Slime Beneath the City's Fallen Snow

New York City Counicilman Dan Halloran is New York's only major elected official with a libertarian background.  Last week, a major snow storm afflicted the Big Apple.  Just as in 1969 during the mayoralty of the late John W. Linday, the Sanitation Department failed to perform.  There was public snit about the lack of snow removal.  My good friend Glenda McGee forwarded a December 30 New York Post article quoting Halloran as saying that managers from within the Sanitation Department had ordered a work slowdown.  If it occurred, it lead to deaths and other serious harm.  According to informants who brought the information to Halloran, the protest concerned promotions and budget cuts.  Union officials Harry Nespoli and Joseph Mannion as well as Sanitation Department spokesperson Matthew Lipani deny a slowdown occurred.  However, the Post asserts that multiple Sanitation Department sources have said that:

"angry plow drivers have only been clearing streets assigned to them even if that means they have to drive through snowed-in roads with their plows raised...One mechanic said some drivers are purposely smashing plows and salt spreaders to further stall the cleanup effort."

Mayor Bloomberg's absurd response was to blame residents for shoveling snow into streets.  But according to Halloran, "snitches" said that:

"they were told [by supervisors] to take off routes [and] not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."

It is time to privatize the Department of Sanitation.  Competition has drastically improved the dismal telephone service of the former New York Telephone (I remember when one had to restrict long distance calls because of high costs, for instance). New York's sanitation workers are paid much more than comparable private sector workers.  Here in rural Olive, New York snow removal usually is complete within a day or at most two after a storm despite higher highway mileage per capita.  The little city of Kingston, NY, 25 miles from here, also has a public sanitation department that is inefficient and in need of privatization.

Mayor Bloomberg's response to the accusations of shirking and inefficiency in his Santitation Department has been cowardly.

I wrote the following letter to Mayor Bloomberg:

PO Box 130

West Shokan, NY 12494

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

City Hall
New York, NY 10007

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

As someone who relies on New York City to earn my livelihood, I urge you to privatize the New York City Sanitation Department.  According to Councilman Dan Halloran and the New York Post, the recent John Lindsay-like problems that you have suffered result from an illegal, irresponsible and murderous work stoppage. 

The Sanitation Department is not functioning competently or morally.  Its workers are overpaid and under-productive.  The irresponsible stoppage caused people to die. You are the person ultimately responsible to investigate and ferret out the malefactors.  But much more important action is needed.  It is time to eliminate a white elephant that New Yorkers cannot afford.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

David Stockman Rails at GOP Incompetence

Last month I gave a talk at the Kingston-Rhinebeck Tea Party.  I pointed out that the GOP's commitment to the Fed has permitted the flourishing of a wide range of special interest groups. In turn, the Fed engenders income inequality, American economic decline, especially in manufacturing, and Wall Street's expansion.  Howard S. Katz has been making these points since the 1970s and earlier, and they key off the Austrians  Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.  Ron Paul and his son Rand make similar points as well, and they should be viewed as the leaders of the political movement that aims to undo the massive damage that the the parties of the elephant and the donkey have caused (the Democrats are worse than the GOP).

Marketwatch's Paul B. Farrell reports that the cornerstone of the legacy media, the New York Times,  has published David Stockman's article making these points with the clarity and specificity of an insider with important historical knowledge.  Stockman was President Reagan's budget director who lost a battle against Reagan' supply siders.  Stockman argues that the GOP destroyed the American economy in four steps:

1. Richard Nixon's dropping of the gold standard at the behest of Milton Friedman and his defaulting on the American obligation to redeem dollars for gold internationally

2. President Reagan's neo-Keynesian doctrine of supply-side economics

3. The expansion of Wall Street and the recent expansion of the money supply

4. The financing of American credit through foreign debt, resulting in increasing income inequality and the exit of factory jobs.

