We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Dizzy, of Dizzy Thinks fame, recently made an interesting prediction, concerning the attitude of Brits towards the USA:
If Barack Obama becomes President-Elect next week, don’t expect any of the snide anti-american Brits, Aussie and others to change their tune. They’ve had a hate figure in Bush for the past eight years, and I don’t doubt that Barack Obama will become an equal hate figure within a short amount time.
I do doubt this. I think that much anti-Americanism is really anti- a particular part of America, and this hatred is felt with equal strength by other parts of America. President Bush, after all, is not only hated in Britain. Many Americans hate him too. And Obama is from a very different part of America to the part that gave us President Bush. Obama is from one of the parts that hates President Bush.
I recall the Clinton years. Had the (very large) part of Britain that now hates Bush wanted to hate Clinton, it would have had at least as much to work with as it has had with Bush. But it didn’t want to hate Clinton, and it didn’t. Likewise, it won’t want to hate Obama, and it won’t.
Well, we shall probably soon see.
It is becoming increasing difficult for me not to concur with Paul Marks’s ahead-of-the-curve branding of MARXIST upon the much kissed behind of Barack Obama. At the very least, his political compass swings disturbingly left on economic issues – to a degree I was not aware of. Previously, I could dismiss his “spread the wealth around” comment that arose from the infamous encounter with “Joe the Plumber” as a spot of ill-chosen populist rhetoric in a campaign unusually heavy on populist rhetoric – which, by the standards of US Presidential elections, is saying something. However, the rediscovered 2001 radio interview in which Obama explicitly advocated redistribution of wealth suggests to me that Americans ought to take him at his word when he talked of spreading the wealth around in that Ohio driveway.
Of course, this is electoral kryptonite in the USA, and the Obama campaign’s denials came hard and fast. Quoting from a CBS News article:
“This is a fake news controversy drummed up by the all too common alliance of Fox News, the Drudge Report and John McCain,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
“In this seven year old interview, Senator Obama did not say that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth at all.”
That is technically correct, but Burton is lying by omission. It is indeed true that Obama did not say in the interview that the courts should get into the business of redistributing wealth. However, what Burton neglects to mention is that he said they should not because they wouldn’t be any good at it and that going through the legislature would be much more effective. He also went on to say that the civil rights movement’s greatest tragedy was that it failed to massively redistribute wealth to the victims of racial discrimination in the USA. This 2001 recording of Obama advocating a redistributionist policy has convinced me that Obama’s “spread the wealth around” remark to Joe the Plumber was a genuine insight into his inner beliefs – beliefs that he would not dare expose to the American public who, by and large, fundamentally oppose them. In 2001, Obama stated that the legislature would be a better tool for redistributing the wealth of others to black people. Then, he was in his mid to late 30s, an age when most people’s political views have solidified. In 2008, one wonders if he now believes the executive would be even more efficacious? It is not such a stretch.
As for the Obama camp’s deeply duplicitous claim that the 2001 interview was deliberately misinterpreted by the Right, well, why break the habit of a campaign and start being honest? I am not denying that the McCain campaign has, on several occasions, twisted the truth out of all recognition over a number of issues. But at least they don’t cloak themselves in self-righteous, holier-than-thou fervour while doing so. If I had a vote in this election, the constant and largely unchallenged spectacle of Obama and his camp trumpeting their integrity – whilst they dissemble and weasel their way to November 4th – would be as good as any motivation for me to pull the lever for McCain.
(2001 Obama interview and CBS article both sourced from Drudge)
Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson’s Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).
But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.
Of course, this is an issue at the margins. If I were an American looking to get out of a left-tilting America, there are many other countries apart from Britain I would want to live in, not least because the weather here is generally lousy, you cannot defend yourself with deadly force, and the place is so crowded. Switzerland is likely to be popular for those who want to go to Europe; some East European states will be attractive. And there is the whole of Asia to consider, possibly even the better bits of Latin America. But do not be surprised to read of a steady exodus of Americans in the next few years, assuming Obama proves to be as bad as some reckon he is. We might hear the accents of the West Coast or New York on the London Underground and in the bars of the West End a bit more.
Update: Here’s more on the collapse of the pound. At this rate, New Yorkers will be heading to London to do their Christmas shopping. Seriously, this shows that markets believe Brown has so badly mortgaged the UK economy on debt that Labour will try to turn on the money printing presses. And we know where that leads.
When reading on the internet about Islamic terrorism, commenters often mention that there is also terrorism by Christian fundamentalists in America, where there have been bombings of abortion clinics and shootings of abortion providers.
How prevalent is this form of American domestic terrorism? In recent years there have been round about 15,000 – 20,000 murders in total per year in the US. How many of these were of abortion providers?
