Paul M. Jones

If you think about emergency preparedness even though there is no emergency, you just might be a downsider. If you think it’s rather uncivilized to be rolling around in a luxury sedan while the country is in recession, you just might be a downsider.  If you don’t trust  Iran with nuclear weapons. If you think public bailouts of private failures are a bad idea. If you are on the lookout for Black Swans, you just might be a downsider. If you have solar panels on your house. If you have fresh water stored in your garage. If you own a gasoline powered generator. If you have no fond memories of inflation, you just might be a downsider. If FEMA’s performance after Katrina made you distrustful. If you’d rather learn CPR than wait for help to come. If you have ever been a floor warden at your place of business, you just might be a downsider. If you don’t trust McDonald’s to cook for you. If it bothers you that you can’t fix things that break. If you like watching the Discovery Channel. If you don’t want to be an addict to modern convenience,  you just might be a downsider.

Downsiders are not paranoid. Downsiders simply refuse to be bewildered, helpless or clueless. Downsiders are not excited about the downside, they just want to be cleareyed if such things happen. Downsiders are not hedging against  civilization to cash in on misery. Downsiders are not obsessed with zombies, the Mayan Calendar or the Book of Revelations. Downsiders are not Eloi or Morlocks, but we want to know what the future holds.  Downsiders are interested in being civil under all conditions, of keeping their heads when all about them are losing theirs. Downsiders have intellectual insurance. Downsiders are about figuring out how to live indifferent to fashion. Downsiders are about maintaing personal integrity tested in the worst of times. Downsiders are the enemy of panic.

And here I thought it was just "a reaistic awareness that unlikely negative events might occur at an inconvenient time." Via You Might Just Be A Downsider | The Downside.

Electric car battery-maker A123 Systems has filed for bankruptcy, according to Bloomberg News.

The company was promoted heavily by President Barack Obama and Michigan politicians and received hundreds of millions of dollars through federal “stimulus” and Michigan Economic Development Corp. programs. Earlier this year, Michigan Capitol Confidential uncovered a video of these politicians promising “hundreds” and “thousands” of jobs – the video was eventually taken down by the MEDC but saved by CapCon.

Despite known financial trouble, just a few months ago A123 awarded sweetened severance packages to its top executives.

via A123 Files for Bankruptcy [Michigan Capitol Confidential].

The agents finally gathered my belongings and led me away from the populated security lines to a more secluded area near the private rooms. I asked twice for a public screening and was denied.

They performed the regular pat-down and then the agent informed me that she would be using the front of her hands to “sweep” my groin. She pressed and swept across my crotch three times horizontally and three times vertically. In any other circumstance this would be sexual assault.

The agents themselves were friendly and smiled, yet I was still denied a public screening and no witness of my own present for the screening itself (a second agent was in the room at the time).

via The TSA Molestation Files: Dana Loesch | Wizbang.

If the government raises the tax rate on you and all of your friends, and then divides up all the tax revenue and dumps it from a helicopter, what do you get?  Well, none of the money gets wasted, so the tax hike doesn't have a direct income effect (there's a small indirect one I'll ignore here). 

If the tax hike is used for pure redistribution from the "average person" back to the "average person," then the tax hike doesn't make the "average person" poorer: The government is taking money out of everyone's right pocket and slipping it into their left.  

But if the income effect is gone, what's left?  The disincentive to work: The pure substitution effect. 

So here's Prescott's Big Idea: 

If higher taxes are wasted, then a tax hike has a small, ambiguous effect on employment.

If higher taxes are spent wisely, then a tax hike causes a big fall in employment.

Not quite what you expected, was it?  

I wonder if it's true. (Emphasis in original.) Via Tax Rates, Efficient Government, and Jobs: Prescott's Surprise, Garett Jones | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty.

Interviewed on the BBC in 1994, [Eric Hobsbawm] was asked whether he would have shunned the Communist Party had he known in 1934 that Stalin was butchering innocent human beings by the millions. “Probably not,” he answered -- after all, at the time he believed he was signing up for world revolution. Taken aback by such indifference to carnage, the interviewer pressed the point. Was Hobsbawm saying that if a communist paradise had actually been created, “the loss of 15, 20 million people might have been justified?” Hobsbawm’s answer: “Yes.”

