Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Monday, November 26, 2012
New Cover
Now, I need to finish the "How did we get into this?" portion (about 150 standard paperback pages, 34,500 words so far), then decide if "How do we get out of it?" will be in this book, or a sequel.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Count Every Vote?
One of the funny things the Socialist loves to do is confuse issues. Any old issue will do, and one of their favorite issues to muck around with is voting. It does not matter where the voting happens, some Socialist will be starting a conversation about it, long on emotion and short on facts.
One of the ironclad facts about USA Presidential elections is the Electoral College casts all of the votes that count. There are plenty of good reasons for this and one of the biggies is preventing the big States from beating up the little States for that particular office.
The Senate exists for a similar reason. Each State has equal representation in the Senate, as opposed to the way each person is represented in the House of Representatives (see the Connecticut Compromise). We Americans did not elect our Senators directly until after the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on 31 May 1913.
So, back to that electoral college business. There has been much whining and whimpering about the electoral college electors not being bound to vote for whom they were elected to elect. The States (plus the District of Columbia) have all control over this. If a State wished, they could impose some penalty on the electors for failing to vote for whom they are "supposed" to vote for.
Also, there is much whining and whimpering over the "winner take all" system most States use for their electors. Again, this is fully within the control of each State. Maine and Nebraska have perfectly legal proportional voting systems that other States and the District could copy or they could adopt other proportional voting systems if they wished. To date, none more have adopted such a system.
The 2000 Presidential election was one of those times when the Socialists were positively rabid about the outcome. Their preferred candidate, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. failed to win the electoral college vote, thus lost his bid for President. However, he did win the popular vote, which is nice but that is no how one wins the presidency in the USA.
Some keep saying, to this day, that "all the votes were not counted." Which is complete nonsense, for sure, and the votes that mattered were counted by Vice President Al Gore, Jr. himself in his capacity as President of the US Senate. Yes, he did, here take a look:
One of the ironclad facts about USA Presidential elections is the Electoral College casts all of the votes that count. There are plenty of good reasons for this and one of the biggies is preventing the big States from beating up the little States for that particular office.
The Senate exists for a similar reason. Each State has equal representation in the Senate, as opposed to the way each person is represented in the House of Representatives (see the Connecticut Compromise). We Americans did not elect our Senators directly until after the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted on 31 May 1913.
So, back to that electoral college business. There has been much whining and whimpering about the electoral college electors not being bound to vote for whom they were elected to elect. The States (plus the District of Columbia) have all control over this. If a State wished, they could impose some penalty on the electors for failing to vote for whom they are "supposed" to vote for.
Also, there is much whining and whimpering over the "winner take all" system most States use for their electors. Again, this is fully within the control of each State. Maine and Nebraska have perfectly legal proportional voting systems that other States and the District could copy or they could adopt other proportional voting systems if they wished. To date, none more have adopted such a system.
The 2000 Presidential election was one of those times when the Socialists were positively rabid about the outcome. Their preferred candidate, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. failed to win the electoral college vote, thus lost his bid for President. However, he did win the popular vote, which is nice but that is no how one wins the presidency in the USA.
Some keep saying, to this day, that "all the votes were not counted." Which is complete nonsense, for sure, and the votes that mattered were counted by Vice President Al Gore, Jr. himself in his capacity as President of the US Senate. Yes, he did, here take a look:
Monday, October 8, 2012
Me and Dr. Walter E. Williams Against the World
In my political reading, I tend to lean toward National Review. Since my early days of political awareness, I was a William F. Buckley, Jr. fan and remain a fan of the magazine he created.
However, it drives me up the freaking wall when I find nonsense like this on their pages: O’Malley Denies Obama Has Increased National Debt More than Any Other President and the comments found attached to the article.
What does this have to do with the great Dr. Walter E. Williams? It seems like he and I are the only people left in America who will call bullshit on the notion that Presidents can spend any monies not appropriated by the Congress, and I will add that it is bullshit to think that Presidents can refuse to spend monies appropriated by the Congress. One does not need a PhD in Economics to understand this, as I am living, breathing proof.
