tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60420780066685540332024-03-13T12:04:16.922-04:00Freedom Choice CostPractical economics to save America's cultural capitalDean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.comBlogger509125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-12160159553384431832013-02-22T14:46:00.001-05:002013-02-22T14:46:39.836-05:00Time to redirect my effortsHello readers of Freedom, Choice, Cost.<br />
<br />
As my work continues to gain a wider national appeal, It has been more efficient to focus my attention on larger media outlets to get my word out.<br />
<br />
Now that most of my published work can be read at <a href="http://www.realclearmarkets.com/">Real Clear Markets</a> and <a href="http://educationviews.org/">Education News</a>, I have focused my attention away from posting on this blog..<br />
<br />
Please visit these sites or simply <a href="https://www.google.com/">Google</a> my name and a few key words of interest and I'm sure you will be directed to many of my works.<br />
<br />
Thank you so much<br />
<br />
Dean<br />
<br />Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-19402596961433004192013-01-10T15:35:00.001-05:002013-01-10T15:35:22.448-05:00Congress should keep up with the Joneses<br />
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Basic
debt ceiling economics</span></i><b><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">By Dean Kalahar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If Congress does not raise the debt
ceiling, the result will be no different than the Jones family deciding that
they have maxed out their credit cards; and that if they continue borrowing and
spending over their means, there will be significant pain to the family at best
and bankruptcy at worst.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no
different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Mr. and Mrs. Jones want to be able to
provide for themselves in their retirement and hopefully leave a little
something after they are gone to provide a better life for their children and
grandchildren. They understand living in the moment and not planning for the
future is a plan for failure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Joneses know if they stop borrowing they will not become
destitute, or default on their loan payments and obligations, because they will
continue to work and earn income. (Just
as the government will still take in tax revenue) They know that if they
reallocate and budget, which includes paying the interest and some of the principle
on their credit card debts, and live within their means - nothing disastrous will
happen!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="" name="OLE_LINK2"></a>The economics of government is no different.</div>
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<a href="" name="OLE_LINK1"><br /></a></div>
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The Joneses know they have a spending problem -not a revenue
problem, and their extravagance must end. They will have to define what is
essential for the family to provide stability. This will not be fun or easy,
but </div>
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they know their free spending choices have costs and they have decided
personal responsibility to their accounts now is better than painful
accountability later.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no
different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Sure the kids will whine and their friends
will begrudge losing the benefits of cozying up to their big spending neighbors;
but the basic family obligations of securing the home, providing food for the
table, and making sure the children have clothes will ensure the health of the
family.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no
different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">If the Joneses want some things they
can’t afford, they can become more efficient, increase their productivity, sell
some of their assets, hold a garage sale, or just plain old save for that
special purchase on a rainy day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no
different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Over time the Joneses will adjust to
their new financial way of life, pay off their bills, and get back on solid
economic footing. At that time, they will have the option of having more credit
extended to them because their credit rating will not only be secured, it will
be enhanced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The economics of government is no
different.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Character and integrity are important
to the Joneses, because living up to their commitments is not a slogan, it’s a
moral obligation. Over time the self-respect they have shown turns those who
were once resentful of their bounty and scornful of their austerity into
neighbors who view them with admiration and strength. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The
economics of government should be no different.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<pre><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">If Congress decides to stop borrowing money and not raise the debt ceiling - nothing disastrous will happen! And any attempt to prove otherwise is futile because it’s just not true.<o:p></o:p></span></pre>
<pre>
</pre>
<br />
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-53483279479096833502012-12-21T15:07:00.000-05:002012-12-21T15:07:17.619-05:00Why?<br />
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<i>Although Adam Lanza is personally
responsible for what happened at Sandy Hook, we are all complicit in the
tragedy.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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By Dean Kalahar</div>
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<br /></div>
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The question you hear most often in regards to the Sandy Hook shootings
is “why?’ The usual linear “intentional causation” analysis as to why Adam
Lanza became a killer is inadequate and intellectually lazy. This horrendous
crime can’t be explained away simply by blaming guns, video games, or
disabilities. If we truly want to honor the fallen, a systemic approach into
the causes of the crime is necessary and may offer clarity, solace, and hope.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nature played a vital role in the temperament of Adam Lanza. His unique
biology created a human with developmental disabilities; possibly including Asperger’s,
Autism, and anti-social personality disorder. Hallucinations & delusions
must have also lived in Lanza’s psychotic mind. The gunman was in all
likelihood, void of conscience or empathy and had great trouble with neurological
processing. If he was “brilliant,” handicaps were a part of the package.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nurture also played a role in the creation of the killer. The parental environment
from birth to age 5 molded his neuroses where critical periods of development were
impaired. The impact of divorce on worth was devastating. Teaching a disabled
child how to use a gun, and allowing violent adult video games, spawned a set
of learned behaviors that lead to tragic results. Poverty was not at play as
the mother and her son lived in luxury. God only knows what happened in that
household.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Society also offered a more subtle influence to Adam Lanza. Institutional
decline since the 1960’s has removed the social constraints once taken for
granted. The family institution has eroded the nuclear unit. Illegitimacy, divorce,
“children’s rights,” feminism, parental negligence, and loss of values all
weigh in on violence. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Religion’s role has been all but removed from society; replaced with a secular
humanism of ego-centric narcissism. The community and church no longer act as co-parents
watching out for all children and keeping them on track.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The education institution was destroyed by the self esteem movement, “student
rights,” a lack of discipline, progressive education ideology, and a non-judgmental
philosophy that says “anything goes.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Lastly, the government has become an overpowering absentee nanny that
offers a welfare culture of specific rules and laws that attempt to define
freedom and create equality of results at the cost of losing personal
responsibility.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The media is also a part of cultural decline, providing<i> </i>violent movies & television shows;
while the 24 hour news cycle endlessly promotes criminals. Hollywood embraces morally
corrupt anti-social behavior to boost celebrity status at the cost of human
decency, decorum, class, and the golden rule. They willingly defined deviancy
downward, coarsened language, desensitized, and embraced deindividuation.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Modern technology (internet, social networks, and cell phones) have
created a situation where we communicate more but talk less. We no longer look
people in the eyes. We have de-humanized interpersonal relationships; and hide
behind screens, becoming ever more emboldened malcontents that lash out without
the fear of accountability. </div>
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</div>
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Although we have always been a nation of weapons, we have embraced a culture
of violence. The six shooter and western rifle has been replaced with Pacino’s
“little friend.” Rap lyrics aimed at killing “pigs” combined with ever more
vivid video games, (where the word violent no longer can adequately define the
carnage) embrace an alternative reality which has warped the brains of our youngest
children. The “boob tube” generation set the stage for the video game to eat
our children whole.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Lastly, we have chosen to ignore the fact that just under the surface
of man is a barbaric animal that is susceptible to the darkest force of human
nature, EVIL. Far too many in our therapeutic society of gum drops and lollipops,
refuse to accept the brutal fact of man’s nature and the history of his actions
against his fellow man. We must stop believing man is good because he does
“good.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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All together, these factors created a neural, environmental, social,
institutional, and cultural concoction of evil derangement, and destruction in
the life and mind of Lanza. One can hope this recipe was a one-time event, but
sadly, the cocktail has been served all too often as of late.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Nobody should say they are surprised the tragedy occurred, just that it
happened at Sandy Hook. Because, truth be known, this could happen anywhere. And
nobody should say that any one of the singular causes can be focused on in
order to fix the problem our nation has with unspeakable immoral violence. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Although Adam Lanza is personally responsible for what happened at
Sandy Hook, we are all complicit in the tragedy. We have allowed our society to
devolve, and in doing so, have removed the cultural constraints that at one
time inhibited this type of behavior. We are all torn apart by the senseless
murder because our social fabric has been torn apart.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As we mourn the death of the children and their teachers at Sandy Hook,
it’s time we, as a nation of individuals, look in the mirror and make some major
changes to the way conduct our lives.</div>
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<br /></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-34137796381674220782012-12-14T11:34:00.000-05:002012-12-14T11:34:15.357-05:00The slavery of redistribution ideology<br />
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">By Dean Kalahar</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">"Not
since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to
what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare
state." -Thomas Sowell <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The
idea that we should take from those who have and give to those who don’t is viewed
as proper and just among liberals. In fact, if you do not subscribe to redistribution
ideology, you are attacked as being greedy at best and racist at worst. The
problem is that income redistribution in practice promotes one of the same
moral injustices found under slavery.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">A
simple inquisition will explain. If morality is defined by private property;
meaning a person has a right, based on natural law, to their person and their
possessions. And if property is generated by the productive and wealth creating
behavior of a person’s labor; then immorality is defined as any force that
seeks to injure or take away ones property (murder, theft, rape, etc). As such,
using the productivity of another for one’s personal gain is immoral.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">We
can then extrapolate this theorem. If taking the productive output of a slave
and using it for another’s personal gain was immoral; then taking the
productive output of any worker and using it for another’s gain is immoral, no matter what race, color, gender, or
socio-economic status the producer happens to be.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Logic
leads us to one conclusion. A modern form of slavery is taking place within in
the welfare state. And no matter how you slice it, property theft to promote a
false ideology of “fairness” or advance a twisted form of “compassion” to gain
power is abhorrent. It does not
matter how many ribbons and bows decorate the rhetoric of “Robin Hood”
redistribution, the final analysis
is the promotion of servitude.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Redistribution ideology is not about a safety net for the truly needy or
the necessity of government to tax in order to perform their proper functions
of protecting people, property, and enforcing the rule of law. President Obama may
call redistributive efforts “economic justice,” or “economic rights,” but in
the end, using the power of the state to take ones property is as immoral as taking
the wealth created by a slave to benefit the slave owner.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Those
on the left will look you straight in the eye and profess they defend liberty
and property; but one need only to read the words of the President in regards
to his definition of “social justice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“I think when you
spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“I
actually believe in redistribution” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">"Spreading
the wealth around is good.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"> ‘Bring about significant re-distributional
change”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“Actual
coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"> “I do not believe that those two things- fair
distribution and economic growth are mutually exclusive”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“I’m not optimistic about bringing about major
redistributive change through the courts” <b style="font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“The Supreme Court never ventured into the
issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political
and economic justice in society.”<b style="font-style: italic;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">“I think there was a tendency to lose track
of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are
able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring
about redistributive change.”<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And of course the classic lines “You didn’t build that” and “those who
do not pay their fair share” show the Presidents belief that private property
is to be confiscated while ignoring the unalienable rights defined in the
Declaration of Independence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">By advancing the welfare state and income
redistribution through class warfare, one of the greatest intellectually inconsistent ironies of liberalism is exposed. The indefensible
position of trying to defend equality and the dignity of man by violating the human
rights of those very people you claim to be defending. The hypocrisy of the
left knows no boundaries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Far too many American’s have shed blood to
protect the sacred rights of life, liberty and property. History reminds us the Civil War’s fight to
end the abuse of human dignity was a victory that came with a high price. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The nation’s current trajectory of wealth redistribution will
eventually polarize its citizens into a fight between the takers and the makers
because entitlement creates resentment.
