Clunkers: Taxpayers paid $24,000 per car

THIS IS A COLUMN BY MY FRIEND SERGEY NIKIFOROV. HE IS A PATRIOTIC IMMIGRANT LIKE ME, FROM RUSSIA. HE WORKS IN SILICON VALLEY AS AN ENGINEER.

I’m not shocked with this latest tidbit of economic doomsday news.  I am appalled at the economic incompetence of our democratically elected rulers and the consistency of their applying voodoo methods to complex politico-economic issues.

Every day more and more people are waking up to the reality of Obamanomics.  Luckily for all of us, the mid-term elections are a year away, and the American voters will change the course of our country.  But long-lasting effects of the criminally irresponsible fiscal behavior of our current administration will haunt us for many generations to come.

Think I am overreacting?  Ever heard of the structural deficit in the US before 1980s?  Having it is equivalent to paying an added tax on everything. So far, its effects were masked by the booming free-market economy of the 90s, so we (the consumers) have generally dismissed them.

The party is over now, yet we keep on adding to the bar bill.  Trillions of spending dollars on top of the existing debt structure and the increased government involvement in various private sectors will permanently retard America’s economic leadership.  I fear we are slowly descending into a Japanese-like economic model: 100-dollar watermelons, efficient public transit and no way out for decades.

The American DNA is strong enough to evolve and survive.  I just don’t think we’ll be around to witness it.

P.S.  Have you personally met anyone who got his job saved or created by the 800 billion dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act?

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Conservative Environmentalism

Conservatives often affirm that creating alarm over alleged global warming is meant to lead to another attempt at collectivist control of our lives. They say that radical environmentalism is the new communism. This makes sense but I think it misses two marks. First, it makes it sound as if the attempt would be innocent enough if only it failed. Second, it implies a certain conscious cynicism on the part of proponents of the climate change view of the world. I think both assumptions are wrong and that it matters that they are wrong.

The religious cult of climate change generates fervent belief in its followers and it will have done our society much damage even if they fail utterly to impose on us the massive socio-economic transformations toward global poverty they pursue. Its applications are ridden with large, crude errors: Today’s Wall Street Journal (10/29/09) mentions an article in the current issue of Science . The article explains how tax-subsidized ethanol turns out more carbon than gasoline.

My judgment that the climate change movement is a religious cult is based on common, ordinary observations: The forceful denial of contrary evidence, the demonization of non-believers, the attempt to shut up effective contradictors by having them fired, the apocalyptic beliefs, are all religious hallmarks of fanatical religiosity. Accordingly, most of the believers are completely sincere, I think, and all the more dangerous for that reason. It’s a strategic mistake to think they are corrupt. It’s easier to change the minds of the corrupt than of the religiously stupefied.

Secondly, much damage will have been done even if they fail utterly Curiously, reading a second book by an intelligent, calm, collected environmental advocate brought to my mind the damage the current “environmental hysteria” is causing, even if the hysterical ones never reach any of their goals. The first book was Bjorn Lomborg’s 2001 Skeptical Environmentalist in which the author uses hard facts and tight logic to destroy just about every single militant belief. Lomborg has done more than anyone, more than silly Al Gore himself, to expose the religious nature of the movement. Believers cannot read any part of the book without experiencing salutary doubt. That’s why it’s banned by the church of environmentalism. Yet, Lomborg insists he is fighting to improve mankind’s use of the physical environment. He is an environmentalist but one who prefers facts to wild myths of monsters under the bed.

The second book, published in 2005, is titled Collapse , with blinding clarity of purpose. The book systematically warns us of eventual (not eminent) societal disaster if we don’t collectively change our ways, a standard message from green and assorted doomsday sayers. The author, Jared Diamond however is difficult to dismiss out of hand. He has real scientific training, in the form of a doctorate in Physiology from Cambridge University. He possesses all the good academic credentials one wishes for (I, for one, take such things seriously.) Then, he is enormously well read in addition to having amassed much field experience, all by choice. Finally, Diamond gave us before Collapse, the luminous and commercially very successful 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel. (It’s rare that thick books written with scholarly care become commercial successes.)

I found myself reading Collapse reluctantly because of its announced objective of warning us of coming environmentally-caused disaster. I have heard so much tripe, so much non-sense, so many lies, I have witnessed so many exercises in stubborn stupidity about the environment than my mind is more than half-shut to anything that sounds “environmental.” It’s become so bad, I actively avoid “organic” produce at the supermarket. I tell myself that I may not be able to stop the tide but that, as a man of conscience, I don’t have to swim with it, an imbecilic smile painted on my face. And yet, Diamond is fairly persuasive. He is no threatening us with hundred-foot waves crashing over New York City. Instead, he carefully lays out several scenarios based on the continuation of current practices. I am left with the impression, even after close critical scrutiny, that one or more of his scenarios are plausible. It seems to me we might be preparing ourselves for a non-cataclysmic descent into serious poverty because, collectively, we mismanage the physical environment, all in concrete, measurable ways.

The damage the climate change jihadists will have done is to have closed through their excesses the minds and hearts of rational people to possible improvements on current practice. Some, many, of these improvements are possible without grievous assault on conservative consciences or on rationality.