I have made all these points since 2004.  Stockman is specific as to much of the historical detail.  The Marketwatch article is well worth reading.  Stockman notes:

"the top 1% of Americans -- paid mainly from the Wall Street casino -- received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90% -- mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy -- got only 12%. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy."

That the GOP continues to support the stupid policies of the Rockefeller-Bush Republicans contributes as much to American decline as do Obama's policies.  While the Democratic Party is lost, the GOP should serve as the rational alternative. Instead, it has followed the ideology of the Democrats into big government extremism and economic decline.  When questioned about the Patriot Act, many Republicans simply spin and lay the blame on President Clinton.  The large circulation legacy media contribute to the absence of mass level debate.  Stockman's recent article conveniently appears in the Times a year after the massive bailouts and money printing escapades (chiefly under the Democrats, incidentally) that may have put the nation's collapse into third gear.

Those Democrats who wish to make partisan hay out of Stockman's Op Ed might consider that the only people making these arguments for the past 40 years have been Republicans.  Which does not mitigate the ill effects of Milton Friedman and his colleagues in academia along with the Rockefeller-Bush Republicans.

Jeff Khuhner: Everybody Knows Obama Doesn't Care for Christians and Jews

Mairi just sent me Steve Malzberg's radio interview with Jeff Kuhner.  Apparently, legacy media marionettes like Chris Matthews are now calling for Obama to show the birth certificate.  Kuhner and Malzberg say that the governor of Hawaii now is looking for a way to make the certificate public.   Kuhner predicts a constitutional crisis if Obama was not born in the US.  Malzberg asks the question I asked two years ago: Why is Obama spending so much money to prevent the vault copy's disclosure?   In '08 I submitted 5,000 signatures to the FEC requesting that it vet presidential candidates.

My concern then was that the whole thing might be Obama's gambit.  What if there is nothing wrong with the certificate and Obama is using this as a ruse to trick his opponent?   If it's ok and he then reveals it a few months before the 2012 election it could work in his favor by discrediting his opponents.  On the other hand, if it is settled now, it could be interesting.  I don't think he should be removed from office if he is not a citizen, but he should be prevented from running again.  He has already done maximum damage with the bailouts, the stimulus and the health care act.  Kuhner claims that there could be a civil war over this, but I hope that if there is to be a civil war it will be for more important reasons.

How anyone can take a media seriously that does not question why Obama would spend $2 million to keep his vault copy birth certificate private continues to puzzle me.

James Rainey and LA Times Were Wrong about Gold and Glenn Beck

In early December 2009, LA Times reporter James Rainey penned a diatribe against Glenn Beck, a pro-gold TV announcer (perhaps the only major television personality to favor gold).  At the time, I wrote a letter to the bankruptcy court overseeing the bankruptcy of the firm that owns the LA Times suggesting that Glenn Beck be appointed the LA Times's  editor ad litem (i.e., for purposes of litigation)  since their investment advice has been consistently wrong and Beck has been right. 

Over the past year gold has gone up 29.7% while the S&P 500 has gone up 13%.  Both are fueled by pro-Wall Street monetary policies.

I am sending Rainey the following e-mail:

Dear Mr. Rainey:

On December 9, 2009 you wrote an article claiming that Mr. Glenn Beck's advocacy of gold as an investment was due to his alleged breach of fiduciary duty, although you failed to outline any fiduciary relationship between Mr. Beck and the metal.  Over the past year, from January 1 2010 to January 1 2011 gold has gone up 29.7% while the S&P 500 has gone up 13%.  You seem to have been wrong.

The matter isn't just that you are a sorry excuse for an investment analyst.  Nor is it just that you are a sorry excuse for a journalist.  Virtually all of the legacy media has that in common with you.  Rather, it is the peculiar stupidity that you demonstrated.  You failed to consider that there might be reasons for a gold bubble that can carry it to $3,000 or more. The dumber students who believed fairy tale Keynesian economics advocated in America's universities seem to have become journalists.  You are a case in point.

Why don't you educate yourself and read some Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard?

Sincerely,


Mitchell Langbert