Americans must find moral clarity on
property rights within the framework of the Republic before the battle grows
ever more volatile and the resolution becomes violent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-15344309071140314002012-12-10T12:33:00.000-05:002012-12-11T07:53:08.143-05:00Jamie Foxx SNL monologue was bigotedRegarding Jamie Foxx SNL monologue:<br />
<br />
It was bigoted, racist, militant, ignorant, and self-adoring.<br />
It made me feel sick and sorry for Mr. Foxx<br />
It was not comedy and he can't hide behind the "it was comedy" banner.<br />
He should not get a pass by the media and society for his bigotry because he is black.<br />
He owes the nation, and all those who have given their lives so he could become a wealthy "celebrity" and host SNL, an apology.<br />
<br />
If SNL had previewed and approved his monologue, they too owe the nation an apology.<br />
<br />
Definition of <em>BIGOT </em>: a person who is intolerantly devoted to his or her own
opinions and prejudices; <em>especially</em> : one who regards
or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and
intolerance<br />
<br />Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-45262997824865867082012-12-05T11:40:00.000-05:002012-12-05T11:40:43.252-05:00The psychology of the new American liberal<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">By Dean Kalahar</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">With the fiscal
cliff, $16 trillion deficit, and bankrupt entitlement programs dragging down
our way of life; businessmen and conservatives take heed. If you want to be
successful, you better know who you are dealing with and be prepared to fight
an opponent that does not think like you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The psychology of
the American liberal is based on a set of perceptions of how the world works
that is the antithesis of Alexis de Tocqueville’s <i>Democracy in America</i>. Recognizing the new majority and realizing what
makes them tick is an important examination for anyone who wants to understand
America in the 21<sup>st</sup> century and fight for survival.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><b><span style="color: windowtext; font-size: 18.0pt;">W</span></b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">hat is a modern liberal? James Q. Wilson explained
that “in the early 19<sup>th</sup> century a liberal was a person who favored
personal and economic liberty; that is freedom from the control and power of
the state. A conservative was originally a person who opposed the excesses of
the French Revolution and its emphasis on personal freedom and favored a
restoration of the power of the state, the church and the aristocracy.” Today
that has been flipped; liberals want the restoration of power in the state, secretly
masking their shame by sincerely claiming they are fighting to protect your
liberty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The name of the liberal vision changes each and every time its precepts are
discredited but the ideology never wavers. As such liberals have called
themselves Communists, Progressives, Collectivists, Keynesians, Historicists,
Socialists, Democrats, and Leftists at one time or another. Today the term
“progressive” is being recycled. Tomorrow we’ll hear other lofty oxymora to
hide their true intentions.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">At the heart of
liberalism, as defined by Thomas Sowell, “is the naïve belief that people are
basically good and that humans can be perfected
through the rule of self anointed experts who should be telling the rest
of us, through the power of government, what we ought to do, what we can do and
what we cannot do.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Unfettered individual judgment and conscience known as secular humanism,
moral relativity, and non-judgmentalism are at the heart of the liberal vision.
And since they do not subscribe to and are least habituated to existing
institutions, traditions, and values, they feel especially suited to act as
social change agents. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Liberals wish to define for us what is good and what is bad in order to
remake us in their image; because they
believe they hold superior wisdom and virtue over the rest of the “society”
they view as ignorant. They express their arrogance of a self imposed
superiority through self congratulatory actions and smug condescending
rhetoric.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The irony
according to Peter Berkowitz is that progressives see
themselves as the only legitimate representatives of ordinary people and
yet when the people make choices contrary to progressive
dictates we see contempt among the experts for the very people whose interests
they claim to alone represent.<em><span style="font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></em></span></div>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell says the
left “believe ills such as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive
primarily from “society,” rather than from individual choices and behavior. To
believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role
of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people
treated unfairly by “society.” As a result of this belief, according to Dennis
Prager, liberals rarely blame people for the evil they do. Instead, they blame
economics, parents, capitalism, racism, and anything else that can let the
individual off the hook.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And yet the left speak in democratic terms to create authoritarian outcomes.
In order to carry out what they blindly believe are compassionate and good
intentioned plans, the left has as its core a never-ending expansion of the
arbitrary powers of the federal government. “Do-gooders,” based on dreams of lollypops and
unicorns in a wonderland they envision, direct decisions on others who need
“fixing” while ignoring costs and paying no personal price for their grandiose
schemes. In short, as Sowell describes the madness, “liberalism is
totalitarianism with a human face.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">L</span></b>iberals deal in feelings and emotions not
reason and reality. They passionately speak
in terms of innovation and excitement and read their childish feelings as
principled thought. It never dawns on a liberal<span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> the possibility that passion without principle is
just the raw emotion of human nature.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; color: windowtext;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Liberals have a tendency to be infuriated and lash out at anyone who does
not agree with their Pollyannaish worldview. As Jonah Goldberg states: “Liberalism
is never wrong, because essential to the concept of liberalism is the idea
that it must always be right.” As such they must become masters of white wash,
blame shifting, and talking out of both sides of their mouths. Liberals never
apologize for actions they take that cause calamity. Instead, morally outraged
liberals demand a right to results instead of defending the morality of
property rights, personal freedom, and liberty.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">What outrages the left is resistance or even non-compliance with their
agenda. Their motto is: If you are not with us, you’re against us; which means
we are against you and will do any and everything in our power to silence you.
The ends justify the liberal means and they will wage war on anyone challenging
their utopian worldview that ironically believes war is wrong. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">For a liberal, according to Sowell, “it is desperately important to win, not
simply because they believe that one policy or set of beliefs and values is
better for society, but because their whole sense of themselves is at stake.” “It
is not hard to find an attitude” with liberals because it is the “threat to
their egos that they hate,” which comes from anything that challenges their
cause as “saviors of the poor, the environment, and other busybody tasks.” </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">It is no wonder the lefts’ agenda takes on a
pseudo-religious faith in their certainty (i.e. global warming, GMF’s, DDT,
pink slime, windmills?) and
reacts to any alternative viewpoints not only as wrong but as a sin against the
church they worship- themselves. This is why
they advance their beliefs from a purely emotional and ideological dogma. Their
anger is misdirected fear that their worldview might come crashing down, if anything
indeed was allowed to challenge their false reality. The liberal’s vision
affirms a life of identity confusion being played out as self-assuredness. This
forces their arrogance to grow with every opposing viewpoint because, as John
Stossel points out, “the conceit of the anointed knows no bounds.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Victor Davis Hanson further explains that “Liberals feel
terrible about their own exclusivity and the abyss between what is professed
and what is lived.” And explains why “angst over their voluntary segregation …
is ameliorated by loudly and cheaply alleging that someone else is racist,”
bigoted, sexist, fascist, or any emotional bomb throwing nomenclature that
seeks to destroy another so as to avoid self awareness.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell states: “many, if not most, people on the left find
it inexplicable how any decent and intelligent person could be on the right.”
While “Most people on the right have no problem understanding people on the left
because many, if not most, were on the left themselves when they were younger.”
The conservative views the liberal as fine, just uninformed, while the liberal
views the conservative with distain and contempt. In short, liberals have yet
to grow up, mature, and realize the world for what it is, not what they
fantasize.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell explains: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Most of us learn that from experience
but experience is precisely what the young are lacking. "Experience"
is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were
making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for
being wrong. Those who are insulated from that pain; whether by being born into
affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure
in academia or in the federal judiciary can remain in a state of perpetual
immaturity. Individuals can refuse to grow up, especially when surrounded in
their work and in their social life by similarly situated and like-minded
people. Even people born into normal lives, but who have been able through
talent or luck to escape into a world of celebrity and wealth, can likewise
find themselves in the enviable position of being able to choose whether to
grow up or not. Those of us who can recall what it was like to be an adolescent
must know that growing up can be a painful transition from the sheltered world
of childhood. No matter how much we may have wanted adult freedom, there was
seldom the same enthusiasm for taking on the burdens of adult responsibilities
and having to weigh painful trade-offs in a world that hemmed us in on all
sides, long after we were liberated from parental restrictions. Should we be
surprised that the strongest supporters of the political Left are found among
the young, academics, limousine liberals with trust funds, media celebrities,
and federal judges?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">To liberals
it is always “societies” fault or America’s fault for any and all ills. Heaven
forbid the liberal mind take personal responsibility and grow. Self awareness
is far too painful and thus external blame is the default setting that protects
their fragile cognitive house of cards. Liberals misperceive and distort the
world in lieu of answering the difficult yet fundamental question of life, “Who
am I.” Since they do not know who they are, they want to control what you are to
make them feel as if they are “something special.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><b><span style="font-size: 18pt;">T</span></b>he liberal
lives in a world where reality is deconstructed into a matter of perceptions. These
perceptions, mind you, can never be misperceptions. Liberals live in a world
where pompous self indulgence separates and insulates “the special” from
accountability and suffering of the type those who live in the real world know
all too well.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And liberal leaders who sit in their academic
“ivory towers” or endless “collaborative” meetings have little contact with the
knowledge of the people. Their world of style over substance symbolism insulates
them from the harshness of the human condition and allows them to bask in the
warm glow of self approval. Yet, sadly, they are the first to proclaim they
“feel your pain” and “understand your needs.” It’s an ironic condescension that
is an all too typical reaction from a group who deals in feelings instead of
facts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell argues correctly that “no one
can really understand the political left without understanding that they are
about making themselves feel superior, however much they may talk piously about
what they are going to do to help others.” Therefore they must psychologically
believe they are the “thinking people” who are “the brightest and the best.” As
such they must play a special role in society by outlining the moral stand.