First, what I don’t believe. I don’t give a rat’s ass about my carbon footprints (or about Silly Al’s hundred times larger footprint).Let me repeat what I have said several times on this blog: The Norse inhabitants of Greenland (so-called “Vikings”) were eating home-raised beef around the year 1100, something you could not do now, after “global warming.” It was warmer then, before cars, before the Industrial Revolution, before anything, when mankind’s numbers were very small. End of idea of man-made global warming! By the way, Jared Diamond has a beautifully detailed account of the Norse Greenland settlements in Collapse. If you want to learn more about the un-going causes of my unbelief, follow the “Climate change” link on the front page of this blog.

Yet, I would not be surprised if unprecedented large numbers of people, acting mostly with ideas and ethics derived from a time when people were few and technologically weak, managed to do real damage. The idea is not absurd but it has almost escaped our attention because of our need to protect ourselves from the shrill, irrational mendacity of mainstream environmentalists. And then, precisely because I am a conservative, I like good resource management. That’s one of the reasons I put my faith in the market in the first place. (Another reason to dislike all socialism is that it’s inherently wasteful.) As a conservative, I am bound to dislike waste. It’s apparent to me that some of our everyday habits are wasteful and that they could be improved without reducing the area of legitimate individual liberty. Below are three examples.

Every durable good I buy from a store seems to me obviously over-packaged, not a little but a lot. It may well be that I am misunderstanding some of the functions of elaborate packaging but it should not be impossible to explain them to me. Consumers should encourage wholesalers and retailers alike to justify their packaging practices on the package itself. I am not calling for more regulation of manufacturing or of retail, but for greater transparency sanctioned by consumer choice alone. That would economize on transport costs and yes, save trees. (I like trees; shoot me!)

I drive a medium-size pick-up truck. I have my own reasons for this, one of which is the arms race on the highways. It’s a moderate gas guzzler. I estimate that about one third or the mileage I put on this vehicle is on flat ground, within a shortish distance of my house. I wouldn’t mind bicycling there when the weather is good (most of the year). I wouldn’t mind saving gas money and depriving the government of some tax revenue and it would not be bad for my health. Except that it might be terminally bad for my health. Motor vehicles are mixed too closely with bikes for safety and many drivers are mindless road-hogs. It seems to me it should be possible better to separate the two kinds of traffic, at least in many places, at minimum cost and by steps. And, by the way, since the laws are already on the books, I wouldn’t mind draconian enforcement of stop signs regulations. Jumping one just cost one of my friends $500. He is not likely to do it again soon.

I have priced solar heating options for my house. Even in sunny California they take too long to pay for themselves to be economically attractive, in the narrow meaning of “economic.” Yet, as a luxury choice, some of them make sense. Think of it this way: Solar heating is no more extravagant than gambling, whoring, or owning some fancy cars. It’s comparable to a sturdy beer habit. ($30/week= $1600/year= $25,000 over fifteen years.) If I ever take the step, it will be because it separates me to a significant extent from government-regulated and government-colluding big corporations. It will be a positive step toward personal autonomy, with the additional merit of taking revenue away from government. (It’s devilishly difficult to tax sunlight though I am sure they will try.) In addition, taking energy from the sun is technologically elegant. It would give me the kind of aesthetic satisfaction that others get from a fancy car, precisely.

And, of course, there are powerful reasons of national security why we should wish to extract less and less of our energy from the bad neighborhoods where we undoubtedly finance those who want to slaughter us.

Those are just three small examples above of how one can be a conservative environmentalist. I am sure there are many more. We must just resist the green crazies’ ability to annoy us until we can’t think straight anymore.

Possession two (or too)

Part Two: No Place to Stay

Update: In a previous blog (“The A.A President,” posted 10/7/09 ), I argued that President Obama’s current string of failures was not surprising because he had never accomplished much of anything in his life under his own power. I mentioned that his passing the bar exam might prove me wrong. There is nothing on Wikipedia about his having passed the bar anywhere. There is nothing I could find on the Internet. Not trusting the thoroughness of my search, I went straight to the source. Nine days ago, I emailed the White House website asking when and where the President had passed the bar. No answer to-date.

In the first installment of this essay, I began to attempt to use a small-scale entity to explain the damage done by innocent government intervention. The small-scale entity is my town of Santa Cruz (population about 40,000). In Part One, I showed how the municipality’s practice of taking possession of buildings downtown to shelter social services impoverished the tax roll. There is worse.

Santa Cruz has two main parallel arteries. On one side of the river, lies Ocean Street, leading to the Boardwalk, a permanent carnival near the beach. Ocean avenue is appropriately lined with fast food joints and motels. It’s as devoid of interest as any similar commercial artery anywhere in the US.

Parallel to that commercial thoroughfare, across three bridges is Pacific Avenue, the main axis of the old but renovated downtown. Pacific avenue was largely but not completely destroyed in the 1989 earthquake. It hurts me to admit it but it was redesigned and rebuilt into a gracious model of small-scale urban planning. It hurts me because this was accomplished under the guidance of a Leftie local political elite. Be it as it may, Pacific avenue is a very nice place to hang out, to eat, and to shop.

