...is not to hold overexaggerated benefit concerts that call for the cancellation of world debt (there is no such thing as cancellation of debt--in fact, what these drugged out washed up numbskulls are asking for is for the Western World to eat billions of dollars in goods and services in order to placate inefficient and corrupt regimes so they may become even more inefficient and corrupt).

The answer to Third World Poverty is to teach them the value of preserving and defending private property rights!.

Consider the following quote from page 200 in Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (Affiliate Link) by Thomas Sowell:

Those who do not think beyond stage one often think of property rights as simply benefits to those fortunate enough to own property. This ignores the role of property rights as a key link in a chain of events that enable people without property to generate wealth for themselves and the whole society.

One implication of this is that some Third World countries could gain the use of more capital by making property rights more accessible within their own borders than by a ten-fold increase in the amount of foreign aid they receive. Moreover, the increased capital would be in the hands of millions of ordinary people, while foreign aid goes into the hands of the political elite. In short, although property rights are often thought of as things that are important primarily to the affluent and the rich, these legal recognitions of existing assets may be especially needed by poor individuals in poor countries, if they do not wish to continue to be poor.

So, the next time some burned out hippie starts to lecture you about foreign debt over power chords, please point them in Dr.Sowell's direction and tell them "Fug you very much."

TAGS: Live 8, Poverty, Thomas Sowell, Third World, Economics

Previously classified documents being released Monday show numerous misuses of FBI surveillance, including improper searches and seizures of e-mails and bank records, The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions.

Later on, the article goes on to say that the FBI claims that "most of the violations were administrative errors."

Couldn't all monumental Eff-ups be boiled down to administrative errors? Because aren't administrative errors really leadership errors?

And while there are some excusable leadership errors; what happens when they become so egregious that they violate the safety and privacy of the very citizens the leadership has been entrusted to protect?

Heads should roll over this right after they roll for allowing 9/11 to happen in the first place.

At first I thought it was another fantastic rant from JD and then he started talking about the attitude of many politicians today towards American citizens as peasantry. Well, hell, let's just let JD speak for himself:

What the hell have we done? From the original George (Washington, dammit, not GHWB) insisting that he be called Mister President rather than majesty, sire, excellency or all that crap, we have gone to a total imperial presidency. Worse, we have made the fucking office hereditary. Any Kennedy could have run and been elected, once. The Bushes are another dynasty aborning. Senators, Representatives and bureaucrats are part of the deal, too. Relatives and in-laws are almost guaranteed a government job.

And somehow they believe they are entitled, somehow above the rest of us. We are peasants required to support this aristocracy we have imposed upon ourselves, or risk imprisonment.

I have long looked back at our first President was immense reverence because he held the most power that any Commander-in-Chief ever held in the hearts and minds of the American populace--and he gave it all up to go back to the farm and become just another citizen.

I blame the media for what has happened to our politicians. The media is like a giant tick sucking the blood of the populace through a needle of fear and politicians have become mosquitos feeding off the tick.

Eventually that tick is going to pop and the ensuing blood volcano is going to drown the mosquitos and the citizens if we don't learn to swim right away.

In a "just and righteous" response to a bunch of ignorant rednecks and crooked cross carriers, black gang members decided to serve the cause of social justice by taking to the street, breaking windows, robbing stores, and threatening the public safety.

I, for one, think that minorities have stepped over the line when it comes to rioting here in Ohio. In fact, I'm with JD:

I don’t know how to end it or even ease it. But I’ll tell you one thing – don’t be tearing down my fence or smashing my windows or doors and expect to walk away without leaving some blood. Because, motherfucker, I’ll shoot your sorry ass.

As an aside, I found the following headline somewhat ironic and somewhat amusing (considering that it was a FoxNews headline): "Thousands Gather for 10th Anniversary of Million Man March."

TAGS: Ohio, Riot

VDH has a great article today that makes three valid points:

• The current average cost of gasoline, $2.85 a gallon, is still less, when adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1981. But what is different today is that the relatively sudden surge in gas prices is assumed to be no mere spike. Instead the spiraling price seems like something permanent that could grow even higher as known world reserves decline. And it is made worse by our voracious consumption and the entry of China and India into the energy market.
  

• Conservatives, for example, are trying to block upping automobile fuel-efficiency standards, hoping the market will adjudicate any waste of energy. When the price of gas gets too high, strapped consumers, conservatives argue, will choose not to buy sport utility vehicles and monster pickups. For their part, liberals concede that nuclearpowered electrical generation plants won’t contribute to global warming. And these plants run as cheaply as burning natural gas and keep energy dollars at home.
  