Proof of this is that “the left's lack of interest in testing the actual
results of their bright ideas against hard facts betrays what their real
interest is.” <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Victor Davis Hansen points out that to liberals “our mastery of nature must
extend to human nature as well. A society that can call anywhere in the world
on a cell phone, must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if
these pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the
soul.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And Michael Knox Beran explains, “Modern liberalism regards suffering not as
something inherent in the very nature of life but as an anomaly to be
eradicated by reason and science and social legislation.” The left thinks it
has a right to a perfect life free of pain. This lack of even a basic
understanding of human nature and history makes their denial of reality all but
certain. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And while the left dominates the
academic world, Sowell documents they are found in the “soft humanities, where
there are no facts to challenge the fantasies that abound. Leftists head for
similar fact-free zones outside of academia.” The faith of “science” is
heralded by the left, while the actual use of science is ignored.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; color: windowtext;">Yet
the liberal vision, according to Friedrich Hayek, has a fatal error in thinking.
Leftists believe they can alter forces more powerful than they and can
comprehend and reason without limits. In short, the liberal mind does not
believe it is held back by such fussy things as limits, costs, scarcity, and
natural laws.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Liberal
faith is placed in “reason” and the unlimited potential of an infallible
ego-centric man; not in a faith of a greater power and a humbled acceptance of
the limits to man’s reason because of a flawed human nature. They believe if it
can’t be “reasoned,” it does not exist. In short, liberals can’t see something
greater than self, so a power greater than self does not exist, which makes
their power absolute.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell states: "Many on the political left are so
entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality
they are creating in the real world.” “Good Things have costs, often costs out
of all proportion to whatever good they might do. But notions like trade-offs
and diminishing returns seldom deter zealots, whose own egos are served by
their zealotry in imposing their vision, however costly or counterproductive it
may be for others.” <span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The elite left of today, Sowell says, are hardly “Karl Marx's proletarians,
who were supposed to bring on the revolution.” In contradiction, “the working
class are in fact today among those most skeptical about the visions of the Left.”
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">The liberal anointed also romanticize about earlier peoples
who they believed were, as Sowell describes, “noble savages” …”who supposedly
lived in some sort of Eden before evil was introduced from outside by modern
Western society. Of course the left conveniently forgets facts about the
carnage, oppression, or brutality in such societies have been gilded over,
totally ignored, or brazenly denied.” The left wants American society to go
back to a more simple and sustainable time. Sadly, that was a time of greater
poverty, crime, death, disease, and suffering not just for American’s but for
everyone. John Milton said, Better to reign in hell
than serve in heaven. Going further, liberals would sooner live in hell than
share in heaven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">N</span></b>ot
only is their ignorance, but the hypocrisy of the ideology is breathtaking. Liberals
hold evolutionary theory as a cornerstone of reason and yet feel the need to
ignore its principles and supplant natural law with man as the social engineer.
And according to Sowell, “People who believe in evolution in biology often
believe in creationism in government. In other words, they believe that the
universe and all the creatures in it could have evolved spontaneously, but that
the economy is too complicated to operate without being directed by
politicians.” What is even more
intellectually inconsistent is the same demigods who blame institutions for
man’s evil nature dismiss the fact that men, like themselves, created the
institutions. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Ludwig von Mises exposed the
hypocrisy by stating: “they call themselves progressives, but they recommend a
system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a
resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but
they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but
they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they
want to make the government omnipotent.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell explains, “the dirty little secret of liberal politics is that it is
not about the poor or ‘social justice’ but is about the political careers and
moral exaltation of liberals themselves.” In other words, “idealism in words is
not idealism in deeds.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell continues by pointing out that for liberals, who champion
for the people and cry for equality, “there
is remarkably little concern with allowing those other people to live their own
lives as they see fit” Instead, they shamelessly promote “the most
dangerous of all inequalities; the inequality of unaccountable power.” “Ever increasing and ever more minute
regulation of other people's lives has now reached the point where we cannot
even take a shower, flush a toilet, or take out our garbage the way we want to.”
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell reminds us that: “the left’s ideological bigotry has become the norm
on even our most prestigious campuses, where students can go for years without
reading or hearing anything that challenges the left vision.” Universities no
longer espouse the universal freedom of ideas. Instead, speech codes, political
correctness, and censorship permeate what are supposed to be our most open
forums of thought.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">And liberals have distain for “crass material
things.” But these same materialistic things “has released hundreds of
millions of human beings from the curse of grinding poverty, endless toil, and
given them longer lives,” according to Sowell. This hypocrisy is unseen or
ignored by the left who thrive in the insulation of a self congratulatory fog.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><b><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">W</span></b>hat
will be the Results of the new American Liberalism?<b> </b><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hayek
said, “The vision of human limits offers a best case view, while the vision of
ever expanding human capacity pushes civilization in a direction that will
ultimately create a scenario of human decline.” Sadly, the left has won the
culture war and we have past a tipping point in America. The results of the
last 50 years of liberal warfare have left the nation scarred. Take a look at
our family, economic, religious, educational, and government institutions, and
the only a conclusion you can reach is one of American decline. </span><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">History
is full of examples of collectivist failures: Jamestown, East Germany,
Plymouth, Chavez’s Venezuela.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6042078006668554033" name="OLE_LINK4"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6042078006668554033" name="OLE_LINK3"> </a></span>Glen Risley states “The Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, and
North Korea are all examples of oppressive failures based on wealth
redistribution.” He asks, “How can modern liberals embrace the tyrannical
system that robs incentive and dooms an entire society to a mediocre standard
of living dictated by central planning? <span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">Sowell offers a simple question for liberals who emerged in the 60’s and
rule today. “Do people on the left ever wonder why we do not suffer the poverty
of India, the oppression of North Korea, the anarchy of Liberia, the slaughters
of Rwanda, etc.? Would it ever occur to them that it might have anything to do
with those very values and traditions which they are striving so hard to
undermine or dismantle.” How can the left come to terms with the “undermining of such basic institutions as the
family, law enforcement and education? Food stamps are no substitute for a
father, busing is no substitute for a decent education and racial
breast-beating is no substitute for being able to walk the streets without fear
of hoodlums and murderers.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">It does not matter if Liberalism’s foundations are from a genetic nature or environmental
nurture. It does not matter if liberalism’s dogma is a natural occurrence for
humans who have not yet moved through the sequential and orderly process of
maturation. It does not matter if liberalism is an outward expression of inner
turmoil masking their neuroticism. The bottom line, liberalism’s cognitive
reality is void of the brutal lessons of life’s reality coupled to human
nature, scarcity, and the infinite dynamics of a universe we can’t possible
begin to understand. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">If you are not prepared to defend your nation, your business, and your
family from the liberal mind, be prepared to live in barbarism. The new
American liberal wants to go off the fiscal cliff, bankrupt the nation, and
redistribute wealth until we are all equally living in poverty. It is time to
understand the foe you are up against. Protecting their psyche at all costs is
at the core of the liberal existence. Until that utopian view is demolished by
an equal amount of focus, energy, and fight, liberalism will continue to win
the battles and destroy the nation.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3;"><br /></span>Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-73241013236157415472012-11-19T12:29:00.001-05:002012-11-19T12:59:40.907-05:00The Evolution of Cultural DeclineAmerican's are devolving in their communication skills.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We have gone from letters where words mattered</div>
<div>
to phone calls where emotions mattered</div>
<div>
to chat rooms where sentences mattered</div>
<div>
to email where fragments mattered</div>
<div>
to instant messenger where acronyms mattered</div>
<div>
to Facebook where self indulgence mattered</div>
<div>
to Insta-gram where only pictures matter.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Whats next? </div>
<div>
Visual symbols</div>
<div>
Then grunts?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As Dennis Miller once remarked, "pretty soon the King will be the one who doesn't ___T (poop) himself."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-91332916775623829312012-11-16T15:30:00.002-05:002012-11-16T15:30:48.120-05:00Thanksgiving is no longer a part of America<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
By Dean Kalahar</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Not so long ago American’s
celebrated Thanksgiving to rejoice at the bounty provided by their economic way
of life. It was a time to reflect and admire what private property and the free
market had accomplished in answering the scarcity question to meet the
insatiable needs of the human condition. It was a holiday to remember the
settlers of Jamestown and the Pilgrims for how they fundamentally formed
America’s economic system.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
In today’s America, the historic wealth
creating and life saving principles called capitalism have been destroyed by a
rapidly expanding state, driven by a utopian command cronyism model. Sadly, our
New American economy is based on the same flawed collectivist idealism that the
colonists first used upon settling our shores. A model that was also to blame
for the “starving time’ in Jamestown and Plymouth. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the sake of the Republic, it
might be prudent to remember how capitalism was born and why Thanksgiving had meaning.
The history of Jamestown and Plymouth offers the historical context.
