Wasn't it about taxation without representation?

This is a hoot.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I'm going to be taking photo's for the blog, might try to get an interview or two, at the event in Henry County.

Though it seems weird to connect Liberty and Obedience so directly...

Didn't communist always say that we had to adhere to the doctrine no matter how painful and in spite of all consequences?

Conservatives keep saying things in ways that remind me of Communists I always used to debate. I'm still working on a more coherent explanation of that...

Trying out posterous...

Should one blog, tweet, and update ones facebook all in one post?  I don't know.  Should Jim... most definately not.  Thats why i'm going to try this for a bit.

I've been falling far behind the online world for the past week and it has been wonderful.  But I don't want to drop out of sight--just become more productive.

So for now i'm trying posterous...  if you like it or hate it email me (Jim.Nichols@gmail.com) and tell me why.  If you know of something better or more effective let me know.  If you just want to show me love by telling me all the reasons why i'm wrong, it really isn't necessary--i'm on the case on that one!

 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Preface

Epictetus --Desire demands its own attainment

Epictetus --Recognize Appearances

do you remember when the cops crashed the party in fairburn pines and we all had to go to court?

something I notice all the time...

I'm a terrible speller. And I don't use spell check enough! sigh....

I'm not sure what that means...

probably one of the most meaningless statements i've read in my entire life...

So far, the Israeli public has displayed much more sensitivity to soldiers' deaths than Gazans have to Hamas combat dead.

How ya figure that one?

Why I blog

Andrew Sullivan's reasons at least...

I blog to keep up with others ideas, articles, studies, items of interest; anything I might want to go back to later on.

Also keep up with some day to day stuff to look back on. A place for random writings, poems, anything I might come up with. Also throw up some of my photos....

Plus I do it so often because its hard to catch up to the blogosphere once you fall behind--as is true now that i'm catching up from my holiday lapse!

I also blog because I can't spell and can't get away with such grammer school errors in any other format...

under the name of reason

From Effcient Markets Theory to Behavioral Finance by Robert J. Shiller

Absurd and dishonest... no matter how hard I try...

de·reg·u·la·tion
Pronunciation: \(ˌ)dē-ˌre-gyə-ˈlā-shən\
Function: noun
Date: 1963
: the act or process of removing restrictions and regulations

Many journalists claim that the U.S. economy since the late 1970s has been very free, with little regulation; that this absence of regulation has caused markets to fail; that there was a consensus in favor of little regulation; and that, now, this consensus is fading. On all these counts, the reports are false. Specifically, the U.S. economy has not been free since before the New Deal of the 1930s. Even before the 1930s, the U.S. economy was "mixed"—that is, a combination of economic freedom and government regulation—and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal altered the "mix" substantially toward regulation and away from freedom. The deregulation of the late 1970s and 1980s reversed some of the regulations that came with the New Deal and some that preceded it, but the net amount of regulation has been much higher in the alleged era of deregulation than it was during the post... --David R. Henderson

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. --George Orwell

Jason proves here and here, that I lack the pragmatic competence to discuss bureaucratic terms. I confused the context of deregulation leaving Jason to point out for the second time that i'm dishonest.

I used regulation in a common (mis)usage of the word--or at least common when i'm speaking to people in my day to day life--be they conservatives, liberals, or Liberals--rather than within government bureaucracy.

Regulatory Agency Spending...

Jason correctly points out that Regulatory Agency spending has dramatically gone up during Bush's tenure.

A 2008 study by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found in their annual regulatory spending analysis that Homeland Security spending increased regulatory activities

Driven largely by homeland security activities, staffing levels in 2008 are 43 percent larger than they were in 2000. The budget calls for expenditures that are 51.8 percent higher than in 2000 -- an increase in real spending on regulatory activities of $13.2 billion between 2000 and 2008, the study finds...

...In 2008, the DHS is slated to receive 45.5% of the regulators budget, or more than $21 billion. And DHS will employ more than half of the federal regulatory workforce, with 133,059 employees - up 5.3% from 2007. This is a trend that continues from the 2006 edition of this report and is mainly attributable to growth in agencies responsible for immigration, customs and border protection.

"While several agencies within the Department of Homeland Security are slated for budget cuts in 2008, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement each face large increases in personnel," notes Warren.

Needless to say that when one removes 9/11 from the equation those numbers are bound to fall more closely in line with past--which is an unknown, but seems reasonable none the less.

Yet as David R. Henderson at the Cato institute notes:

One could argue that we need to distinguish here between different kinds of regulation. Often people refer to "economic regulation" when they mean restrictions on whether new firms can enter businesses or that require firms to get government permission before setting their prices. If this is what they mean, then there is a case to be made that, in substantial sectors of the economy, there is less government regulation now than before the late 1970s. There has been substantial deregulation at the federal level of airlines, trucking, railroads, oil, and natural gas, to name five large sectors

This was the argument I was trying to make--my bad.

