Category Archives: View

View 696 Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Occupy Wall Street movement grows and spreads. No wonder. Billions in taxes went to bail out Wall Street whose minions then rewarded themselves for their brilliant moves in creating this mess but fixing things with public money. That, at least, is how much of the general public sees the situation.

But the popular view looks for people to blame and punish, not for remedies and underlying causes. It should be no surprise that greed infects the system.

Of course we also have the radio commentators including supposed conservatives who talk of torches and pitchforks.

Of course it isn’t envy and greed to say that we’re entitled to something that others shall be forced to pay for. That’s just natural rights, and covetousness has nothing to do with my right to a free education…

It is that time of the year: KUSC is having its pledge drive. I time mine to coincide with theirs, so be prepared to be bombarded for a week with exhortations. I operate this place on the Public Radio Model – it is free, but if not enough donate, it will go away. So far it is healthy. It needs subscriptions and renewals to keep it that way. SUBSCRIBE NOW! RENEW NOW! Thanks!

I suppose this is one way to deal with the CERN neutrinos Boo! Hiss! Dutch Scientist Rains on Faster-Than-Light Neutrino Parade but it’s not the way I’d do it. There seems to be a general buzz about that the CERN people didn’t pay enough attention to General Relativity and the GPS system, and it was their appalling ignorance that led them to believe they saw faster than light transmission of neutrinos.

Whatever the final outcome here, it was not due to simple ignorance. The CERN people well understood the complexities of determining what is simultaneous in events happening close to the speed of light. GPS satellites move fast enough that determining what are simultaneous events on moving clocks significantly affects the answers you get. There are two ways to compensate for this, one involving relativity, which is the official calculation, and some speculations that apparently get the same results with simpler math.

It may be that the CERN people didn’t do the math right; relativity calculations are notoriously complex and difficult, and that may well be the explanation. I will be astonished if it turns out that they made elementary errors by not thinking about how their GPS clocks are synchronized. That would be the first thing I’d think of given the results. Are these events simultaneous? How do we know? I am sure the CERN boffins thought of that one before they went public. And it may just be they didn’t think it through. http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2685

Of course I really want the results to be real, but the universe doesn’t seem to pay much attention to what I want. Maybe if enough of us want it? If enough Wu Li Masters dance fast enough?

For one view of how SSX became DC/X and what happened to reusable rocket technology, there is a semi-official NASA account http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/x-33/nasm.htm. It is incomplete, but then it would be. It’s a reasonable account of much of what went on.

This would be a really great time to renew your subscription.

View 696 Friday, October 14, 2011

It is that time of the year: KUSC is having its pledge drive. I time mine to coincide with theirs, so be prepared to be bombarded for a week with exhortations. I operate this place on the Public Radio Model – it is free, but if not enough donate, it will go away. So far it is healthy. It needs subscriptions and renewals to keep it that way. SUBSCRIBE NOW! RENEW NOW! Thanks!

Today as Roberta and I were about to take Sable for a walk, the phone rang. It was Niven proposing a hike. I agreed, took our mile before he got here, then Niven and Sable and I set out on our usual route, which is about 2 miles each way and 500 feet altitude rise from my house to the top of the ridge. I wasn’t sure I’d be up to that, but we made it to the top of the trail. Sable loved it of course. It was a very productive hike. I got several pages of notes and a couple of actual scenes in my head, and we created at least one new viewpoint character. Things have been going slow lately and this was great. Then we went to lunch. After which I took a nap, then wrote up my notes while I was still thinking about it, and it was dinner time.

Which is why I am a bit late getting to this. It has been a good day.

I note that the mainstream media is full of news about Romney, most of it good, which means that the establishment has chosen its candidate. Most of the ruling class understands that Obama isn’t likely to be elected again, so there’s a scramble to find someone else they can anoint. Today it was a lot of good stories about Romney and his wife, and a sniff telling us that Cain’s wife doesn’t campaign. We can expect more of that as time goes on.

In 1776 about 1/3 of the American people supported King George III and the government. According to polls, the number of people who support the present Congress is about 13%, so we’re down to about half the support for the government that King George had. Of course we don’t have committees of correspondence and a rival Continental Congress, but we have the Tea Party. Of course the Tea Party remains patriotic and supports the Constitution, so we’re not likely to have a Declaration of Independence and open rebellion. Not from them. The OWS group would love to have a rebellion, but given their attitude they expect the government to supply it for them, as the young man in New York blamed the City for not providing portapotties, thus forcing them to defecate in the flower pots. I am sure there are some intelligent young people in the OWS movement who are victims of the indoctrination they have been getting (and which we pay for in taxes) from the schools, but they seem less and less evident as time goes on. Today in New York they took a victory hike to celebrate not having the park they are occupying cleaned up by paid workers.

