie behind the preference for abortion and the disdain for marriage. Facts and figures about family life necessarily raise larger questions about the moral choices people make. What’s more, we should be asking searching questions about churches and what they are teaching about the dignity and value of human life, marriage, family, and community.

Interestingly, the severity of social problems within black communities has intensified since the civil rights victories of the 1960s. In 1960, when black America was considered relatively worse off, only 23 percent of black kids were born out-of-wedlock. In 1970, just 33 percent of black women aged 20-29 were unmarried. By 1992, the number of unmarried twenty-something black women catapulted to 70 percent. A gross misconception about the out-of-wedlock birth crisis in black communities is that it is a consequence of teenage pregnancy. In fact, out-of-wedlock birth rates are the highest among women between the ages of 18 and 29. Moreover, since 1969, the largest increase in out-of-wedlock births has been among black women between the age of 20 and 24. Therefore, adult black women are purposefully choosing to have children outside of the context of marriage.

Marriage has profound effects on the quality of life for black kids. A data analysis report on marriage released by the Heritage Foundation highlights several benefits of marriage. For example, marriage dramatically reduces the incidence of poverty for women who remain romantically involved with the father from the time of the child’s birth. Marriage reduces the odds that a mother and child will live in poverty by more than 70 percent. If mothers remain single and unemployed, they will remain poor permanently; if single and employed at least part-time, slightly more than half will slip below the poverty line; and only 10 percent of mothers will sink into poverty if employed full-time. Moreover, marriage combined with part-time maternal employment increases family income by 75 percent. Sadly, over 80 percent of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married families.

There are even more alarming pathologies resulting from out-of-wedlock births. For example, nearly 30 percent of all welfare recipients resort to living on public assistance because of poverty associated with single-parenthood. Black children from single-parent homes are twice as likely to commit crimes as are black children from families with resident fathers. Seventy percent of juveniles in state reform institutions come from single-parent homes. And there is a strong, inverse relationship between incidence of out-of-wedlock births and education attainment.

Of course, individuals can and do rise above brokenness and poverty. Yet, the statistical big picture reveals how the devaluation of marriage and family has created a crisis in many black communities. The Bush Administration has proposed making marriage an important component of the next phase of welfare reform and rightly so. The administration seeks to introduce incentives to increase and maintain a high number of marriages in an effort to thwart many of the associated outcomes listed above.

A government program, however, can only go so far. What is needed, more desperately than ever, is for churches to step in and engage this issue proactively. What America needs is a strong witness from Christians who can communicate persuasively and practice God’s design for marriage, family, and community. Disconnecting human life, marriage, and family from its correct foundation in God is literally destroying our communities and keeping generations enslaved to self-destructive behavior.

Reverend Ray Hammond, pastor of Bethel AME Church and board member of Boston’s Black Ministerial Alliance, has the right idea. Rev. Hammond is promoting biblical formulations of marriage and family in hopes of combating what he calls “the epidemic level of fatherlessness in America.” He understands that marriage, rightly constructed, is necessary in providing the way out of “the social wilderness of family disintegration.”

Given a culture that stifles human potential through abortion and the devaluation of the bedrock, life-sustaining institution of the family, we should not be surprised that there is not “enough” black presence in influential sectors of American society. Many have forgotten that there was a time when these pathologies were the exception rather than the rule in the black community. They can be overcome only when we rediscover God’s wisdom, including a right understanding of the institutions that strengthen families and build up communities.

Anthony B. Bradley is a research associate at the Acton Institute.

Monday, December 15, 2003

The latest evidence of a weak connection between education spending and academic achievement comes courtesy of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. A report released last week found that rural states in the West and Midwest tend to have the highest rates of high school graduation. So here's a pop quiz: Guess where most of those same states rank in per-pupil spending?


Wyoming leads the nation in high school graduates with 90.2%, followed by Utah (90.1%), Minnesota (89.8%), Alaska (89.7%) and Nebraska (89.3%). All are well above the national average of 82.6%, which includes GED recipients. At the same time, four of those top five states spend right around the per-student national average of $7,376, according to Education Department data for 2001, the most recent year available. The exception, Alaska, spends $9,216.