Dr. Williams brought this point up in closing his last appearance guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, several weeks before the date stamp on this post. In a more recent column, he stated it this way (pretty darn close to the same way I have been stating it for a few years):
I do remember the days when I believed what Katrina Trinko and others believed, that the Congress passes budgets but the President does the spending, followed by the flawed logic that Presidents can spend whatever they like or refuse to spend federal funds on things they don't like. Part of this was true in practice before 1974. Presidents, up until Nixon, were able to impound Congressional appropriated funds on a whim. Not any more.
Yes, the President usually submits a budget annually. The Congress can, and usually does, ignore that budget before passing their own. As on many things, the Congress has the last word. In recent years, the Congress has not even bothered passing a budget, relying on Continuing Resolutions to direct spending. In essence, the Congresses since 2008 have left federal spending on autopilot. However, there is a bigger problem which Dr. Williams writes well in the above linked article.
The Senate's version of fiscal law history is here. The key element for the modern American is this bit:
One might ponder why our current President Obama could spend money on an automobile industry bailout when the Congress never authorized funds for the Chrysler bailout. What the Congress did appropriate was funds to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which is where the Executive illegally expended the funds from. What it is is a misappropriation, although it may not be a deficiency if funds were still available for what the money was appropriated for. As I have written elsewhere, every single fiscal manager in the federal government who approved any aspect, any amount of money, for the Chrysler bailout should be in jail for misappropriation.
Over at Reason, Damon Root and Jacob Sullum weighed in on the illegality of the auto industry bailouts: Why the Legality of the Chrysler Bailout Won't Matter
UPDATES:
Here are some of the places and times I have attempted to alert others to this topic, at least those I can find at the moment:
However, it drives me up the freaking wall when I find nonsense like this on their pages: O’Malley Denies Obama Has Increased National Debt More than Any Other President and the comments found attached to the article.
What does this have to do with the great Dr. Walter E. Williams? It seems like he and I are the only people left in America who will call bullshit on the notion that Presidents can spend any monies not appropriated by the Congress, and I will add that it is bullshit to think that Presidents can refuse to spend monies appropriated by the Congress. One does not need a PhD in Economics to understand this, as I am living, breathing proof.
Dr. Williams brought this point up in closing his last appearance guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, several weeks before the date stamp on this post. In a more recent column, he stated it this way (pretty darn close to the same way I have been stating it for a few years):
Who May Tax and Spend?
The first clause of Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, generally known as the "origination clause," reads: "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." Constitutionally and by precedent, the House of Representatives has the exclusive prerogative to originate bills to appropriate money, as well as to raise revenues. The president is constitutionally permitted to propose tax and spending measures or veto them. Congress has the authority to ignore the president's proposals and override his vetoes.The question about the debt is even more obvious. Katrina Trinko and every other typing head in The Beltway just came off of a typing binge about raising the debt ceiling, followed by another typing binge about raising the debt ceiling. The Congress raises the debt ceiling, not the President, as these writers would know if they only read their own articles strewn with Congressional Republican vs. Democrat positions on raising the debt ceiling. Not a one of them were so dim as to suggest that the President might do it all on his lonesome.
There is little intellectually challenging about the fact that the Constitution gave Congress ultimate taxing and spending authority. My question is this: How can academics, politicians, news media people and ordinary citizens continually make and get away with statements such as "Reagan's budget deficits," "Clinton's budget surplus," "Bush's tax cuts" and "Obama's spending binge"? I know that the nation's law schools teach little about Framer intent, but I wonder whether they tell students that it's the executive branch of government that holds taxing and spending authority. Maybe it's simply incurable ignorance, willful deception, sloppy thinking or just plain stupidity. If there's an explanation that I've missed, I'd surely like to hear it.
I do remember the days when I believed what Katrina Trinko and others believed, that the Congress passes budgets but the President does the spending, followed by the flawed logic that Presidents can spend whatever they like or refuse to spend federal funds on things they don't like. Part of this was true in practice before 1974. Presidents, up until Nixon, were able to impound Congressional appropriated funds on a whim. Not any more.
