Rasmussen's useless throw-the-bums-out poll

I usually find Rasmussen's political polls to be useful, but the one released today really provides no helpful information regarding the mood of the electorate.  One of the poll questions asked:

Suppose you could vote this fall on whether to get rid of the entire Congress and start over again. Would you vote to keep the entire Congress or get rid of the entire Congress?

No middle ground -- throw them all out or keep all of them?  If these were our only choices, I suppose I'd have to say throw them all out and start over.  Unsurprisingly, 65% of the pitchfork-wielding voters went this way as well, because few in their right mind think that keeping the entire Congress is a good idea.

Here in the real world, it's clear that there are some good guys in Congress who should be returned to office.

What was Rasmussen's point in asking this question?

Far more useful were these questions from the same poll:

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party?

Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party?

Do you consider yourself part of the Tea Party Movement? [those who answered "no" or "Not sure" were asked] Do you have any close friends or family members who are part of the Tea Party movement?

It's definitely newsworthy to note that (despite what the Democrat and media elite have said repeatedly) only 56% of people who identify with the TEA Party movement (and only 61% of self-identified Republicans) have a favorable view of the Republican Party.

This fact should have been the headline, because the GOP leadership really, really needs to understand this.

Memo to GOP: The national debt wouldn't be where it is now without your active participation

I sure do hope the GOP bigwigs understand the sentiment that appears to be set to thrust their party back into power.  If they think this is just a matter of letting a different party preside over the sinking of our country, their base will withdraw its support with extreme prejudice.
CNSNews, October 14:

The national debt increased for the 53rd straight fiscal year, jumping $1.65 trillion in fiscal 2010, according to data posted online by the Bureau of the Public Debt and confirmed by a spokesperson for the agency.

Fiscal Year 1958, the first year of the run, saw a debt increase of $5.8 billion, a paltry sum these days.  Since then, the cumulative debt increase has been $13.3 trillion.
Although the GOP has been complicit in this drunken-sailor spending binge, the events of the past two years have shown that the Democrats are ideologically devoted to spending without restraint. 
The GOP needs to understand that many of the people who will be voting for them this time will be doing so as the most efficient means of stopping the runaway Democrat train, and not necessarily because they trust the Republicans.
GOP, you'll have two years to earn the trust of these folks.  That's not long, so you'd better not dawdle.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!

Today is a U.S. holiday officially known as Columbus Day, in commemoration of Christopher Columbus' (or whatever his real name was) voyage westward in search of a shorter (and thus more profitable) trade route to India and China.

Instead of reaching his goal, he unexpectedly blundered into some islands which were off the coast of a continent that was heretofore unknown to the major powers of Europe. 

Once word of his discovery made it back to Europe, the race to carve up the New World was on.  Spain and Portugal were out of the gate more quickly than the others, and in short order they had staked their claims to most of the western hemisphere.  Not to be left out, France and Britain claimed what they could as well.

Of course, the nomadic peoples who had arrived hundreds or thousands of years before for the most part weren't too keen on welcoming the newcomers, but one by one these people groups were conquered or displaced.

In the minds of many on the left, Everything That Is Wrong With The World today can be traced back to Columbus' arrival at Hispaniola in 1492.  Because of this, Columbus' voyage is not to be celebrated, but rather reviled.  Many have lobbied for the second Monday of October to be renamed Indigenous Peoples Day.  America's very existence is considered to be an affront to human decency.

But is it fair to single out the US for moral culpability in something that is pretty much the natural state of humanity?

How many countries can you name that do not have within their boundary territories in which people groups were at some point in history conquered or displaced?

How many people groups can you name that today occupy territory that has never at any point in history belonged to some other people group?

I am not for a moment excusing any atrocities that may have been committed (and there were many) during the course of colonization, but the simple act of establishing a colony does not ipso facto constitute an atrocity, as some would have us believe.

Personally, I don't see much to celebrate in the character of Columbus the man.  But neither do I see any cause to lay the sufferings of the "indigenous peoples" (a term of art in itself) at his feet.

Fences: A parable.

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up."
-- Robert Frost

Update on the “most open and transparent” administration in history

Here’s the promise, published January 20, 2009:

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government.