By contrast, the District of Columbia ($12,046) and New York ($10,716) tied for 33rd in the high school graduates rankings. Other big spenders like Connecticut ($10,127) and New Jersey ($11,248) could do no better than 20th and 22nd, respectively. Vermont and Massachusetts spend in excess of $9,000 per student and both ranked in the top 15. Utah spends about half of that but came in second.


Iowa ranks in the lower half of states in per-pupil outlays (as do its teachers with respect to pay), yet last year its students produced some of the highest standardized test scores in the country. The reverse is true in places like the District of Columbia, even though education spending there has tripled since 1980.


We're not suggesting an inverse relationship between education spending and outcomes, or that money is irrelevant. The point is that the empirical data consistently show that how school dollars are spent matters more than how much. When politicians brag that they're working to increase education spending, they are telling you almost nothing about how they'd improve education.

Updated December 15, 2003


Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Cool beans -- I actually found lots o good stuff to post today:
Education
Doesn't capitalism oppose "free" education?
Capitalism supports freedom in education as opposed to the tax funded "free" education run by the state. Under capitalism, the indoctrination of the young by the officials of the state is illegal. Under capitalism, education, like food, computers, and medicine, is taken on as a private profit making enterprise, not because education is unimportant, but because it is so important (like all private enterprise this leaves room for private charity, but this is a secondary issue).

How is 'free' education funded under capitalism?
The only "free" education under capitalism is provided by private individuals, i.e., parents paying for their child's education, i.e., individuals acting as a group, e.g., church groups and non-religious groups.

What is the price of a 'free' state-funded education?
The price of a "free" public education is freedom. The collectively (Nazi, communist, socialist) notion that there is such a thing as a "free" education is a monstrous myth -- anything of value must be paid for. The state per say produces nothing, all state funds are forcibly taken from others through taxes, etc. When one recommends the "state funding of education to preserve freedom", one is asking that the freedom of one's fellow citizens be abridged, that their wealth be looted by public officials, all for the alleged purpose of protecting freedom. This is a contradiction in terms: freedom of action under a system of rights, is never preserved by the violation of those rights. That is, no matter how good the alleged ends, evil means are never justified.

What do collectivists really mean by "free education"?
What the advocates of "free" education espouse is not leaving individuals free to pay for their own education, or free to pay for the education of another, or free to decide on the content of that education. Rather, they advocate the robbing of one man to pay the for the unearned benefit (in this case the "schooling") of another. The proper name for such a program is not "free" education, but is legalized theft. This is what those who advocate "free" state supported education actually endorse.

The key issue here is whether one is forced to pay for education of oneself (or others) voluntarily of one's own free-will -- as with private education; or, if one is forced to pay for the education of oneself (or others) at the point of a gun (to see this gun appear, simply volunteer to refuse to take 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Tues and still nuthing on the job front... gotta love it.


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We're still slaves

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Posted: September 9, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com


I remember a rather bizarre question I was occasionally asked by classmates when I was in grammar school. Someone would find out I was of mixed race and offer: "If the blacks and the whites had a war, whose side would you be on?"

The apparent absurdity of this query obviously stems from the fact that it was typically asked by 6- to 10-year-olds, who normally have a tendency to look at these abstracts rather superficially. Still, there's something about this recollection that brings to mind the current state of race politics.

There's a war on right now – not just in Iraq, or on terrorism, but on the home front – for the hearts and minds of Americans. No longer is it a question of what's good for America vs. what's not so good for America – it's a question of what might ensure America's survival vs. what will most assuredly destroy this nation.

The far Left – which is a minority – is nevertheless a strategically placed and highly vocal minority whose influence is inordinately potent. That they espouse policies which weaken America is, to me, a given. With lines becoming more clearly drawn every day, it is becoming increasingly important for ethnic minorities to become enlightened as to the stakes involved in this war, how they are being manipulated and what is truly in their best interests.