The latter is an important detail because the city has only two significant industries left: The University of California and tourism. The more visitors spend the better off we all are, including the socially assisted population.

Downtown, Pacific Avenue, would also be a lovely place to stay except there is no place to stay there. Incredibly, there are no tourist hotels and no beds and breakfast anywhere in the area. This is much of a pity because the city is 45 minutes from Silicon Valley on a good day, 90 minutes on a bad weekend day. Still-prosperous Silicon Valley is in our economic catchment area. This proximity is all the more fortunate because Silicon Valley is quite boring for most of those who live there. There is no there there, to plagiarize a statement made originally about Oakland. And what there there is there is almost entirely reachable by car only. There is no strolling and eating and drinking and shopping. (Valleyites will pathetically try to argue that I am wrong, that there is rich Los Gatos and moderately priced- downtown San Jose, and fairly pleasant Palo Alto. Both San Jose and Los Gatos are closed down by 8 PM most nights, for different reasons but with equivalent consequences for attractiveness and therefore, for commerce. Palo Alto is clear at the other end of Silicon Valley.)

Downtown Santa Cruz, Pacific Avenue, is the perfect place to linger after the boardwalk, or the beach, or after visits to the many art studios and to the even more numerous antique shops in the county. The retail shops on the avenue close late. They would be enticed to close even later if there were throngs of non-locals around. The same general area should offer residents of Silicon Valley a perfect excuse to skip the awful and dangerous Saturday late afternoon return trip across the Santa Cruz Mountains. Even some visitors from far-away and cold San Francisco ought to be tempted to come if they could stay overnight because Santa Cruz boasts a warm micro-climate.

By the way, the whole Santa Cruz area, including its downtown, offers a remarkably varied menu of quality musical venues, another reason to say a night or two, perhaps for a different age group.

Visitors don’t in fact stay much overnight because nearly all the hotels are on boring, pedestrian-inaccessible, no-shop Ocean Street, the other artery. Is the lack of places to stay in the vibrant downtown a historical accident, perhaps an unintended consequence of the earthquake’s destruction? Is it the result of a deliberate policy to segregate tourism on the other side of the river that bisects the town? Frankly, I don’t know the full answer to these queries. Here is what I know.

On Pacific Avenue, the good street, within three blocks of each other are two hotels. One was built since the earthquake. At less than ten years of age, it must be in pretty good shape inside, more than adequate for overnight tourists. The second hotel is located on the upper floors of a building that survived the earthquake. It’s old but of such great architectural interest that I always bring foreign visitors to admire the restaurant on its ground-floor, a splendor of 1930s “Spanish revival” style. (That’s Mexican style, revised and improved by Hollywood.) On the same ground-floor is a large bar favored by the locals, a good coffee shop and a superior taqueria. The bottom floor of this building provides exactly the kind of urban environment well-heeled Silicon Valley engineers and their spouses would favor after a day at the beach and a shower. There is no shower to be had.

The two hotels are within a short walking distance of three large bookstores, one of historical note, Book Shop Santa Cruz, and of a lovingly restored 1930s- style large movie theater. There are also several bar and restaurants within three blocks. Many of these establishments offer music on weekends

The city (or the county, or both jointly) has taken possession of both hotels. They are reserved for social cases, people who, for one reason or another, are deemed unable to provide shelter for themselves. It’s obvious to me that people fall into the pit of public largess for all kinds of reasons, including misfortune and illness. It’s equally obvious that, in a prosperous area such as  central California until recently, substance abuse sometimes plays a role in the descent into poverty. Both hotels are located within easy walking distance of the local drug bazaar, the bus depot.

There is more. A few years ago what looked to my experienced eye like a luxury four-story apartment house was completed in the same area. From the outside, its architecture is both striking and gracious. My wife and I, who already live downtown, found it so attractive and so well situated that we made an attempt to visit one of the apartments for rent  Rent was very high but we thought we could swing it if we sold our house. A snooty young real estate woman advised us haughtily that we needed to fill a form even before she would let us look. It was that kind of place. Get the idea?

Since my failed attempt to assess the place, the city took over one whole floor to shelter yet another set of needy people. I know a perfectly normal and healthy young man who lives there, sheltered by his municipally sheltered father. (And, why not,? He is very good to his old dad.)

Note what I have not said. I have not complained about the unfairness of welfare programs in general. (Government taking money from the 8-dollar an hour toiling waitress to give it to some older guy who may or may not want to work.) Nor did I mention the unpleasantness some of the sheltered people often create downtown. (Let’s not be coy; I am in the area often enough to know that some of them are habitual substance abusers.)

I am preoccupied with something else: How many rich Silicon Valley engineers do not spend their money in Santa Cruz several weekends each year because the hotels where they would stay are unavailable? How many entrepreneurs from there, and from everywhere else, have not fallen in love with Santa Cruz because they never knew that it was more than a beach and a carnival? How many jobs have not been created because they had nowhere to stay overnight? How many venture capitalists missed the opportunity to fund our abundant local creative talent because they have never stayed here long enough to notice it?