With approval of the government down to under 40% we’ll have more and more people looking for ways to make their unhappiness manifest. Some will be looking for a protest to join.

Let me remind them: Good Guys clean up after themselves. Good Guys act like adults. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems determined to act like petulant children.

And the mainstream media will continue to thrash about trying to save the establishment. It looks like fun times ahead.

Need a job?

The formula for economic growth is known. Cheap energy and freedom. It works every time. Federal Regulations cost about $1.5 Trillion a year, We pay that for the federal regulations. The question is whether it’s worth it. I understand that regulations protect us. The question is, do we want to pay the price for that protection? I suspect that if you gave notice that all the Federal Regulations – all of them – would be repealed in 180 days, and after that it was all up to the states, the results would be edifying. Of course that won’t happen.

But we have 7% exponential growth in government spending built into the system.

If something can’t go on forever it will stop – but it may do a lot of damage, some irreparable, until it does stop.

OK we can’t repeal all Federal Regulations. How about repealing all those adopted since, say, 1988?

View 696 Thursday, October 13, 2011

We don’t hear much about the Tea Party nowadays. The Tea Party’s liberal enemies are trying to tell us that it’s dead. Some say they ran out of white hoods and had to go home to make more. They were just a bunch of racists anyway, and now they’re done. The interesting stories are now about the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. That’s growing and that’s where the action is and that’s where the news hawks will go.

It’s true that there’s not a lot of news about the Tea Party. They’re not out demonstrating because they have jobs and homes and families; and after the Tea Party victory in 2008 they’ve turned to the serious business of consolidating their gains, much to the chagrin of the Establishment Republicans, who are working hard at co-opting the new members of Congress. The activists are now out trying to take part in the nomination process. It’s clear that the Republican candidate for President will win in November 2012, so the big question is, will that be an Establishment Republican, or a conservative from outside that establishment? This is a vital contest, and the outcome will be terribly important for the republic. The Tea Party has work to do. Its first job is to get behind a candidate.

According to the mainstream news Occupy Wall Street is now more popular than the Tea Party. Eighty percent of the nation is unhappy with the way the nation is going. More and more are discouraged with the fundamental principles here. Fortunately change is coming. There is little chance that Obama will be re-elected. Of course the Republican Establishment has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory before. In 1996 they ran the only man that Clinton could beat. It is not over yet, nor need we give over the choice to the Ruling Class. The game is still afoot.

Rush Limbaugh is wondering when the split happened? That is, when he first got into the radio talk show business, all the conservative commentators were on the same side, and “our side” meant broadly “the Republican side.” Then somewhere in there the Republican establishment drifted away from the conservatives. When did it happen?

I can tell you when it happened to me. From 1980 to 1988 I had direct access to the White House, and the reports of the Council I chaired went to the National Security Advisor and the Executive Summary of each of our reports was shown to the President. Actually, President Reagan read the entire reports; he liked what we were saying. We have a number of papers on that here. See also The LE MONDE DEBATE and The COUNCIL.

That ended in January, 1989. George H. W. Bush systematically dismissed all the Reagan people from the White House, and tried to move the Republican Party over into the general Washington Establishment and ruling class. He also took us into Iraq for the first time. Long time readers will recall that I wasn’t in favor of that move. Neither were a lot of voters, and the result was Clinton, who ran as a New Democrat who would bring Hope and Change. He proved to be a normal Establishment Democrat. Newt Gingrich, a personal friend, supporter of the space programs I was advocating, and sometimes guest of the Council I had chaired in Reagan days, organized his Contract With America and took both the House and the Senate; he was elected Speaker but was never popular with the Ruling Class. He still isn’t. Newt’s personal life caused him to resign as Speaker, and the Establishment Republicans began their disastrous reign with “Big Government Conservatism”, “Compassionate Conservatism” and all the other distortions of the conservative movement that led to the big collapse. Do not misunderstand me here: although “big government conservatism” wasn’t sustainable, the real estate bubble and collapse were due to the compassionate establishment which was united in its determination to make banks grant loans that couldn’t be repaid, while letting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy up crazy bundles of mortgages and build derivatives that haven’t been straightened out to this day. It was a spree that makes drunken sailors look thrifty, and the commissions were enormous.

Came the inevitable collapse. And there appeared the Light of the World, the One we were waiting for, who would bring Hope and Change, and not at all incidentally would demonstrate to the world the end of political racism. He would bring in a new era of open and fair government, compassionate and smart.