There are some among minorities who regularly refer to the U.S. as a "racist state." Others are of the opinion that while progress has been made, the possibility of some racist or separatist group or party gaining preeminence in America and reversing it all is a real possibility. Those of the first persuasion, I believe, are either delusional or are simply playing the game – making their gains through intimidation of the impressionable.

To those of the second persuasion, I would point out, as I have many, many times in conversation: Whites in America still outnumber all minority groups combined. If "Whitey" wanted to "get" us, we'd be "got." Very few of us – of any race – are truly color blind, because we have not been raised to be so.

I get interesting e-mails from minorities in response to the articles in which I address race. Most are positive and insightful, and many are from supportive individuals, gratified and relieved they are not alone in their beliefs. A much smaller number are so vulgar and laced with threatening overtones that they would likely raise FBI scrutiny were they the words of white racists.

Apparently, some minority individuals presume people like me are wholly insensitive to – and ignorant of – issues regarding race. Based on the rhetoric I hear directed at us, we've obviously never suffered the effects of prejudice, never been subjected to name-calling, have somehow avoided bigotry in schools, the workplace and in housing, and certainly never, ever had to fight over race or flee for our lives from parties who sought to harm or even kill us because of our race. We grew up in an idyllic, color-blind enclave someplace, were nurtured perfectly and lovingly, attended the best prep schools and Ivy League universities, sailed triumphantly into the job market through the connections of our color-blind white pals, and have been living large ever since.

At best, we're misguided and clueless, at worst, we're Uncle Toms and sellouts because we do not hold the line of those self-appointed career activists who rail against the U.S. as a "racist nation," as though blacks still had to fear being lynched in the streets, and who continue to support the same socialist programs that have not only failed for nearly half a century, but which have debased minorities to a degree unimaginable 50 years ago, and which would do an old Jim Crow supporter proud.

I personally hold that minority civil-rights activists in this country are pimps – they've sold their integrity for personal aggrandizement, and they've encouraged those whom they claim to represent to sell their collective "favors." And for what? Mere subsistence and, most importantly, absolution from any form of personal responsibility – in perpetuity.

If someone of an ethnic minority is miserable, somehow it will always be the fault of some faceless racist in a suit who is not doing enough, or is actively trying to "keep him down." I picture the slavemaster creeping into the slave quarters in the middle of the night and enticing the newly freed blacks to sign their freedom back over for a roof and three squares a day. Extrapolate this to the present and it appears that the former slaves gave in to this enticement.

Black people were once among the most socially conservative groups in America. This was due largely to the fact that most were devoutly religious. During the '60s, riding on the wave of appreciation for Jack and Bobby Kennedy's advocacy, the Democrat Party hijacked the civil-rights agenda and essentially "turned" prominent black clergymen – some through the rhetoric of brotherhood and others through the prospect of personal gain.

Since then, blacks have voted Democratic (despite the fact that Republicans spearheaded the Civil Rights Act of 1964) and have supported everything the party has proposed or brought to pass. More damaging, black pastors have allowed the secular agenda of the Left to thoroughly permeate their churches, and consequently, black culture. Think about that the next time you see a poor, unwed, pregnant teen-age black girl.

It is the professional minority civil-rights activist who is the faceless racist in a suit, actively trying to keep his people down. The same southern Democrats who supported segregation simply modified their modus operandi as civil-rights laws were passed and, now, under the umbrella of the Democrat Party, minorities are being sold into the slavery of socialism. Of course, we all are. But among minorities, the Left continues to promulgate petty issues, race hatred and class envy, deflecting concern from the real dangers we face. Honestly, where would the likes of Jesse Jackson be if the truth were widely known among blacks at large?

With regard to race politics, if you take anything away from reading this article, let it be this: For all practical purposes, there are no races anymore. In America, there are freedom fighters and there are those who would enslave all of us, regardless of race – and it's time to choose a side

Thursday, December 04, 2003

And you wonder where the afford housing and decent jobs went off to.... :
Thomas Sowell (archive)


December 4, 2003 | Print | Send


One of the staples of liberal hand-wringing is a need for "affordable housing." Last year, the standard liberal solution -- more government spending -- was proposed in a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington, in a report billed as a "new vision."