Let’s begin in Jamestown as described by Historians David Boaz and Ray Harvey.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
In
1607, 105 men and boys, mostly indentured servants who held no private property
and were to work for the “common store,” disembarked from three ships and
established the first permanent settlement in America.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
By
1609, there were 500 settlers, including women. And yet within six months fewer
than 100 were still alive during what came to be known as "the starving
time." Why? According to a governor of the colony, George Percy, most of
the colonists died of famine, despite the “good and fruitful” soil, the
abundant deer and turkey, and the “strawberries, raspberries and fruits
unknown” growing wild.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
And
yet people were desperate. They ate dogs and cats, then rats and mice. They
apparently ate their deceased neighbors. And some said that one man murdered
and ate his pregnant wife. By the spring, they had given up. They abandoned the
fort and boarded ships to return to England. But, miraculously, as they sailed
out of Chesapeake Bay, they encountered three ships with new recruits, so they
turned around and tried to make another go of it. The additional settlers and
supplies kept them alive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
When
a new governor, Thomas Dale, arrived a year after the starving time, he was
shocked to find the settlers bowling in the streets instead of working. Dale's
most important reform was to institute private property. He understood that men
who don't benefit from their hard work tend not to work very hard. As such he
allotted every man three acres of land and freed them to work for themselves. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Not many years later, in November of 1620, another
group of 101 American settlers arrived on the Mayflower, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts
and settled in a place named Plymouth. The Pilgrims were not unaware of the
early Jamestown disaster, the starvation, the disease, the famine; they were,
however, unaware of what had caused it. Accordingly, they proceeded to make the
identical mistake that the settlers of Jamestown had made, namely collective
ownership of land. And the Pilgrims also paid dearly for their misguided
economic choice. Within a few short months, half were dead.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Over the course of the next three years, 100 more settlers arrived from
England to Plymouth, all of whom were barely able to feed themselves. As
Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford detailed in
his <i>History of Plymouth Plantation</i>, 1641.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
Many [settlers] sold
away their clothes and bed coverings [to the Indians]; others (so base were
they) became servants of the Indians … and fetch them water for a capful of
corn; others fell to plain stealing, both day and night, from the Indians…. In
the end, they came to that misery that some starved to and died with cold and
hunger. One in gathering shellfish was so weak as he stuck fast in the mud and
was found dead in the place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
William Bradford would also solve “the ruin and dissolution
of his colony,” and he would do it in the exact same way Sir Thomas Dale had
saved Jamestown.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
After much debate of things … [it was
decided that the Pilgrims] should set corn every man for his own particular,
and in that regard trust to themselves…And so assigned to every family a parcel
of land, for present use. This had very good success, for it made all hands
very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have
been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great
deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into
the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would
allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought
great tyranny and oppression.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bradford, like Dale, came to fully grasp how lack of property
rights negates and destroys the work incentive. He went on to correctly
identify the source of the “disastrous problem” as “that conceit of Plato’s,”
who, in direct contrast to Aristotle, advocated collectivism and collective
ownership of land, which history has repeatedly proven creates economic
inefficiency and suffering. Bradford even wrote later that those who mistakenly
believed that communal property could make people “happy and flourishing”
imagined themselves “wiser than God.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Private property and economic freedom
saved the Jamestown and Plymouth colonies. A letter by Edward Winslow
describing the first Thanksgiving, dated December 12, 1621, details the proof
of how capitalism saved the colonists.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
Our corn [wheat]
did prove well, and God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and
our barley indifferent good, ...Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent
four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together
after we had gathered the fruit of our labors... And although it be not
always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God,
we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another description by William
Bradford offered this account of amazing economic bounty and thanksgiving.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
They began now
to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and
dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and
had all things in good plenty… they had about a peck of meal a week to a
person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which
made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in
England, which were not feigned but true reports.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Virginia historian Matthew Page Andrews wrote
regarding Jamestown:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in;">
As soon as the settlers were thrown upon their
own resources, and each freeman had acquired the right of owning property, the
colonists quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of
Americans—an aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship coupled with an innate
genius for experimentation and invention. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies became a
success, people from all over Europe flocked to the New World, and life saving capitalism
was born in America.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since we no longer understand history, nor follow histories
leadership, there is no reason to celebrate a holiday that is based on the
principles of free markets and the miracle of private property. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Freedom
exercised through the natural rights of life, liberty, and happiness - promoted
through an entrepreneurial free market economic system based on private
property - saved us in the beginning years of our nation, and allowed America
to raise the standard of living for the rest of the world. It is to those principles
and history matched against what America has become that explains why
Thanksgiving is no longer a part of America. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We used to give thanks to system that provided for all. Maybe
this Thanksgiving we should be saying “no thanks” to a New American economic
vision intent on providing suffering and misery to us all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-64732868556810072672012-11-14T11:12:00.001-05:002012-11-14T11:12:40.875-05:00Parties die, principles do not<br />
The Republican party is dead.<br />
<br />
What we have seen is the slow migration to the left within America's two party system with the Democrat Party is on the far left and the Republican Party left of center.<br />
<br />
But parties are created by fallible men, while the principles of natural law - life, liberty, property- are beyond the control of men.<br />
<br />
The classical liberal philosophical principles of the enlightenment that were embraced by our founding fathers will never die.<br />
<br />
As with all vacuums of power, principle and conscience, this void of non-representation will be filled.<br />
<br />
The question is, will it be filled in our statehouses or in our streets?<br />
<br />Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-48676856068305998642012-11-07T16:11:00.000-05:002012-11-07T16:11:48.580-05:00The New America<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">By Dean Kalahar</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">November
7, 2012<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the aftermath of the election of 2012, a new reality must be
digested by all Americans. Working within the precepts of a democratic republic,
The American public freely exercised their choice and voted for a New America.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The electorates’ decision once and for all confirms a definition
of America that values hopes, feelings and equality of results over the
realities of human nature, history, and the foundational principles that hold
western civilization together. There is now no doubt that the tipping point of
geometrically increasing cultural decline has been crossed. America has now
firmly changed from a nation where the founding principles of the great
enlightenment have been substituted for a utopia of widespread human suffering.
There is no going back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> This change is not due to
one person or event. For fifty years we have seen systemic institutional decay to
the vital institutions across our cultural landscape that sustains America. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And like a canary in a mine providing an early warning signal
to dangers, we have been warned time and time again that we were losing our
footing and chose to ignore the obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Today the foundational pillars of civilization that have sustained
America have been voted insignificant and will be allowed to collapse. The
result is a New America for sure, but it is not a greater America. It is an
America that has sown the seeds of its own demise, blinded by self inflicted
wounds, disguised by false compassion, and based on trust in a human condition
that is not in our nature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">A callous society focused on self has been defining deviancy
downward, as the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned us, for a long
time. Sometimes covertly and other times overtly, a cultural war was being
raged in America by a progressive “tolerance” movement that is intolerant of
institutional traditions, principles, and laws that were created and tested
over thousands of years of trial and error. Those who have lectured us have shown
a condescending hypocrisy of moral relativism towards any concept that might
interfere with their self-anointed sensibilities of creating a utopia so as to
avoid self awareness. The walls of the republic have been crumbling for some
time. Now the collapse is all but inevitable because, and let’s be clear, they
have won.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">America’s religious institution has been eroded by the
secularization of society, the welfare state, the misguided belief in the
separation of church and state, and attacks toward any outward expression of
religious passion. The church has lost the culture war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our public education institution has been decimated by
bureaucracies and unions that have failed to teach children how to read, write,
or add, while choice, accountability, rigor, and our nation’s history have been
forsaken for self esteem and multiculturalism. The schools have lost the
culture war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Our family institution has been redefined into a bizarre amalgam
of gender, sexual, and parental proclivities. 40% of children are born out of
wedlock and 25% of teenagers have a sexually transmitted disease. The
overt-sexualization of our society has created confusion and despair among our
children, while infanticide has become an all too easy choice. Biological and
psychological realities for sanctioning marriage between a man and woman for
the sake of our posterity have been ruthlessly attacked by those seeking to
re-define the universal order. Our families have lost the culture war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Free market entrepreneurial principles no longer guide our
economic system. Efficiencies, life saving economic growth and opportunity
based on the laws of human nature and scarcity have been forsaken by an ever
encroaching government institution that believes a command and control approach
of central planning can better answer the questions of what, how, and for whom.
Our economic system has lost the culture war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The winners of this battle have handed over America’s keys to the
government. A government that no longer sees its role as providing for the steady
rule of constitutional law and unwavering protection of the basis of morality
found in the steadfast protection of personal property. The New America
government will direct the collapses of what they deem are antiquated
institutions of society like life, liberty, and property. They will smugly orchestrate
the demise of the bedrock principles that sustained our family, education, religious,
and economic institutions that have held us together and allowed us to thrive
as a country; naively believing a nation can sustain itself after its
foundations are removed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Progressive ideology has destroyed the social fabric of the nation
from within. Ignorance has sown the seeds of our own destruction. As the Romans
did long ago, our fate will be written in the epilogue of history. Gone, a
nation whose torch was smothered when a complacent arrogance forgot who they
were, what made them great, and the humility to stand vigilant in defending liberty
was lost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">There is no upside for America or its people; and it is going to
get ugly out there. But for those who have been fighting the good fight for so
long, honoring those who have died fighting for the same providential cause, my
suggestion is to pull in, relax, live, and love your families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Patriots, the New America is the reality; just have peace
of mind knowing the winners of the war, and the choices they made, will be held
personally responsible for the severe costs that are to follow. To those who
asked for a New America, I leave you with the words of Col. Jessup in A Few
Good men: “</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today ...