Conservatives often say that government does not create wealth. It’s worse than this. Government often stands in the way of natural wealth creation. Usually, it’s not on purpose but for good, superficially humane reasons. Government at all levels takes possession of sources of wealth, seldom relinquishes them and then, it destroys them. I miss less the money I pay in taxes than the money, and its beneficial consequences, that never came into existence because of this particular form of demonic possession.

Don’t think this is just a small town tale. The same possession occurs at the national level today, with devilish consequences for us, for our children and for their children.

Possession

Part One: Drying up the tax fountain

I suspect many people have troubling getting a good grasp of the on-going conservative struggle to prevent large-scale takeover of the economy by the federal government. I think there are two main obstacles to their understanding.

First, the idea of the virtuousness of the market as a regulator and organizer of economic life is difficult to communicate. It’s an abstract idea and it does not correspond well to people’s own experience. In their personal life, people think that when good things happen it’s a because someone (some one) made good decisions. First, it’s Mom, and then, it’s the “leadership” of the many organizations within which they live, schools, churches and especially employing organizations. To an extent, the one is themselves.

In daily life, there are few occasions to reflect upon the fact that the myriad decisions made by anonymous decision-makers, including bad decisions, aggregate into good outcomes. The market processes involved are both too magical-seeming and too abstract.

At any rate, for some reason, schools and universities do a bad job of explaining these processes. Liberal Arts teachers don’t understand them themselves and they are hostile to them. Most of them are born socialists. If you eat the King’s bread long enough, you become a monarchist.

Economics teachers whose job it is to explain the market usually understand and like markets but they don’t teach well. (I think I know why but this is the subject for another essay.) At any rate, they would argue in their own defense, they don’t have the students long enough, in high school or in college, to make much of a difference. Incidentally, I know a very good senior from an expensive university, who says she will no take a single Economics class before she graduates.

The second obstacle to understanding what’s at stake in the current political struggle is that large things are inherently difficult to understand. So, the large numbers – trillions and such – currently being bandied around by both liberals and conservatives with respect to the health care debate don’t speak to many people’s imagination. For another reason, large-scale socio-economic processes are almost invisible.

The difference between 6% unemployment and 10% is of the order of six million people. I don’t know six million people; I just know my neighbors, three of whom lost their jobs recently. (Obviously, the two obstacle to understanding macro-processes overlap: large numbers are incomprehensible and large processes are invisible, in part because only large numbers make they perceptible.)

Small changes taking place before my very eyes, on my street and not far beyond it illustrate better some of my objections to government take-overs of any fraction of the economy.

My city of Santa Cruz, located on the coast of central California has a population of about 40,000. I live near its center with a view on city hall’s back parking lot, one block from the municipal library and one block from the civic auditorium.

The city government of Santa Cruz is colonizing the city to the detriment of the city, the real city, from a sociological standpoint and from the standpoint of the production of wealth. Of, course, I am taking the traditional view that the function of government is to serve everyone else, that government is not a good in itself. Originally, city government is a pretty good way to take fairly decisions that must be taken.

Secondarily, city government provides services. Being of the libertarian tendency of conservatism, it’s not clear to me that it should deliver any services at all. Yet, some services – such as public libraries – have been municipalized (or taken over by counties) for so long and so reasonably well that I don’t wish to fight this battle right now. My purpose is narrower. It has to do with the “how” of municipal services delivery. My theme is that city government does many things badly because it is not subject to competitive forces so that its mistakes are not ever reversed but repeated over and over.

The city government keep taking possession of prime real estate and putting it out of circulation, for economic purposes. This is a bad for the local economy and for the city government’s own ability to provide basic services via taxation.

Across the street from me is a large three-units, Victorian house for formerly drug addicted pregnant women and female former addicts with small children. The shelter is reasonably well run. It’s not much of a neighborhood blight. Formerly, it housed three moderately priced rental units for U Santa Cruz students.

The house was thoroughly re-modeled three times before it was turned into a shelter. Someone thought that what was good enough for students was not good enough for reformed drug addicts. If private money was used, it’s not of my business. Just making a note of how charity functionaries’ minds work.

Also across the street from me, in another direction is a large shelter for victims of domestic violence. I don’t know what purpose the building served before but, it’s ideally located for rent-paying students and also for rent-paying senior citizens. I am guessing it could easily house fifteen people in comfortable circumstances. Assuming current individual rent to be at minimum $250 per person and per month, the lot should generate more than $45,000 in income each year. Such income, in turn, influences and undergirths the value of the property. Ultimately, the higher the property value, the more it pays in taxes.

The battered women’s center also does not pose many problems as a neighbor because it seems to have low to very low occupancy. It sits on a large corner lot and includes a playground, obviously for the victims’ toddlers. I have not tried to find out hard numbers about the real rate of occupancy because I am sure I would be given the run-around by local social works bureaucrats. I am sure they don’t think the average tax-payer has a right to know. What I can say is that I have never seen any children playing in the shelter’s playground although I have been walking by there several times a week often several times a day, for several years. This particular piece of property is ill-used, for that reason alone. Perhaps, it’s not located close enough to an area of domestic violence to be of much use to anyone. Oops!