This year, supply and demand made front-page news in the New York Times of November 29th: "Apartment Glut Forces Owners to Cut Rents in Much of U.S." As apartment vacancy rates reached an all-time high of 10 percent nationwide, landlords have been cutting rents, both directly and by such gimmicks as giving gift certificates and allowing so many rent-free months for new tenants.

Buried deep inside the second section of the newspaper are facts that completely undermine the liberal notion that high housing costs are a "national crisis" calling for a "national solution" by the federal government.

Far from being a national crisis of affordable housing, outrageous rents and astronomical home prices are largely confined to a relatively few places along the east and west coasts. Rent per square foot of apartment space in San Francisco is more than double what it is in Denver, Dallas, or Kansas City, and nearly three times as high as in Memphis. Home prices show even greater disparities.

The Times story notes that the difference between apartment rents in coastal California and those in the rest of the country is widening. It also refers to cities "where land is abundant but building regulations are not," where "housing costs were already among the least expensive of the country's urban areas."

Wait a minute. Vacant land is at least as abundant in coastal California as in places with far lower rents and home prices. More than half the land in huge San Mateo County, adjacent to San Francisco, is vacant and is kept that way by law.

The difference is not in the land but in the politics. The long-time dominance of liberal Democrats from San Francisco to Silicon Valley has meant that restrictions on land use have proliferated and the costs of building anything have skyrocketed as a result of environmental red tape, bureaucratic delays, and legal harassment by activists of various sorts.

The New York Times story refers gingerly to "many cities on the coasts, where new construction is more difficult" than in the rest of the country. To put it more bluntly, liberals have driven housing prices sky high by forbidding, restricting, and harassing the building of housing.

In turn, this has meant driving people of modest incomes out of the communities where they work. Nurses, teachers and policemen, for example, typically live far away from places like San Francisco or Silicon Valley, and have to commute long distances to and from work.

All the while, liberals wring their hands about a lack of affordable housing, about urban sprawl, and about congested highways. In their puzzlement about the causes of all these things, they never think to look in the mirror.

While the Times story noted in passing "the growing gap between the cost of living in the Northeast and parts of California and the cost of living almost anywhere else," it does not take the next fatal step of connecting the dots.

It is precisely in the places that have been most dominated by liberals for the longest times that housing costs and other costs of living have been driven up to levels that force many people out of town and even out of state. New York and California are losing more of their native-born populations than any other states and only influxes of immigrants help conceal that fact in gross statistics.

It was not always like this. Prior to the 1970s, home prices in California were comparable to those in the rest of the country. Today they are more than three times as high.

What happened during the 1970s was the beginning of the drastic restrictions on building pushed by liberal Democrats in general and environmental extremists in particular. On the 6 o'clock news, it is common to say, "Details at eleven." Here let me say: Details in chapter 3 of my new book, "Applied Economics."



©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

more good stuff for the holidays:
Do Nothing Democrats On The War In Terror
By Tamara Wilhite ()

D = do-nothing democrat, C = concerned citizen

C: What do we do about the terrorists?

D: Do nothing.

C: Shouldn't we be trying to fight them?

D: Certainly not. If we kill them, they'll hate us.

C: Don't they already hate us?

D: That's beside the point. They don't like us, and we can't give them a valid reason for their hatred of us by killing their cohorts.

C: What about the fact that they've been killing us for years?

D: Soldiers volunteered for that when they volunteered for the military, so their deaths don't count unless it furthers our agenda. Conservative black diplomats serving in Africa don't matter. Dead evangelical missionaries get what they asked for - martyrdom. We shouldn't do anything about those idiots who got themselves killed.

C: What should we do if they continue to attack us at home?

D: Nothing! We can't strike back. That would risk enraging the Arab Street.

C: I thought they already hated us.

D: Yes, but striking out at them would breed more terrorists.

C: Aren't they already breeding terrorists?

D: Yes. But the Muslim minority in this nation is very vocal and very active in increasing their numbers by both local production and foreign imports. We can't risk them being angry with us. They're very conservative, but they can be lulled to the Democratic side. Acting against their friends in the Middle East risks them becoming violent in our own streets.