Yes, the President usually submits a budget annually. The Congress can, and usually does, ignore that budget before passing their own. As on many things, the Congress has the last word. In recent years, the Congress has not even bothered passing a budget, relying on Continuing Resolutions to direct spending. In essence, the Congresses since 2008 have left federal spending on autopilot. However, there is a bigger problem which Dr. Williams writes well in the above linked article.
Believing that presidents have taxing and spending powers leaves Congress less politically accountable for our deepening economic quagmire. Of course, if you're a congressman, not being held accountable is what you want.Apparently the legions of National Review writers and commentators like it that way too. Just go take a peek at the responses to my comments when I expressed exactly the same notions as Dr. Williams.
The Senate's version of fiscal law history is here. The key element for the modern American is this bit:
Two developments provided the impetus for the enactment of the Budget Act in 1974. One development was an increasing realization by Congress that it had no means to develop an overall budget plan. Prior to 1974, Congress responded to the President's budget (which contains the President's many spending and revenue proposals) each year in a piece-meal fashion. There existed no framework for Congress to establish its own spending priorities before work began on specific spending and revenue bills during the spring and summer.The notion that one President "spent more" or "spent less" than another is thoroughly ridiculous, since the Congress holds all of the purse strings.
A second, and more immediate, cause for passage of the Budget Act was a dispute in the early 1970's regarding presidential authority to impound money appropriated by Congress. During this time, President Nixon repeatedly asserted authority (as had many of his predecessors) to withhold from Federal agencies money appropriated by Congress. By 1973, it was believed that President Nixon had impounded up to $15 billion of spending previously approved by Congress. A large portion of these funds were to have gone towards the building of highways and pollution control projects. Many in Congress disputed these actions by the President.The authorization for the pollution control projects, for example, had been enacted by Congress in 1972 with a strong vote in both Houses overriding President Nixon's veto. Nonetheless, the President impounded much of this spending. These events led Members of Congress to seek a legislative solution.
In 1974 Congress enacted the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to establish procedures for developing an annual congressional budget plan and achieving a system of impoundment control. The Budget Act also created, for the first time, congressional standing committees devoted solely to the budget. It also created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to serve as the ``scorekeeper'' for Congress. CBO is responsible for producing an annual economic forecast, formulating the baseline, reviewing the President's annual budget submission, scoring all spending legislation reported from committee and passed by the Congress, and preparing reports in compliance with the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. CBO's policy with respect to providing estimates is set out in Appendix B. The Joint Committee on Taxation scores all revenue measures.
One might ponder why our current President Obama could spend money on an automobile industry bailout when the Congress never authorized funds for the Chrysler bailout. What the Congress did appropriate was funds to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which is where the Executive illegally expended the funds from. What it is is a misappropriation, although it may not be a deficiency if funds were still available for what the money was appropriated for. As I have written elsewhere, every single fiscal manager in the federal government who approved any aspect, any amount of money, for the Chrysler bailout should be in jail for misappropriation.
Over at Reason, Damon Root and Jacob Sullum weighed in on the illegality of the auto industry bailouts: Why the Legality of the Chrysler Bailout Won't Matter
UPDATES:
Here are some of the places and times I have attempted to alert others to this topic, at least those I can find at the moment:
John Tagliaferro
Kind of amazing how it just takes the presence of a Republican to make a deficit and the presence of a Democrat to make a surplus, even if either are just imagined.
So, according to CBS a Republican House passed this stuff without a by-your-leave to the Senate or the President. In a way it is history repeating itself from the Clinton surpluses, that apparently he created by edict without the "help" of the Congress.
I am curious, has a single person who writes this stuff ever heard of the Impoundment Control Act or the Anti-Deficiency Act? Do they have even the most remote clue that a president's budget is literally meaningless and the Executive *must spend* in accordance with the orders of the Congress? At least that is the legal way. As for all that bailout crap, there should have been some Treasury Contracting Officers up on charges for approving the car maker bailouts with financial institution bailout money (that should never have been appropriated either).
Reply to this comment
Jonathan and his commentators are assuming too much good will from Yglesias. The Leftists never lets facts get in the way of a narrative.
