The Week in Politics
Feb 11th, 2012 by David Anderson
This is an open discussion thread to get your thoughts. The comments will be the interesting part. I would like to remind everyone about the free marriage conference in Dover, married or not, it could be an opportunity to gain insight about relationships between men and women. Registration is now at the door. Come on by the Westminster Retirement Village Community Center West room and bring your Valentine. It starts at 10 and ends before 1.
The people need to know the issues, resources to address those issues. Dr. Kim Warfield is having a forum today give people that information. It is at 2:00pm at the Dover Parks and Recreation Center off White Oak Road in Dover. It is an impressive panel representing NGO’s–such as charities and service providers, local government, education, business information, and state government.
CPAC has been ground zero for the Republican Presidential Audition.
I never understood the significance of St. Valentines Day (nor does my bride). Isn’t every day supposed to be a day you show your spouse or significant other your appreciation of them and their SIGNIFICANCE to you. Pagan practices aside, of course.
I see Don Ayotte continues to censor our comments. Why put a post up about a guy running for public office if comments are closed? You ask us to visit his web page but we can’t comment? Makes no sense.
Don didn’t post it or censor anything and hasn’t been commenting on anything. He’s won’t be for a while and he is welcome back when he’s ready.
I just looked at his website and you can comment. Commenter 1 and 2 and a few others will have to find someone else to denigrate in your spare time. Instead of commenting, try getting a life.
No discussion here of Tom Wagner’s report on the wrongdoings over at Delaware State University? Oh, wait, we pretend we never do anything wrong.
The new Kawasaki ZX-14 R does 175 in a half-mile with a gear to go. 0-100 in 4.8 seconds. Hardest accellerating mass-produced vehicle ever. Under $15k with 3 modes of traction control, over 30 mpg and beautiful. The anti-Volt.
#3
“Don didn’t post it or censor anything and hasn’t been commenting on anything.”
Except post #3.
{you’re off base as usual}
Just passing this along. Here is something I’ve been saying for a while. And to your credit, I believe this blog is far ahead of the main stream press when it come up to this topic….
http://www.chron.com/news/article/Friedman-Few-answers-from-today-s-GOP-3307718.php
But the article’s observations are correct, I think.. And if you would open this blog up to everyone and when the GOP gets criticized, don’t try to defend it, but look for opportunities to prevent that criticism, you could develop the core of the future Republican Party, or as (I should state probably a little more historically accurately), a new party of opposition…
The Constitutional Party has a nice ring to it……..
Thomas Friedman is completely wrong (as usual), in the post at Chron from the New York Times.
Friedman postulates that because the country has challenges ahead, therefore an old party (not nearly as old as the Democrat Party, however) would be unable to meet them.
Balderdash. Until you can point to a bold new solution or program to meet the challenges of tomorrow that the Republican Party refuses to adopt, other than for being truly stupid or a bad idea, then you have no complaint.
Chances are, if someone comes up with a bold new solution or program for tomorrow’s challenges (a) Newt Gingrich already proposed it 20 years ago, taught it extensively through GOPAC and his satellite TV training program, and is ready to pull the trigger on it on January 21, 2013, (b) the entire Republican party would quickly embrace such an idea from whatever source long before the unionized Democrat Party figures out what the idea is all about.
But Friedman then parades a list of issues which clearly belong in the private sector, in which the government should not play any role. Unless Friedman’s plan is to convert the USA into the USSR, his list of priorities burnishes his socialist credentials, but does not a convincing argument make.
Case in point: When Bill Gates was creating MICROSOFT in his parent’s garage, WHAT GOVERNMENT AGENCY, REGULATION, OR PROGRAM WAS IT that was in the Gates’ garage with them?
Hint: If the government had been involved, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt before delivering its first operating system, costing the goverment millions of dollars in bad loans.
The only plausible example Friedman offers is his claim that Republicans would not accept $1 of tax increases for $10 of spending cuts.
But this ignores the obvious reality that Congressional DEMOCRATS LIE — and we have figured that out by now. We’ve seen that movie before…. over and over and over. How many times do you think we should believe promises of spending cuts that never happen, before we figure out “You know, those $10 of spending cuts will probably NEVER HAPPEN.”
The fact that Republicans would not take that deal shows what is RIGHT about the GOP, not a defect. We’ve been taken to the cleaners before. We learned not to trust Democrats any more. And the GOP hung together to toe the line. That is a sign of the GOP’s strength, not its weakness.
This is a world in which education, innovation and talent will be rewarded more than ever. This is a world in which there will be no more “developed” and “developing countries,” but only HIEs (high-imagination-enabling countries) and LIEs (low-imagination-enabling countries).
