Happy 100th President Reagan!

Ronald Reagan:  A Defense and a Criticism

Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the 20th Century.  He recaptured America's glory and global respect after the ham-handed buffoonery of the Carter years.  Yeah, FDR must be considered great for his fireside chats and WW II leadership, but his statist economic policies increased the country's misery.  Reagan, on the other hand, knew how to jump start an economy left for dead by liberal experimentation.

Nonetheless, liberal gargoyles like Paul Krugman love to blame all our ills on Reagan, the man responsible for the longest economic boom in our nation's history.  He was not perfect, but on balance, Reagan was a great president, but more importantly, he was a great man of rock-solid values who knew why he believed what he believed.  Here I offer a summary of Reagan criticism (some legitimate), and some links that defend his policies.


Paul Krugman is a dishonest, diabolical troll
Instead of using his education to enlighten Americans about the difficult and dismal science of economics, he chops up facts like firewood and serves up selectively sliced statistics in order to score cheap political points in an attempt to smear this great president.  Ignorant liberals lap it all up and regurgitate it on the rest of us, forcing us to do the homework lazy liberals just won't do.

Practitioners like Krugman use little funhouse mirror tricks to stretch and distort our view.  Yes, some conservatives do it too, but I don't listen to them or repeat their BS.

Most liberal writing on our economic mess is a hopeless tangle.  A typical writer will take crony capitalism, spending, deregulation, bubbles, and poverty, wad it all in a big ball and throw it in Ronald Reagan's face.  The logic is terrible and typically lacks cause and effect. 

Tis true, Reagan didn't shrink the government and he grew the national debt
In return, we collapsed the Soviet Union, freeing tens of millions of Eastern Europeans and got a well-respected kick-ass military to boot.

Add to that the regulatory reform that allowed millions of Americans to start their own businesses and brought structural unemployment to below 5%.  The result was the longest economic expansion in American history, thanks to President Clinton continuing Reagan's policies. What have we gotten for the trillions Obama has spent?  At least Reagan's spending produced results.

For a serious libertarian criticism of Reagan, see free-marketer Sheldon L. Richmon's article, or Murray Rothbard's excellent critique, The Myths of Reaganomics. Their main criticism is he did not roll back government and he spend too much.  These are not liberal screeds, but rather cold-eyed analyses of the facts devoid of any personal criticism of the man.

Reagan was a great man and a great president.  If you want to defend him, you must consider his record, warts and all (no one in the public arena is wart-free).  He did the best he could in an America remade by progressives.  FDR build a clanking, soul-destroying bureaucratic machine, and even the great Ronald Reagan couldn't dismantle it. 

The only way progressives can defend Obamanomics is to turn it all upside down, and that involves taking the success that is Reaganomics and convincing enough soft-headed people that the longest economic expansion in our history was really a failure.

For a serious defense of Reaganism, see the following articles.  There's a lot of liberal BS out there, you'll need to refer to them often:

Reaganomics - William N. Niskanen
Thomas Firey - There Krugman Goes Again
Max Barron - Chief Lib Propagandist Krugman
Reagan Did What? Fantasies of Paul Krugman
Donald Luskin - That Old Hack Magic
Robert Scheer - Krugman Ignores the Real Culprits
Stefan Karlsson
Nick Gillespie - Blame Reagan!
Krugman - Enron's Nobel Advisor

Progressive Logic & Compound Interest II

There have been many calls from progressives for the government to slash military retiree benefits and an independent commission's call for an integrated active and reserve retirement system would put an end to immediate retired pay for active duty members after 20 years.

Under the proposal, retired pay would begin at age 62 for those with 10 years of service, age 60 for those with 20 years, and age 57 for those with 30 years. "There are people who see military retirement, with its immediate annuity as very generous at a time when pensions are disappearing in the private sector" said a house aide, who asked not to be identified.  (Army Times)

Let us take for an example an E-8 with 25 years of service from 1985-2010
In his last three years of service he earns $4499 (as an E-7), $4786, and $4948 in base pay. His high 3 average (which they use to calculate retirement) is $4744 and of that sum he takes home in retired pay 62.5% or $2965 a month, $35,889 a year. Sure seems like a lot, if he lives to the age of 75 the government will have paid him $1,076,400 over 30 years.

