Official Statistics

I will admit, that I will use statistics just as much as the next guy.  I don't have a problem using statistics.  There is no evil in the statistics themselves, as data is amoral.

But there is an old saying in America: "Figures never lie, but liars can figure."

Data doesn't manipulate itself, but it does get manipulated.  People who want gun-control are notorious for doing this.  Politicians come up with stunning ways to spin facts and figures. Two of the easiest ways to do this are to either include way too much information, or leave out a lot of information.  This little essay has to do with the latter.

Take a look at this graph:

See that dip down to zero at 1919 to 1925 area?  That's because of the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the subsequent Volstead Act.  Since this graph depicts the number of permits,* I have no problem with this graph.  It makes perfect sense.  The graph would be idiotic if it didn't show the number of licenses for producing alcoholic beverage dropping to zero during the time of prohibition.

But let's look at another graph:

Take your time and ponder it slowly. 

This second graph made the claxons go off in my head.  The question is, can you see the problem with this graph?  Anyone?  Anyone?   Bueller? 

Well, you would have to know the rest of the story.  There were a few characters who became famous during the prohibition era, and most notably two.  One of them was far more honest than the other one and spent 11 years in Federal prison for it.  The other guy was lucky enough to be born the son of a prominent politician in whose footsteps he would follow and use his prestige and connections to sock away millions of dollars under the cover of legitimate business.  Read the passage below to figure out who.

"By 1925, New York was filled with speakeasy clubs that sold liquor illegally. Some historians say there were 30,000 to 100,000 speakeasy clubs operating in the city, several of which were well known as watering holes for government officials. Prohibition was an attempt to control and reduce the amount of liquor sold in the states, but like most laws, all it did was drive up the price of the regulated item and stimulate the growth of a well-organized underground black market.
One of the most famous names associated with bootlegging liquor at the time was Joseph P. Kennedy – the successful investor, businessman and political leader. Kennedy traveled to England with President Roosevelt's son, James, and made a deal to be the exclusive distributor of scotch, gin and bourbon from Scotland and England. Kennedy had the connections, the warehouses and the money to make the deal, which became a cash cow for him and the family.
One of the reasons the Kennedy bootlegging stories seem accurate is Joseph's association with Samuel Bronfman, the founder of Distillers Corporation based in Montreal. Bronfman specialized in cheap whiskey and took advantage of Prohibition in the United States by bootlegging his whiskey to cities like Boston, New York and Chicago.
Kennedy and Bronfman became business partners of sorts when Bronfman bought Joseph E. Seagram & Sons in 1928, but some kind of relationship developed a few years earlier when Danny Walsh and his crime syndicate bought liquor from the Bronfman-run group. Kennedy had contacts with many Irishmen in Boston at the time and Danny was on that list. Some historians say Kennedy didn't have to be a bootlegger; just about every other Irishman in Boston was."

Why didn't I use the Wikipedia entry or a dozen others?  Because the conquerors are the ones who write history, not the slaves.  Too much of the Kennedy dynasty is still alive and kicking.  But I digress.  That's not the main point of this post. The main point is in the first paragraph of the passage.

If I presented a graph showing marijuana consumption in the U.S. based on sales in retail outlets across all fifty States, I think you would fall out of your chair laughing.  Why?  Because everybody with an I.Q. above room temperature knows that tens or hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cannabis goes up in smoke every year in America.  Are you starting to see the problem with graph number two?

The United States has the peculiar distinction of having a major, multi-billion dollar, nearly exclusively spectator sport that owes its existence to one thing: Prohibition.  That sport is NASCAR.
Please don't cite Wikipedia for me.  I'm from the Southeastern U.S.  I know too many people who are proud as hell to regale you with stories of their fathers outrunning the Feds in cars made fast out of necessity.  We still have names of roads in the deep south that reflect the prohibition era and running moonshine.

The point I'm making, if you haven't already guessed it, is how incredibly silly is that second graph. Does anyone really believe that Al Capone, and probably hundreds of others, made millions of dollars while alcohol consumption dropped to nearly zero?  When you see statistics or figures presented, learn to think.  Ask questions.  Ponder what data might be missing.  Cogitate over who's presenting the data and why.  Anybody who accepts that second chart above without any qualms or questions makes me think of this:

 

But then that's what the global elite have been working so hard for anyway.

 

Now, how long are you going to believe that this whole "War-on-drugs" is a good idea?