That's all you did. You put people in
danger. Sweet dreams, son.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-61104276785392981752012-11-05T15:20:00.000-05:002012-11-05T15:31:05.497-05:00<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Election predictions 2012</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The polls are statistically skewed in favor of Obama and
Romney is ahead or is ahead by a larger margin than shown.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The electorate has been hesitant to be negative toward Obama
when asked by pollsters due to “white guilt” and the fear of being called
racist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Romney will win the Presidency in 2012 easily by a solid margin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Obama team will act as if they are shocked by the
margins they will argue that foul play must have been used.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The voting for all intents and purposes will go well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An Obama win is the defining signals that the nation has
lost its cultural roots and principles, is forever changed, and will continue
its decline in the footsteps of other great civilizations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An Obama win will move us closer to a social revolution sometime
in the future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A social revolution could become violent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I believe a strong third party will emerge in 2016 to the
right of the GOP if Obama is re-elected and the Republican Party will fade.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Benghazi scandal will unfold and a President Obama may
be forced to resign in his second term sometime after replacing his Vice
President.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course these are just predictions, I could be wrong.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is what I said 4 years ago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Morning of November 4, 2008</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If Barack Obama is elected president, one of the primary reasons will be to end the psychological pathologies afflicting many Americans and send a message of compassion and reconciliation to show the world the principles of the Western Enlightenment are alive but not necessary well. The cost of this moral self-exaltation will be to move <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region> further to the left and much closer to a collectivist state. The irony of this electoral shift, although an ideal of natural law, could sow the seeds of an intellectually inconsistent ideology that, when cultivated, will destroy the very principles that allowed for such a society to prosper. The true test of the American experiment will then be in the hands of the Constitution, to see if it can withstand human nature and continue to uphold the principles of classical liberal understanding from which it was created. If it shows the fatal flaws the founders warned of, <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region> will get the change it does not deserve by dishonoring the blood it so valiantly offered. May providence again save us from ourselves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dean Kalahar</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-66592803833374969672012-11-02T11:47:00.000-04:002012-11-02T12:25:27.641-04:00A military crisis? and Benghazi<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">If you want to figure out Benghazi, connect the dots on the
following 2 questions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">1. Why was General
Ham, head of African Command arrested by his 2nd in command for
conduct unbecoming an officer?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">2. Why was the Admiral Gaouette</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14pt;">of the US Navy carrier task
force in the Middle East relieved of his duty for “</span><span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">inappropriate leadership judgment?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>Dean Kalahar</b><br />
<br />
<br />Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-78288469708218253962012-10-25T15:41:00.001-04:002012-10-25T15:41:23.446-04:00The female wage gap myth<br />
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By Dean Kalahar</div>
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We constantly hear
that discrimination and exploitation force women to make 77 cents for every
dollar a man makes. It’s time to end the wage gap myth with a dose of common
sense economics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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First of all, the
wage gap is based on inappropriate use of data and statistical analysis. In the
U.S. the 77 % number is calculated by looking at the median yearly earnings of
women to men. The median is defined as the middle value of all the wages in a
given sample. Using the median is useful if we are comparing winter
temperatures between New York and Tampa, where one dimensional data has
validity, but applying it to humans that have free will and biological
differences proves nothing except that demagoguery works.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Is the median wage
lower for women, absolutely, but the statistic is not an apples to apples, job
for job comparison and thus has nothing to do with “paying women less than a
man for doing the same job.” Using the median without taking into consideration
specifics of individuals in the workplace is intentionally misleading or
ignorant.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So what causes the variation in pay? Personal and workplace
choices account for much of the gap. Labor Department research shows that men
choose more dangerous and high stress jobs. Men choose higher paying career
fields. And men hold more full time jobs, and work longer hours, weekends, and
nights than women. All these factors lead to higher wages regardless of gender.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stanford economist Thomas Sowell shows that “women are
typically not educated as often in such highly paid fields as mathematics,
science, and engineering, nor attracted to physically taxing and well paid
fields as construction work, lumberjacking, coal mining and the like.” All
these factors create differences in pay that have nothing to do with the
exploitation of women.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Maybe the biggest
reason is biology. Women make up 50% of the workforce but give birth to 100% of
the babies. And if women choose to have children, their incentives change and
this affects their choices of jobs, careers, continual service and hours spent
on the job. The New York Times reported that among Yale alumni in their
forties, ―only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90% of the men.
It goes without saying that traditionally men do not face the same incentives
of biology and child rearing as women.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When these variables
are included to the unadjusted 23 cent wage gap difference, the gap falls to
5-7 cents; according to a 2010 study by The United States Congress Joint
Economic Committee’s Comprehensive Review of Women in the US Economy. Thomas
Sowell concurs showing that “Women who remain single earn 91 percent of the
income of men who remain single, in the age bracket from 25 to 64 years old.”
And what’s left of the 5% gap is bridged by systemic socio-cultural factors,
not by intentional causation based on discrimination.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">If we actually compare apples to
apples in the workforce, the facts will disturb those who are married to the
vision of women victimization</span></strong><strong>.</strong> </span>
According to Marty Nemko and data compiled from the Census Bureau, unmarried women who've never had a child
actually <em><u><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">earn more </span></u></em>than
unmarried men. In a 2010 study of single childless urban workers between
the ages of 22 and 30, Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8%
more than their male counterparts. And
according to the Labor Department, “of
men and women who work 30 to 34 hours a week, women make more, 109 percent of
men’s earnings.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sowell backs up
these findings “comparing never-married women and men who are past the
child-bearing years and who both work full-time in the twenty-first century
shows women of this description earning more than men of the same description.”
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Basic economics tells us that it makes no sense for an employer to pay
a man more than a woman, if they can get the same productivity out of hiring
the woman; unless the employer likes discrimination more than they like profit.
To believe that women are paid 75 percent of what men receive for doing the
same work is to believe employers can afford to pay 3 male workers the same as
they pay 4 female workers that would produce 25 percent more output, and stay
competitive in a economy that sees most businesses last less than ten years. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Even prior to all the hand wringing about pay inequality,
free markets proved there was no pay discrimination. Sowell’s research shows
that single women in 1971 who had worked continuously since high school earning
slightly more than men of the same description. This fact was conveniently
missed in 1972 when an executive order was signed creating affirmative action
for women who were being underrepresented in the workplace.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The facts just don’t add up in the wage gap argument. To say
that men are paid more than women for the same job is an attempt to redefine
the laws of supply, demand, profit motive, and human nature. Class, gender, and
racial victimhood pay big dividends for politicians, but only if gullible,
ill-informed citizens buy false rhetoric like the female wage gap. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-23165307079769806642012-10-08T11:34:00.001-04:002012-10-08T11:34:33.484-04:00Thanks Ben for the stagflation.<div class="tr_bq">
<br />Why do we have stagflation? Because the FED views money as simply a numerical unit to be manipulated, not a representation of productive wealth creation and economic efficiency.</div>
<br />Excerpts and edits of a piece by Jeffery Snyder writing about: <i>Central Banks Gone Wild: Money Is Now a Total Fiction</i><br />
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For all intents and purposes, global central banks view "money" as
nothing more than "charta", a Latin word for "token"… </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Chartalism in this form is nothing more than a theory that capital can
easily be replaced by mere monetary units, as if there is no information
content relevant to economic efficiency stored in the flow of capitalized
money. Past success in the form of stored "earnings" or
"money" is, following this line of inquiry, eminently replaceable by
determined government planning. In that way, money is now flowed or channeled
on the basis of poor past performance rather than on the basis of good expected
future performance. </blockquote>
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Fresh capital in the modern monetary sense is a unit on an accounting
statement, devoid of any larger connotation. For investors and the process of
investing, however, accounting should have meaning - where a business gets its
money matters greatly in the process of investment analysis. <br />This philosophy thoroughly upends capitalism…<br /> <br />The entire premise of capitalism is the efficient deployment of capital;
capital having full meaning absent in the sense of modern money. Capitalists
create capital through successful deployment of "money", turning that
"money" into true wealth of productive enterprise. That successful
deployment of money creates additional capital that can be
"monetized" in asset markets, but the number of new monetary units
has no basis in trying to predict or determine successful business acumen. That
is the traditional role of intermediation. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
In the past four years, central banks have attempted to resurrect economic
health by adding new charta to the system with perfect exclusivity biased to
institutions and businesses that have destroyed their past stores of capital,
despite the very visible fact that said destruction of capital is the quintessential
measure of real economy inefficiency.<br /> <br />If the destruction of money has meaning, then so does the creation of money,
or at least the methodology of determining how money is acquired. Bernanke's
theory, shared by all the major central banks on this globe, is that economies
can only recover when capital is disadvantaged in favor of meaningless money. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The primacy of meaningless money is such that the entire system of savers,
the majority of which have created actual capital and acquired value, need to
be hamstrung by (zero interest rate policy) ZIRP in favor of institutions that
destroyed real capital in the inefficient pursuit of the very policies that
central banks directed in the first place. Success is to be shunned and
disfavored in the socialized and institutionalized process of debt creation
from the very firms that have proven beyond a doubt that they are not capable
of maintaining economic efficiency. The ascendancy of chartalism is the only
manner in which such a backward system could actually exist. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Unfortunately, real economies run not on meaningless money, but on
sustainable and efficient success. All of these banks and central banks need to
emulate the ideals cleverly conjured and portrayed in the Smith Barney TV
commercials of decades past, when firms used to "earn" their money.
The capital on a bank's balance sheet at one time (before fiat money and
transcontinental wholesale money markets) denoted success at intermediating the
pool of savings, turning past success into additional future success in a
virtuous circle that is the hallmark of every thriving economy in history. In
short, money is supposed to be about winners and losers. Economies need to
reward the virtue of economic winners and delete the societal and systemic cost
of the losers. </blockquote>
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Without monetary meaning, there is no sorting process of winners and losers;
there are only losers that are supposed to take comfort in the vacuous
experimentations of academic central bankers that passes for progress and
evolution. </blockquote>
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More than anything, human nature needs value and meaning in money. Maybe
central bankers should try their hands at investing without any meaning to
money and capital - it doesn't work. Try as they might, particularly with
reducing economic agents to mathematical equations and models, modern
mainstream economics has tried to dehumanize the economic and financial system.