Here’s the directive to the Executive Branch, published January 21, 2009:

Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

SUBJECT:      Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent.  Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.  Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

[…and so on…]

Here’s the reality (FoxBusiness, July 28):

Under a little-noticed provision of the recently passed financial-reform legislation, the Securities and Exchange Commission no longer has to comply with virtually all requests for information releases from the public, including those filed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.

That argument comes despite the President saying that one of the cornerstones of the sweeping new legislation was more transparent financial markets. Indeed, in touting the new law, Obama specifically said it would “increase transparency in financial dealings."

The SEC cited the new law Tuesday in a FOIA action brought by FOX Business Network.

Go to the FoxBusiness link above to read the relevant section of the law.

[Emphasis added throughout]

Who in the world is David H. Comins?

Does David H. Comins actually exist?

The “Thought For The Day” Listserv had this quote today:

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
-- David H. Comins

I loved the quote, and wanted to pass it along to my friends, but I was curious about the author, because I had never heard of him.

I’m usually pretty good at digging information out of Google, but so far I’ve come up empty.  Searching on his name, I found countless sites that reproduce this quote, but have no information about who Comins is.

So… Is Comins a one-hit wonder, famous precisely for saying the above quote, but otherwise obscure?  That’s not very easy to pull off, it seems to me.

I did find a Facebook page for a David Comins, but I’d have to get on his Friends list to see any detailed information on him.  There’s a David Comins on LinkedIn, but how would an Information Manager at TimeWarner become famous for a quote on Benjamin Franklin?

C’mon, somebody do my homework for me and point me to a site that tells me who Comins is.

There is a lesson in all of this.  How often to we uncritically pass on things we find on the Internet or receive in our email?  Do any of the people who posted the Comins quote on their websites know anything about Comins, assuming he exists?  I’m willing to bet they don’t.

You’re welcome to prove me wrong.


11 July 2011 UPDATE: The hunt for David H. Comins still rages on, given the number of visits to this post through search engines.  I decided to have another look to see if anything else had turned up on him.  I think we've got him!  It seems that the possibility that I dismissed above as the least likely has ended up being the reality about our mystery man.

All of those sites referring to him as an author may want to reconsider that description, given that pretty much the only thing he ever got published was... that quote.  It was a reader submission for a magazine article.  In real life, it looks like he was a real estate broker in Manchester, Connecticut for quite a while, but he's well past retirement now.  I wouldn't be surprised if he’s spending his golden years marveling about how famous—yet obscure—he is.


18 December 2015 UPDATE: The links in the previous update no longer work, so I thought I'd update my search.  A recent book called The Official Rules has this entry for "Comins's Law":

There's no way to know where the authors got their information, but the citation supports my 2011 findings: that Comins lived in Manchester, Connecticut, and that the quotation originally appeared in a magazine article (HW = Harper's Weekly).  He may still be there, if Pipl's data is accurate.

Conclusion, reiterated: David H. Comins is famous for this quotation, and nothing else.  If it weren't for his submission to Harper's, he wouldn't exist at all, as far as the internet is concerned.

The Case of the Vanishing Oil Spill: A Parable

ABC News reported July 26 that the oil cleanup brigades are having trouble finding oil to clean up (emphasis added):

For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.

At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.

[…] The numbers don't lie: two weeks ago, skimmers picked up about 25,000 barrels of oily water. Last Thursday, they gathered just 200 barrels.

Still, it doesn't mean that all the oil that gushed for weeks is gone. Thousands of small oil patches remain below the surface, but experts say an astonishing amount has disappeared, reabsorbed into the environment.

"[It's] mother nature doing her job," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University.

The well has been capped for only two weeks, and already nature has done an “astonishing” amount of the work that the cleanup folks had expected to do.

This says a lot about our planet’s ability to accommodate shocks to the ecosystem.

Think about it.  Experts have been taken completely by surprise by the way the Gulf of Mexico is cleaning itself up. 

And yet, we’re told by many that the science is settled concerning climate change, and that there remains no credible opposition to the notion that we’re nearing a tipping point of irreversible damage to our planet.  What’s really astonishing is the hubris of “experts” who think their knowledge of climate is anywhere near the level needed to make predictions like that.

Pause and reflect.