 

After the coming meltdown or TEOTWAWKI, if there are enough free people still alive to start a new society and we can write a new Constitution, the following would be two of the articles that I would fight for:

 

 

Article [#] 

Since history has proven that inanimate objects are inherently amoral and can do nothing outside of the hands of man, and since it is self -evident that a person's body is his sole and inviolable property to care for as he sees fit, no branch or any other entity of government shall ever have the power to make any object or thing, whether inanimate or tangible, or even intangible to be banned or restricted or regulated.  This article shall be exempt from repeal or modification by amendment so long as this entire Constitution is in effect.

 

Article [#]

It being obvious to people of reasonable intelligence that there can be no such thing as a crime where there is no victim, no branch or entity of government shall ever have the power to enact any legislation, statute, act, or code which makes any activity illegal or unlawful which does not harm or infringe upon the rights, person, or property of another individual.

 

What say you?

*permits and licensing are an evil and abhorrant thing in a free society.  I hope to do a post in the future that explains why there is no need for any kind of licensing in a free society and just how it actually harms society through the auspices of government.

Free Market Realities

Anyone who's read more than a few posts at this tiny little blog is probably pretty sure I'm a stark raving conservative.  Oh hell, just run down the sidebar.  You don't even have to actually read a post.

So, you might think that I would sympathize with the owner (or former owner?) of a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, from whence the picture below comes.

Many thanks for this reference to Maggie's Farm.

Well, I have no sympathy whatsoever for James Chu.  He chose to fight the free-market, and thus his customers and he lost.  And that's the way it should be.

When I had my own home repair and remodeling business, I knew never to tell a customer that they were wrong for wanting anything that was a matter of aesthetics or style or taste.  Outside of anything that was absolutely necessary to get the job done correctly, anything in the variable or optional range was purely at the discretion of the customer.

It's been no secret that over about the last fifteen years, people all over the world have been waking up to the fact that MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) is both an excitotoxin and neurotoxin.  You may not be convinced, and James Chu might not be convinced, but there is enough research and evidence available that myself and millions of others know that we don't need the risk.  As for the gluten, we aren't talking about the gluten that naturally occurs in the plain old wheat or other grains that our grandparents thrived on.  Today a lot of the cheap commercial wheat flour, sold in 25 to 50 lb. bags to restaurants and bakeries, is genetically modified (probably Monsanto patented) to contain double or triple the amount of gluten, but not natural gluten. They did that to make bread have that great chewy texture with only about a third of the kneading time and resting time that is required for regular bread production, thus cutting production time and increasing profits.

No, I'm not against profits.  Not at all.  If you can find a way to increase your profits, good on ya, mate.  But the consumer has (or should ALWAYS have) the right to decide if your resulting product is something they want to consume, and they should have all the information to make that decision.  If you want to eat all the foods that are processed and genetically modified and have cellulose fillers from pine trees and laugh at me for not wanting to put that stuff in my body, . . . well,  KNOCK YOURSELF OUT!

 I'd never heard such a thing as a gluten allergy until about ten years ago.  Today, I think about 1 in 10 people I meet has a gluten allergy that became so severe that it drove them to the endocrinologist to find out what was making them so ill.

If James Chu wanted to not only stay in business but even thrive, he should have listened to the customers and provided what they wanted. 

I'm living in a rural area of Kentucky right now.  In this whole city where I am, there is one little health food store.  It's in a great location in the biggest shopping district.  The population here is about 20,000 in the city limits, within a 6 mile radius of the shopping district, about 35,000 people.  This little health food store is barely hanging on.  Why?  Because this is rural Kentucky.  People still smoke in some of the little Mom & Pop establishments.  There's an empty business space on main street that used to be a gym.  There's another one on an adjacent street that used to be a yoga place.
There is not a synagogue within 100 miles of here.

How long would I survive as a businessman if I opened up a Kosher Deli here?  These people have never heard of knishes or falafel or gefilte fish, let alone would they try it.  How stupid would I be to blame the people who live here for not wanting to buy stuff they don't want to eat?  I would be outraged if anyone blamed me for the local Waffle House closing down because I don't want to eat at a place that cooks pork and eggs and potatoes all on the same grill surface.

James Chu is like a guy who is angry because he decided to sell computers that use 3.5" floppies and only have 586 mb of RAM and he's pissed off because nobody is buying. I once lived in an area of Atlanta where a small Mom & Pop Pizza place opened up.  They quickly discovered that the immediate neighborhoods were full of both Jewish and Muslim families.  They made their establishment completely kosher, or halal if you will.  They made sure they had no pork or shellfish products and they advertised it on their menus, takeout and delivery.  The Domino's and Papa John's places within 10 blocks couldn't match the Mom & Pop's place combined.  That's the beauty of competition.