It certainly makes economics appear more scientific, but ultimately that is
just the cloak of self-delusion - models are not science. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Perhaps central banks have re-invented an achievable means to a healthy
economy with meaningless, inhuman tokens, but the results of the past four
years, particularly 2011 and so far in 2012, are rather conclusive and
unambiguous doubts. It's easy to blame fiscal profligacy for all the current
ills, but such bad habits were borne and nurtured by money without any real
meaning in the first place - intermediation removed from its eponymous task.<br /> <br />The word debasement itself is not just a semantic accident; it literally
means to reduce status or esteem - very human concepts. Welcome to the world
where capital, in a still nominally capitalist system, is as pliable and
fictionable as TV advertising.</blockquote>
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Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-45675698331823930912012-10-03T11:51:00.000-04:002012-10-03T11:51:29.136-04:00The dollar is just paper<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Understanding
destructive monetary/fiscal policies(increasing the supply of dollars without a
proportional increase in productivity/GDP growth)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or how the FED and Obama
administration have devalued the dollar causing inflation now with
hyperinflation to come. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">What is it about fiat
currency debauchery that makes it so hard to understand? Imagine the mockery
Michelle Obama would get if she announced plans to cure the country's obesity
epidemic by changing the number of ounces in a pound. Wow, I'm down to 175
without dieting! Yet this is exactly what is happening to the dollar, with much
worse to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"> -Bill Freeza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The value of the dollar, in other words,
has collapsed to less than half of the number ounces of gold it was worth when
President Obama acceded to the presidency and to less than a <i>sixth</i> of
what its value on the day, say, George W. Bush acceded. -Editorial, New York
Sun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-74952558100210821032012-09-13T15:51:00.000-04:002012-09-14T07:15:12.130-04:00Idle dollars will become inflation drivers<br />
If Mitt Romney wins the White House an unintended consequence will loom large on his presidency. With a Romney win, optimism and confidence will in all likelihood roar back into the market. Unfortunately this will unleash the trillions being held by banks and corporations. As a result, we can expect to see substantial inflation and a sharp rise in interest rates. In short, idle dollars will become inflation drivers.<br />
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This inflow of new cash will bring about yet another round of resource misallocation and the creation of the next asset bubble. You see, instead of cleaning out the previous misallocations of easy money, weeding out inefficiencies, and creating incentives that push markets forward; the FED's monetary and government fiscal policies have stepped in to soften the blow every time the results of their previous meddling of the economy have gone south.<br />
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The next bust but will be the result of the FED's handling of the housing bubble. Of course the housing bubble was caused by the FEDs actions after 911 and the Dot com bubble along with legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act and public risk taking by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.You get the picture.<br />
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In short, the multiple boom bust cycles have been created and exacerbated by the central planners who are unable or unwilling to admit their vision of a command and control economy is fatally flawed..The next bubble will not be caused by a President Romney but you can be sure he will be blamed.<br />
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The Bernanke / Obama team know that providing fluffy landings by removing the pain of tying costs to choices made in the free market inflate egos, score politically in the short term, and hide the evidence of their failures. Unfortunately, warm fuzzy rhetoric has ever growing consequences in the long term.<br />
<br />
Well folks, the long term has arrived. If you need any proof, look at the $16,000,000,000,000 we are in debt, that's 12 zeros. This time however, the sharp cuts and stings of a crash landing will be felt. The fuse has been lit, the inflation bomb is primed and the FED can't put salve on the injury any more. Of course asking the Obama administration to step in and solve our looming crisis is like giving a crack addicted accountant the company credit card.<br />
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It is too late to stop the inevitable inflation that is heading our way. And the only way to muffle the blast of the next bubble is to allow the productive entrepreneurial market economy and its people the freedom to minimize its effects. One specific suggestion is to unleash America's existing energy resources and technology to counteract the effects of damaging inflation.<br />
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Will we see more pain, yes. Should we run from the free market, no. We have to, for once and for all, trust fundamental principles of capitalism that as Nixon said "works better than it sounds," instead of chasing the utopian fallacy of socialism "that sounds better than it works."<br />
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<span style="color: windowtext; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Buckle-up, it's going to be a rough ride.<br />
<br />Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-46202769707319123302012-09-11T15:56:00.000-04:002012-09-11T15:56:16.654-04:00Michelle's strange psychology<br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I am
confused. If Michelle Obama was raised by her father Fraser Robinson,.. <b style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Who according to Rich Lowry in National Review, citing
Michelle Obama’s DNC speech, had an: </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">insistence on paying his small portion of
her college-tuition bills on time, because “that’s what it meant to be a man.”</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Who led a life of self-sacrifice. He was
a working-class father who raised two Princeton University graduates.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Who was a high-school-educated man who
married and stayed married, who worked and kept working despite considerable
adversity. Whatever his relative lack of education and skills, he was a hero of
character, shaped by mores that have been eroding for decades.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">(Who) according to Michelle’s convention
speech and to published accounts, her father was a pump operator at the city
water plant in Chicago. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man
and still got up to work every day. The first lady described how she watched
him “grab his walker, prop himself against the sink, and slowly shave and
button his uniform.” When he came home, he’d reach down to lift one leg after
another to make it up the stairs and greet his kids.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s difficult to imagine a more
affecting depiction of everyday dutifulness than that. With his wife of 31
years, Marian, Robinson built a family deeply invested in his children’s future.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Too few men in his position now do the
same. Forty years ago, Fraser Robinson left for work in pain every day —
walking on two canes — and now a small army of his fellow Americans schemes to
get paid for doing nothing.</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Through his faithfulness, Fraser
Robinson gave Michelle and her brother an incalculable gift. That being
according to Susan Meyer, “The parental characteristics that employers value
and are willing to pay for, such as skills, diligence, honesty, good health,
and reliability, also improve children’s life chances, independent of their
effect on parents’ income,”</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">…then why
would Michelle marry and tolerate her husband, President Barack Obama’s actions and record in office; which
goes against everything she was taught by her courageous father she so obviously admires and loves? It really is a confusing nature/nurture question that offers what I am sure is a fascinating answer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Generational consistency strengthens a nation. In this case much of it must have been lost.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I’m saddened for the culture of our nation to lose such values. It's a shame her two children may never get to learn the lessons from their father the first lady should have learned from her's.</span></div>
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Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-3752239641404892002012-09-07T08:10:00.000-04:002012-09-07T08:10:02.794-04:00Machiavellian danger<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Regarding
the DNC:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What
I am hearing and seeing are speakers looking directly into the camera and flat
out lie about who they are, what they believe, and where they want to take the
country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
really is a stunning display of ignorance or hubris.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
are either pathologically unfit to serve, or are driven by the most dangerous
of motives, that being the direct undermining of the American way of life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
old Machiavellian game of saying one thing so as to gain power and do the
opposite is the fountainhead of totalitarianism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
have decided their self-anointed central planning trumps the most fundamental
of natural laws, FREEDOM.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">God
help us all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-69454433230525406882012-09-04T12:31:00.000-04:002012-09-04T12:31:07.611-04:00Get ready for poverty<br />
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Peter Schiff sends a clear warning based on facts and reasonable
assumptions:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On the current trajectory,
the national debt likely will hit $20 trillion in a few years. If, by that
time, interest rates were to return to 5 percent (a low rate by postwar
standards) interest payments on the debt could run around $1 trillion per year.
Such a sum would represent almost 40 percent of total current federal revenues
and likely would constitute the single largest line item in the federal budget.
A balance sheet so constructed would create an immediate fiscal crisis in the
United States.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The depression that will follow will not be called “The Greatest
Depression,” it will be called “The End of America.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">
Read more: <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/3/the-real-fiscal-cliff/#ixzz25W6OICUl">SCHIFF: The real fiscal cliff - Washington Times</a> </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Dean Kalahar</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-45780438961546911432012-09-04T12:26:00.000-04:002012-09-04T12:26:35.793-04:00Bernanke is not the Chair, he sits on a throne of his own making<br />
<span lang="EN">Chairman Bernanke and the FED
either have their heads in the ground (or up someplace else), or are
intentionally destroying the economy of The United States so that it can more
resemble the rest of the wretched world. The ideology is to redistribute the
wealth worldwide by bringing down America.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN">The main policy paper at the
FED’s Jackson Hole conference was: William White’s, <i>Ultra Easy Monetary
Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences.<o:p></o:p></i></span><br />
<span lang="EN"><i><br /></i></span>
<span lang="EN">The paper and warnings are
obviously being ignored. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN">Some excerpts:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span lang="EN"><br /></span>
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<a href="" name="body_text9"></a><span lang="EN">“Ultra easy monetary policies have a wide variety
of undesirable ... unintended consequences. They create malinvestments in the
real economy, threaten the health of financial institutions and the functioning
of financial markets, constrain the ‘independent’ pursuit of price stability by
central banks, encourage governments to refrain from confronting sovereign-debt
problems in a timely way, and redistribute income and wealth in a highly
regressive fashion.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<a href="" name="body_text10"></a><span lang="EN">Using monetary policy, White concludes all the
central banks have done is “to buy time” for governments: “If governments do
not use this time wisely, then the ongoing economic and financial crisis can
only worsen as the unintended consequences of current monetary policies
increasingly materialize.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span lang="EN"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dean
Kalahar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source:
Niall Ferguson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-74071788639248856472012-08-29T13:17:00.000-04:002012-08-29T13:17:19.321-04:00Back to school: How about showing up?<br />
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By Dean Kalahar</div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s that time of year again when
we assume children are back in school and that being absent is only due to
illness or extraordinary events.</div>
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How many absences do you think a
teacher has to deal with in the course of a year; 200, 500? If you said that
sounds about right or even high, go to the back of the class. </div>
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Data shows that last school year,
this humble teacher had <b>1793</b>
absences! That is not a typo, and means the average number of days missed per student
was 13.7 or almost 3 weeks of instruction. It goes without saying the extra
work load and loss of academic potential is monumental. If we extrapolate these
numbers over a k-12 education, the average student misses 178 days or a full
year of instruction over their school career. </div>
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The crisis of these numbers is not
an aberration. Chronic absenteeism (missing 10 percent or more of school or a
month or more per year, which translates into 18 days a year) is prevalent in
our schools. </div>
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The reason these numbers are not
reported is because attendance statistics only show average daily attendance. <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Sarasota</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">County</st1:placetype></st1:place> reports a 95.5% average daily
attendance rate, but that means that as many as 40 percent of its students may
be chronically absent because on different days different students are in
school.</div>
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It does not take rocket science to know that being in
school leads to succeeding in school while poor attendance affects standardized test scores, graduation rates, and teacher
effectiveness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The Georgia Department of
Education found “that just a 3 percent improvement in attendance – five
additional days -- would have led more than 55,000 students to pass end-of-year
standardized tests in reading, English, or mathematics in grades 3 to 8. The
biggest impact was for students who missed between five and 10 days of school,
suggesting that missing even a week to two weeks can have a significant
negative impact on achievement.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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A study by Douglas Ready showed
that “compared to children with average attendance, chronically absent students
gained 15 percent fewer literacy skills and 12 percent fewer mathematics skills
in first grade.” Multiplying these losses over the k-12 experience has
devastating consequences on learning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And this epidemic of absenteeism is
nationwide says a report on <i>Absenteeism
in the Nation’s Public Schools</i>, by Robert Balfanz and Vaughan Byrnes from Johns
Hopkins School of Education. They conclude that “a national rate of 10 percent
chronic absenteeism seems conservative and it could be as high as 15 percent,
meaning that 5 million to 7.5 million students are chronically absent … with significant
numbers of students (are) missing amounts of school that are staggering: on the
order of six months to over a year, over a five year period.”</div>
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The report states that “chronic
absenteeism is typically based on total days of school missed, including both
excused and unexcused absences. This is critical because the evidence indicates
that it is how many days a student misses that matters, not why they miss
them.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Findings from the report are sobering:</div>
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<br /></div>
<ul style="margin-top: 0in;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">There is essentially a linear relationship
between each missed day and lower test performance. Through the first 20 days
missed there is a greater than 1 point decline in mathematics performance
per day and three-fourths of a point in reading.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal">During
the critical middle and high school years, 46 percent of students in at
least one of those years missed a month or more of school and 18 percent
missed two or more months of school. </li>
<li class="MsoNormal">In
2009-2010, <st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place>’s
reported rate of 10 percent translates into more than 300,000 students a
year missing more than a month.</li>
<li class="MsoNormal">Data
from Florida following a group of all first-time sixth-graders in the
state over seven years showed almost
half<b> </b>the students in the Florida sixth-grade cohort had been
chronically absent in at least one year; with one in five students
severely chronically absent in at least one year (missing two or more
months of school). </li>
<li class="MsoNormal">The <st1:place w:st="on">Florida</st1:place> cohort data
suggests that in most cases chronic absenteeism is not an isolated
occurrence but a frequent and recurring one with cumulative effects for
such students.</li>
</ul>
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<br /></div>
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Notwithstanding the fraud being
committed on the tax payer who is funding empty desks; if we want high stakes
testing to close achievement gaps, tie teacher pay to performance, and foster
academic excellence through discipline from our children, dealing with
absenteeism must be a priority. </div>
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Parents and educators must be
willing to defend sound educational principles regarding attendance. These
principles include high expectations and accountability for parents, students,
and teachers with a steadfast application of the highly specific laws regarding
attendance. Anything less is educational malfeasance and parental negligence.</div>
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-79047144918403823572012-08-29T12:17:00.000-04:002012-08-29T12:21:36.226-04:00Politics or powerDid the President indirectly try to bribe Reverend Jeremiah Wright to keep him quiet during the 2008 Presidential campaign?<br />
<br />
Here are the facts:<br />
<br />
Reverend Jeremiah Wright was a liability to Barack Obama’s Presidential run in 2008.