Suppose instead this upstanding young soldier had put $100 a month with 200% matching contributions (that's what my company does) for his first 10 years, $150/mo for his next 10 years, and $200/mo for his last five years. The average annual return from the S&P 500 from 1985-2010 was 12.43%. At the end of ten years, with $3600 a year invested, he has $65,000, increasing the contribution to $5400 at the end of twenty years he has $309065, and saving $7200 for the last five he ends with $601,348.

If he moves his portfolio into a more conservative investment earning 6% and is allowed to withdraw the equivalent of his retirement pay at age 45 ($35880/yr) he will still continue earning money on the principal. Withdrawing $35880 a year, he has over the course of time: 5-yr $590,342, 10-yr $575,612, 20-yr $529,525, and at the end of his life at 75 he leaves $446,974 to his heirs. Now if the government had done the same thing with the money it needed to pay for his retirement benefit, almost half a million dollars would go back in the fund. Some will die at 65 some will die at 90, it is these variations that allow the fund to cover everyone.

Effectively the military retirement system is the equivalent of a 401K without the employee contribution and without the age penalty restrictions. With military, federal, state, and other institutional pensions the same general equivalency can be made, the difference between a public and private pension is the government is the fund manager as opposed to a private company. What's sad is that for many years employees with the option to participate in government or private pension options chose the government because they trusted them more, today we see how far that trust was misplaced.


Bernie Madoff is Jealous
The federal, state, and local governments engaged in pension fund management practices that had they been civilian would have landed them in the cell next to Bernie Madoff, and today the progressives blame the retirees for being greedy. Little blame falls on the idolized political candymen who handed out unfunded or underfunded social programs like kibble. Politicians gambled and lost, now it is time to pay the piper and they are more than happy to throw their constituencies to the wolves.

Ask yourself...who's to blame? The retired Army Major, statehouse Secretary, Fireman, Schoolteacher? Or the politicians who played tricks with funding and money that would land them in jail if they worked for IBM? Our politicians pay off one credit card with another, and the Repo-man is catching up.

The Federal Government: A Party to Fraud

Responsible governments bring down criminal enterprises.  In America, the government sponsors them

The Fannie and Freddie cronies, who walked away from the crash they caused with tens of millions stuffed in their pockets, are being defended against fraud charges by the federal government.

Here's a statement from a criminal if I've ever heard one:

"I understand the frustration regarding the advancement of certain legal fees associated with ongoing litigation involving Fannie Mae and certain former employees. It is my responsibility to follow applicable federal and state law. Consequently, on the advice of counsel, I have concluded that the advancement of such fees is in the best interest of the conservatorship."  (NY Times)

That isn't a Fannie or Freddie official, folks.  It's the acting director of the the FHA, a government organization!  The federal government is defending these criminals from fraud charges with your tax dollars, to the tune of over $160 million dollars.  If you're not mad as hell, you're not paying attention.

Some Slogans for the Weekend

I just love ideological slogans.  Here are some of my favorites, with a twist...

Keep your hands off of my discourse!

Celebrate Perversity

Imagine Whirled Peas

My Gun, My Choice

And my favorite (I designed it myself), a takeoff of those irritating and sanctimonious "Diversity" bumper stickers plastered on the back of Volvos, Priuses, and Subarus...

Post your own favorites in the comments section!

Muslim Population set to Double

This is horrible news


Just look at predominately Muslim countries. Is there a good one in the lot? All we hear about from these lands is beheadings, stoning of women and honor killings of daughters, embassies burned down over cartoons, illiteracy, belief in wild conspiracies...

No Nobel prizes, no scientific breakthroughs, no contributions to literature, humane letters or art. Almost anywhere any violent conflicts are going on, Muslims are a party to it.

They seem to have a knack for snuffing the light of reason in every corner they infest. Contrast this with the Christianity-spurred Scholastic movement of the theocratic Christian Middle Ages. Other than a few flare-ups, Christianity rode the enlightenment and the renaissance rather than launch bloody rampages against it. Christianity has had its violent episodes, but it powered the advance of Western Civilization, and now sits content to let earthly powers run the governments. There are no Christian theocracies.

There is some good news, if we can believe it…

Despite the rapid growth of Islam, Christianity seems set to remain the biggest religion in the world for the next 20 years. There are currently more than 2 billion Christians - 30 to 35 percent of the global population - making it very unlikely that there will be fewer than 2.2 billion Christians in 2030.

The report undermines the notion that Europe is heading toward having any country with a Muslim majority. The continent will be about 8 percent Muslim in 2030, it projects.

