Economic Solutions

George Will has a great article in the Washington Post re: "How to get the country to solvency on entitlements." 

Here's a sample, but it's well worth the whole thing:

Some calamities -- the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 -- have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.

Funding entitlements -- especially medical care and pensions for the elderly -- requires reinvigorating the economy. Ryan's map connects three destinations: economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.

Economic Solutions

George Will has a great article in the Washington Post re: "How to get the country to solvency on entitlements." 

Here's a sample, but it's well worth the whole thing:

Some calamities -- the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, Sept. 11 -- have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.

Funding entitlements -- especially medical care and pensions for the elderly -- requires reinvigorating the economy. Ryan's map connects three destinations: economic vitality, diminished public debt, and health and retirement security.

"Open the Doors" to Climate Change Science

This is article from The Globe and Mail has a good summary of my thoughts on the subject. This is what I have been a "denier" of, if anything - advocacy in the name of science. Science is not about concensus, nor is it agenda-driven. Furthermore, models are just that - models. Policy is a wholly other thing.

None of this is to say that global warming isn't real, or that human activity doesn't play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren't valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.

By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they've discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: “Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.”

These thoughts are echoed in this HA post, as well:

The IPCC doesn’t do science. They do advocacy, mainly for the idea of international control of energy and manufacturing, with a healthy dose of redistribution of wealth. These revelations should put an end to any reliance on IPCC work for American policy, and the UN should be pressured to fire everyone involved in this sham, starting with railroad engineer Rajendra Pachauri.

Economic Lessons From France

Here is a great article from Fortune that a friend emailed me. It retells the situation of French President Mitterrand and his economic policies from the 80's. Here's a brief review of some important details:

Mitterrand won the presidential election on the Socialist ticket in mid-1981, pledging an ultra-Keynesian agenda of government expansion, and a program of sweeping nationalizations. His moderate supporters were certain that he would take a far more centrist approach once in office. But to their horror, Mitterrand kept his most radical promises. At the time, France, like the rest of Europe, was mired in recession. Mitterrand's strategy was to revive the economy by boosting consumer demand through vast increases in wages and government spending.

The Mitterrand plan was the ultimate experiment in extreme stimulus, a Gallic campaign to out-Keynes even Keynes. The new president raised pay for civil servants and employees of state-owned companies.... He created 250,000 new government jobs, and lavishly increased payments to mostly middle-class families through a program called Allocations Familiales. The minimum wage rose sharply, and the government flooded the banks with easy money.

To pay for all the new spending, Mitterrand tripled the budget deficit. Mitterrand not only talked like a Socialist, he acted like one, nationalizing 38 banks, including Paribas, and seven big industrial giants, ranging from chemical colossus Rhone-Poulenc to container producer Pechiney.

The results were an unmitigated disaster. In 1982 and 1983, inflation stood in double digits, twice the level in the Germany and America. Unemployment soared to over 10%. Mitterrand devalued the franc no less than three times to keep France's exports of wine and insulation competitive. The French economy was growing by millimeters while its European neighbors recovered in long strides. Top talent was fleeing: Bernard Arnault, now the CEO of luxury goods marketer LVMH, departed for the U.S., declaring that his homeland was becoming a "banana republic."

Then, in early 1983, Mitterrand made an historic change in direction. Admitting that he'd been "intoxicated" by his Keynesian vision in 1981, Mitterrand, as the French say it, "put water in his wine" by shifting to far more conventional, prudent, and, frankly, capitalist policies.

It sounds very familiar, doesn't it? Check out the rest of the article to find out what happened. Ultimately, the article concludes:

"So Americans should hope for what they can get, a president willing to put water in his wine, and recognize the virtues of a policy that revived France 27 years ago, when François Mitterrand traded fantasy for austerity."

JK Rowling on Failure

Here is the 2008 commencement speech at Harvard given by "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling (20 min). I was very impressed and think it very wise. She obviously is a great story-teller, and thus a good speech-writer. She addresses two topics in her time: Failure and Imagination. Of course she stands as a successful woman, even the richest women in England. But this was not always so. One poignant line from her speech: "Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."

When discussing the idea of Imagination, she gets there in an unexpected way. In describing her early life experiences at Amnesty International, she comes to the rare expression of gratitude for living in a country of laws and personal human rights. This idea struck me (and I was grateful for her expressing it), because it is something that I have understood from my own study of genocide. We truly do live in an exceptional time and place. The majority of the world, both past and present, has never known our comfort and our opportunities. We live in the exception, not the rule.