Both the ex-drug addicts shelter and the victims of domestic violence shelter are within easy walking distance of the bus depot where any drug can be had, day and night (about six blocks). The two centers are situated ten minutes one way, by car, from the nearest reasonably-priced supermarket and at least a long hour round-trip walking. (Too far with small children.)

Of course, the female inmates of both shelters have the option of a short pleasant walk to the organic store on main street or to the nearby once-a-week farmers’ market for the overprices “health” foods my wife and I would not dream of buying.

Both shelters should probably exist, in some form. There is no reason why they should be located where they are. There are strong reasons why they should not. One reason is that their location helps defeat the purpose for which they were created: helping people who need help. They scream of bureaucratic mindlessness: Let’s put them in an area that’s familiar to us, the bureaucrats must have thought. Nothing else matters.

I have another, stronger objection. Both properties have been taken off the tax roll. In California, taxes increase when a property changes hands. The take-over by some mixture of government and non-profit organizations, reduces to close to zero the probability that these property will be sold and thus become liable to higher taxes. Public entities are reducing their tax base at the same time as they are increasing tax-funded services. It’s the same people, the same mentalities that claim the right to act mindlessly in economic matters that should automatically raise tax revenues and to expand endlessly the roll of tax-eaters.

There used to be a small auto-shop in my area, the only one downtown Santa Cruz. I don’t know if it was making money. I don’t know if it was a successful business. It should have been because it was plum in an area with many seniors who don’t like to have their cars serviced in the boondocks. What replaced the auto-shop makes me suspicious of how it changed hands. In its place now stands a Hope office, yet another organization against misery.

My suspicion arises from the fact that Hope is not much of a job creator. It does not generate wealth that circulates locally and that can be taxed legitimately. I suspect that public resources were used to outbid for this prime location enterprises that would do both.

More on this problem next time.

PS There are no conventional “poor” for Hope to help downtown; rents are too high there.

News From The House of Islam

More news than usual from the Muslim world in the week ending October 9^th 2009.

Iranian so-called “Justice” condemned to death a former demonstrator (Le Figaro). He was charged and convicted of “waging war against God.” His lawyer pointed out that he was not armed when he was arrested in a demonstration. No need to be. If the Supreme Council of Clerics represents God on Earth, any criticism is an act of war against God. Impeccable logic.

Elsewhere, high-level Muslim authorities seem to be waking up, at last; two in one week. But first, a vocabulary brush-up for those of you who attended a Community Studies Program, or an Ethnic Studies Program, or a Women’s Studies Program.

“Islamic” and “Muslim” are synonymous. They both mean “in submission (to God’s will).”

An Islamist is a Muslim who wants to establish a single state for all Muslims, under religious Islamic law – Sharia – rather than the mixture of Islamic principles and Western-style civil and criminal codes prevailing in most predominantly Muslim countries.

In many cases, the Islamic law the Islamist refer to, or think they refer to means fundamentalist law from the Middle Ages. Curiously much of it is far from the Koran, the basic Muslim religious book. It also ignores the modernizing effect of several centuries of updating by Muslim scholars.

The current “Islamic Republic of Iran” gives you an idea of what Islamists aspire to.

Many Islamists, not all, are also violent jihadists. “Jihad” just means “struggle.” It can mean struggle against one’s own sin, against sin in general, or against non-Muslims. Sometimes, it means squarely holy war against “unbelievers.” Unbelievers are those who disagree with jihadists about the nature of God and of divine law. The fact is that violent jihadists have murdered many more Muslims than non-Muslims.

The Koran clearly differentiates between Muslims, Christians and Jews, people who follow a sacred book, and everyone else. Christians and Jews are supposed to be protected minorities are supposed to be tolerated. (Even the Hamas Charter – linked on this blog – admit this.) Christians and Jews may live in a country under Islamic rule but they have to pay extra taxes.

There will be a quiz!

In the week ending Saturday 10/9/09, the Santa Cruz Sentinel published a longish AP report on the declaration of a top, or of the top Egyptian Muslim cleric. He is banning full-face mask for women in all schools over which he has authority. This matters, for three reasons. First, he is the head of Al Azhar mosque and university to which many schools In Egypt belong. Second, Islam has no Vatican but the most influential Islamic institution in the world is undoubtedly Al Azhar. Third, Egypt accounts for one third of the Arab population of the world. As goes Egypt, so goes the Arab world is the common wisdom.

The sheik’s statements were not novel from the standpoint of religious doctrine but they were politically courageous in their firmness and clarity.

The cleric is quoted as saying forcefully, “ [ the face veil] has nothing to do with Islam…I know about religion better than you [girls] and your parents.”

The statement may seem superfluous because all students of the Muslim religion already know that the veil is not required by their religion. However, many ordinary Muslims, including in the US and in other western countries, don’t seem to know that. In many cases, they seem to have been taught a mixture of elementary Islamic doctrine and tribal religions and superstitions. Many are not intellectually equipped to disentangle the two.

Incidentally, the French government has long banned even the head scarf in public schools, for girls under eighteen. I think the main Muslim representative organizations in France supported the French government in this matter. Turkey, nominally a 95+ Muslim countries has long banned the head scarf in all public buildings, including courts. (The Turkish rules are being questioned more and more as I write.)