"The data that we have isn't pointing in the direction of 'Eurabia' at all," Grim said.

"The Muslim population is growing and slowing. Instead of a runaway train, it's trending with the general global population," he said. (CNN)

Muslim numbers are increasing and spreading across the globe, and that is bad news indeed. I say this based upon my observation of the world.

What is the religious status of successful countries? 
The typical successful and free country has a religion-neutral government where practicing believers of various and disparate faiths peacefully coexist with one another and with non-believers. Until Muslims learn to do this, their lands will continue to be snakepits of hatred and economic misery

Can We Learn to let it Burn?

 
Eliot Abrams made a good point on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America. We are not worried about “the people” taking over Egypt when Mubarrak falls; we are worried about the Muslim Brotherhood taking over


The dictators we prop up in exchange for their cooperation end up suppressing the people, not the dangerous organizations we hope to guard against. They squander the breathing room we buy for them, snuffing freedom and giving oxygen to freedom’s enemies.

84% of Egyptians support killing apostates
There is a liberal-conservative tug-of-war going on over the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. Are they terrorists, or are they benign? Given the results of Egyptian public opinion polls, this is an irrelevant question. Caroline Glick injects some reality into the discussion:

According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics.

Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion. ( Caroline Glick)

Take the Muslim Brotherhood out of the question, and Egypt is still a scary society. And those trumpeting the announced partnership between the secular El Baredei and the Muslim brotherhood need to remember a similar partnership in Iran. The clerics joined with the academic left to topple the Shah, then slit their throats and unleashed the Islamic brown shirts once the revolution was won.

It's a crazy world over there and we don't understand it, so why pick winners and losers?

We cannot make Middle Easterners love the US and our western-style freedoms. We don’t even share an understanding of what our basic human rights are.  Our attempts to win them to our side have failed. They’ve got to come around on their own. If they must pass through 100 years of darkness to realize they are wrong, then so be it.

Our further presence there will only bias and distort the decisionmaking of ordinary people. Time for us to abandon these miserable societies to their miserable fate.

Neocon Nightmare or a Come to Jesus Moment?
Neocons and foreign policy realists make a compelling case for staying engaged and even for supporting rotten tyrannical regimes.  There are no good solutions.  But let's stop and ask what would happen if we abandon the Middle East.  Maybe it will burn if we leave, slide into chaos, or rot in hell, who knows? Maybe China will step in to protect its interests.

Maybe the Middle East will melt down.  Maybe it needs a meltdown that will destroy the old dysfunctional order once and for all.  The cognitive dissonance caused by an inflated sense superiority while inhabiting a cultural toilet has driven the Umma to the brink. A drunk needs to land in the gutter before he realizes he needs to change.  Nations and cultures are no different.

What about US?

The most important question is not what will happen to this region and its hordes of of bug-eyed America-hating fanatics, but what are the consequences for us and our national security? How would the cost/benefit ledger settle out if we completely disengaged?

Would it spell disaster for us?  Or would it force cowardly governments inside and outside the region to grow up and shoulder some responsibility?  Perhaps we have vital interests in the region, but we're not the only ones.  Time to force the other players to turn over their cards and face reality.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/01/028255.php
Christopher Hitchens - Shame

When a School District is a Prison Sentence

Veronique de Rugy makes an excellent case for privatizing education by comparing private sector manufacturing (where productivity has increased) with public education (where productivity is decreasing):

Since 1975, manufacturing output has more than doubled, while employment in the sector has decreased by 31 percent. […] These statistics reveal that the average American manufacturer is three times more productive today than in 1975 — a sure sign of economic progress.

That’s exactly the opposite of what the government does. With government, you get, at best, the same service at a higher cost over time.

Take K–12 education, for instance. For years, we have been throwing money at poorly performing schools, yet it has not moved the needle on performance. Over the last 40 years, the federal government has spent $1.8 trillion on education, and spending per pupil in the U.S. has tripled in real terms.

Despite the dramatic increase in spending, there has been no notable change in student outcomes. (National Review)

The message is not that government is inherently bad; it’s not. The problem is that government failures are rewarded with more money so they can continue to fail in bigger and more spectacular fashion; private sector failures dry up and blow away, freeing up capital and people for potentially successful projects. The same needs to happen in education.

Instead, we get stuff like this that really pisses me off…

An Ohio mother's attempt to provide her daughters with a better education has landed her behind bars.

Kelley Williams-Bolar was convicted of lying about her residency to get her daughters into a better school district.

