Right to Opine

OK, so my curiosity finally got the best of me and I had to head over to the Occupy Wall Street site. Now this is a movement of intellectual giants.

(From the official web site, front page link to the “call to action.”)

First, their principles:

1. If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us.

Um, yeah. Anarchy has a very successful history. Besides, these freedoms exist with reasonable limitations or society simply couldn‘t function. Corporations have done nothing to limit them.

2. If you agree that a person is entitled to the sweat of their brows, that being talented at management should not entitle others to act like overseers and overlords, that all workers should have the right to engage in decisions, democratically, then you might be one of us.

Every individual in the U.S. is already “entitled to the sweat of their brows” as it is. If you don’t like working for a corporation, then don’t. Start your own business. Nobody’s stopping you. But business isn’t and shouldn’t be democratic. Twenty unskilled, uneducated workers very rarely have the business experience or knowledge to make good decisions that a single manager often has. That doesn’t mean managers always call it right—not by a long shot. But the people who have skin in the game, i.e., stockholders, have the legal and moral right to choose the folks who make decisions—it’s their money at risk.

3. If you agree that freedom for some is not the same as freedom for all, and that freedom for all is the only true freedom, then you might be one of us.

And this has what, exactly, to do with Wall St & corporations?

4. If you agree that power is not right, that life trumps property, then you might be one of us.

Yeah, so…?

5. If you agree that state and corporation are merely two sides of the same oppressive power structure, if you realize how media distorts things to preserve it, how it pits the people against the people to remain in power, then you might be one of us.

Let’s see. Wall Street gave significantly more to Obama in the last election. His admin has been full of Goldman employees, etc. The media have slanted leftward for decades. Oh, and conservatives would like to significantly decrease the size and power of the state. So all these protestors are going to vote R instead of D next time around?

And the call for action:

1. We call for protests to remain active in the cities. Those already there, to grow, to organize, to raise consciousnesses, for those cities where there are no protests, for protests to organize and disrupt the system.

Yes, let’s disrupt the system. Gas and food prices are rising. Real income is falling. Let’s turn a bad situation into a full-on disaster.

2. We call for workers to not only strike, but seize their workplaces collectively, and to organize them democratically. We call for students and teachers to act together, to teach democracy, not merely the teachers to the students, but the students to the teachers. To seize the classrooms and free minds together.

Frightening and moronic. Organize workplaces democratically? Right. What, exactly, do the hourly workers at my company know about the physics, chemistry, etc., required to manufacture LEDs and semiconductors? For the most part, nothing. And when they do apply themselves and gain the knowledge and experience required to make good decisions…they get promoted and paid more.

And democracy in the classroom? Please. Our students don’t need more democracy, they need to learn calculus and physics, and how to communicate in coherent English—and they need teachers who actually know those subjects instead of drones who’ve been inculcated with child psychology but couldn’t solve a simple math problem or parse a sentence to save their lives.

3. We call for the unemployed to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to use what skills they have to support themselves as part of the revolting people as a community.

Almost a good idea. Why not focus all that energy and effort into producing goods or services your community wants and needs—and making a profit at it so you’re not only supporting yourself but capable of supporting others instead of leeching off those of us who do productive work?

4. We call for the organization of people’s assemblies in every city, every public square, every township.

Funny. The Tea Party’s been doing just that for a couple years without crapping on police cars or destroying public and private property. The main difference is that Tea Party assemblies naturally disperse after a couple days because they’re comprised of responsible people who have jobs. I guess the next group they’ll direct their misplaced anger at will be the employed.

5. We call for the seizure and use of abandoned buildings, of abandoned land, of every property seized and abandoned by speculators, for the people, for every group that will organize them.

Hold on a second. I thought it was, “power is not right.” Mob mentality. Lovely. And then what? “Organize them” to what end?

Meaningless pablum straight from the pen of Saul Alinsky.

Herman Cain has penned a perfect response to the mindless blatherings of the Wall Street protestors.

Given the current state of the economy, the 2012 presidential race should be Perry’s to lose. If he fails to take advantage of this opportunity…

Money quotes:

Adversarial unionism is one reason the Midwest slumped. It turns out that the 1970 assembly line, with union shop stewards always poised to shut it down, was not the highest stage of human economic development. When you make labor more expensive, you create incentives to invent new machines and create new jobs elsewhere. Foreign auto manufacturers built plants in a South recently freed from state-imposed racial segregation. With no adversarial unions, management and labor could collaborate and achieve quality levels the Big Three took decades to match.

and

Mr. Perry points out that his state, with low taxes and light regulation, has been producing nearly half of America’s new jobs.

