Another entry in the Powerline Prize contest for a media product illustrating the severity of the debt crisis.
Out of the mouths of babes.
Jul 26 2011
Grains of sand
14 trillion and a few hundred billion change is what the federal government owes, right now. It’ll be more like 15 billion by the end of 2011.
Guess who gets to pay it back? Not me. Maybe not you, if you’re middle aged or so. Here’s who will be paying it back, in cash, in kind, in trade, or in economic disaster and unemployment.
Another entry in the Powerline Prize contest.
Jul 26 2011
Swimming in debt
Another high placing (but not quite winning) entry in the Powerline Prize competition for a media product to illustrate the danger of our national debt.
Jul 10 2011
God, Christians and politics
This is just a bit of an excellent article that I commend to you on Government and God’s People
I want to be careful not to make policy pronouncements on specific issues that the Bible does not address. I think sometimes Christians simply have to make decisions based on the results of one policy or another. People can evaluate the factual data in the world in different ways; evaluating the results of different tax policies and things like that. However, on unemployment, there are at least two principles that come into play. One is that we are to care for the poor and those in need, and the Bible frequently talks about the need to care for the poor. I think government has a legitimate role in providing a safety net for those who are in genuine need of food, clothing and shelter.
There is also a strong strand of biblical teaching that emphasizes the importance of work to earn a living. Paul commands people to work with their own hands and gain the respect of outsiders, be dependent on no one. He says if anyone will not work, he should not eat. In the book of Proverbs, it says a worker’s appetite works for him. The longer that unemployment benefits are continued, the more we contribute to the idea that some people should not have to work in order to earn a living, but we should just continue to have government support them. That creates a culture of dependency, which is unhealthy for the nation and unhealthy for the people who are dependent, year after year, on government handouts.
In the book The Battle, Arthur Brooks says that what people need is not money, but “earned success.” The example that comes to my mind is a student at the seminary here who told me that a number of years ago, he had been in jail. He was arrested for the sale of drugs and other crimes, and his life was just a mess. Later, he finally got a job at a fast food restaurant and one day his manager told him he was doing a good job of keeping the French fries hot. All of a sudden, this young man had a sense of “earned success.” That is, he was doing well at something and he felt great about it and it spurred him on to work harder, to seek to receive more managerial responsibility at the fast food restaurant, and now he is a straight-A student at the seminary and has had a number of years of successful Christian ministry already.
So we need to be asking the important questions about how we can we get the economy growing so that more jobs are available.
Jul 08 2011
My article at Renewing American Leadership is up
You may recall an earlier post where I described the humiliation of trying to get a decent photo for another website, to accompany an article I had written for that site. The article is now up at Renewing American Leadership, or ReAL.
BTW, after the debacle of trying to get a decent headshot photo for ReAL, my daughter finally came over with her professional SLR camera and her knowledge of light, shadow, exposure and (certainly not least) her skill at touching up afterwards, to get the picture of me that appears at ReAL. At least she didn’t make me look like I’d just finished the perp walk.
Jul 04 2011
A pink gun can still kill you
The Orange County Register reports that a Transient finds police gun replica under leg.
A Costa Mesa homeless man called Costa Mesa police officers Sunday night to turn in a gun he said he found under his leg after waking up at Lyons Park.
The piece, which turned out to be an air-soft gun, is an exact replica of the 40-caliber semi-automatic Heckler & Koch pistol that Costa Mesa police officers use, Sgt. Clint Diebell said. The gun has the same weight, look, color and feel as the officers’ sidearm. When the slider is pulled or the cartridge is removed, one can see brass that resembles a bullet, Diebell said.
The transient, David Betts, is well known to the local Police Department. He called on his cell phone at 9:26 p.m., put the gun in a white paper bag and waited for the officers at a bus stop.
The gun will be stored in a found property area, Diebell said. If no one claims it, it eventually will be destroyed.
Diebell said owning an air-soft gun that fully resembles a real one is legal, but owners are not allowed to brandish or fire the weapon in a public place such as a city park.
There is so much wrong with this article that it’s hard to know where to begin.
Let’s start with this: the airgun shown above is not a “replica of a ‘police’ gun.” It is a replica of a typical .40 caliber handgun, a real firearm that is entirely legal for civilians to own (and carry, if they can get a concealed carry permit), and which some police officers carry as well. It is not a “police” gun in any sense, unless we plan to start referring to the donuts that police eat as “police donuts,” or the beer that they consume in cop bars as “police beer.”
The next thing that’s wrong with this report is that it isn’t news. A hobo found a toy gun and gave it to the cops because he couldn’t tell the difference? How is that “news”?