C: Haven't some of those locally born or naturalized citizens sought to act against the US?

D: We can't assume they did anything. We don't have adequate proof yet.

C: Those men from Lackawanna pled guilty.

D: They haven't run out of appeals, so we can't assume that they're guilty.

C: What can we do to defend ourselves from attack?

D: Converting to Islam is a possibility.

C: If we do nothing, we might not be allowed to make that choice willingly.

D: Nonsense! Islam is a religion of peace!

C: The Sunni and Shiite attacks on each other in Iraq and Pakistan are proof that that's not a safe option. They're throwing suicide bombers at other sects of Islam even as they send them at our allies and us.

D: That's a trivial detail. They hate us because we're oppressing them.

C: How are we oppressing them?

D: We're buying their oil!

C: How is that oppressing them?

D: We're bringing capitalism to their socialist dictatorships. Democracy could only be around the corner if that continued.

C: Then how do we stop oppressing them?

D: We should stop buying their oil.

C: Then how will we keep our economy going?

D: We won't. That's part of the beauty of it. We would just do nothing. No oil imports. No problems.

C: Our economy would stall -

D: More Democratic votes.

C: We'd see the transportation network grind to a stop -

D: More people doing nothing, and that would save the environment, too.

C: Shouldn't we build more power plants here, then, to reduce dependence on their oil?

D: Oh, no.

C: Why not?

D: That costs too much.

C: Per your arguments, it would reduce the terrorist motivations.

D: Yes, but it would provide jobs and power. We can't do that.

C: So you vote to turn off the oil imports and to not bother with a replacement fuel source?

D: Of course! Doing nothing about the supply or the demand issues would bring the whole nation to a stop! Imagine it! Everyone doing nothing ... except being motivated to vote for us because we can solve the crisis!

Friday, November 28, 2003

this is more science for you:>>>
Jobs oversees? Another attempt to explain
Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | Nov 27, 2003 | Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.


Posted on 11/28/2003 5:53 AM PST by Huber


The Bush administration has slapped high duties on Chinese TV sets for the alleged problem of "dumping"—which increasingly means selling at prices lower than sets sold by established firms.

Let's leave the issue of dumping for now and examine the claim that jobs are being shipped overseas, which is usually what is said when great foreign products appear in US stores. A number of people have observed that TVs are no longer made in the US. The implication is that at least the Bush administration recognizes a problem. The jobs that used to go into making TVs have effectively been shipped overseas. Why not act?

International economic historian Sudha Shenoy (University of Newcastle) has been at the offices of the Mises Institute, and this topic has come up quite often. She has found herself astounded at the lack of knowledge over trade issues in the US, and alarmed by growing protectionist sentiment. I'll offer a response to the above in a manner that follows a number of points that she has been making about trade.

Let's first watch our language. Jobs are not being shipped, and Americans are not somehow being stopped from making TVs. TVs can still be made in the US. Everyone and anyone is free to invest the money, hire the workers (bidding them away from other pursuits), buy the parts, build the sets, and put them on sale. That the same processes are undertaken in China has no bearing on anyone's freedom to do it here. If you want to make an all-American TV, no one is stopping you.

And yet, as with any other product, the US TV maker must still face the issue of persuading people to buy. The question comes down to the price people are willing to pay for your TV sets versus the prices charged by the competition. To try to sell them at a price that justifies your investment and worker salaries means they would sit on the shelves unsold because the same product or better is available at a cheaper price. You will have to lower your price to sell them, and will end up selling at a loss.

Now, you are free to continue to make losses, or produce TV sets that nobody buys, employing workers and dumping capital into the project, but you must eventually come to terms with the fact that you are not going to make a profit. That you are unique in choosing an economically unviable path would not be surprising. Investors are not so stupid that they continue to pour scarce resources into production (which is always and everywhere directed toward the final end of consumption) that makes no sense.