She ends her speech by quoting Senneca: "As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is that matters." Honestly, one of the best speeches I've ever heard.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

The Impact of the Internet - UPDATED

I enjoy checking out The Technium every once in a while (Link in the margin). Below are some excerpts from a post related to the title above. It is interesting to consider how the internet does change the way we think (and live). I'm sure there are many ways, but here are some of Kevin Kelly's thoughts:

We already know that our use of technology changes how our brains work. Reading and writing are cognitive tools that, once acquired, change the way in which the brain processes information.... Psychologists...concluded that "the acquisition of reading and writing skills has changed the brain organization of cognitive activity in general is not only in language but also in visual perception, logical reasoning, remembering strategies, and formal operational thinking."...

... I now no longer to try remember facts, or even where I found the facts. I have learned to summon them on the Internet. Because the Internet is my new pencil and paper, I am "smarter" in factuality. But my knowledge is now more fragile. For every accepted piece of knowledge I find, there is within easy reach someone who challenges the fact. Every fact has its anti-fact. The Internet's extreme hyperlinking highlights those anti-facts as brightly as the facts....

My certainty about anything has decreased. Rather than importing authority, I am reduced to creating my own certainty — not just about things I care about — but about anything I touch, including areas about which I can't possibly have any direct knowledge . That means that in general I assume more and more that what I know is wrong. We might consider this state perfect for science but it also means that I am more likely to have my mind changed for incorrect reasons. Nonetheless, the embrace of uncertainty is one way my thinking has changed....

While hooked into the network of networks I feel like I am a network myself, trying to achieve reliability from unreliable parts. And in my quest to assemble truths from half-truths, non-truths, and some other truths scattered in the flux (this creation of the known is now our job and not the job of authorities)....

I no longer can tell when I am working and when I am playing online. For some people the disintegration between these two realms marks all that is wrong with the Internet: It is the high-priced waster of time. It breeds trifles. On the contrary, I cherish a good wasting of time as a necessary precondition for creativity, but more importantly I believe the conflation of play and work, of thinking hard and thinking playfully, is one the greatest things the Internet has done....

My thinking is more active, less contemplative. Rather than begin a question or hunch by ruminating aimlessly in my mind, nourished only by my ignorance, I start doing things. I immediately, instantly go. I go looking, searching, asking, questioning, reacting to data, leaping in, constructing notes, bookmarks, a trail, a start of making something mine. I don't wait. Don't have to wait. I act on ideas first now instead of thinking on them....

Compared to the passive consumption of TV or sucking up bully newspapers, or of merely sitting at home going in circles musing about stuff in my head without any new inputs, I find myself much more productive by acting first.... To my eye they are not wasting time with silly associative links, but are engaged in a more productive way of thinking then the equivalent hundred of millions people were 50 years ago....

This approach does encourage tiny bits, but surprisingly at the very same time, it also allows us to give more attention to works that are far more complex, bigger, and more complicated than ever before. These new creations contain more data, require more attention over longer periods; and these works are more successful as the Internet expands....

[UPDATE] As it relates to the third quoted paragraph, I stumbled on this Chesterton quote that is very fitting:

“What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth. . . .

We are on the road to producing a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.” Orthodoxy (Garden City, 1959), pages 31-32.

The Thorn

I love poetry and even write some occasionally. Here is a poem I found over at BTW.

The Thorn
by Martha Snell Nicholson

I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne
And begged him for one priceless gift, which I could call my own.
I took the gift from out His hand, but as I would depart
I cried, “But Lord this is a thorn and it has pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast given me.”
He said, “My child, I give good gifts and gave My best to thee.”
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His face.

Hebrews 10:19,20 "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh...."

The 5000 Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen

Last summer I read this book and have wanted to write a review ever since. It is a fascinating review of our Founding Fathers' literature (both what they had to read to influence their thinking, and what they wrote). The subtitle clarifies the focus: "The 28 Great Ideas That Changed the World". There are many quotes in the book that I had never heard before related to views our Founding Fathers held about various topics. I'll include some of the more profound below.

Over all, it was not a well-written book in that it seemed like a prof's lecture notes simply transcribed for publication. There were a lot of connect-the-dot jumps in the material and not a fluid presentation, like someone who was telling a story. This made it a bit difficult to slog through the book. I think it could be better organized, but grant it is a substantial amount of material compressed into just over 300 pages.