 

(Image found here)

Liking Sarah Palin and… Mitt Romney??

Facebook fan page recommendations appear to be based on one of two main criteria: (1) a certain number of people on your Friends list are fans of the  page; or (2) a certain number of people who are not on your Friends list, but are fans of some page you’re a fan of, are also fans of some other page you’re not a fan of (got that?).

Recently I’ve been seeing the following recommendation on my Facebook sidebar:

Facebook is making this statement based on statistics, not on philosophy.  “Like” has a different meaning in the Real World.

It just seems difficult to believe that thinking conservatives would truly like both Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney… especially when we’re talking about the difference between (1) a woman who refuses to back away from her conservative values, even in the face of an all-out attempt to destroy her and her family, and (2) a man who was acceptable to the majority of the voters in one of the most liberal states in the country.

MSM starting to report on the “unintended consequences” of Obamacare

“Unintended consequences” – a phrase almost certain to become clichéd in the coming months and years as people and businesses start digging into (and reacting to) the deepest, darkest parts of the new health care law.

AP reports July 23 that the law is already starting to have a negative impact on one class of people:

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

[…] Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems — a major early benefit of the complex legislation. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

[…] "Our plans are very concerned about this," said Alissa Fox, a top Washington lobbyist for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. "If the law says that insurers have to take you any time, any place, some people will see that as an opportunity to wait until their children get sick to buy coverage."

There is nothing in the law that would stop a hospital from buying a policy for a uninsured child who came into the emergency room, she added.

The law is almost certainly riddled with landmines like this.  The average congressperson can neither confirm nor deny this, primarily because the average congressperson hasn’t actually read the law he or she voted to enact.

If the GOP wants to win in November, it needs to be more than simply not-Obama

Does the national GOP hoping to passively surf the growing wave of anti-Obama sentiment all the way to control of Congress?

In NRO on July 21, Victor Davis Hanson argues that the GOP – as a party and as individual candidates – needs to be specific about how it would govern differently than Obama and the current Congress are governing:

Republican politicos will quite accurately lecture that presenting such detailed alternative plans would be foolhardy: The key now is simply to be against what an unpopular Obama is for. I accept that offering detailed solutions might well turn the public as much against the proposed medicine as against the original malignant disease.

Yet at some point, blanket Obama-bashing without a comprehensive alternative will turn stale. Critics of Obama — if they are to be taken seriously — will have to be about more than not being Obama. Instead, conservatives must identify exactly how to undo the Obama agenda — and do so in a way that does not earn them the disdain that the Republican Congress earned between 2001 and 2006, and the Republican administration between 2005 and 2009.

We need some notion of a contracted agenda, so that conservative voters can hold conservative politicians to account in this age of anti-incumbency. Voters wanted closed borders, balanced budgets, ethical members of Congress, and less government between 2001 and 2006. They believed that all of that had been promised — and then were sorely disappointed.

In short, conservative voters want to see something specific — as much to keep their own honest as to defeat the other.

The Tea Party movement’s very existence shows that the conservative base is restless.  Conservatives are in no mood to be used by the GOP elites to effect a return to We May Be Bad But We’re Not As Bad As The Democrats.  The elites will ignore this at their peril.

“Cash for Clunkers”, revisited: New home sales plunge to lowest level on record

The Associated Press reports that another major chunk of the façade known as the “economic recovery” has crumbled:

Sales of new homes collapsed in May, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record as potential buyers stopped shopping for homes once they could no longer receive government tax credits.

The bleak report from the Commerce Department is the first sign of how the expiration of federal tax credits could affect the nation's housing market.

The credits expired April 30. That's when a new-home buyer would have had to sign a contract to qualify.

"We fear that the appetite to buy a home has disappeared alongside the tax credit," Paul Dales, U.S. economist with Capital Economics," wrote in a note. "After all, unemployment remains high, job security is low and credit conditions are tight."

Sound familiar?  Last summer, the “Cash for Clunkers” program created an artificially high demand for automobiles, almost certainly spurring purchases by people who otherwise wouldn’t have (or shouldn’t have) done so.  Once the C4C program ended, auto sales dropped through the floor.