Now, is it a problem that American consumers (and businesses that import and sell TVs retail) have access to lower priced TVs than can be made in the US? Not at all. It is great for the buyers of TVs and it is great for the economy in general because this frees up capital and labor to be employed in better projects. To force the situation to be otherwise would imply sheer waste: deliberately raising the price of TVs by restricting supply or taxing non-US TVs. This is precisely the Bush administration policy, and it accomplishes nothing but destruction. It is only putting off the inevitable and taxing people in the process.

Then we come to the question of why it is possible to make TVs more cheaply in China than the US. It is a matter of the widening circles of the division of labor. China finds itself in a stage of economic development that allows it to specialize more and more in manufacturing at the expense of agriculture, even as the less developed nations are specializing more and more in agriculture. While this is taking place, more advanced nations are finding it economically advantageous to specialize in the production of goods and services that require more advanced labor skills and more capital expense.

In short, China (as well as South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and many other booming economies) is finding itself in the position that the US was in the early 20th century, while the less developed nations are taking on tasks that used to be performed by the US in the early 19th century. It is globalism of economic processes that account for why the world, and not just the single nation, is the relevant domain to consider in understanding this.

These long-term trends of economic development are part of the blessing given to the world by the free mobility of capital. And so long as markets are free, they are also perfectly capable of adjusting. It is not only good for people around the world that prosperity is rising and the division of labor is expanding; it is good for the US. To wall ourselves off does nothing but subsidize waste.

What about workers who lack the job skills to fit into the higher and higher levels of sophisticated production in which the US is specializing? Because of the existence of scarcity, there will never be a shortage of jobs to do, so long as we live in time and not eternal bliss. The phrase "shortage of jobs" can only be colloquial; there is never a shortage of things to do. It is only a question of price, and the best way to raise the wages is to make sure that people do what they are most suited to do—which can only be known by letting markets work.

High-level production such as the US specializes in refers not to every job but only the dominant industries; within each there also exists a sophisticated division of labor. Not every employee at Microsoft designs software; the firm also provides jobs to packers, shippers, artists, gardeners, and a thousand other professions. Not every employee of the financial industry is a bond trader; rather, a profitable bond business provides jobs to ever widening circles of employment.

Now, some people have been drawing attention to the supposed uniqueness of the current moment in international trade, in the following sense. US companies are not just foregoing certain production processes in order to allow them to be done by the Chinese. Instead, US firms are moving their plants to China, not to sell to the Chinese, but in order to re-import their products into the US to sell.

Is this a uniquely troubling situation? Again, not at all. US business owners have observed a profit opportunity and seized it. The alternative is that US business not notice the opportunity and let others get there first. This would hardly be something to celebrate. It is a testament to the acumen of US businessmen that they can go anywhere in the world, take advantage of local economic conditions and then sell to anyone else in the world. It so happens that American consumers are in a great position to buy the best products from everywhere in the world (so long as their government lets them). Thus do we see the end result of American capital producing for Americans in countries especially suited to host the process, while the US itself hosts ever more sophisticated production.

In the Winter 2003 issue of the Austrian Economics Newsletter, due out soon, Professor Shenoy discusses how the US is just now coming to terms with the long-run trend toward greater levels of development around the world, and why the US had better get used to it and make the adjustment. The Bush administration has done its best to slow down economic development via tariffs and every other manner of protectionism. But this is only delaying the inevitable.

There is no surfeit of wonderful trends in our time, but the progress being made through global trade (progress at home and abroad) is certainly one of them. Leave it to government to try to rob us of the blessings of prosperity and peace that come from trade. And it is no different with trade than with every other area of life. We can permit the market to work or we can hobble it with taxes as it eventually gets its way in the long run. That is our choice. As Professor Shenoy would say, the free market is not perfect, but it is always better than the results that come from any attempt by government to make it better.

Friday, November 14, 2003

Posted on 11/14/2003 9:19 AM PST by aculeus


-The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

-The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.

-The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.

-The Washington Times is read by people who suppose God wants them to run the country, would like to make enough money to understand the Wall Street Journal, and are comforted every morning knowing those who read the New York Times are no longer running the country.

-USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their smog statistics shown in pie charts.