• Voters no longer trust Republicans to balance the budget, while party of Presidents Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy is no longer credible on national security...The result of this petrified leadership is that while things are not nearly as bad as they seem, the public in its frustration feels they are far worse.

It's time we started talking to each other as individuals instead of as socially-constructed images.

Don't you think it's just about time that we stop defining ourselves in terms of political parties and idiotic mass-thinking platform mantras?

TAGS: Victor Davis Hanson, Politics

...call me prejudiced if you want to, but the first thing I thought when I read this was, "Is this guy a muslim?"

Am I being too paranoid or is our government not paranoid enough by not realizing that at some point the general social malaise that Carter spoke about in the late 70s (one of the few things the peanut farmer got right) is going to merge with anti-American radical sentiments into a conglomerate force that is not bound by creed or religion but rather by a violent opposition to the US government's domestic and foreign policies.

Now is the time for the government to set the vision and the goals for the nation and the world and to stop allowing corporations to set the standards.

It is individual freedom which sacrificed to start this country and that is the only freedom worth defending and preserving--not the freedom to expand industry into the third world and manipulate the markets for better access to their resources.

Now is the time to get back to basics.

Tags: Theodore Hollot, Georgia Tech

...comes from Thomas Friedman:

The president’s speech on terrorism Thursday was excellent. He made clear, better than ever, why winning in Iraq is so important to the wider struggle against Islamo-fascism. But it only makes me that much more angry that he fought this war as though it would be easy — never asking for any sacrifice, any military draft, any tax hikes or any gasoline tax — and that he tolerated so much incompetence along the way.

I think Friedman is full of shit when it comes to the extra taxes and the military draft but I think he's got the crux of the frustrations of everyone when he talks about the shoulder shrugging off of incompetence that has pretty much become the defining action of this administration.

Look, I love President Bush the same way you love John Candy--because he had a good heart and a lot of vices. But when is enough enough? When are heads going to roll because the brains inside them made major tactical and intellectual mistakes in the application of surgical political warfare when the situation demands balls at the walls fire and brimstone to the slaughter gates to destroy and remove the enemy from any position to make war on individual liberty in the world?

This President has to step up and lead before we all fall down and bleed.

Tags: Thomas Friedman, War on Terror, Iraq War

We are nearing the end of the eighth season of Little House on the Praire, which is the last season that Charles and Carolyn Ingalls were on the show.

But I just realized that there is no bar or saloon in Walnut Grove.

And noticing that, I had to ask Why?

Well, the economist in me automatically goes to the incentives of having a bar.

If you have a bar, people will drink. When people drink, a portion of them tend to get drunk.

A portion of those drunk get disorderly and a portion of the drunk and disorderly commit crimes and even murder.

Now, how many murders were there in Walnut Grove compared to, say, Kansas City in the late 1800s?

It's all about incentives and goals. What are your goals and what incentives are you putting in place in your social processes to see that those goals are met?

Now, as for the Bill Bennett issue where he was responding to a caller who said something about social security contributors being aborted and blah blah. To which Bennett told the caller if that was his logic then one could apply that same logic to crime and, since the majority of convicts in the country are black, abort black children to significantly lower crime--and he said immediately that this would me morally reprehensible.

And he was right...but it was too late.

The Left-a-Wing-Nut bloggers got ahold of that little sound byte, excised the "morally reprehensible" part and branded Bennett with the scarlet R.

Juan Williams on Fox News Sunday said that this was a dangerous thought experiment that should never have been given voice.

But this is where we get back to incentives because when there is freedom to express one's ideas and immediately refute those which are morally reprehensible, there is a great mental and spiritual machinery in motion that will weed out the bad ideas and the bad minds from infecting the rest of society (like what happened in all Totalitarian regimes).

Bill Bennett has been treated unfairly by small and sick minds so hell bent on tearing down conservative Americans that they are willing to completely abandon reason altogether for the bloodlusty madness of partisan politics.

My blogger buddy Reverse_Vampyr said that the divisions being caused by riffs like this Bill Bennett issue are making our enemies smile like the bartender counting his money in the saloon in Kansas City.

We as Americans must be willing to ask and brave the hard questions of life, those which deal with incentives and death. There must be outrageous statements and deep, swift, and thoughtful responses in which we use our collective spirit and morality to ensure that the answer comes out right.

This is the only way to keep the saloons out of Walnut Grove.

Tags: Bill Bennett, Little House on the Prairie, Walnut Grove