Notice what the wording of the sign reveals:  "We're closed because of you customers."   He revealed that he didn't think of them as his customers.  That's getting off on the wrong foot right from the get-go.  James Chu failed the reality test of natural selection in free market economics.  Phony conservatives, or what some might call "Neocons," might support James Chu, but I'm a real conservative.  I believe in free choice for everyone.  For James Chu and people who might have wanted to be his customers.

That also means that no money taken from taxpayers should ever be used to subsidize any business.  None, whatsoever.  Not dairies. Not soybean farmers. Not peanut farmers.  Not oil companies. Not chemical companies. Nobody. Ever.  There should be no FDA or USDA or any of these agencies who rubber stamp toxic crap so the gullible public can say, "It must be safe, the FDA approved it."
Check out the stories on Youtube just on aspartame, (NutraSweet).

Freedom means taking responsibility for your own life and health.  Do your homework. Otherwise don't bitch when you end up sick, with Alziemers, or multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson's or Fibro-myalgia or a dozen other conditions that were never heard of a 100 years ago.  Sorry, went a little off topic.  I'll stop here.

Shalom and Shanah Tovah

How we got here

ATTENTION:  This is reposted with corrections for the videos and other little details.

If I was forced to blame the current economic recession, malaise, problems (use whatever term you like) on only one thing, it would be ignorance of most of the people.  Ignorance of both history and economics.  And I do mean real economics and not Keynesian theory, which is why I say both history and economics. History proves which economic models work and which ones don't.

Notice the fact that the largest reserves of petroleum energy in the world, more than all of the middle east and Venezuela combined, is laying underneath United States territory. The only close second is Russia, providing 90% of Europe's oil.

 

By the way: you won't find this information easily on the internet anymore.
 The above image is from 2011.  Such info has mysteriously vanished from most sites.  Just like some of my info on this blog has mysteriously vanished. 

Thanks to Jerome Corsi's book on the oil conspiracy, we can now know what most of the rest of the world knows: that petroleum is abiogenic. There is no such thing as "fossil fuel."  Crude oil and natural gas are not made from formerly living things, but by a chemical process in the earth's crust that a couple of Nazi scientists discovered during or before WWII.

We have the greatest technology. We have the greatest basic infrastructure.  We have no lack of consumers who would be happy to purchase goods made right here on American soil.

We have plenty of scientists who know that we could build incredibly safe reactors that would use super cheap and abundant thorium.  Before you watch the video, I want to make a couple of points.  About 40,000 people die every year in the U.S. in vehicle accidents.  About 800,000 people die from standard, non-malpractice medical care.  Just to help you keep the deaths from coal in proper perspective.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayIyiVua8cY

Of course that's not the only way to improve our energy situation. The bloom box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shkFDPI6kGE

But of course, this government would rather throw money down the black holes of solar panels (Remember Solyndra?) Or windmills that nobody wants (NIMBY).

But I say all that to get to the question: What's the real reason we are in this situation?

Nip It In The Bud

Ever use that phrase?  Know where it comes from?  So many of our cliches in life come from agrarian sources.

This phrase speaks to stopping the growth of something you don't find desirable.  I used to grow a lot of roses in Florida, and I took great care doing it.  It involves an almost constant pruning to produce nice long stems and big showy blossoms.  You nip a lot of small buds in order to get nice ones where you want them.

When it comes to weeds, anybody trying to grow nice stuff knows the difficulty of controlling weeds if you don't take precautions early on.  The trick to keeping yourself from being frustrated to death by out-of-control weeds is to not let them get started in the first place.

This post was prompted by a post written by Oleg Volk.  It's very short and worth the read, but it made me realize that we need to deal with how the problem arises in the first place.

Losing your personal and individual liberties is very much like the weed problem.  With the exception of the military, collective punishment has no place in a free society.  In the military, the teamwork necessary to survival in battle is ingrained by both collective reward and punishment.  But in the civilian population of a country based on freedom and rule of law that protects individual rights, collective anything is a very bad idea.

As a society, we've allowed the weeds of collective punishment to permeate our lives.  It mostly starts in the government schools (nothing public about them).  Children are taught to conform early on to all kinds of standardization and individuality and talent is not only not nurtured, it can be downright squashed.

It starts there and then it migrates in society to all levels and age groups.  I would never live in a neighborhood that has "Deed Restrictions"  or "Covenants."  You can do it if you want to, but you better pay close attention to all the fine print in that 200 page contract that will attract the nosiest busybody who really will pay attention to what kind of patio furniture you have, what color you paint the house, and what brand of trash receptacle you use.