-The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn’t have to leave L.A. to do it.

-The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and they did a far superior job of it, thank you very much.

-The New York Daily News is read by people who aren’t too sure who’s running the country and don’t really care as long as they can get a seat in the subway.

-The New York Post is read by people who don’t care who’s running the country either, as long as whoever’s running the country does something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.

-The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren’t sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority lesbian feminist atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from any country or galaxy, as long as they are Democrats.

-The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.

-The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the supermarket.

Thursday, November 13, 2003

COWS
Email | November 13, 2003 | Me


Posted on 11/13/2003 8:26 AM PST by GYPSY286


I just received this via email and thought it was pretty funny.

DEMOCRAT-You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN - You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

SOCIALIST-You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST-You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE- You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE- You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE- You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION- You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION-You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch and drink wine. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION-You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION-You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION-You have two cows but you don't know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION-You have two cows. You have some vodka. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION-You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they were in the hospital.

IRAQI CORPORATION-You have two cows. They go into hiding. They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION-You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

FLORIDA CORPORATION-You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can't figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking cow.

NEW YORK CORPORATION-You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some fat cow from Arkansas

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION-You have millions of cows Most are illegals. Arnold likes the ones with the big tits.

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

http://www.capitalism.org/
More stuff you gotta love:
Washington Times Op-Ed: The Richest 1%



Dateline: December 18, 2002
Headline: The richest 1 percent
Byline: The Washington Times

So much for Republicans being the party of the wealthy. According to a new study by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, that moniker more appropriately belongs to the Democrats. "Republicans raised more than Democrats from individuals who contributed small and medium amounts of money during the 2002 election cycle," the report notes, "but Democrats far outpaced Republicans among deep-pocketed givers." Among donors who gave more than $200 but less than $1,000, Republicans enjoyed a substantial $68 million to $44 million edge over Democrats. The margin was closer among those individuals who gave $1,000 or more: The GOP took in $317 million, compared to the Democrats' $307 million.

But among the fabulously wealthy, the Democrats cleaned house. Donors of $10,000 or more gave $140 million to Democrats, while only $111 million went to Republicans. Among those individuals who gave $100,000 or more, the Democrats raised $72 million compared to the Republicans' $34 million. And when it comes to the millionaires' club - those kicking in $1 million or more - the Democratic Party skunked the GOP, $36 million to $3 million. Needless to say, despite the near-parity in overall amounts - $384 million to the Republicans vs. $350 million to the Democrats - the number of individual donors to the GOP exceeded those to the Democratic Party by more than 40 percent.

In other words, in 2002 a select group of bigwigs dumped big money into Democratic causes, while a broad base of folks donated respectable [but not overwhelming] amounts to Republican candidates. That goes a long way toward explaining the Democrats' shallow support in the midterm elections, and should give an indication of which party's agenda has been hijacked by the big money-men.

But it also sheds light on the president's first round of tax cuts - arguably the highest-profile domestic referendum in the midterm elections. We can't help but notice that only those who are so stinking rich that money doesn't matter supported the Democrats' opposition to tax cuts. Meanwhile, the many more who form the backbone of America's economy supported the Republicans. As the White House and congressional Republicans prepare a new tax package, we hope they bear that in mind. And just to show that there are no hard feelings, we'll still support tax cuts for the limousine liberals. With all that extra change in their pockets, maybe they'll put it to more productive uses than propping up the rejected policies of the Democratic Party

Friday, November 07, 2003

Rising to the occasion
Larry Kudlow

November 6, 2003

No one seems to have hit on it yet, but there are many reasons why the current economic recovery could easily develop into an eight- or 10-year boom, much like the prosperity cycles of 1982-1990 and 1992-2000. Back at the beginning of each of those recovery waves, few saw the prosperity coming, either. The naysayers, in particular, were completely blind to the potential of a capitalist, market-based U.S. economy driven by science and technology gains.

Today, however, pessimists have little excuse not to see the potential for a multiyear, inflationless, low-tax-rate, low-interest-rate growth cycle -- the key to which is in the amazing productivity story.