There was another important declaration, by another Egyptian Muslim cleric Thursday in the WSJ (10/08/09) The president of the Islamic religious courts for Egypt made the statement. Islamic courts rule on matter of morals and on the conformity of Egyptian law to Muslim legal principles. After the a convoluted speech, Arabic style, and a ritualistic call for the end of Israeli occupation of Palestine, Sheik Ali Goma said the following:

“I am going to a conference on Muslim- Christian understanding in Georgetown, I will insist that representatives of all Abrahamic faiths be included. “

Those are Muslims, Christians and Jews. The gentleman was calling directly for a dialog with Jews. This is a new one for a highly placed Egyptian although it’s completely in keeping with Islamic tenets.

Earlier in his column, the sheik had squarely condemned 9/1 1 terrorism and violence against civilians in general.

Again, none of this is new from the standpoint of religious principles. I had just not heard it so clearly said until now.

Both clerics are brave men. They are openly courting assassination. I, for one, am grateful for this ray of hope from that part of the world. The Obamanationist media did not seem to notice. As I keep telling you, they are lazy, not evil.

The A. A. President

The dreaded, forbidden words are on everyone’s lips but nobody in the media, not even Rush Limbaugh, dare utter them yet. And no, I am not concerned here with alcoholism and I am not initializing crude language. The President reminds me of the university professor with three last names who got tenure although all he can do is read the textbook in class (but in a good voice). He reminds me also of the friendly gentleman of color at the Post Office who can only spell some of the time, and of the 120-pound female firefighter who could not carry me down the ladder if my life depended on it. (It just might.)

Why else would the President’s undergraduate grades still be under lock and key? Who cares what grades anyone got when he was twenty? Full disclosure: I earned a D on the midterm the first time I tried Calculus. A smart adviser then steered me to another instructor, one who wanted to be loved. All ended well. I am not ashamed!

I used to think, to assume rather, and I said it on this blog that at least, he had passed the bar exam. There is no argument that this is difficult. I have known several smart people who failed once, or even twice. However, it seems I was precipitous. None of the Barack Obama entries in Wikipedia mention the bar, a strange omission because the entries list every little thing he did. If he had won a dart throwing contest, it would be there. A cursory web search also shows nothing on the subject. I may have missed something. I would be happy to post a correction on this blog, prominently and immediately.

Just in case I turn out to be right, follow my scenario:

The President was 21 in 1981 when he transferred from Occidental College in Los Angeles to Columbia. That was a time when universities were feverishly competing for students and faculty of the right race and sex who would not embarrass them. Handsome, well-spoken, and reasonably intelligent, young Barack must have been considered a prize. It’s also a public fact that big-time law schools actively lowered their standards of admission for purposes of affirmative action. It became public because of the lawsuits this practice triggered.

I remember those days well. I was a college professor then. There was a time when my Department was about to recruit a new assistant professor. As is the custom in academia, the word came down from on-high: You can offer X to Y as salary. And, by the way, you can go up to Y+Z if the candidate is woman or a member of a minority.

What if we find a minority woman? The answer was: You get back to the Vice-President then. The response implied: This would be such a find, the sky would be the limit.

Earlier, when I was finishing graduate school at Stanford, I inquired innocently about so and so, a member of a federally protected minority. I was curious about why he was slated to receive his doctorate at the same time as I, given that he had entered the program one year after me and received nothing but bad grades in every class we had taken together. My professor’s, laconic response: The less said, the better.

Note: The two universities mentioned are private. I have no strong objections to affirmative action in private schools because I believe that private property is private. The owners can do whatever they want with their property, including give it away. The first university mentioned has an affirmative action program oriented to local Latinos. I think it produced commendable results overall.

The President was editor, then president of his school’s law review journal. That’s an elective position in which political correctness is and was sure to intervene. He did not publish a single article during his tenure. That’s admirable because it’s usually difficult to hold student editors back from publishing everything they write.

The fact that President Obama worked for a law firm and was hired by a law school does not answer the bar exam question. Law firms employ law school graduates who have not passed the bar exam. Even the fact that he was hired by the University of Chicago law school does not dispose of this matter. See above. I know for a fact that universities hire adjunct personnel with few qualifications, with unknown qualifications and sometimes, with no qualifications. Anyway, not having passed the bar would not necessarily disqualify one from teaching law.

Here is my point: Plenty of intelligent people fail or are afraid to take the bar exam. However, this exam is the only fixed point allowing anyone to argue that Barack  Obama was not the object of grossly preferential treatment throughout his life. Without success at the bar exam, how do we know that the President ever accomplished anything in his life outside of being elected to office?

This scenario would explain why the President voted , “Present” so many times when he served in the Illinois legislature. It’s the right thing to do if you don’t know the issues or if you don’t understand them. It does not prevent you from being a compelling campaigner. Campaigning and governing require different skills.

Now, I am too timid to be he first to utter the forbidden words but I will give you some hints: Wonderfully limpid economist Thomas Sowell, luminous columnist William Raspberry, actor and social philosopher Bill Cosby, comedian Chris Rock, and my thinking master, Carlos Mencia are not A.A. wonders. And, incidentally, my favorite journalists are almost all women who are not either. I won’t even mention my favorite television personality, Megyn Kelly, because there is lust involved (not so much on her part). She is not a product of A.A either.