Guess now. Scribble your answer down.
If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said three or four murders per year.
Considered over the last fifteen years I was overestimating somewhat. According to the best-known pro-abortion organisation in the US, NARAL Pro-Choice America,
Since 1993, seven clinic workers – including three doctors, two clinic employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard – have been murdered in the United States. Seventeen attempted murders have also occurred since 1991.
That figure comes from a document published in December 2007. So far as I know the figures have not changed since then.
However the phrasing “Since 1993 seven abortion clinic workers have been murdered in the United States” could be re-arranged, with equal truth, to say that “since 1998 no abortion clinic workers have been murdered in the United States.”
The last such murder was ten years ago today.
When I first found out this fact I was surprised. Again and again I have read comments that assumed that this type of terrorism was less deadly than Islamic terrorism but was nonetheless a steadily lethal undercurrent of American life – a death here, a death there.
In the fight against any type of crime, no victory can ever be anything but temporary. The most you can ever say is that the trend is down. There have been several attempted murders of abortion providers during the last ten years and the fact that none of them have succeeded must owe something to mere chance. As has often been observed, the terrorist only has to get lucky once. However it does now seem probable there will be zero murders of abortion providers during the presidency of George W Bush. I doubt that he will be given much credit for this, though if the trend had been otherwise he would certainly have been given the discredit.
Greg Nemitz is running a write-in campaign for the Idaho 2nd Congressional District:
I’m Gregory Nemitz. I’m a conservative Republican running for Congress as an official Write-In candidate for Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District.
Your Congressman, Mike Simpson, recently voted twice for the $810 billion bailout bill. You also need to know that the liberal Democrat candidate said she would have voted FOR the bailout.
I have absolutely no idea if we have any readers in that district, but if you are one, check out his campaign video.
Greg is an acquaintance of mine through aerospace circles. We first crossed paths on the internet a couple decades ago and I have even met him in person a few times.
Fox News asks the question: “Will Obama’s $604M Haul Kill Off Public Financing?” Ask any Libertarian and I am sure the answer you will hear is: “I certainly hope so!”.
No Libertarian presidential candidate has ever accepted stolen funds for their campaign. Perhaps the attempts to regulate political speech have simply reached the point at which even a Socialist Democrat recognizes they are better off not accepting State controlled financing.
If the Republicans stay out of the trough as well four years now, perhaps we will at least get the State out of campaign financing.
Poor naive George W. Bush! For all his shambolic presidency, his dreadful mistakes, and the horrors of aggressive imperialism, his last couple of months in office could end up being the most disastrous for the world.
Bloomberg reports:
The leaders of the U.S., France and the European Commission will ask other world leaders to join in a series of summits on the global financial crisis beginning in the U.S. soon after the Nov. 4 presidential election.
President George W. Bush, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and European Commission President Jose Barroso said in a joint statement after meeting yesterday that they will continue pressing for coordination to address “the challenges facing the global economy.”
The initial summit will seek “agreement on principles of reform needed to avoid a repetition and assure global prosperity in the future,” and later meetings “would be designed to implement agreement on specific steps to be taken to meet those principles,” the statement said.
Just how bad this could be is already showing. The report continues:
Sarkozy and Barraso are pressing Bush for a G8 agenda that includes stiffer regulation and supervision for cross-border banks, a global “early warning” system and an overhaul of the International Monetary Fund. Talks may also encompass tougher regulations on hedge funds, new rules for credit-rating companies, limits on executive pay and changing the treatment of tax havens such as the Cayman Islands and Monaco.
Just what has the continuation of the OECD nations’ campaign to plunder smaller states and institute globally uniform (high) taxation got to do with the market crash? Nothing. Executive pay? Irrelevant, too, save in the politics of envy. Mainstream banks, not hedgies, were the ones that crashed after playing iffy games with CDOs, and governments helped pump-up house prices – with enthusiasm. Where this agenda comes in is as an opportunity to kick the resented “Anglo-Saxon” model of capitalism while it is down – even, and especially, in those places where it is not down yet. (Are we missing Commissioner Mandelson yet?)
Mr Bush has lost the thread entirely if he really thinks a transnational “reform” of the financial system can do other than damage “free markets, free enterprise and free trade”. He may have a patchy record on liberty, and a bad record on limited government. His guests in November will have no interest in either. They will tempt him (have tempted him) with the mantle of world saviour, and will try to get him to bind his successors. We shall have to hope that his successor, either one of whom would be well to the economic right of the self-selected ‘international community’, depressingly enough, is more wily and far-sighted.
Meanwhile, where is there left to run?