Imagine that Hobsbawm had fallen in love with Nazism as a youth and spent the rest of his career whitewashing Hitler’s atrocities. Suppose he’d refused for decades to let his Nazi Party membership lapse, and argued that the Holocaust would have been an acceptable price to pay for the realization of a true Thousand-Year Reich. It is inconceivable that he would have been hailed as a brilliant thinker or basked in acclaim; no self-respecting university would have hired him to teach; politicians and pundits would not have lined up to shower him with accolades during his life and tributes after his death.

Yet Hobsbawm was fawned over, lionized in the media, made a tenured professor at a prestigious university, invited to lecture around the world. He was heaped with glories, including the Order of the Companions of Honour -- one of Britain’s highest civilian awards -- and the lucrative Balzan Prize, worth 1 million Swiss francs. His death was given huge play in the British media -- the BBC aired an hour-long tribute and the Guardian led its front page with the news -- and political leaders waxed fulsome. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair called him “a giant … a tireless agitator for a better world.”

Such adoration is sickening. Unrepentant communists merit repugnance, not reverence.

Emphasis mine. Via A true moral giant and a dogmatic leftist creep - Opinion - The Boston Globe.

The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week. 

The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.

This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.

The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued  quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.

This stands in sharp contrast  to the release of the previous  figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.

Ending the data then means it is possible to show a slight warming trend since 1997, but 2011 and the first eight months of 2012 were much cooler, and thus this trend is erased.

It's science! Via Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it | Mail Online.

Building luxury resorts for the rich helps to refine a technology that can in turn be used to benefit the poor in places such as Bangladesh, where flooding regularly destroys lives and livelihoods.

"So we let the rich pay for the innovation for the poor," he said.

via Dutch architect dreams of future floating cities | Reuters.

“Actual AP Headline: ‘Experts: Global Warming Means More Antarctic Ice,’” as spotted by Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.

Which sounds remarkably reminiscent of this actual L. A. Times headline from 2010: “Why cleaner air could speed global warming.”

Or this Reuters lede from last year:

"Smoke belching from Asia’s rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur’s cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday."

(Paging the Dr. Stranglove-esque John Holdren who suggested launching rockets full of pollution into the upper atmosphere in the early days of the Obama administration -- you’re wanted in the Moral Equivalent of War Room.)

Given that global warming causes everything, no wonder, as Steve Hayward wrote last year at Power Line, “Climate Change Has Become the ‘Dead Parrot Sketch’ of American Politics.”

But when will Washington’s Joke Warfare against the American public finally come to an end?

via Instapundit » Blog Archive » GLOBAL WARMING: IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? “Actual AP Headline: ‘Experts: Global Warming Mean….

They condemn, but their words alone will not prevent future occurrences. I say, execute the shooter in public. That'll be a deterrent.

Malala’s shooting is only the most public example of the Taliban’s brutality and despicable attitudes toward women and girls. There are probably thousands of similarly ugly stories that don’t make international headlines. Nevertheless, it’s heartening to see widespread anti-Taliban sentiment in Pakistan, however long it lasts. The best hope for the country is that the domestic reaction against fanatical barbarism  will discredit radical ideology and shame political and military leaders into acting to defend the pillars of decency and toleration.

via Just About Everyone in Pakistan Condemns Shooting of 14-Year-Old Girl | Via Meadia.

The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It's not even a city-state environment; it's a municipal state. Most decisions are made at the local level, which allows for distributed errors that don't adversely affect the wider system. Meanwhile, people want a united Europe, more alignment, and look at the problems. The solution is right in the middle of Europe -- Switzerland. It's not united! It doesn't have a Brussels! It doesn't need one.

...

We need smaller, more decentralized government. On paper, it might appear much more efficient to be large -- to have economies of scale. But in reality, it's much more efficient to be small. An elephant is vastly more efficient, metabolically, than a mouse. It's the same for a megacity as opposed to a village. But an elephant can break a leg very easily, whereas you can toss a mouse out of a window and it'll be fine. Size makes you fragile.

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The U.S. government should have no deficit. There's way too much debt. It is inexcusable when you have the highest standards of living in the nation's history! When you get rich, you should have less debt. There's a vicious element to borrowing when you're very rich, and having a deficit is an extremely dangerous game.

via Epiphanies from Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Foreign Policy.