I don’t know how much training police receive these days in firearms identification, but I’m fairly sure that the report mischaracterizes Sgt. Diebell’s comments about how hard it is to tell the toy from the real thing. The report makes it sound like the Sgt. thinks it’s hard to tell the difference between the toy and real thing. I suppose that might be true, for someone who has never held or operated an actual hand gun. I’m pretty sure that the Sgt. would be able to tell in about 1 second that it was an airgun, something the reporter chose not to mention. Of course, people who really can’t tell the difference should assume such an item to be a real firearm until they know otherwise. I’ve told my own kids that when they see a firearm-looking item, they should assume it’s ‘real’ till proven otherwise. In what way is this a big deal, and newsworthy?
This sentence says it all, about the reporter’s ignorance regarding firearms: “When the slider is pulled or the cartridge is removed, one can see brass that resembles a bullet, Diebell said.” Guns don’t have “sliders,” they have “slides.” Airsoft ‘guns’ don’t have “cartridges” at all, but they do have little tiny plastic pellets that the user puts in a magazine that is then inserted into the grip of the handgun. There is no “brass” in them. I strongly suspect that the reporter used the word “cartridge” where he should have used “magazine,” since, as I said, airsoft guns don’t have cartridges, let alone ones that can be “removed.”
Why am I belaboring all of this? To make two points:
1) Reporters who report on “firearms related news stories” usually know less about firearms than they do about quantum physics or molecular biology. They don’t have the background to understand what an expert tells them, and so they don’t get the report right. It’s as simple as that. Media outlets usually can’t FIND a reporter to send on such “stories” who knows anything about guns, because these journalism school graduates have mostly never been around them…. which makes you wonder why they fear them so much. Maybe they watch too much TV.
2) The slant of this story is clearly that there is something dangerous about people being allowed to possess toys that look like the real thing. This is clearly meant to be in support of a new law to require them to be pink. But the reporter’s obvious opinion belongs in the editorial pages, not masquerading as ignorantly presented “news.”
By the way, if this idiotic law to require all airsoft guns to be pink actually passes, I expect that some crooks will be painting their real firearms a nice shade of hot pink, just to cause the cops with whom they may be shooting it out to pause that extra deadly second to decide if the weapon is “real” or not.
In the story linked above, would the cop who shot the teen age boy have been able to see that the airsoft gun was pink, in the low light conditions in which the shooting occurred?
The boy was left paralyzed in the shooting, which LAPD officials said occurred when an officer felt threatened because he was unable, in the dark, to distinguish that the weapon involved was a replica of a Beretta handgun.
You really can’t see colors well in the dark, can you?
And what reponsibility does the boy have for failing to comply with reasonable officer commands, and instead running, then brandishing his toy gun at the cops? In the low light, would it have mattered if the toy gun was pink?
It’s worth pointing out that some REAL guns are manufactured pink (and a variety of other bright colors), on purpose, to make them more attractive to women. Maybe the California legislature should make a new law that all real firearms sold in the state must be black or gun metal blue. Just so everyone can tell the difference, you know. Maybe the feminists will weigh in on that suggestion. Or not.
Google “pink airsoft legal California” and “SB 798” for more info and opinions on the proposed law. This is just another example of trying to fix everything in the world so that stupid people who do foolish things won’t suffer for it, at the expense of the freedom of everyone else.
It’s also an example of really bad reporting.
Feb 09 2011
High speed rail? Obama tries to turn economic lead into gold
Obama to call for $53B for high-speed rail
President Barack Obama is calling for a six-year, $53 billion spending plan for high-speed rail, as he seeks to use infrastructure spending to jumpstart job creation.
An initial $8 billion in spending will be part of the budget plan Obama is set to release Monday. If Congress approves the plan, the money would go toward developing or improving trains that travel up to 250 miles per hour, and connecting existing rail lines to new projects. The White House wouldn’t say where the money for the rest of the program would come from, though it’s likely Obama would seek funding in future budgets or transportation bills.
Obama’s push for high-speed rail spending is part of his broad goal of creating jobs in the short-term and increasing American competitiveness for the future through new spending on infrastructure, education and innovation. During last month’s State of the Union address, Obama said he wanted to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail within 25 years.
At the same time he’s calling for new spending on sectors like high-speed rail in the upcoming budget, Obama also has pledged to cut overall spending as he seeks to bring down the nation’s mounting deficit.
Well, to be clear, Obama only called for a “freeze in spending”… a freeze at the ridiculously high levels he set in his first two years. Only his sycophants in the press would call not raising spending even further “a cut.”