Instead we have what we have. The Establishment Democrats took charge. The Republican Establishment wanted to spend money on TARP. The Establishment Democrats wanted to spend money on “stimulus”. And the results were always the same: Wall Street was bailed out, and the Wall Street executives used public money to save themselves from the consequences of their bad judgments, then paid themselves enormous bonuses for saving the company – and incidentally kept their huge commissions on the big real estate bubble derivatives and swaps and complex bundling schemes.

And comes now the Occupy Wall Street Movement. It’s easy enough to dismiss some of the ne’er-do-wells who come forward when there’s a media camera. Some of them are nearly caricatures, enough so as to arouse suspicion. And of course many are just old line Socialists with dirty faces, old Wobblies (including a few old friends I recognize). Some are ACORN professional agitators. But there is among them a group who have seen that there’s something wrong with an America that bails out the Wall Street institutions and watches as their executives give themselves big salaries and bloated bonuses.

So we have the OWS and the Tea Party. Quite different, but it’s worth looking at the differences. Think of the Tea Party as “small r republicans.” It’s an oversimplification but it will do from a distance; just as, from the same distance, you might see the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators as “small d democrats.” So why are the media so tolerant of the OWS while castigating the Tea Party?

One suggestion is that they are regarded differently: the Tea Party are considered adults, and thus responsible for what they do. The OWS act like children and are thus treated like children. That too is a vast oversimplification, but it has some embedded truth in it.

For those with grievances who want to demonstrate: choose your side carefully. Be very careful who you support. Arab Spring in Cairo is turning into Islamist Fall. Raids on the Christian community. Armed conflict between Army enlisted troops and the police. Egyptian officers losing control of their conflict soldiers. That way lies – well, there are several paths, as those who have read their Aristotle and Cicero know full well. It may lead to Caesar. Or as Mill said

Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing … but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Of course few are fortunate enough to find an Akbar or Charlemagne. Usually they find themselves in the Hobbesian state of nature, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Then they seek Caesar, which leads to Tiberius and Caligula. Good luck brings them Claudius – then Nero.

So for those unhappy with what we have – and over 80% of the American people are unhappy with what we have – the caution is how to bring about the change required, and just how much change is needed. That is not done by direct mob action, but direct action may motivate the rulers to make some changes. Do we then want democrats or republicans?

I will remind those seeking a cause that sometimes the obvious is true. The good guys clean up after themselves. They don’t complain that the city didn’t give them a porta-potty. They rent their own, and use it. OWS is at bottom seeking an Akbar. The Tea Party seeks liberty and rational discussion. We can agree that the establishment has pretty well forfeited the right to rule. We need to choose its replacement with great care. I choose liberty.

In digging around in the archives I found this from June, 2005:

Iune, 2005

Thought you might like this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoconservative

John Quincy Adams <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams>  avowed, "America does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Brice Yokem

Indeed. Thanks. I see I am listed among the "paleoconservatives" and there is a biography of me there. Hmm. I suppose I was aware that such things exist, but I confess to having paid little attention to them.

Having had a look, I can’t object to being placed in the list of paleoconservatives, but that may require some explanation, so here goes:

I don’t believe I can be labeled with any accuracy. I have some claim to being a intellectual descendent of Burke, and I was a protege of Russell Kirk. In my younger days I was concerned with political philosophy and I was a "theory major" in graduate school in political science. Kenneth Cole, co-founder of Modern Age with Russell Kirk, was one of my mentors at the University of Washington.  My career though was mostly in operations research and military applications, and while I taught Constitutional Law and political philosophy ("theory") my involvement in politics was anything but theoretical: I was a political campaign manager and advisor to politicians ( I have not the temperament to run for elective office; I do not suffer fools gladly nor damned fools at all, and it shows, and that attitude is fatal for an elected official).  Of course Burke himself was a party manager and not a terribly successful politician.

In any event, I suppose I am properly put in some small corner of the paleo-conservative movement so long as it is clearly understood that I don’t agree with all they say. I was once offered publication in The American Conservative but I declined, but many of those who do publish there are friends. Once again I do not mean that I agree with all they say. I read Chronicles, and have some admiration for Fleming, but I have never met anyone of the Chronicles group. Sam Francis and I corresponded on congenial terms, and I miss his clearheaded populist view, but most of our correspondence was about our disagreements. It is fair to put me on the list of paleo-conservatives so long as it is understood that way.

Of course there was a time when Kirk was an editor of National Review and Possony a contributor; but that was some time ago, and the egregious Frum pretty well read people like me out of the National Review sympathizer list and in the name of the magazine using the editorial "we" turned his back on us publicly and finally. National Review did good work at one time but it seems to have fallen into other hands as Buckley got older. I no longer correspond with Buckley but then I haven’t since I left academia a lifetime ago, so nothing need be read into that. I doubt he remembers me in any event.