This probably the exact opposite of what will happen. Instead it is more likely that there is an education bubble being inflated by the government now which will burst as people realize that their capacity to imagine things and information doesn’t necessarily always impact on the formation of things reality. It’s likely that what you are looking at now is the language of people who are one step behind. They see that information had an impact and conclude that it will continue to while failing to imagine the opposite. There are signs of this type of static view in his pattern of thought.
E.g. We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies and public-private partnership concepts – not radical ones. Would somebody please restore our second party? The country is starved for a grown-up debate.
And there’s the hubris, you could probably figure it was coming just due to the static view of information written all over the way he writes. He’s a boring fellow so one could almost write his scripts before he gets to them. On a random note, for some reason he reminds me of the Fed debating the housing bubble: Link
Friedman in his book:
There is only one effective, sustainable way to produce “green jobs,” and that is with a fixed, durable, long-term price signal that raises the price of dirty fuels and thereby creates sustained consumer demand for, and sustained private sector investment in, renewables.
Get the price right by the use of coercion/government and then the “free market” will become almost magically knowledgeable and find a pathway to fuel people’s way of life without burning anything? Imagine that… or imagine that all he would accomplish with his “too big to fail” partnerships or his attempts at forcing the market to create knowledge is smothering the use of energy and therefore your liberty and way of life.
The Constitutional Party has a nice ring to it……..
I doubt that Friedman has much respect for the Constitution.
Until you can point to a bold new solution or program to meet the challenges of tomorrow that the Republican Party refuses to adopt….
He did, it’s called green energy. Although it seems to be more of a form of entertainment than a solution. After all, it’s hard to find a solution to imaginary problems like preventing catastrophes and apocalyptic events in the future.
It’s likely to be bad political advice because his views are generally based on forms of religion that are undermined by technology, naturally:
If Barone is correct then Friedman’s advice is the exact opposite of what it should be. People may be entertained with theatrics and the sale of indulgences may make them feel good* and so on but they became increasingly skeptical in the past generally due to the use and advent of knew information technologies so he should at least try to imagine them doing the same thing again. We’ve come a long way but reading a bit of information disseminated due to the advent of the printing press isn’t that different from reading one on an Iphone or whatever else.
*Personally, I think people in the past were better in the way that they liked to imagine things when they paid the priests of knowledge of their day for the privilege to do so. It seems to me it would be better to entertain yourself with the idea that you are saving a family member from something than to imagine that you’re saving the earth. Although one could frame it as saving the earth for future generations to combine both. But given that Boomers have generally enslaved posterity with debt in the real world, their concern for them in the way that they like to imagine things is dubious. It’s more likely that Boomers are smothering the use of energy due to moral theatrics based on their superstitious views while playing pretend that it’s all for the children too. It’s like you get two for one, you’ve saved the earth and saved the children too. Meanwhile, in reality the poor children of the earth starve because they generally haven’t been able to warm themselves at the fire of progress that Boomers imagine warms the earth.
An open thread comment, no one seems to frame the story this way but it may be that Romney and Gingrich are splitting the moderate vote:
…but only HIEs (high-imagination-enabling countries) and LIEs (low-imagination-enabling countries).
In the case of South America and Africa, call it low-imagination-enabling continents, and the United States, like GB and much of Western Europe before us, seem to be rushing to join them.
American Thinker has some great stuff on why Obama is not a natural born citizen. What a great publication!
“When Bill Gates was creating MICROSOFT in his parent’s garage, WHAT GOVERNMENT AGENCY, REGULATION, OR PROGRAM WAS IT that was in the Gates’ garage with them?”
I can think of at least two off the top of my head. One was the United States Copyright Office. Unlike other programmers in the local computer club, Gates was very picky about not allowing others to copy his stuff. This rubbed a lot of his friends the wrong way, but he had the law on his side.
The other government agency which comes to mind is the US Census Bureau. Gates was writing operating software code for machines that were made by IBM. IBM was the result of a decision by the US Census Bureau to use the Hollerith Tabulating Machine for the 1890 Census. That was the big boost Hollerith’s company needed to become the primary technology powerhouse in the 1911 merger of his company with two others to become IBM in 1911. Their lock on the Census contract parlayed into them becoming the prime contractor for the Social Security Administration later in the 20th Century. Government contracting was the largest chunk of revenue for IBM for decades, and the money they made from that was eventually parlayed into development and release of the personal computer. It was that PC which was the platform on which Bill Gates’ success was built.
So, without those government contracts – no IBM, no Bill Gates.
And that is not to mention the various spin-off technologies developed for the space program, which was the first major purchaser of electronic components produced by Fairchild Semiconductor, from which TI and Intel were spun-off, and which, because of government contracts, developed the basic technology which went into making that IBM PC.