One might ask how the radical team pushing Barack Obama politically thought they could get away with this. The answer is blindingly clear: Leftist leaders are all elitists, without exception. They think their adversaries are kind of stupid. That’s also why they mostly lose, in the end. The collective wisdom of this country’s electorate is often slow to manifest itself but when it does, it’s impressive. I give credit to our political institutions. Skepticism of people in government is built into our political culture.

One of my friends, also an immigrant, put it best. One day that I was lamenting the turn of events in the Obama administration, my friend said: Obama will never get away with what he is trying to do; American DNA is too strong.

Update 10/10/09: President Obama receives the Nobel Prize. What did I tell you? See above. There is a small side to this story I don’t quite grasp but I can smell it because I know things about Europeans. Of course the Norwegian Nobel Committee is long past the fear of ridicule. Obama follows in the footsteps of the terrorist Arafat, the  anti-Semite Jimmy Carter and  the fool Al Gore. (Gore got only half of the prize. The winner of the other half denounced him as a charlatan within one week.)

The missing part is this: The Norwegian Nobel Committee is composed of old Norwegian men whose photograph is difficult to take because, together, they look like a chicken breast sandwich: white meat on white bread with mayo. I suspect they feel awfully white all the time. They gave Obama the prize in part because he is so refreshingly a Negro!

I wonder what noble Nelson Mandela is thinking today to be in such vapid company.

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CORRECTION: I WROTE PREVIOUSLY THAT I DOUBTED PRESIDENT OBAMA HAD EVER PASSED THE BAR EXAM ANYWHERE ANY TIME. A FRIEND OF MINE, A GOOD LAWYER I HAVE KNOWN FOR A LONG TIME AND WHOSE UTTERANCES I TRUST SAID OTHERWISE. MY ATTORNEY FRIEND TOLD ME THAT THE FACT THAT BARACK OBAMA HAD BEEN ADMITTED TO PRACTICE BEFORE THE ILLINOIS SUPREME COURT PROVED THAT HE HAD PASSED THE BAR. THAT HE WAS SO ADMITTED CAN BE FOUND ON THE SITE OF THE ILLINOIS BAR ASSOCIATION. I ACCEPT MY FRIEND’S JUDGMENT IN THIS RESPECT. I AM STILL PUZZLED ABOUT WHY THE REAL ACHIEVEMENT OF PASSING THE BAR EXAM – WHICH CAN PRESUMABLY NOT BE EASED BY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONSIDERATIONS – IS NOT MENTIONED ON THE PRESIDENT’S WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. MR OBAMA ‘S LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS IS SHORT AND THIN; THE BAR EXAM SHOULD BE THERE TO THICKEN IT. PERHAPS ONE OF THE PRESIDENT’S SUPPORTERS WILL DO THE JOB. I AM WATCHING.

EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE ABOVE COLUMN REMAINS THE SAME.

Sixtieth Anniversary of the People’s Republic; Obama’s String of Victories.

To celebrate our country’s birthday, we fly the flag, we put on fireworks (only in some places, not in my town of Santa Cruz where the authorities are afraid the sand of the beach might catch on fire!) Mostly, we eat grilled meat saturated with saturated fat to mark this anniversary. The red Chinese also do fireworks (really good ones). They also march 10,000 people under arms. That’s a basic difference.

The parade of heavy weapons and tanks took place on Tienanmen Square, the same place where brave unarmed young people were crushed by tanks twenty years ago.

The Chinese Communist Party is the most successful mafia in the history of the world. It has succeeded in raising the Chinese from abject poverty to moderate poverty while maintaining its corrupt, totalitarian rule. It now ranks 133 out of 229 countries in GDP per capita, right behind Albania. Its GDP/capita of $6,000 is almost one fifth that of Taiwan, all Chinese, and less than one eighth that of Singapore, which is 90% Chinese. You might say, the Chinese are prosperous everywhere in the world except under Communist rule.

(Figures from CIA World Factbook on-line 10/1/09.)

What corrupt rule? I don’t mean small time business grease like la mordita in Mexico, or other small bribes. I mean real horrors. The Weekly Standard published a long article several month ago about the execution of imprisoned regime opponents for the purpose of selling their organs. Normally, I don’t pay attention to this sort of stories. I think of them as urban legends. One thing caught my attention in this case: Several reports of thorough medical examinations given to young healthy prisoners and never followed by treatment of any sort, a sort of blood-curdling inventory. Furthermore, I don’t discount the Weekly Standard. It’s a very serious periodicals that checks its facts thoroughly. (Report is in the Nov. 24^th 2008 issue).

The UN urged the Chinese government to look into it. You bet!

Speaking of inventory: Almost nine months since the inauguration. Soon the Obama presidency gestation will be over. Here is an informal inventory. Tell me where I am wrong.