A few examples of such...

From the OECD

Deregulation is a subset of regulatory reform and refers to complete or partial elimination of regulation in a sector to improve economic performance.

An Assault on Public Protections: Regulatory Policy News in 2008

OMB also continued to alter the substance of individual agency rules. In most cases, OMB's interference weakened requirements proposed at the agency level. For example:

In March, President Bush himself stepped in to force EPA to abandon its plan to set a seasonal standard for ozone exposure tailored especially to the needs of plant life. OMB challenged the scientific basis for EPA's decision and encouraged the agency to consider the economic impact of the new standard, even though the Clean Air Act prohibits EPA from weighing costs in setting air standards. After EPA resisted the pressure, Bush was brought in to arbitrate the dispute and sided with OMB.

In October, EPA tightened the national public health standard for airborne lead, drawing rare praise from clean air advocates. However, shortcomings in the network for monitoring lead pollution persist. EPA was prepared to require installation of new monitors near facilities emitting 1,000 pounds or more of lead pollution. But an e-mail exchange between EPA and OMB less than 48 hours before the final rule was announced shows that OMB pressured EPA to raise the threshold to 2,000 pounds. The change means state and local officials will not be required to place new pollution monitors near at least 124 facilities that emit lead.

The White House also watered down a rule expanding protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whale. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) initially proposed extending the protection area in which the new rule would be enforced to 30 nautical miles off shore. When NOAA announced the final rule in October — after a White House review that lasted 573 days — the protection zone had shrunk to only 20 nautical miles.

where...

The pace only accelerated in December. Many of the rules target the environment. Rules finalized in the first half of December would:

*Make it legal for mining companies to dump into rivers and streams the waste generated from mountaintop mining

*Exempt farms from reporting air pollution generated from animal waste
Lift the 25-year-old-ban on carrying loaded weapons in national parks

*Remove the requirement for scientific consultation under the Endangered Species Act (as discussed above) and eliminate climate change as a factor in decisions about species protection

OMB directed its most strident opposition toward new regulations that would have addressed climate change. The White House completely dismantled the efforts of EPA staff to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

A House investigation into EPA's 2007 decision to prohibit California from adopting its own tailpipe emissions controls showed the White House may have played a role in denying the state's climate change policy. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson had been willing to grant California's request but changed his mind after a meeting with White House officials, according to the House report released in May 2008. The denial precludes as many as 19 other states from adopting similar emissions reduction programs.

The White House also blocked federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After developing a regulatory roadmap to reduce both vehicle and stationary source emissions, White House officials prohibited EPA from releasing its plans to the public.

In response to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, EPA began to develop documents showing that climate change poses a danger to the public and a regulatory plan for addressing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But when EPA sent the material to OMB for review, OMB refused to open the e-mail. OMB officials feared the documents would make a compelling case for greenhouse gas regulation.

As well as a recent article in Mother Jones

Deregulation has been the mantra on both sides of the aisle since the late 1960s. Long gone are Democrats like Michigan's Phil Hart who, as chair of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, held hearings on the concentration of economic power in the United States, and proposed expanded government regulation of everything from the oil and auto industries to pharmaceuticals to professional sports. Hart believed that because wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of such a small number of corporations, the market economy had become no more than a facade. In this context, what would bring about lower prices and greater productivity and innovation was more government intervention and regulation, not less.

it also notes that

Democrats from Carter to Clinton helped roll back the government's regulatory power

The point is

A common theme is shifting regulation of industry from government to the industries themselves, essentially promoting self-regulation. One rule transfers assessment of the impact of ocean-fishing away from federal inspectors to advisory groups linked to the fishing industry. Another allows factory farms to self-regulate disposal of pollutant run-off.

The concept I was emphasizing was Special Interests v. Public Interest. In this sense the Bush record is quite clear.

As Barry Ritholtz notes

When we discuss “Regulations,” we are talking about regulating human behavior. And that behavior can range from following misplaced incentives to falsifying accounting data to overtly legal but destructive actions — like putting people into loans they knew (or reasonably should have known) were likely to default.

My willful perversion of truth in order to deceive and cheat has been exposed. I shall work to address this character flaw that provides me education and entertainment.

-----------
Some interesting finds along the way:

OMB Watch

Breaking the banks - Bill Clinton's economic policies

Regulatory Agency Spending Reaches New Height: An Analysis of the U.S. Budget for
Fiscal Years 2008 and 2009 --2009 Annual Report

What two leftists were doing watching West Wing in their LA loft in 2000 I dunno...

But this scene always struck those narrative chords in me. Biological. Plus the dire straits song with the long walk was just the magic touch.