We teach our children that if you excel, you are hurting the self-esteem of someone else, so don't excel.  We let the world, media, television, the indoctrination centers (school) tell our kids that we should all have the same stuff, and that if someone else has more, he must have gotten it because he's greedy and evil, not because he worked hard and provided other people with things that they needed or wanted and was thus rewarded for his effort.  Children are treated like idiots when they are allowed to play soccer, so long as they don't keep score.  Little boys can't possibly be allowed to be little boys and trained to control their energy and enthusiasm without the use of drugs.  No.  They must have some mythical condition called ADD or ADHD, which never existed until the late 20th century and doesn't exist anyplace but the U.S.

Not everyone who reads this will feel the same way I do.  I know that there are plenty of people out there that will go along with the collective ideas like sheep or lemmings, simply because it makes them feel safe.  Not one shred of real thought goes into it.  It's all based on feelings.  They can see a guy with a gun on his hip out in public and just start freaking out.  But if they see a uniform, a radio, a handcuff holster and twin magazine holsters holding an additional thirty rounds of ammunition, that's okay.  Never mind that the person with the gun is still a human being,  or that cops have gone to prison before for murder.  But I digress.

We need to fight this collective indoctrination at every turn.  This is why I hate unions so much.  Unions are for losers who don't want to excel.  They want to hide in the anonymity of a large group and just get by with doing enough to be passable or less.  It is absolutely criminal that anyone working for taxpayer money has anything remotely like collective bargaining.  Of course the only thing that is going to bring that to an end now will be the financial collapse of all the government entities that allowed it to go on.

It's one thing for the teacher to not allow gum chewing in class because it interferes with the child's ability to speak clearly.  It is quite another to not allow it because a few children were irresponsible and stuck their wad under the desk.  That teaches the child that a few bad people can just mess it up for the majority.

We live in such an upside-down world.  We subsidize those who choose to do nothing to improve their own situation.  We punish those who seek to be the best that they can be.  Then the media laud and celebrate those who denigrate the values of those who made the right choices and champion the so-called "rights" of the dregs of society to demand the fruits of the labor of the productive.

Whenever individual problems are dealt with by collective means, the result is loss of freedom.  From chewing gum to alcohol or drugs and even guns.  The founding fathers were right.  The government that governs best, governs least.

Conservatives and Corporations

One of the big myths of the left is the idea that conservatives love big corporations.  This myth gets perpetuated because leftists have a severe problem with language. So much so, that the subject could be a very large post all on it's own.  But I'm going to proceed from here on the assumption that most people following this blog so far actually can understand that words have fairly fixed meanings and that there reasons why we have different words for different concepts.

If you are new to this blog, you need to be aware that I have provided a glossary in the right sidebar for your convenience.  This is necessary because leftists and many people who have been indoctrinated in government "schools" may have some bizarre ideas about what some words mean.  I'm not going to leave that to chance on this blog.  Bearing that in mind; on with the post.

True conservatives don't like big corporations for the very same reasons that we don't like big government.  They tend to grow impersonal and inflexible.  They tend to be less responsive to individual needs and desires.  Daphne over at Jaded Haven had a post not long ago about swearing off going to the "big-box" stores and sticking to the smaller stores.  I had been on that bandwagon for a while already, though admittedly there were some things I had to get at such places that I couldn't otherwise buy, but for the most part, if I can patronize my local small proprietor, that's what I do.

In all of the talk about the economy and how bad it is, the left, and of course that includes the mainstream media talk about how capitalism has failed.  Now they use the word capitalism hoping all the mindless drones will associate it with a free market economy.  That is an easy assumption to make since people who would vote for democrats and even many who vote for republicans don't really understand any of those terms or how basic economics works on practically any level.  If you believe that Paul Krugman understands economics because he was given a Nobel prize for economics then you probably believe that a Nobel peace prize should have been awarded to a "Palestinian" terrorist from Egypt.

For those of us who actually do understand basic economics and the terms used, we would like to know  how a system could fail when it hasn't been used in at least 40 years, and in many areas, far longer? Let me put it another way.  Pretend that the economy is a Boeing 747.  Free-market capitalism demands that we obey the laws of aerodynamics. You have to maintain the aircraft to minimum standards and you can't just load it any way you want to, and you can't make it do things outside of its flight envelope.  But the government steps in and says you have to load it with 20,000 pounds more than its recommended gross weight and you have to use 10,000 pounds less fuel than what's needed to get from L.A. to Honolulu, now just go make it work.  We are the government.  We want it to work that way.  It should work that way. We have the authority and we are going to see to it that you do it that way.  Then when the plane crashes, the government says that the aerodynamics just don't work anymore.  The people flying the plane just didn't know what they were doing.  Forget aircraft from now on.  We will build a bridge to Hawaii. This will put more people to work.