Here is his most successful initiative: “Cash for Clunkers.” It’s successful because the money allocated was actually spent and spent quickly. Let me give you the ethical summary of this achievement:

The President took money from my wife, who cannot afford a new car of any sort, to give it to people who could afford to put down $20,000, but maybe not $25,000. Those are very happy with the transaction; no kidding? Also fairly happy are car dealers, whose function is increasingly questionable because of the Internet. (Sorry, I call them as I see them.)

Even happier are GM workers, high-school graduates with 1940 skills, who earn $ 30 an hour (according to UAW, $75 according to Republican Congressional critics) and large fringe benefits, making cars Americans don’t want in large numbers. Unhappy, are the people who would have bought the used cars sent to be destroyed. Many of those people are undoubtedly among the poorest Americans. I wonder how many lost their jobs because they couldn’t find a used car in their price range.

“Cash for clunkers” was clearly a transfer of income. It transferred income from the poor to the moderately well-off.

I don’t hate liberals because of their misguided economic ideas; I only deplore those and I try to combat them. Hypocrisy is hard to forgive though, even if it’s rooted only in stubborn disregard for basic facts and for elementary logic.

On the domestic economic front, three things did not happen:

The stimulus package did not work. It wasn’t supposed to. You can’t reduce unemployment next month by building a rail line between Disneyland and Las Vegas the permits for which will take five, six, or five years. Federal employment is growing though.

Foreclosures have hardly slowed down.

The so-called “public option” on health care reform has vanished, for practical purposes. The final bill will have something called “public option,” no doubt. It will have nothing in common with the program the President wanted as a Trojan Horse to turn American health care into a single payer.

Digression: A couple of days ago, the French Ministry of Health announced the size of the unfunded cost of the French single-payer system. It’s expected to be about $700 per man, woman and child. (Le Figaro10/02/09.) That’s not the total cost but the amount for which money will have to be found elsewhere. Look at it this way: on the average, in 2010, a French family of four will spending $2,800 more on health care than the national budget allows.

In foreign affairs, same progress. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, the President is pausing to ruminate about the strategy he chose himself by appointing a general who is its foremost exponent. That’s about the “war of necessity” he said we had to win.

He wants to revert to waging war with long range missiles. It’s the unworkable wimp’s option of course. That’s the opinion of all who study counterinsurgency.

On October 1^st, the President made a moving speech on the result of negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its unlawful nuclear program. He said he told Iran, “Allow inspection, or else.” The “else” was left to the mullahs’ imagination. They must be crapping their pants. Those are the same mullahs who smile benignly when the president they hand-picked tells the world he wants to annihilate a neighbor.

Oops! I almost forgot: “Cap and Trade” is dormant and Guantanamo will stay open. I like the latter; it’s he best solution but that’s not what he told those who voted or him.

Some of the President’s supporters are beginning to say, “Give him time.” Point well taken but the Republicans were not the ones who told him to rush, to triple the federal deficit in nine months, nor to direct the largest tax increase since the Korean War (Boston.com – The Boston Globe 9/2/09). No conservative demanded that he cram a 1,000-page plan to recast 15% of the economy in a couple of weeks (health care reform). (Data: The NYT on June 19^th said 885 pages. I am just guessing it had grown to more than 1,000 by August.)

It’s also true that the President inherited a big economic crisis, that the bulk o the crisis was not of his making. Well, we hired him to drive the truck, not to change the wheels. When your motor starts burning, you don’t rush to take out the jack. Rigidity of purpose is nearly a crime for a senior executive. Don’t implement costly programs when the economy is much worse than you expected. Got it?

I think it’s fair to take people at their word. When I tell my wife I will paint the living room, that’s how she judges me. That’s one reason I am careful not to announce that I will paint the whole house in one day. President Obama declared he would do X,Y, and Z. He has not done any, has not even come close. If I had voted for him, I would be displeased.

With all this, I still don’t think the man is evil though I am more and more inclined to see him as a puppet. Conservatives who describe the President as evil are losing track of the obvious. He is a handsome man with a good diction who had never achieved anything in his life besides get elected. He can’t even select literate speech-writers. Here is what he said recently disdainfully a propos of his critics on Iran:

“Some invoked the picture of Hiro Ito signing the articles of capitulation.”

Mr President: It’s not “invoke” it’s “evoke,” and Emperor Hiro Hito did not sign the articles of capitulation. He was cowering in his palace.

That’s two mistakes in one sentence, worse than George Bush!

The President shows himself to be a fool. He will fall. I fear what comes next. Some of his followers are fascists, the real thing. Who will come after they throw him under the bus because he is unable to deliver even with majorities in both houses?

I have an exit plan for the President though. Actually, he found it himself in Copenhagen.

It’s true that he did not get the Olympics Games for Chicago. That’s the easiest failure to excuse. One, Rio was hard to beat. Brazilians are more fun than Chicagoans anytime. (I, for one, don’t want to see any Chicagoans in a string bathing suit.) Two, he was up against another political machine, the International Olympic Committee. It’s a machine as corrupt as Chicago’s but he had not had time to learn its ways.

In spite of this failure, I think President Obama would make a good international relations representative for the Greater Chicago Chamber of Commerce. He speaks well from a text if the text is well written. He looks better in a suit than just about any other public figures. He looks “multicultural.” I don’t know what that means but I know it’s a good thing.