Perry needs to avoid discussing the other Republican candidates and focus entirely on the things Texas is doing differently, why they are working when liberal policies in other states are failing, and how they can be extended to the country at large. It’s hard to argue against success.

The left in America would have us become more like Europe: a largely secular society with cradle-to-grave “security” provided by the government. After seeing the rioting in England—public depredations that can only be described as evil—I’ll pass.

MOBS have begun stripping people and taking their belongings as police struggle to control riots in London and in other major English cities…

A young man is shown being forced to hand over all of his clothes after appearing to be stripped naked during the third night of lawless riots…

Another picture which emerged shows an unnamed woman completely naked next to a police officer after apparently having her clothes taken from her…

…another shocking video shows a bleeding teenager being robbed in broad daylight by lawless thugs who pretend to help him to his feet.

[Note the stirling security provided by the British government. The Bobbies—yes, that’s one ‘o’ and two ‘b’s, not the other way around—can’t control the mobs, and the people have been entirely disarmed by their own government so that they can’t protect themselves. But that’s a whole ’nother can-o-worms.]

And what are they rioting over? The big-government teat at which they’ve been feeding is drying up. This is swiftly becoming a recurring pattern—riots in Greece, France, and England by a populace weakened and spoiled by decades of government coddling. Once people grow accustomed to being cared for, they lose the ability—and the moral determination—to care for themselves. Think that couldn’t happen here? Yeah, I’d have thought the same thing a few decades ago when I lived in Europe and visited the U.K. with my family. But I was young and naive then.

The most recent NY Times/CBS poll shows what many of us have feared for a while (and the last presidential election confirmed): Americans are confused, self-contradictory, and clueless. Consider:

Mr. Obama has considerable support for his proposal to end tax cuts for those households earning $250,000 a year and more: 72 percent of respondents approved of doing so as a way to address the deficit.

[…]

Given the choice of cutting military, Social Security or Medicare spending as a way to reduce the overall budget, 45 percent chose military cuts, compared with those to Social Security (17 percent) or Medicare (21 percent.)

Sorry folks, that’s not going to solve the deficit problem. You could tax everyone in that bracket at 100% and you still wouldn’t put a dent in our deficit. There just aren’t enough folks making that kind of dough to make a difference. And even if you shut every branch of the military completely down, we wouldn’t break even. Not even close.

55 percent of poll respondents said they would rather have fewer services from a smaller government than more services from a bigger one, as opposed to 33 percent who said the opposite, a continuation of a trend in Times/CBS polls.

[…]

Twice as many respondents said they would prefer cuts in spending on federal programs that benefit people like them as said they would favor a rise in taxes to pay for such programs.

Yet more than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they believed Medicare was worth the costs. And when asked specifically about Medicare, respondents said they would rather see higher taxes than see a reduction in its available medical services if they had to choose between the two.

Yep. Americans want it all. Fewer services from a smaller government. Spending cuts instead of higher taxes. More Medicare (as it grows rapidly) and higher taxes. Which is it? You really can’t have it all.

The opposition by Tea Party supporters to raising the level of debt the nation can legally carry was shared by nearly two-thirds of poll respondents, including nearly half of Democrats…

OK, so in a nutshell, we’re going to cut spending but we can’t touch the biggest fiscal boondoggles (Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid) on the ledger. We’re going to raise taxes, but only on the “rich” (tell that to a two-income family in CA who makes $250K but pays more than $500K for a small home on top of exhorbitant state income taxes; no, wait—they deserve it for repeatedly electing the craziest state government in the union). We can’t increase our debt limit but at the same time we can’t cut the entitlement programs that make up the bulk of federal spending.

Basically we want everything but we don’t want to actually pay for it. We’ve become the perfect credit card society. This can’t last long, folks.

Throughout the current recession Hyundai has not only remained profitable but has significantly expanded its manufacturing presence in Alabama and Georgia. Other foreign auto makers have had similar success. Why is it that the Big Three in Detroit have struggled so much—with two being handed generous taxpayer-funded bailouts—while we hear nary a peep about Honda, BMW, Hyundai, etc., who all have plants here?

The United Automobile Workers union has long tried to organize plants in the United States operated by foreign carmakers, most of which are in the South, but has yet to succeed anywhere.