OT: As far as American budgets, debt, and all of that go, I really wish that conservative columnists would take a peek at the Anti-Impoundment and Appropriations Acts of the 1970s. Then, *maybe* one side of this spending debate will stop giving credit to any president for any surplus or deficit. The Congress has been completely in charge of that since 1974.I emailed Dr. Williams and National Review about this post and received this response (nothing from NR yet):
One would think that with all the recent chatter about the debt ceiling that writers would stop tagging presidents with that one too. Wishes and horses.
Reply to this comment
To: John Tagliaferro <johntagliaferro@gmail.com>
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Delete | Show original
Thanks and hang in there.
Cheers.
Professor Walter E. Williams
George Mason University, Economics
4400 University Dr., MSN 3G4
Fairfax, VA 22030
On 10/8/2012 7:51 PM, John Tagliaferro wrote:
Dr. Williams (and whomever reads the mail at NRO),
It seems you and I are darn near the only people left who have read
the Constitution, to include the article typers at National Review.
Below is a clip from a recent blog post related to my upcoming book is
quoted below and I link to one of your articles. You can read the
whole thing if you like here:
http://superdupersocialism.blogspot.com/2012/10/me-and-dr- walter-e-williams-against.html
"Me and Dr. Walter E. Williams Against the World
In my political reading, I tend to lean toward National Review. Since
my early days of political awareness, I was a William F. Buckley, Jr.
fan and remain a fan of the magazine he created.
However, it drives me up the freaking wall when I find nonsense like
this on their pages: O’Malley Denies Obama Has Increased National Debt
More than Any Other President and the comments found attached to the
article.
What does this have to do with the great Dr. Walter E. Williams? It
seems like he and I are the only people left in America who will call
bullshit on the notion that Presidents can spend any monies not
appropriated by the Congress, and I will add that it is bullshit to
think that Presidents can refuse to spend monies appropriated by the
Congress.
Dr. Williams brought this point up in closing his last appearance
guest hosting the Rush Limbaugh radio show, several weeks before the
date stamp on this post. In a more recent column, he stated it this
way (pretty darn close to the same way I have been stating it for a
few years):
Who May Tax and Spend?"
Thank you for your time,
JT
Topics like this are addressed in my upcoming book, Super-Duper Socialism.
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Monuments to Government
The government transportation system of the relatively small city where the above pictures were taken is curious too. Pretty much anybody who wants a car there has one. The federally subsidized buses that flock to and scatter from the John J. Duncan, Jr. Bus Cathedral, belch around the streets of town mostly empty. One can read here what a bargain was had for only $29 Million.
I did not have to arrange an evacuation of the area for the "photo shoot" either, there just was not a soul around for socialized transport worship services.
Prior to FDR, there was not a lot of this nonsense going on, either monuments or government transport. Yes, there were monuments aplenty for the Founding Fathers, but not so much for sitting legislators. It seems to have begun picking up steam around Reconstruction and exploded with Senator Robert Byrd (D-KKK-WV), who was famous for this sort of thing. Now it has become commonplace across the Republic.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
New Book Title and Cover
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| Super Duper Socialism |
Until I saw Antony Beevor on Q & A with Brian Lamb (C-SPAN) I never thought that I shared much with true historians as far as my style of conveying history to others. Professor Beevor notes that there is a German style, also alluded to as a scientific style, which is really just an illusion. All history is narrative and I approach it the same way that he does, with an open mind. Of course, I have my own biases going in, but as I find evidence I have no problem changing my mind.
Changing my mind is what happened while researching this book. As I began I knew that International Socialism and National Socialism were different only in degree, but those were the two major camps of Socialism. However, I was under the impression that American Socialism was something different, more along the lines of Mussolini's Fascism. I was very wrong.
When I 'discovered' a 1913 New York Times article about Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform, they used the term "Super Socialism" to describe Roosevelt's vision of a non-Marxist socialism. Over the weeks, that title echoed to the point that it finally dawned on me that this forgotten description was perfect to usher in the American accent on the Yellow/National Socialism that was sweeping western civilization.