I don't think anybody reading this blog can name a single industry that produces anything that isn't subject to all kinds of ridiculous and unnecessary regulation.  Go ahead and try to think of one.  Even a small one.  The interference of government at all levels makes it extremely hard for even the smallest of business to get started or squeeze out a modest profit, and that's before they are faced with any competition.  Then when small businesses are up against big corporations who have the advantages of large-scale buying power, specialization and division of labor to control costs and the ability to lobby legislation in their favor; it takes Herculean effort to just survive in such an environment.

I ran across the following quote by someone who is on the leftist side of economics who actually has a functioning brain.  The following is only the first of three paragraphs quoted at Samizdata.net as the quote of the day for January 11, 2011

I know, my friends, that you are concerned about corporate power. So am I. So are many of my free-market economist colleagues. We simply believe, and we think history is on our side, that the best check against corporate power is the competitve marketplace and the power of the consumer dollar (framed, of course, by legal prohibitions on force and fraud). Competition plays mean, nasty corporations off against each other in a contest to serve us. Yes, they still have power, but its negative effects are lessened. It is when corporations can use the state to rig the rules in their favor that the negative effects of their power become magnified, precisely because it has the force of the state behind it. The current mess shows this as well as anything ever has, once you realize just what a large role the state played. If you really want to reduce the power of corporations, don't give them access to the state by expanding the state's regulatory powers. That's precisely what they want, as the current battle over the $700 billion booty amply demonstrates.

I wrote before about eliminating many agencies of the Federal government because they not only produce nothing of value and instead are just giant incinerators burning up the blood, sweat and tears of the productive American workforce, but they actually do harm in the very areas they pretend to be proponents of.  The agencies that regulate do this in three ways.  First, there is the income tax. Governments that are limited to just the things that governments ought to be concerned with don't need to tax people's income. We did fine without one prior to 1913.  Secondly, the increased cost of regulation on everything from bookkeeping to safety, takes away from the potential profits that in turn could increase the pay of an employee.  And if it isn't hurting the pay of the employee, then it is artificially raising the cost of the goods or services to the consumer.

Now, if you are a really big corporation or one among only a few, it would be a lot easier for you to do business and protect your profit margin by squeezing out all the smaller competition and creating an environment where nearly all the demand is driven to you.  Such an arrangement may not perfectly fit the definition of a monopoly, but it's close enough.  Then when the government does find an excuse to take it over, now we've descended to socialism.

In my small remodeling and repair business, I would have loved to have hired some young kid on even a part-time basis to just be a gopher and clean up person who could learn a little at a time and start developing some valuable skills.  But it wasn't worth it to me to have to pay even minimum wage for such unskilled work, and especially when there was too much of a possibility that a lot of my invested time in teaching could just end up going down a hole because I didn't know how many kids I might go through before I found one who understood the concept of apprenticeship.

There were times when I wanted to learn a new specialized skill and was even willing to apprentice myself to somebody's business for minimum wage and no benefits just so I could get the training, but was turned down because of regulation and insurance requirements.  What should have been a simple contract agreement between me and another businessman was thwarted by government interference.

True conservatives don't like huge corporations because they also tend to be breeding grounds for unions.  Unions are inherently anti-individual.  Most union members love the idea of being able to hide their own mediocrity in the collective.  Why work harder to get ahead when you can rely on the union leadership to intimidate management?  Unions thrive on fostering and maintaining an adversarial relationship between management and workers.  Who suffers from such a condition?  The customers.  You can see it in the differences between airlines and grocery stores.  I think hell would have to freeze over for me to have a reason to get on a commercial flight due to the TSA and that joke known as Homeland Security, but if I had to fly I would want to go on Southwest, not United or Delta.  I love shopping at Publix, but I can't stand Kroger.  That's based not on the comparison of two stores, but more than 30 stores across two States.  It always comes down to the attitudes of the employees that I encountered in those stores.  The better the company, the better the management, the better they treat and compensate their employees, the less likely they are to go union.

Conservatives like freedom.  Freedom means there's going to be competition.  Freedom of choice means that quality gets rewarded and poor products and services die a natural death. Big government regulation and subsidy both interfere with that process.

Centralized Medical Care

This video does a fairly good job of explaining what socialized medicine means.  But I wish the creators of it had used different voices for the two characters to make a better distinction of who's talking.

Other than that one criticism, it is definitely worth 7 minutes of your time.