Here we go again.  The federal tax credits for new home purchases is gone, and sales have dropped to a level never before seen in the 47 years that the government has been tracking this statistic. 

Just like we saw with C4C, it is likely that many who bought a home in recent months should not have done so.  How many of them will be in foreclosure in just a few short years?

Remember these examples each time you are told that we’re in the midst of an economic recovery.

Given the fresh storm clouds gathering on the horizon, now may not be the best time to buy a home, with or without a tax credit incentive.

If corporate earnings appear to be improving right now…

…it may very well be that businesses are shifting as much income and production as possible to this year.  Arthur Laffer writes in the Wall Street Journal June 6:

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Laffer believes that allowing the tax cuts to expire will result in an economic collapse next year that will dwarf what we’ve seen so far.  To be sure, a sudden, massive tax increase in the middle of a weak economy will not end well.

The Global Debt Crisis Explained, sort of

I had not heard of Clarke and Dawe before, but I love the way they “explain” the impossibly tangled web of debt that may bring down one economy after another.

Various countries in Europe are the first to falter, but the US appears to be heading for the precipice as well.  Bloomberg, June 4:

U.S.’s $13 Trillion Debt Poised to Overtake GDP

President Barack Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

The CHART OF THE DAY tracks U.S. gross domestic product and the government’s total debt, which rose past $13 trillion for the first time this month. The amount owed will surpass GDP in 2012, based on forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. The lower panel shows U.S. annual GDP growth as tracked by the IMF, which projects the world’s largest economy to expand at a slower pace than the 3.2 percent average during the past five decades.

“Over the long term, interest rates on government debt will likely have to rise to attract investors,” said Hiroki Shimazu, a market economist in Tokyo at Nikko Cordial Securities Inc., a unit of Japan’s third-largest publicly traded bank. “That will be a big burden on the government and the people.”

Click on the “Graphic” tab at the above link to view the chart.

Do boycotters secretly hate Arizona hispanics?

With the announcement of each new boycott of Arizona companies (such as the one just approved by L.A. County), I wonder if the Legion of the Outraged has thought this through completely.

If, somehow, these boycotts manage to have an actual economic impact on Arizona businesses, just who do they think will lose their jobs first?  Wouldn't it be the lower-income employees?

Even if the middle- and upper-class somehow got hit first, their ensuing decrease in economic activity would affect... who?

I cannot escape the conclusion that those who purport to champion the cause of Hispanics in Arizona secretly hate them.

Government-authored spyware – what a great idea!

No, it’s not happening yet (that I know of), but the RIAA and MPAA are pushing hard to establish the legal precedent of government surveillance of average citizens’ private in-home activities.

Tom’s Guide reports:

Big Brother is watching you. Actually, it's the RIAA and the MPAA, especially if you're parked on a BitTorrent client. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that both organizations--along with a few others--want to take the file-monitoring process a huge step further by infiltrating consumer PCs and deleting the infringing content off their hard drives. How? Through "anti-infringement" spyware developed and enforced by the government.

This is no joke.

"There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers...these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware)," reads a caption in a joint comment (pdf) filed by the MPAA and RIAA.

The joint comment goes on to suggest other means of copyright enforcement including a mandatory scan on all internet connections to interdict transfers of illegal content, physical searches at all borders of personal media players, laptops, and USB sticks. There's even an indication that the parties want to enforce international bullying to force other countries to put similar policies in place.

A couple of observations are in order.

First, the only reason  the RIAA and MPAA could even dream of getting the federal government to do something like this is that they know the fedgov recognizes no meaningful limits on its power.  Industries take advantage of this fact all of the time – using the government as a bludgeon against one’s competitors has become a time-honored tradition in this country – but the RIAA/MPAA proposal goes beyond what we normally see. 

Many people who will complain that this is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy and a denial of due process will, the next day, demand that the government provide health care, jobless benefits, welfare, etc.  We can’t have it both ways.  Either the federal government is bound by the U.S. Constitution, or it isn’t.

Second, is there any real difference between government-authored spyware on our computers and government-installed surveillance cameras in our homes?  Both would have the same official purpose – crime prevention.  I wonder if RIAA and MPAA executives would consent to government video surveillance of their mansions, “just in case” they decided to do something illegal.