And, what’s really wonderful, is that we can talk about this stuff on the Internet, which is the result of DARPA funded computer networking research, and which would have been concluded as an experiment if it hadn’t been for Congressional action to move authority over root server operation to the Department of Commerce. The National Telecommunication Infrastructure Agency of the DoC is still the primary authority over the Internet root server system, and have contracted with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to develop and implement various policies to coordinate aspects of the domain name system and IP numbering system.
So, let’s recap….
No US government agencies: No IBM, no Bill Gates, no Internet, and nothing for those computers to connect with.
What is really amazing, though, is sitting here with a pile of technology on my desk which is directly traceable to various US government projects, and using the Internet whose addressing system is still under US government authority, to say stuff like, “What did the US government ever do to promote technological progress?”
It’s like that scene in Life of Brian – “What did the Romans ever do for us?” (aside from the roads, aqueducts, law, education…)
That’s really the problem with the binary thinking that goes on today. Anyone who places any value whatsover on factual information cannot state that the government has not had a beneficial impact on business, industry, and life in general. That’s not to say that everything the government does makes sense or has value. But to dismiss all value that came from government action is really idiotic, especially when people are blogging against government using the very means that resulted from the government. A more local example of this is a certain commenter/blogger who stated that they don’t rely upon the National Weather Service for their information, instead choosing to rely upon nameless sources that they trust, when those same nameless sources themselves realy upon the NWS. I wish I fathom the thought process that goes into those kinds of statements!
It was that PC which was the platform on which Bill Gates’ success was built.
So, without those government contracts – no IBM, no Bill Gates.
This isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, it is possible to imagine a world without IBM’s “partnerships” with governments in which we would all be exponentially richer:
In the introduction to War Against the Weak the same author says:
When pyramid schemes are built on the sacrifice of the lives, property and liberty of others then one can only wonder what could have been built otherwise. Many people would be exponentially more wealthy than they are if they did not confuse liberty with coercion and were not “stimulated” by the demagoguery typical to corrupt politicians.
So, without those government contracts – no IBM, no Bill Gates.
I think you should have focused on the fact that Bill Gates had a garage instead of other things. He was in a garage but without the government his garage probably would have never been built or one could imagine that it would have burned down due to faulty wiring and so on. And that goes to show that the government generally creates wealth, technology and pretty much provides for happiness and life as we know it too.
After all, without the government garages wouldn’t exist…. and hence, no Bill Gates.
That’s really the problem with the binary thinking that goes on today.
It’s not really a problem with binary thinking, it’s a problem with being wrong. In fact, the law of non-contradiction is a basic rule that one has to accept in order to begin thinking in the first place.
Anyone who places any value whatsover on factual information cannot state that the government has not had a beneficial impact on business, industry, and life in general.
That’s true.
But it’s ironic that people who seem to believe that the government* should try to “stimulate” the creation of wealth for to redistribute and so on also cite the Patent Office as if it is consistent with their philosophy. So going back to the law of non-contradiction….
*What essentially seems to be an unlimited form of government of the economy given that there is no limit to its debt.
Actually, I have heard that our technology boom really came from the reverse engineering of the alien technology found at Roswell in the 1940′s and the government is just doling it out over the decades to make us think we did it ourselves.
It may sound silly, but it is just as silly to claim government regulation and free market ingenuity gave us the boost.
I put your claims in the same category as my Roswell friends. Sure government does set a tone with patent and copyright laws so that the market exists for inventors, that was the genus of the founders, and I think the space program really helped drive some new technology along with national defense (one argument for not gutting defense like the President wants to do), but it is the market that developed the technology without the interference of government. Most of these came in the labs of private corporations and individuals. Even University funded grants that had government backing were aimed at letting people be free to explore.
Where government was successful, it did so by promoting freedom and innovation not regulation. The government should invest in basic infrastructure and research grants, buy what it needs, and have a tax system which rewards investment in the future and developing the American Economy and culture. There is a role for government. The founders understood what it was. The modern progressives do not. That role is not micromanaging business, science, medicine, and education. It is giving us a sensible, safe playing field where we can reap the rewards of our talents, investments, and labor.
“Most of these came in the labs of private corporations and individuals.”
And most of this lab work was done either under the sponsorship of the federal government under the direction of the federal government.
But regardless, it is true that excessive government regulation and involvement is recipe for disaster. It is just as true that too little government regulation and involvement is a recipe for disaster. Finding equilibrium is the real challenge, but I submit that both the left and right are engaged in what amounts to a blood feud, battling against the opposite extreme, disregarding the search for equilibrium, the right balance and role for government. I believe the reason for this is that any recognition of a governmental role (or not) is perceived as caving or being disloyal to one’s side. In summary, what is wrong with this country is the constant battle whose sole objective is diminishing the other side. In short, the existence of both the Democrata and Republican parties is the primary problem are nation must contend with.