Just a couple of decades later, the Super Socialist states of the world were allying with Marxist states and movements to battle National Socialists, not over freedom, but merely over which flavor of Socialism would rule the world. Nowhere in World War II was anybody fighting for free markets, free speech, freedom of choice, or the freedom of anything beyond the 'freedom' of the state to dictate to the people.
As time progressed after the big showy surrenders of the Axis powers to the Allies, another war began. Some call it the Cold War, which does have some merit, and some called it World War III, which really has more merit. Underlying all of that is still the war for freedom, with the True Right libertarians and Conservatives in an ideological and electoral battle against the Socialists of the Left. "Super Duper Socialism" is the label I use for American and Red Chinese hybrids of Marxist and non-Marxist Socialisms.
About the cover:
The cover has gone through more evolutions than the text. It began as a collection of Socialists with the ice ask identified as the murder weapon of Trotsky in the middle. As I was writing, a Florida Democrat Party office displayed an American flag with the field of stars replaced by a bust of Obama. I found that interesting and created a similar one on my own, with a different version of the book title scrawled across the stripes.For the current cover, that I am quite satisfied with, I replaced the white stripes with yellow, for Yellow Socialism and kept the red for Red socialism. After adding the bust of Obama I had a little room at the bottom of the field for leading American Socialists. I had more, but one can only fit so many before they shrink to the point of invisibility.
Update: The wife and the cover illustrator for some of my other books thought the first version was too busy, so I simplified it a little. Wife told me to try Powerpoint for more text effect options.
I did have a thought of giving the flag a golden fringe for the "Ohio is not a State" tax protestors, but the "Cali 05" frame brought a distressed effect that I like better. The stylized Socialism bumper sticker across the front was a bit of an accident. I wanted the white parts to be transparent, but my limited knowledge of graphics programs got in the way, so I applied it like a bumper sticker and liked that better than my original idea.
Older versions below.
As of this post, I am only about 1/4 - 1/3 of the way through my writing. Hoping to finish before the election heats up.
V/r,
JT
 |
| Super Duper Socialism: You were sold an illusion about the Left and Right |
 |
| Super Duper Socialism: You were fed an illusion about the Left and Right |
Monday, July 1, 1991
Reason Covers Gate of Heavenly Peace 'Affair' (Tiananmen Square), A Few Years Later
First, the Marxist edited version in Wikipedia of what 1989 Tienanmen Square 'affair'* was:
So, according to them, the location of the massacre was slightly different than the location named for the massacre. "Fought their way" is interesting wording for an armored column vs. unarmed students too.
BBC Coverage at the time, which differs dramatically from the Wikipedia entry:
An AP report, 20 years later:
This video purports to have additional footage, shows several men ushering the "Tank Man" away:
Liberty Magazine covered it in September, 1989:
*The Communists like to call things like the Haymarket terrorist attack "affairs", thus the wording and sarcastic quotes.
The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, also known as the June Fourth Incident in Chinese, were popular demonstrations crushed by China's army on 4 June 1989, when China's leaders ordered the army to force the protesters out of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. On their way to the Square, soldiers killed protesters in unknown numbers, and the crackdown became known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre or the June 4 Massacre. However, secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing obtained by WikiLeaks, "partly confirm the Chinese government's account of the early hours of June 4, 1989, which has always insisted that soldiers did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square. Instead, the cables show that Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters outside the centre of Beijing, as they fought their way towards the square from the west of the city." In the aftermath of the seven-week protests, the Chinese government strengthened its police and internal security forces, and put leadership unity and political consensus ahead of modernization. Economic and political reforms were delayed or halted.
So, according to them, the location of the massacre was slightly different than the location named for the massacre. "Fought their way" is interesting wording for an armored column vs. unarmed students too.
BBC Coverage at the time, which differs dramatically from the Wikipedia entry:
Liberty Magazine covered it in September, 1989:
Architects of tyranny - Recent events in China and the USSR reveal some odd phenomena concerning certain habits of repressive Communist nations. Take mass architecture, for example. Communist governments construct huge squares in their capital cities (Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Red Square in Moscow)-vast empty spaces adjoining government buildings that house the institutions of supreme state authority. Nearby, dead Communist leaders lay stuffed and mounted under glass, the culmination of a mad taxidermist's vision.