In the two decades prior to the technology boom, the ravages of high inflation, skyrocketing interest rates, over-regulation and high marginal tax rates contributed to a measly 1.5 percent average annual increase in productivity, or output-per-hour. But over the past eight years, the application of innovative technologies -- spurred by a wave of capital investment -- has generated a 3.2 percent yearly gain in productivity through boom and bust. This productivity miracle has made the U.S. economy incredibly efficient. It has also enabled businesses of all sizes to slash costs and raise profits. The workforce has never been better equipped, and real wages keep rising.

Economists calculate the nation's potential to grow by adding productivity gains to average population growth rates. In the United States, population tends to rise at a 1 percent rate, so the new-era Internet economy is capable of growing in a sustained long-term fashion at roughly 4.2 percent a year (3.2 percent productivity plus 1 percent population growth). In the old-economy era, America's capacity to grow was only 2.5 percent a year.

Over the next 20 years, the difference between 4.2 percent and 2.5 percent amounts to $6.4 trillion in higher national income. In budget terms, at an average 20 percent tax rate, roughly $1.3 trillion in new revenues will turn deficits into surpluses. At the same time, more growth, investment and work will operate to hold back inflation and interest rates.

While inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon -- a lower dollar value caused by too much money chasing too few goods -- higher productivity and faster economic growth raise the supply of available goods and services that can be purchased with the same quantity of money. Hence, the existing money supply becomes less inflationary in a growth-producing, productivity-enhanced economy.

Other contributors to economic growth have the same counter-inflationary effect. Bringing down high marginal tax rates on individual incomes and capital formation (including dividends, capital gains and faster business-depreciation write-offs for equipment purchases) also contributes to a more rapid expansion of the economic pie.

When it pays more to take the extra investment risk or work the extra hour, economic behavior rises to the occasion. Though demand-side economists seem not to recognize it, the recent Bush tax cuts are not one-time stimulants. The tax cuts on capital gains and dividends won't expire until 2008 -- personal rate cuts extend until 2010.

That means pro-growth incentive rewards for risk and work will be in place for many years, nurturing greater investment and encouraging breakthroughs in the next biotech, Internet telephony or broadband advance. This is the stuff of which powerful prosperity booms are made.

Over the next decade, the tax-cut consequences of proliferating capital formation and goods-producing business expansion virtually eliminate any threat of inflation.

Actually, the strong-dollar combination of lower tax rates, higher investment returns, more rapid technological breakthroughs and even greater productivity gains -- all promoting faster economic growth -- will maintain the pressure for lower, not higher, prices. Hence, the Fed must keep the money spigots wide open.

To a great extent, President Bush has made a supply-side bet on the next election. His Keynesian critics argue that the so-called temporary tax cuts are already wearing off. Consequently, they say, 7 percent GDP in this year's third quarter will be a one-time event -- followed by a tepid jobless economy and Bush's defeat.

But there's another doctor's opinion. Reduced marginal tax rates will sustain the new economic-incentive structure for years to come. Lower taxes will keep on spurring new wealth and higher employment levels far longer than almost anyone dreams possible.

Meanwhile, year two of President Bush's supply-side tax-cut experiment could generate 4 percent to 5 percent growth, as many as 2 million new jobs and a handsome re-election victory. But the really interesting part of this calculus is the potential of another six to eight prosperity years (at the least) following 2004.

Left-wing economic pundit Paul Krugman will be floored. The high-tax Democratic presidential field betting on continued recession will be stunned. And George W. Bush's supply-side re-election will have long coattails for federal, state and local legislatures throughout the land.
This is another friday. Im hoping that things will continue to improve in the job market. These lil 12 $ an slave gigs suck

Friday, October 24, 2003

Today is friday. I like fridays, in fact we probably need two or three of them each week. Since the chat room is broken I will post some stuff here.
Children First America

Friday, July 25, 2003

New Beginings today is a good day, I passed the NETWORK + certification
We Met Online :: Viewing profile Ok folks this is me.

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

TechTV | The Screen Savers
Another beautiful day in the Magic Kingdom