I did have some influence in matters military during the Reagan era; I was also science and technology advisor to Gingrich when he was Minority Whip during the days of what looked like a permanent Republican minority in Congress. I suppose the high point of my "influence" was Reagan’s 1983 SDI speech. The more visible result was the DC/X which General Dan Graham, Max Hunter, and I persuaded then VP and Space Council Chairman Dan Quayle to fund.

The truth is that since Newt Gingrich left being Speaker I haven’t had much involvement in Washington politics. That’s partly due to the death of General Graham, who maintained a sane presence inside the Beltway without succumbing to the Beltway Disease of assuming the nation ends ten miles outside the Capitol Beltway.

On the other hand, this place seems to be widely read, and every now and then I get messages from people I would not have assumed paid any attention, so I suppose I can still say that I have an entry, sometimes, to being persuasive in places where being persuasive might make a difference. That is all I ever promised with the Council.

And this is far too much about me. Leave it that paleo-conservative is not an entirely accurate label, but no labels are entirely accurate, and the paleo-conservative tent includes many who don’t agree with everything said on the posters outside the revival meeting…

It all remains true. I am not very active in politics, but there are still those who listen. Sometimes. I have sources from all over. Possony used to say that you either believe in rational discussion or you don’t. I still do. Someone has to…

It is that time of the year: KUSC is having its pledge drive. I time mine to coincide with theirs, so be prepared to be bombarded for a week with exhortations. I operate this place on the Public Radio Model – it is free, but if not enough donate, it will go away. So far it is healthy. It needs subscriptions and renewals to keep it that way. SUBSCRIBE NOW!  RENEW NOW! Thanks!

View 696 Tuesday, October 11, 2011

The Travelling Republican Debate show continues tonight with Charlie Rose, who generally considers himself the smartest person in the room and often is. It will be interesting to see him in action with the Republican candidates, at least two of whom are smarter than he is.

It is said that the debate is intended to emphasize economics and that Rose will also try to embarrass the Republican candidates with questions and jibes about the Occupy Wall Street movements.

It may be interesting to see what the candidates have to say about the Occupy Wall Street movements, although probably not, because they aren’t likely to take them seriously. After all, this was called into existence by Adbusters, a rather strange organization, supported by ACORN and community organizers, and suddenly supported by the regular political operatives of organized labor. There seems to be little common ground among the demonstrators other than a general discontent with the way things are going, and a disdain for the Tea Party. I would presume that most of the demonstrators are Obama supporters — or more likely, disappointed Obama supporters. The disappointment has gone to disdain with some. He was supposed to have brought us hope and change, and an end to this corporate state and domination of the nation by the 1% and some kind of transfer of power to the 99%, and a general return to prosperity and something like participatory democracy, and that didn’t happen. He promised the most open administration in history, and the most ethical, and that hasn’t happened either. There don’t seem to be any more people actually listening as there were before Obama’s inauguration. The hope and change didn’t happen but since the Republicans are the party of big corporations and big banks, where do you go from here?

If a lot of this sounds like the Tea Party, it’s hardly a coincidence. The Tea Party people decided to try reforming the Republican Party and weaning it away from corporate welfare and “Big Government Conservatism" (whatever that it; it sure isn’t conservative). They seem to be doing some of that. It needs to continue. Establishment Republicans won’t save this country.

A good part of the country is unhappy with the concentration of wealth and power that has taken place over the past decades. That includes me. Marx predicted that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction, and the concentration of power under capitalism is inevitable. The economist David McCord Wright believed that one principle reason why Marxism didn’t get so far in the United States is that we had the anti-trust acts and prevented the overwhelming concentrations of power that would otherwise have resulted. I would certainly support a return to breaking up power concentrations, not by confiscation but by anti-trust actions. Instead of the Big Five banks I’d be much happier with the Not-So-Big Fifty, or Forty. I’d do the same with many of the other industries. But that’s another essay. My point is that capitalists always cooperate each other to influence government – see Adam Smith as a beginning – to restrict entry into their particular part of the market. That’s not necessarily a Republican trick. Look at Obama and the auto industry, the stimulus actions, or almost anywhere else you look as first Republicans and then Democrats thrashed about trying to recover from the collapse of the housing market bubble – a bubble created by government in efforts begun by Democrats but continued by post-Gingrich Republicans, which enriched Wall Street. No wonder so many Occupy Wall Street people are unhappy. They have every right to be, and it takes a great deal more education than they are likely to have got in their terribly expensive years in our new modern colleges to figure out what went wrong or how to get out of it.