Now the rationale for these vast squares is obvious: they dwarf the human and individual sensibilities of those hapless citizens patiently waiting in line to gaze upon the waxen Great Leader. The puny insignificance of the individual is contrasted to the mighty vastness of the State, which is symbolized by the vast stretch of vacant real estate. Only a thoroughly statist society would waste so much valuable urban land in emptiness instead of filling it with office towers, shops, parks, or streets. These squares have a political purpose: they are ideally suited for great parades, placard waving demonstrations and marches, with leaders gamely waving to the adoring masses below.
That virtue is also a flaw: the masses are liable to assemble in the squares to demonstrate against the State, especially if the masses have taken the democratic rhetoric of their leaders seriously. As events in Tiananmen Square proved, 100,000 or 200,000 people are hard to control when they are massed together in some kind of anti-Marxist Woodstock celebration. One cannot imagine this happening in Washington, London, or
Paris-much less Tokyo-since open spaces in those cities are used as green parks or malls, which don't have the political significance of the Communist pavement prairies, stretching out below the freeze-dried corpses of dead dictators.
According to the Reason.Com archives, the Free Markets/Free Minds crowd got around to this 'little' story in 1991: The Calm After the Storm Life after Tiananmen. George Tseo from the July 1991 issue -
So in late May, occupation of Tiananmen Square was the liberation of China, both symbolically and literally. When the "masses" showed up to march without being ordered or shown how and where, government authority simply disappeared. The revolution in the streets played out before the world because 200,000 people are hard to ignore. They gained that certain kind of dangerous courage found in all large crowds, the courage and craziness borne out of anonymity and mass numbers.
The leaders of China were not prepared for this. Along with the Soviet Union, but unlike virtually every other country on earth, the Chinese State had never bothered to acquire nonlethal methods of crowd control. Modern technology has provided the State with dozens of ways of controlling crowds without killing them: tear gas, rubber and plastic bullets, pepper and CS gas, stun guns, bamboo poles, plastic shields, water cannons ... the list of non-lethal means of crowd control is as long as it is depressing.
So it came to pass that the Chinese relied on the only means at their disposal to disperse the crowd at Tiananmen: send in armed troops and tanks to kill those who wouldn't disperse fast enough. The world got a chance to see the murderous Chinese State in action, violating the ostensible spirit of its own revolution in an attempt to suppress the new Chinese revolution. Huge as Tiananmen Square is, it is not large enough to be the sort of battlefield on which tanks are effective. The resulting spectacle of huge tanks attempting to maneuver against unarmed demonstrators between huge buildings would have been amusing had it not been so tragic.
Why didn't the Chinese and Soviets have non-lethal means of dealing with crowds? Both have shown little reluctance in the past to commit mass murder, but in this age of global television, surely they are concerned about both internal and external public opinion. Apparently inured by their years of unchallenged rule, they never anticipated that their subjects would take their rhetoric about democracy and freedom seriously.
Evidently, the lack of non-lethal crowd control is another example of the failure of socialist planning. - MH
“I think the government was ... a bit harsh,” said Jin, a plump computer consultant with a wispy mustache. The window of our “hard-sleep” train compartment was raised. I pursed my lips in tacit response to Jin’s remark and looked past him and the fluttering white lace curtain. Outside, verdant summits towered above a flat, watery expanse of rice paddies. “Moreover,” continued Jin, pausing to take a slow drag on his cigarette, “the students were reasonable in their demands.”. . . the rest at Reason.
“The students were arrogant,” interjected Professor Hu, a lanky, bird-like man. “The regime showed restraint, and in return, the students gloated over a ‘victory’! The government had to resort to force. How else could they reestablish credibility?”
Jin lifted his brows as though to say “perhaps,” then blew smoke out of his mouth.
*The Communists like to call things like the Haymarket terrorist attack "affairs", thus the wording and sarcastic quotes.
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