"It's overwhelming. I'm exhausted," she said. "I did this for them, so there it is. I did this for them." (ABC News)

She should get a medal for exposing an unjust law!
A mother lies about her residency in order to get her kids out of a failed school and into a better district and now she’s going to jail. This is an outrage. Will her kids really be better off with their mother in jail?

School districts are in place not for students, but to protect real estate values, ghettoizing the poor in low-property tax areas that doom the underfunded schools to failure.

District boundaries should be erased and all schools should receive more equitable funding. I know I sound like a liberal on this, but if we’re going to publicly fund education, it is illegal and immoral to give the poor and minorities the crappy end of the stick.

The free-market answer is to privatize it all
Let entrepreneurial teachers form small business teaching companies and shop their services. Collapse the department of education and return the money to the states. This will result in the good teachers rising to the top and getting paid more. The bad ones will be looking for another line of work.

Every parent can go shopping, voucher in hand. The bad schools will lose business, forcing the teaching company that runs it to lose its contract, making way for a new cadre of teachers to try their hand.

True, the rich will take their voucher and put their own money on top of it and go shopping for elite private schools, and some teaching companies will specialize in that, but there is no way in a free enterprise system that such activity will consume the entire market. Someone will have to go teach the poor kids for the basic price of the voucher, and there are plenty of great teachers who do that right now. Going free market won’t change that. Teachers teach because they love it, and many enjoy the challenge of teaching “the unteachable.”

If we want to improve education in this country, we need to free teachers from their bureaucratic shackles and stop jailing parents for violating illegitimate rules and boundaries.

Here’s to you Ms. Williams-Bolar. You are a hero in my book, as are those teachers who tirelessly toil in our nation’s worst school systems

War on Cops

On 14 January, eleven police officers were shot in five states in a 24-hour period. 14 officers in all were killed in January of 2011.  In 2010, 162 officers were killed in the line of duty, up from 117 in 2009.

The lunatics are running the asylum. We celebrate a gansta culture, laugh at lawlessness, and worship thugs. Then scratch our heads when stuff like this happens.



Like soldiers, cops don’t need our sympathy, they need our support. 
When some criminal bum files a lawsuit because somebody put his cuffs on too tight, we need to step up and defend our police department, and even encourage legislators to pass laws narrowing the window of opportunity for such legal frivolities.  


A YouTube Viral Video Does Not Tell The Whole Story
I hate when some youtube goes viral because an “innocent protestor” was slammed to the ground by policemen or cuffed and hauled off. Here’s the bottom line folks: a police officer is the law on the scene and must administer justice as the situation warrants. He doesn’t know who you are and all the personalities involved. He just rolled up on the situation and now has to sort it out. Shut your mouth, cooperate and if you’re not a perp you’re on your way. Shooting off your mouth is not going to keep you out of trouble, it just make the situation harder to sort out.

We view these youtubes, like the guy with some sign at an event up in Alaska last year, with full knowledge that the person was harmless. The cops on the scene don’t know that. Anyone could have a knife, a gun or could just be hopped up on meth or some other drug that makes them violent, powerful, and impervious to pain compliance techniques. The police are charged with protecting the public, but they also must protect themselves as much as possible. And yes, they make mistakes, but people acting stupidly and refusing to listen turns a small mistake into a much bigger one.

Cases like Amadou Diallo also go viral. Intellectual luminaries like Bruce Springsteen ask why the cops had to shoot him 41 times? If you believe a perp to be imminently and lethally dangerous, you shoot him, and you keep shooting until he goes down. It’s not like in the movies where you shoot once, or pull a Lone Ranger and shoot the gun out of the perp’s hand. You don’t fire a warning shot and see what happens. If there’s a lethal danger, you put it down.
 
We now know Diallo was not armed, but the officers on that dark night did not. The officer who yelled “Gun!” made a mistake. That mistake would not have happened had Diallo followed orders and simply raised his hands. The policemen would have frisked him, questioned him and he’s on his way. He could have lived to file whatever complaint or lawsuit he felt was necessary if he thought his rights were violated.

It’s a sad fact of life for people in bad neighborhoods that they may sometimes be stopped. It’s even sadder for the police officer killed in the line of duty and the grieving loved ones left behind.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1350523/Police-shootings-America-Sudden-wave-sparks-fears-secret-war-cops.html
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/24/authorities-fear-cops-targeted-officers-shot-hours/?test=latestnews#