In any case, America is not Europe, nor is it Japan. There is not now a demand for high speed rail, nor will there be anytime soon. If there was a demand for it, private interests would be busy investing in it, expecting to make money from it. Obama seems to have learned nothing from the subsidy infested mess that is Amtrak.
I propose a better way to spend the money. He should invest in research in alchemy. Turning lead into gold is probably impossible…. but maybe not. And along the way, spending 50 billion dollars is likely to accidentally result in some real science getting done, something with at least “spin off” benefits, technologically and economically.
So lets hear it for alchemy in the federal budget. That makes a LOT more sense, and is probably a better way to spend large amounts of money, than high-speed rail, which will continue to be a sinkhole for money even after it’s built, which will probably cost a lot more than anyone now projects.
Of course, we all know Obama has no actual hope of doing this. He just brought it up to play to his lefty audience, who love anything that makes people get in lines and wait somewhere. But Obama knows he has no chance of getting this through a Republican House of Representatives. He’s just talking for effect, and public relations with his base.
Still… maybe in trying to turn lead into gold, the scientists would finally discover cold fusion.
Dec 05 2010
Some experiments only prove what is NOT true
California can be seen as a lab experiment that has produced negative results, i.e., it has proved what is NOT true, and what does NOT work, as explained in a somewhat lengthy but very enlightening article titled Lessons from California’s Laboratory. Here’s the introduction. Click the link for the full text.
California is facing serious economic and political problems. How we deal with these problems will affect both California and the nation.
In this first essay of our Advice to the Governor public policy series, the Claremont Institute’s William Voegeli explains that we must strictly limit spending, and we must do it repeatedly rather than just enough to get us through the next budget or election cycle. The path forward is simple but not easy. Ballot measures that seek to restrain budgets and revenues are unlikely to provide lasting solutions unless our legislature and governor are committed to fiscal rectitude. In this long-building crisis, we have great opportunities. As Voegeli puts it, we are likely to see not a teachable moment but a “teachable decade.” The time to act is now, for we cannot escape the inescapable any longer.
As Rahm Emmanuel famously said, it’s a shame to let a crisis go to waste. Pray that California’s new government (really, the same old government) will recognize this, and act accordingly to take this opportunity to make tough decisions and stick to them, even if they are politically unpopular with some.
In the meantime, list your house for sale and start looking for a job in Texas.
Nov 29 2010
Dark energy, expansion, and 2012
Galactic illusion helps refine dark energy abundance
AN OPTICAL illusion has enabled the most precise measurement yet of the abundance of the mysterious dark energy, which is thought to be accelerating the universe’s expansion.
The more dark energy there is, the faster the expansion should be, so measuring the universe’s expansion provides an estimate of the abundance of dark energy.
An optical illusion has enabled the most precise measurement yet of the abundance of the mysterious dark energy, which is thought to be accelerating the expansion of the federal government.
The more dark energy there is, the faster government expands, so measuring the federal government’s rate of expansion provides an estimate of the natural tendency in nature to socialistic dark energy. Very dark energy.
Dark energy is the force the keeps the universe expanding… that is, dark energy is literally blowing up the universe. It is the opposite of gravity, which holds things together.
Recent measurements indicate that socialistic dark energy (which, unchecked, always blows things up) may not be as powerful as originally thought. Despite 2008 predictions widely heard in the media that socialistic dark energy would triumph (leading to the eventual destruction of everything, although that wasn’t widely announced), new measurements made in 2010 seem to indicate that perhaps gravity is somewhat stronger in relation to dark energy than once thought.
Gravity, of course, is another word for capitalism, which tends to aggregate resources in large enough chunks to do something useful with them, to the benefit of everyone, rather like gravity clumping together mass in large enough concentrations (planets) to allow the existence of life.
It just may be that gravity will prove stronger than dark energy. We won’t know for sure until 2012, when a new measurement is planned that will confirm whether or not gravity is sufficiently strong to keep society, and our economy, from flying apart completely.
Maybe the Mayans were wrong.
Nov 17 2010
On Toxic Leadership
Much has been said here and elsewhere about various leaders, both local and global. In particular President Obama has been in these proverbial crosshairs concerning a variety of issues concerning his leadership since taking office.
The recent election would seem to indicate that more and more voters find Obama to be a toxic leader. But he is certainly not the only leader, good or bad, who affect the lives of the constituency under them.
Research is currently being done concerning how and why people find themselves in a workplace environment under leadership that is considered to be toxic. If you’d like to participate in a survey related to the subject of toxic leadership as it may relate to childhood trauma please click on the following link:
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