I would recommend it in the end for the content, with the understanding that the presentation is weak.

Some quotes from the author:
de Tocqueville found that Americans were the freest people in the world. "Eventually, the world found that they were also the most generous people on earth. And all this was not because they were Americans. The Founders believed these same principles would work for any nation. The key was using the government to protect equal rights, not to provide equal things" p 119.

"Under no circumstances is the federal government to become involved in public welfare. The Founders felt it would corrupt the government and also the poor. No Constitutional authority exists for the federal government to participate in charity or welfare" p 121.

The real genius of the Constitution is that it "was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change - namely, human nature" p166.

Some quotes from the Founding Fathers:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin

"If there be [no virtue among us], we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." James Madison

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams

"I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republic virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." Thomas Jefferson

"...if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be know that we are at all times ready for war." George Washington to Congress

"The very fame of our strength and readiness would be a means of discouraging our enemies; for 'tis a wise and true saying, that 'One sword often keeps another in the scabbard.' The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war." Benjamin Franklin

"That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence...." Abraham Lincoln

Becoming Men

I came across this great article about some of our Founding Fathers on a website designed to encourage young people to do hard things for God - The Rebelution.  Here is a summary paragraph in the article:

"...As an old saying goes, “As a twig is bent, so grows the tree.”  This understanding is what our founding fathers had in common. It was the secret to their greatness. They put into practice the principle of Lamentations 3:27, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.”  As young adults they adopted the determination and high ideals that went on to characterize their entire lives. Their history-making adult years were directly connected to their focused years as young adults.

It is no coincidence that the same Samuel Adams who organized the Boston Tea Party at age 51 wrote his master’s thesis in defense of the people’s liberties at age 21.  It is no coincidence that David Farragut, who became the U.S. Navy’s first Admiral at age 65, was given command of his first ship at age 12.  It is no coincidence that Alexander Hamilton, who became our nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury at age 34, was a clerk in a counting house at age 13.  Likewise, it is no coincidence that, as the primary author of the Federalist Papers at age 32, Hamilton had already been publishing political pamphlets since he was 19.  And, of course, it is no surprise that the same George Washington who became the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Army at age 43, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Virginia Militia 20 years earlier.

3 Strikes and You're Out, IPCC

Here's the third story of a "scientific" conclusion made in the IPCC that has now been revealed to be based on something less than pure science:

"A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.... The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning."

Beauty and Brains on Fox News

I wanted to watch the Miss America Pageant tonight, but not for the obvious reason. Most years I could care less. But this year is special - Rush Limbaugh is a judge. So, I tuned in to see how he looked/came across on TV in such a mainstream venue. This is all actually just an intro to the clip below from Jon Stewart, which I saw quite a while ago and thought was very funny/sad. Stewart is actually mocking Fox Newscaster Gretchen Carlson for "dumbing down" herself for the news. Carlson is actually a former Miss America, which brings this all together.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Gretchen Carlson Dumbs Down
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

I don't really watch this show on Fox and Stewart is pretty fair to point out the ridiculousness of it all.

The Real Side of Foreign Aid

Here's an account of one effort to distribute food to the needy in Haiti.  The idealism in us says if we send money or other contributions, the rest of the work will be easy.  But conditions on the ground, as this case shows, sometimes can make that impossible.  There really is no ONE to blame, but a thousand factors why people in need can't get help that is available.  That's why it is called a disaster.  The article is insightful and should demonstrate why good plans and good intentions don't always solve all the problems.

Quotes from a Criminal Mind

I have seen a few episodes of the TV show Criminal Minds recently. Each episode starts and ends with a quote. Here is a website that is transcribing them. Here are a few that I found particularly profound:

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses. It is an idea that possesses the mind. ~ Robert Oxton Bolton

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it. ~ Helen Keller

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. ~ Plato

Nothing is so common as the wish to be remarkable. ~ [attributed to] Shakespeare

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society must take the place of the victim, and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness. ~ W.H. Auden

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. ~ Khalil Gibran

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity, nothing exceeds the criticisms made of the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. ~ Herman Melville

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and of unspeakable love. ~ Washington Irving

Prager University

I have really enjoyed Dennis Prager when I have had the chance to listen to him. Unfortunately, he's not on where I now live. But I did find this website where he posts 5 minute video "lectures" in his Prager "U". Check these out and check back regularly. You will enjoy. Here's one to tease you: The Most Important Verse in the Bible.