On audio tape Reverend Wright said he was offered $150,000 bribe to stop talking during Obama 2008 campaign.
Eric Whitaker was the person Wright said made the offer.<br />
<br />
Whitaker has been very close friends with President Obama since their time together in the early 1990s at Harvard. He has joined the first family on every single one of their August and Christmas vacations since 2008. He’s also been involved in official capacities with the Obama campaign. He and his wife, Cheryl, hosted a Chicago fundraiser for the president in January.
Convicted felon Tony Rezko, on Obama’s recommendation, hired Whitaker in 2003 to run the Illinois Department of Public Health.In 2010, Whitaker working as chief of the DPH was the subject of a federal probe.
Whitaker was also closely involved in the Senate-seat-selling Blagojevich scandal. According to the president’s own report on the issue, Blagojevich’s deputy governor contacted Whitaker in early November 2008 to ask “who spoke for the president-elect” on the question of who should be appointed. Whitaker then went to Obama, who said he had no interest in the issue — thereby insulating himself from the scandal.<br />
<br />
If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, at worse, it might just be a crime; at best, it is a transparent window into the Presidents character and political power aspirations.<br />
<br />
Looks like it’s time for further investigation.<br />
<br />
Dean Kalahar
Sources: Patrick Brennan, National Review
Fox News
Edward Klein, The Amateur
Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-57313489554765014852012-04-19T10:43:00.006-04:002012-04-19T10:49:41.673-04:00Is it "fair" President Obama'<br />President Obama, <br /><br />Is it “fair” that a team lost by 1 point?<br />Is it “fair” for a child to be born in Rwanda?<br />Is it “fair” that J.W. Booth shot Lincoln?<br />Is it “fair” to have been Jackie Robinson?<br />Is it “fair” a child’s pregnant mother was on crack?<br />Is it “fair” a tornado touched down?<br />Is it “fair” that some kids’ parents get divorced?<br />Is it “fair” that Armstrong was the first on the moon?<br />Is it “fair” that free people make choices?<br />Is it “fair” that OJ was acquitted?<br />Is it “fair” when someone is born blind?<br />Is it “fair” to be Orville or Wilber Wright?<br />Is it “fair” to be afflicted with ALS?<br />Is it “fair” to get pregnant while in high school?<br />Is it “fair” some decide to save?<br />Is it “fair” to ride a plane that landed on the Hudson?<br />Is it “fair” that someone gets the last piece of pie?<br />Is it “fair” to work in the World Trade Center?<br />Is it “fair” Solyndra couldn’t compete?<br />Is it “fair” your Kansas born mother had a Ph.D.?<br />Is it “fair” that you went to Harvard?<br />Is it “fair” that Malia and Sasha’s dad is the President?<br />Is it “fair” that the $787 billion dollar stimulus passed?<br />Is it “fair” the Democrats hold the Senate?<br />Is it “fair” you get to ride on Air Force One?<br /><br />You’re incessant call for society to be “fair,” sounds like a “tween” who does not have the cognitive capacity to even understand the basic realities of life in a dynamic universe of possibilities.<br /><br />Life is not “fair” or “unfair,” it is the systemic results of infinite combinations of scientific and social circumstances, interactions and choices.<br /><br />Anyone attempting to tell you otherwise is immature, foolish, or dangerous.<br />'Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-16980446948154367132012-04-11T13:15:00.005-04:002012-04-17T12:27:48.809-04:00She's a seductressBy Dean Kalahar<br /><br />Did you know you are about to be robbed of your hard earned property by the most diabolical criminal you have never met?<br /><br />You will know it is happening but will be powerless to stop it.<br /><br />Well, the suspect has been identified.<br /><br />Her name - “Inflation.”<br /><br />People don’t know much about her because she is usually tame. But don’t be fooled, she can be one nasty woman. It would be prudent if you understand her nature because Inflation is about to commit the biggest crime never reported.<br /><br />Inflations basic temperament is a rise in prices. She also has a duel personality, so to truly understand her we need to ask which persona acted to make prices rise. Once that is answered, we can determine if we are faced with normal healthy Inflation or if we are facing her alter ego also known as “Miss-allocation.”<br /><br />On her good side, natural Inflation is a market phenomenon in terms of productivity and/or price that increases sharing and economic efficiency in moving scarce resources to their most efficient use. Natural Inflation does not hide from the public and we can identify her in several ways.<br /><br />· A rise in prices and corresponding loss of purchasing power due to an increase in the money supply with a corresponding increase in output of goods and services.<br />· A rise in prices due to the multiplier effect of economic expansion via real credit wherein people are saving money so others can borrow money.<br />· A rise in prices due to an increase in demand for goods, services or the currency.<br />· A rise in prices due to a lack of supply or a rise in raw material costs.<br />· A rise in prices as the result of demand pull and cost push inflation forcing wages higher.<br /><br />On her bad side, “synthetic” Inflation caused by government intervention into markets decreases sharing efficiency. This evil Inflation is shady because she hides herself from the public while acting as a seductress to the government. And when the government indulges her, and believe me policymakers can’t resist her, she robs us of vast amounts of our wealth. We can identify her by this specific action.<br /><br />A rise in prices due to the expansion of the money supply by government deficit spending of artificial credit; or Federal Reserve policy that tries to stimulate lending by lowering interest rates, reserve requirements, or when the Federal Reserve Bank purchases government bonds in return for Federal Reserve Notes, a.k.a. money via open market operations.<br /><br />Inflations dark side increases the number of dollars in circulation, which reduces the purchasing power of each dollar without a corresponding increase in output of goods and services or a decrease in demand for the currency.<br /><br />To make matters worse, some people do not trust or want inflated and devalued money. This can make the value of the money decline even further; sometimes ending in economic collapse.<br /><br />The irony here is that expansionist monetary policy intended to help the economy will actually create a boom bust cycle. Synthetic Inflation forces people to suffer needlessly at the hands of those who believe they can manipulate the economy better than the invisible hand Adam Smith so eloquently explained.<br /><br />Why do governments get in bed with Inflation and employ such insidious policies?<br /><br />As Milton Friedman has explained, Government borrows in dollars and pays back in dollars. But thanks to inflation, or the simple act of printing money, it can pay off its debts without raising taxes because the government does not care if the dollars it pays back have less worth than the dollars it borrowed.<br /><br />The problem is the dollars you have earned and saved are also now worth less in terms of purchasing power. In short, the government pays off its debts on the unknowing backs of the saver who has their currency’s purchasing power stolen.<br /><br />Friedman points out that legislator’s have resorted to financing spending through “inflation, a hidden tax that can be imposed without having been voted, taxation without representation.”<br /><br />Some of Inflations worse offenses and the destruction she can create can be seen in historical terms. Thomas Sowell reminds us of post WWI German history.<br /><br />“In July 1920, 40 marks were worth one dollar; but it took more than 4 trillion marks to be worth one dollar by November 1923. People discovered that their life savings were not enough to buy a pack of cigarettes… During the worst of the inflation, in October 1923, prices rose 41% per day! ... The German government had, in effect, stolen virtually everything they owned by the simple process of keeping more than 1,700 printing presses running day and night, printing money.”<br /><br />When Inflation strikes dollars are worth less than before. Worse yet, the entire currency can become worthless. In Zimbabwe, their 100 trillion dollar bill is not worth enough to buy a loaf of bread. The current exchange rate is 300 trillion Zimbabwe dollars for 1 US dollar.<br /><br />How does Inflation create economic chaos?<br /><br />Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek both pointed to artificial credit expansion, normally at the hands of a government established central bank like the FED, as the non-market culprit that fuels synthetic inflation.<br /><br />When the central bank expands the money supply by lowering interest rates, lowering reserve requirements or when it buys government securities, it creates the money to do so out of thin air. Meaning the FED expands the money supply not with real tangible dollars but with “reserve balances” or “bank money” that is nothing more than an electronic transfer of numbers into a ledger.<br /><br />The added currency the banks hold and will lend is not the result of people saving and putting more of their money in the bank; it is from an intervention into the market. Without the equal counterbalance of savings and the slowing of other spending, the new money is just looking for trouble with Miss-allocation.<br /><br />These additional “synthetic” dollars force lower interest rates and stimulate investment into speculative projects, or other non market driven investments. We have seen this happen historically with inefficient spending on internet start-ups (dot coms) houses, gold, oil, and other speculative ventures that disrupt and distort the natural mechanisms of the free market.<br /><br />With all this liquidity, the players in the market are enticed to find places to invest the money they would normally not be interested in. But herein we see a paradox. Why would self interested individuals working with sound free market mechanisms become afflicted by incentives that are inefficient, create inflationary boom bust cycles, and cause financial pain? Why do we see so many entrepreneurs making the same errors in misjudgment every time they are seduced into a relationship with synthetic Inflation?<br /><br />Something outside the principles of the free market must be at play to create such delusional actions. Economist and historian, Thomas E. Woods Jr. explains that the inflated supply of money interferes with the market’s freely established structure of interest rates and disrupts the usual incentive system that coordinates the market and keeps inefficient decisions from being made.<br /><br />In Human Action, Ludwig von Mises offers a great analogy regarding artificial credit expansion showing how “entrepreneurs, misled by the artificially low interest rate, behave as a master builder who lays too large a foundation for a house, because his subordinates incorrectly tell him how many bricks and other materials he has.”