No unions. Unencumbered by the dead weight of the UAW, foreign makers are able to offer competitive salaries and benefits while remaining competitive and profitable in a down market. Workers at GM, Chrysler, and Ford could learn a valuable lesson from this. Will they?

Remember just a couple years ago when the U.N.’s IPCC issued a report claiming the Himalayan glaciers were melting—due to man-made global warming, er, “climate change”—and would disappear within a few decades? Well, we already had good reason to believe that was false because the head of the panel—Dr. Rajendra Pachauri—has acknowledged the claim was made based on unchecked research, although

he maintained that global warming was melting the glaciers at “a rapid rate”, threatening floods throughout north India.

Well, hold onto your hats, because even that isn’t true.

Researchers have discovered that contrary to popular belief half of the ice flows in the Karakoram range of the mountains are actually growing rather than shrinking.

You read that correctly. And the research was done by scientists at the University of California—not exactly a hotbed of right-wing conservative climate change skepticism.

“Anthropomorphic global warming” is nothing more than a tactic to throttle private industry and increase governmental (and U.N.) control over the economy. This becomes clearer with each new revelation.

While the rest of the world expands oil drilling, we shut it down and will inevitably wind up buying even more of what we need from foreign sources. While sucking the energy life-blood out of our own economy we pour billions into other nations’ oil ventures. Brilliant, that.

The newly-elected Republican majority headed to the House of Representatives in January has one general mandate: reduce the size of government. This sounds good to voters, who are understandably upset by the massive expansion of the federal government during the last two years—and with the unaffordable price tag which accompanies it. When it comes to actual spending cuts, however, many Americans start to squirm. If you talk about cutting the defense budget you’re unpatriotic. Education? You’re racist or don’t care about the future of our country. Entitlements? You’re unsympathetic toward the poor.

The truth is that in order to get federal spending under control, we will likely have to make cuts in every area of spending, but the one area that is going to need the biggest overhaul—because it by far accounts for the largest portion of federal spending—is entitlements. Most thinking people agree that Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are unsustainable in their current forms, but changing them is going to be a years-long process that may not have a visible impact for more than a decade. There is, however, one entitlement that should be cut significantly: food programs.

The Wall Street Journal headline was dire: “Hunger Afflicts More U.S. Households.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, around 15% of American households “struggled with low food security in 2009.”

The USDA defines food-insecure households as those that have difficulty at some time in the year providing adequate food for all of their members.

And

Roughly a fifth of the U.S. population participated in at least one federal food-assistance program

But are federal food programs really the solution? Obesity rates among the poor are significantly higher than in the middle and upper classes. While there are numerous reasons for this, as federal food programs have increased so has the rate of obesity in the lower classes.

One major problem is the way in which these programs are administered. The SNAP/EBT program gives out a card which is used like a credit card. Abuses of this system have been highly publicized, including purchasing such non-food items as alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and even cash withdrawals. (There are many such accounts from a variety of states.) The first step toward cutting waste in the program, then, should be to either distribute staple foods directly, or return to the food stamp system whereby stamps can only be exchanged for specific food items.

Another, larger, question is whether this program is necessary in its current scope. According to the Cellular Telephone Industries Association 91% of Americans have cell phones. And the Television Bureau of Advertising notes that 90% of American homes have satellite or cable TV. These are not necessities, but luxury items. In effect, food programs are a federal subsidy for the cable and cellular industries. Many recipients have money they could spend on food, but choose to spend it on other things because the government is feeding them. This level of technology penetration indicates that we could cut food programs by roughly one third—and require more Americans to take responsibility for their own needs.

No one wants the poor to go hungry, but federal food programs are not ensuring the health of the poor, are wide open to abuse, and are simply not necessary to the extent to which they are provided. Not only can we cut them back—we should.

Two American companies have announced plans to create around 60 “high calibre” jobs in Ireland (approx. $50-60K/year). That’s not really the big story here, though, as 60 jobs is just a drop in the 9.6% unemployment bucket.

In recent weeks, there have been several jobs announcements from US companies investing in Northern Ireland.

Now why would American companies be interested in creating those jobs overseas instead of here? It’s simple, really. Our current administration and its lackeys in Congress are anti-business. Every time Republicans have suggested cutting the corporate tax rate in order to encourage business expansion on our shores, the left lobs accusations that Republicans: are in the pocket of the ueber-evil big business, favor Wall Street over Main Street, etc., ad nauseum. The truth is that Ireland has a corporate tax rate of 12.5% compared to our 39%. Sometimes economic reality is stunningly obvious.