I like Fridays these days, because on Friday, David Thompsom does another clutch of Friday ephemera, and this Friday’s ephemera included three links to a black guy named Zo, explaining why he will be voting McCain/Palin. When I started listening, I kept thinking, there’s a snag. When is the ambush coming? I don’t know quite why I thought this, but I did. Cognitive dissonance, I imagine. Guys who talk like that just do not think like that. Many of them hardly think at all, except about show business concerning which they are highly knowledgeable.
Another favourite blog-ephemerist is Lynn Sislo (sp?), who will not be voting McCain/Palin, in fact in this posting, she includes a link to a report about the equal and opposite phenomenon to Zo. But best of all, in a more recent Lynn S posting, there is a link to an amazing time-map showing the growth of Walmart. Capitalism at its formidable best (talking of which, have you heard that Buffet is now buying shares?). It is an object lesson in starting slow, getting it right and then – and only then – conquering the universe. Well, not the universe, yet, just America. But give it time. Highly recommended.
Through the miracles of modern technology, Bob Barr will be delivering live replies to the questions put to those ‘other parties’ candidates tonight. You can read more here and get the link for the live broadcast. As it will be at 9pm US eastern time, I will probably not be watching it from here!
Last night I attended a Libertarian Alliance talk/discussion evening at the Evans household, the talk being given by Antoine Clarke. Here is what Antoine said in an email about his talk beforehand. I learned several interesting things which smarter people than me doubtless already realised but which were new to me. The most interesting thing I learned, assuming Antoine was right about it, was that after the first mega-billion dollar bale-out package failed to be agreed by the politicians of the USA, the market immediately went up. But then, as soon as a revised bale-out package, containing more bribes, was agreed, the market went down. “We should do nothing” is a tough political sell, but the smart move, said Antoine. And McCain should have gone with what, according to Antoine, were apparently his instincts and torpedoed the whole damn bale-out operation, and thereby clung onto a chance of being the next President of the USA.
My take on this is that there is a crowding out effect going on here, big time. I trust we are all familiar with this idea. It says that big government plans of any kind not only do harm because the government plans fail and all the wealth it wastes on them is wasted, but, and arguably even worse, because people with better plans in the same line of business are frightened into inactivity. In this spirit, I recall the disgraced former Tory MP Neil Hamilton once saying at a meeting I attended long ago that the money that an earlier Labour government had spent on buying up and ruining the British motor industry would have done a great deal less harm if it had just been put into several thousand suitcases and chucked into the sea (I daresay this would have been good for inflation also). That way, saner motor car entrepreneurs could have gone to work making cars and car stuff in better ways than then prevailed, unimpeded by the fear of great walls of government “investment” screwing up their plans, bidding up the prices of all the people and all the things they wanted to hire and buy and put to good use.
Well, now, exactly the same thing seems to be happening in the banking industry. Were I one of the immensely rich and immensely sensible banking people who had (a) seen this crash coming and cashed out at roughly the right time, and who now (b) has plans to gobble up failed banks and reorganise them along more sensible lines, I would now, despite all my hopes of profitable new business, be sitting on my hands, waiting for all the government plans to do their immense damage before I went wading in and god chewed up too. Only when these government plans had become an obvious failure, and the politicians had just totally given up, would I be ready to move in and sort things out. Only when the politicians lapse into inactivity, which for a brief shining moment looked as if it might happen straight away, does economic optimism, among the people willing to back their optimism with money, reassert itself.
But, as I like to say from time to time when blogging, what do I know? I am no expert on the banking business, and as I say, I only realised this thing about the ups and downs of the world’s stock exchanges when Antoine Clarke pointed it out to me last night. So, did Antoine get this story right? And have I explained this phenomenon, even part of it, even approximately right? Tomorrow afternoon, Antoine, I, and fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings will be getting together to record a conversation about all this, so comments now would be especially welcome.
I just want to remind any of our readers in Massachusetts to help keep up the pressure for the initiative to end the income tax. The time until eleection day is running out. Money and publicity are the things our folk need so get out there and do your damndest to assist them. The opposition are raising large amounts of money from the people with their snouts deepest into the swill and are doing their best to convince Massachusetts voters to keep feeding them money.
If you are unfamiliar with this ballot initiaitive, or even if you know all about it, you should find this episode of the Glenn and Helen Show is of interest.
Instapundit has been doing yeoman service in covering it and I hope the bar conversations I had with Glenn on this subject back in May had a little bit to do with it!
What does Bob Barr have to say about the latest debate? “Booorrrrrinngggg!” But then, I knew that ahead of time and did not even bother to follow either it or any of the predictable coverage and pontification about nothing.
If you are interested in Bob’s take on the DC feeding frenzy, you can go here to listen.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