<br /><br />Woods explains, “The sooner he discovers his error the better. The longer he persists in this unsustainable project, the more resources and labor time he will irretrievably squander. Monetary stimulus merely encourages entrepreneurs to continue along their unsustainable production trajectories; it is as if, instead of alerting the master builder to his error, we merely intoxicated him in order to delay his discovery of the truth. But such measures make the eventual bust no less inevitable – merely more painful.”<br /><br />As the economy busts and is saddled with imbalances due to fiscal stimulus, it will suffer until the imbalances are corrected. The people will also have to suffer the cost of being held accountable for their decisions; even though the incentives came from a government and FED seduced by the political expedience of synthetic Inflation.<br /><br />If a Laissez faire approach is taken and the market is left alone, freedom, choices and costs will allow the allocation of scarce resource to move back to an efficient equilibrium in the shortest period of time. A look at any number of recessions including the depression of 1920 legitimizes the market’s ability to recover and heal with a speed and ease unknown to those who believe they can micro-manage the economy.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this simple solution to the bust cycle is often ignored as we have seen with the FED and Feds propping up Miss-allocation after the internet bubble,911, today’s housing bust, and predictably tomorrows gold bust. It is just too easy to employ another round of fiscal stimulus to avoid the pain of readjustment and admit of their torrid relationship with Inflation.<br /><br />What’s more shocking are the policy actions we most often see after the bust. As the economy goes into a nosedive as a response to the artificial and unsustainable boom, policy makers step in and suggest a solution that created the problem in the first place, more fiscal stimulus! Can you say: $787 billion bailout, QE1, QE2, and Operation Twist?<br /><br />The idea of government stepping in to solve an economic problem they created by instituting the same policies they used to create the problem in the first place is madness. Why should we believe the government now when the government did not know where to allocate the simulative money the first time around, or the second, or third.<br /><br />Remember governments are not incentivized by any profit or loss system and their decisions are far more arbitrary than the decisions made by free individuals. Government obsession of synthetic Inflation is like a stalker addicted to a love gone bad. Unfortunately the government won’t place a restraining order on itself.<br /><br />As far as bailouts, Woods again helps us understand that “Emergency lending to troubled firms perpetuates the misallocation of resources and extends favoritism to firms engaged in unsustainable activities at the expense of sound firms prepared to put those resources to more appropriate use. . . Bailouts merely freeze entrepreneurial error in place, instead of allowing the redistribution of resources into the hands of parties better able to provide for consumer demands in light of entrepreneurs’ new understanding of real conditions.”<br /><br />All of this just postpones the inevitable. Because like a drunk, you can avoid the hangover costs of drinking if you just keep drinking, but you can’t keep drinking forever.<br /><br />In short, as economist Roger Garrison states, “Savings gets us genuine growth; credit expansion gets us boom and bust.” Easy money leads to boom which is unsustainable which leads to bust which brings in even more easy money which leads to a bigger boom and thus a bigger bust until eventually the boom will lead to a complete breakup of the economy. And that is where we are heading after mismanaging the internet, 9/11, and housing boom and busts.<br /><br />What is the current problem?<br /><br />Today, the housing bust and the following gold boom have created the next wave of disaster. As International economist David Malpass explains, the FEDs near-zero interest rates penalize savers and channel artificially cheap capital to government, big corporations and foreign countries. As previously noted, low rates encourage excessive risk taking which fuels bubbles. This stimulus, however, has not shown up in the marketplace with Inflation, yet. At some point, as we have seen with all artificial economic growth, an increase in interest rates will fuel the bust.<br /><br />Our current boom bust cycle has been covered up right under our noses by arrogant and dangerous actions taken by the Central Bank and Executive branch.<br /><br />The Fed has been fully sterilizing its asset purchases, meaning all the cash it has used to buy bonds to fund the government’s deficit spending and stimulus is still contained at the Fed, not multiplied in the private sector. The Fed has accomplished this through bank regulation and by borrowing from banks at above-market interest rates—$1.5 trillion as of Jan. 18, 2012.<br /><br />The FED buys US government bonds and then they -as well as the government, via Dodd-Frank and other statutes- regulate member banks so as to keep the money that was used to buy the bonds from being lent to consumers. The FED then borrows money from these same Federal Reserve banks and pays them interest greater than the rate set by the FED which is zero. Thus the FED soaks up the potential liquidity and the reserve banks make “no risk” money. Dollars are thus not put into circulation but the banks become very profitable on their balance sheet which creates a multiplier effect in expanding the number of dollars without printing more dollars and without having to lend dollars to consumers or cause Inflation to strike – yet!<br /><br />The result is a vacuum of tremendous subdued Inflation. As economist John Taylor of Stanford has noted; “ before 2008 reserve balances were 10 billion, at the end of 2011 when QE1 and QE2 ended they were 1600 billion. This money will “eventually pour into the economy causing inflation.” “The FED is distorting incentives and interfering with price discovery with unintended consequences throughout the economy.” The lack of transparency keeps the scheme all but hidden from the general public while in the meantime, investors flock to gold and other resources as they know their currency is being devalued by the Treasury Department and the FED.<br /><br />Even though we don’t fully see her yet statistically, common sense screams that a massive outburst from Inflation is coming. At some point, as all schemes do, the vacuum seal will be broken, the Inflation bomb will be unleashed, and the people will have to pick up the bill for the government prostituting Inflation.<br /><br />In short the government is monetizing their debt under the cover of the FED who is creating a monetary bubble to prop up and profit their banks that upon its “pop” will make the housing bubble seem like a snap.<br /><br />What do we do?<br /><br />As you can see, Keynesian stimulus strategies do not work while Austrian models define why they are failures. The solution then is for the FED and policy officials to understand, as Taylor states, “that rules based monetary policy works and unpredictable discretionary policies do not.” The goal then should be long run price stability, also known as a sound dollar. This means it is the job of the FED to maintain the stability and purchasing power of the dollar and thus keep Inflation’s evil side in check by minimizing her seductive lure.<br /><br />The FED should get rid of its current dual role of maximum employment and price stability as it is working at cross purposes. What good is the expansion of the money supply to foster employment when it destroys the currency stability which acts as a break on hiring?<br /><br />One idea offered by Taylor is to design a gold standard that requires no physical gold to operate, and that is not subject to speculative attack. The idea is to develop a policy that would automatically adjust the size of the money supply either up or down mirroring the price of gold. Another important step is for the government to get its fiscal house in order and stop borrowing money.<br /><br />As you can see natural Inflation is not a worry, but when money is effortlessly stolen by Inflations dark side the crime is immoral by definition. This is made even more maddening when the theft is the result of a government and central bank that have, as their very reason for existence, the job of protecting you and your property.<br /><br />Of course their betrayal at the hands of a seductress should not surprise anyone. Thomas Jefferson said: “To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt… And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale … (Where) private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.”Dean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6042078006668554033.post-33397513394446786872012-03-23T12:17:00.004-04:002012-03-23T12:21:03.645-04:00It's not about me means it's all about meAn open letter to President Obama,<br /><br />Is your cognitive “house of cards” so shaken by the realities of energy creation and consumption that the only way to protect your fragile sense of self is to call those who live in the real world “flat earth society” members? Your rhetoric is a classic example of the “it’s not about me” line where everyone knows it’s actually all about them.<br /><br />In other words, you are the one who believes in fairy tales and “flat earths,” that, like a chess board made from sustainable wood, can be controlled by the well intentioned pixie dust of green technology and your self-aggrandizing narcissism.<br /><br />You spend your time smugly creating straw men and decrying capitalism as piggish. These projections are simply a defense mechanism to defend your blind perceptions. In reality, your mind is a straw house that desperately is trying to protect its frailties and global warming fantasies (or is it climate change?) from the winds of a big bad wolf known as self-actualization, common sense, and capitalism.<br /><br />Heaven forbid your self-anointed ivory tower be blown away by the dissonant cognition found in the enlightened reason of a systemic and dynamic universe beyond the pale of mere mortals. Unlike yourself of course, who reached demigod status when you proclaimed upon your exultation, “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”<br /><br />I am saddened by the outward expressions of inner turmoil you exhibit without even a hint of humility or ability for self awareness. Your maladaptive coping strategies directed towards reasoned yet conflicting points of view is beneath a man that is supposed to be the leader of the free world.<br /><br />How about doing the American people a favor, grow up, find yourself, and lead; otherwise step aside so America can prosper in freedom.<br /><br />Respectfully<br /><br />Dean KalaharDean Kalaharhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05840290107017110306noreply@blogger.com1