The amazing thing--if you skip the sappyness factor--is how powerful constructs are. Our literature, our myths, our political "theories", our "just so" storys on everything--from right and wrong, the "good fight", good vs. evil, and who we are; they are full of these types of structures. We want to beleive, need to beleive, meaning.

This scene and the song are locked in my head--I heard a clip of the song in a movie and thought of this scene so I had to pull it up.

Strange.

good point

Juan Cole on the SOFA 2011 withdrawl date:

Whether the U.S. withdrawal will allow a resurgence of violence is a question we can't know the answer to. But it should be pointed out that, while the United States has been there, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, have died in violence. Entire cities have changed their social complexion through violence. There's been ongoing killing and destruction.

So the U.S. presence has not been a guarantee of social peace in any case.

Lets put away 102 Trillion dollars this week...

I should be studying for my theories of democracy final but this is too much fun...

Jason responds again:

How can you say that it's not true with any certainty? These programs will be consuming almost 20% of GDP in 30 years. The current budget, not including bailouts, is around 21% of GDP. You're talking about adding another entitlement to these boondoogles programs.

It doesn't make any sense.

I believe markets work.

And I'm assuming we're speaking to the medicare issue and the market competition that the government can bring via a plan you can buy into as the entitlement you are speaking of?

Does anyone really believe cutting into profit margins of other firms doesn't lower costs and makes markets more efficient?

Does anyone believe that government purchasing power won't lower costs of medicare by providing cheaper drugs? We're not currently allowed to negotiate prices by purchasing in bulk thanks to Republicans.

We have to waste revenue subsidizing private companies who already get protectionism from patents. I'm on board with getting rid of wasteful spending--who isn't by the by?

If one doesn't think purchasing power would push down costs why is the purchasing power of walmart so effective for lowering costs?

Also note a clever chess move in the NCPA study Jason cites...

"Looking indefinitely into the future, anticipated benefits, over and above expected premiums and dedicated tax revenues, amount to $102 trillion. This is about 7 times the size of the U.S. economy. It is the amount the government needs to have set aside today, invested and earning interest, to fund these programs indefinitely"

Look at social security... its set up so the workforce today is paying for the current benefits going out. So its a straw man to say anyone is arguing we put all that money away today.

And once again... are there any other government programs we project 70 years into the future? Why not project the military expenditures for the next 1000 years? Might as well throw up the white flag, cut and run so to speak... we can't afford it.

I don't know of anyone saying we save all of it up today? Err... aside from ncpa. No wonder they are worried about it... (on second reading my hyperbole doesn't work... of coarse they don't.)

update: also check this... they state:

Congress often passes legislation that benefits current generations by imposing costs on future ones — Social
Security and Medicare are prominent examples.

Question... are there any government programs whose sole goal is to benifit future generations?

In what democracy could a politician possibly get elected by saying: "We need to spend x amount of dollars so that every child in 2085 has a robot of their own--I don't care about helping citizens today... we need to think about our future first." Whose gonna vote for that? People are greedy and selfish (i.e. people work on incentives--the reason markets work so effectively).

Obviously the social security surplus was about thinking about the future... but it was for the future in the sense that its our economic sustainability that is important--and people do have incentives to give a decent quality of life to their kids...

if you stopped to blink...

Jason responds to my blog post on the "crisis" myth...

The answer to funding shortfall with entitlements is not adding more entitlements.

You can't raise taxes because it risks economic growth and you cannot put off the bills coming due years down the road.

Europe has had so many economic problem because of the welfare state and excessive taxation to fund it.

You're essentially asking for more problems.

If you blinked you'd miss the quick shift to other issues. I admire it as a good "chess move" but I responded in the comments page by trying to go back to the essence of my post...

"Europe has had so many economic problem because of the welfare state and excessive taxation to fund it." Then why do they have longer life spans and higher quality of life? We were hit with the global economic crisis just as hard--if not more--than they have been. So you're not possibly arguing our economy is stronger are you?

"You're essentially asking for more problems." Actually I was responding to the myth of the crisis.

I didn't say we should raise taxes necessarily nor i'm I completely closed off to privitization efforts.

I was pointing out the "sky is falling" is not true and is more ideologically driven.

These are manageable problems.

Do you not think increasing our work force through increased immigration there by pushing down wages will stimulate growth and help get economic growth? Then you don't raise taxes and help address the issue.

Do you not think more competition in the market place would help get rid of needless bureaucracy and force the private sector to lower wages and provide better service?

What about getting not wasting revenue and using the governments purchasing power to get cheaper medications for those on medicare and medicaid?

these all address problems you highlight in this blog... using markets... cutting down on wasteful spending... free flow of labor...

daggnabit...

bloging problem... my side bar is currently pushed down "below the fold" (if you will). I dunno why...