For a start they want the bailout money back. It didn’t go to them. To whom did it go? There was a lot of money floating out there –

Anyway, look for that. Look for Charlie Rose to be easy on Romney and hard on Perry. See how he treats Cain. And now that Palin has pretty well removed herself as a possible knight riding to the rescue, things will get more serious as the Republicans begin to realize that their candidate probably is on that stage; it’s a bit late for anyone else to come to their rescue.

It should all start in an hour or so. I’ll have some comments after it’s over.

There were no surprises in the Republican debate at Dartmouth this evening. The candidates have finally learned not to treat each other as enemies, and to stop bashing each other; the lesson hasn’t been perfectly learned, but they’re doing better. Bachman managed to control her near-surface hysteria, sufficiently so that I’d advise her to run for Speaker of the House. She’d be a good one. Cain looked Presidential, as did Romney and Perry. Newt Gingrich as always was the smartest man in the room, and managed to get the point across: there wasn’t anyone on the platform who wouldn’t do a better job than Mr. Obama. In the old days when Postmaster General was a high precedence Cabinet position that served as the post for Presidential Advisor – think Benjamin Franklin as Washington’s Postmaster General, or Farley as Roosevelt’s – I’d think the country well served if Newt had that post. We don’t have anything quite like it now, a cabinet level position without direct management responsibility, not confined to “national security” but expected to be involved in that. We need Newt Gingrich in a position close to the President, someone to be listened to and free to range through all the actions of government without the responsibility of actual management.

I’m not familiar with the Bloomberg Channel, which is apparently popular with financial institutions and offices; indeed I don’t think I have ever watched it before, and I had trouble finding it among the many channels we get. I found it an hour before the debates began and watched for a while. Their political analysts were almost all both arrogant and incompetent. If Charlie Rose spends much time hanging around with them it’s no wonder that he’s sure he’s always the smartest man in the room. Of the three interrogators, one was the Washington Post harridan who considered it her job to argue with the candidates and become part of the debate, one was Charlie Rose who wasn’t much different from any of the other moderators in such debates, and one was a Bloomberg analyst who appeared more competent than anyone else I saw at Bloomberg. The fact the she was a personable young lady with a reasonable media voice and demeanor didn’t hurt. Some of the Bloomberg pundits had voices and demeanor totally unsuitable for public appearances coupled with an apparent inability to understand what they were talking about.  Those were my impressions; I could be wrong because my exposure to them was limited; I can say I won’t be going back to Bloomberg for much else.

The debate won’t have changed many opinions. Rick Perry came off better this time, but so did all the others: less strident, less ready to tear each other apart, more inclined to talk about what they intend to do rather than recite resumes.

The big three remain: Romney, Perry, and Cain. The others didn’t come off badly at all. I could live with any of them as President.

Yesterday was 10/10/2011 as well as Columbus Day. Ten-ten is the anniversary of the 1912 founding of the Republic of China as well as anniversary of the uprising in 1911 that led to the fall of the centuries old dynasty and millennia old empire.

During the Cold War ten-ten, or double-ten, was an important day. The Republic of China was recognized by the United States, and the Republic threw large receptions/parties attended by much of the diplomatic corps – those who sympathized with Nationalist China as opposed to Red China. Senator Tom Dodd’s Committee of One Million Against the Recognition of Red China generally threw another reception. The US recognized diplomatic corps of the Baltic Republics (which were physically occupied by the USSR and claimed to be part of Russia until the breakup of the USSR) would attend. As Southern California Chairman of Captive Nations I was always very busy on Ten-Ten. Even after the US recognition of the People’s Republic (and the diplomatic exile of the Republic) there were ceremonies on Ten-Ten for years, but the music stopped as time went on. I think my last Ten-Ten party was in about 1996 at Universal City. It was organized by Chinese Americans and I was invited because I had been considered a good friend of China in the old days. My friend Supervisor Mike Antonovitch was there. I hear from him once in a while, but I think I haven’t had a Ten-Ten invitation since.

With the end of the Cold War the US commitments to the Far East have been reexamined and new priorities and policies instituted. Over time the Republic of China, now known as Chinese Taiwan and not recognized as a sovereign entity, has become a stable parliamentary democracy. The People’s Republic of China remains what it is.

At one time the policy of the US was that we agree that China is one country, and that it includes Formosa (Taiwan).

For my last essay on the subject (1999) see http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/taiwan.html, which also includes an FPRI report on the subject. Things have changed a lot since 1999 but the essays are informative about history.