Friday's Wall Street Journal carries an article on page A7 that is more important than the averted government shutdown. The article concerns the spread of superbug bacteria in New Delhi, Britain and Pakistan. The superbug, called New Delhi metallobetalactamease, or NDM-1, destroys antibiotics. It is circulating in the sewage of New Delhi and may spread globally. In a sidebar the Journal points out that there are currently 63,000 deaths each year in American hospitals due to bacterial resistant infections. Until recently, those deaths would not have occurred.
The article also points out that innovation in the antibiotic field has slowed to a halt. It seems to me that the slowing of innovation is directly linked to the Wall Street bailout. Following the growth of government since the 1960s, especially the advent of Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare, and the Fed's never ending orgy of money printing, the secular reductions in mortality that occurred during the 19th century and through the days when Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, may be reversed in the coming years.
Now that trillions of dollars have been diverted to the support of incompetently run investment companies, where will funding for entrepreneurial innovation, specifically including drugs, come from? Does Goldman Sachs and Citigroup aim to stop superbug bacteria? Are the advocates of 50% marginal income taxes certain that a lower tax rate would not have stimulated innovation in new drugs?
The result of the kind of economics that the nation's universities advocate is the absence of new antibiotics; university economists assume that the Federal Reserve Bank can print money and transfer wealth through high taxes, but innovation will be unaffected. You may die as a result. Keynesian economics seems to have been successful in stimulating one kind of activity: the Grim Reaper's.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Sustainable Development Is Code for Authoritarianism
Watch the Conservative Caucus/Conservative Roundtable interview of Tom DeWeese below (h/t patriot 246). Sustainable development is a movement that aims to eliminate property rights and representative government. UN Agenda 21 is a policy that expresses the environmental movement's authoritarian aims. Sustainable development has little to do with conservation in its traditional meaning. Solution: (1) Close UNESCO and end all United Nations involvement with environmental issues. (2) Illegalize UN presence on American soil for any reason other than diplomacy. (3) Boycott firms that advocate sustainability.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Letter to the Editor of the Woodstock Times
Dear Editor:
While my wife was in the Woodstock Apothecary I noticed that not a single car of 53 passing Woodstock Hardware sported an Obama bumper sticker. There were five peace sign bumper stickers (nearly a 10 percent rate), a Sunshine Fuel truck, a sheriff’s van with a work gang, and a bumper sticker that said “I Love Trees.” Also, I noticed a parked car with a sign that read “Don’t trust the corporate media.” I wonder if the dearth of Obama stickers is related to Senator Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal that a “progressive” oppose Obama. The “progressives” seem to have taken razor blades to their Obama stickers, which have gone with last summer’s flowers.
A year ago I wrote to the Woodstock Times that Obama is George Soros’s and Wall Street’s marionette. Your readers responded by (a) getting on my blog and calling me a racist and (b) implying as much on the New York Times’s blog. So much for “progressive” tolerance. By that time Obama had already handed Soros a tidy sum via Petrobas. Much worse, unbeknownst to Woodstock’s “progressives,” more money had been created and handed to wealthy banking interests than in the previous history of the United States. The amount is staggering, and because of Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s vote against a Fed audit, no one is certain how much. Bloomberg estimates $12 trillion. That’s nearly $40,000 per American in direct subsidies to financial interests. The real number might be higher, as much as $20 trillion. That doesn’t count the Fed’s ongoing billions in subsidies to the commercial banking system and Wall Street. In creating the Fed in 1913, the Democrats created an orgy of subsidy to the rich. Obama’s and Hinchey’s performance is well within the “progressive” tradition. The current battles between the Tea Parties and government employees are battles between honest working people and petit Fed beneficiaries. We Tea Partiers know whose side the “progressives” are on.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Town of Olive Republican Committe
While my wife was in the Woodstock Apothecary I noticed that not a single car of 53 passing Woodstock Hardware sported an Obama bumper sticker. There were five peace sign bumper stickers (nearly a 10 percent rate), a Sunshine Fuel truck, a sheriff’s van with a work gang, and a bumper sticker that said “I Love Trees.” Also, I noticed a parked car with a sign that read “Don’t trust the corporate media.” I wonder if the dearth of Obama stickers is related to Senator Bernie Sanders’s recent proposal that a “progressive” oppose Obama. The “progressives” seem to have taken razor blades to their Obama stickers, which have gone with last summer’s flowers.
A year ago I wrote to the Woodstock Times that Obama is George Soros’s and Wall Street’s marionette. Your readers responded by (a) getting on my blog and calling me a racist and (b) implying as much on the New York Times’s blog. So much for “progressive” tolerance. By that time Obama had already handed Soros a tidy sum via Petrobas. Much worse, unbeknownst to Woodstock’s “progressives,” more money had been created and handed to wealthy banking interests than in the previous history of the United States. The amount is staggering, and because of Congressman Maurice Hinchey’s vote against a Fed audit, no one is certain how much. Bloomberg estimates $12 trillion. That’s nearly $40,000 per American in direct subsidies to financial interests. The real number might be higher, as much as $20 trillion. That doesn’t count the Fed’s ongoing billions in subsidies to the commercial banking system and Wall Street. In creating the Fed in 1913, the Democrats created an orgy of subsidy to the rich. Obama’s and Hinchey’s performance is well within the “progressive” tradition. The current battles between the Tea Parties and government employees are battles between honest working people and petit Fed beneficiaries. We Tea Partiers know whose side the “progressives” are on.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Town of Olive Republican Committe
Friday, March 25, 2011
William Cronon's Partisan Bloviation
William Cronon is a history professor at the University of Wisconsin who has publicly involved himself in the controversy concerning Wisconsin public employee bargaining. He wrote an op ed for The New York Times and started a blog that, in short order, received more than 500,000 hits. Soon after Cronon's first blog post, Stephan Thompson of the Wisconsin GOP sent the University of Wisconsin an e-mail, and I have verified the e-mail's authenticity. The e-mail requests, "copies of all emails into and out of Prof. William Cronon’s state email account from January 1, 2011 to present which reference any of the following terms: Republican, Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, or Mary Bell."
The Wisconsin GOP's request was made under the Wisconsin open records law. Professor Cronon asserts, correctly in my view, that the Wisconsin GOP's request was intended as political retaliation. Cronon also claims that the GOP's aim was to silence Cronon, but I do not agree with the second claim. Political retaliation is part of the political process and it has not slowed political debate yet.
If there has been silencing at the University of Wisconsin, it is Cronon's and his partisan allies' silencing of Republicans. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans at universities around the country is six to one, and at a left wing-biased place like the University of Wisconsin I'll bet the bias is more extreme. The bias comes about because leftists exclude anyone who does not agree with their ideology, an ideology which has repeatedly failed and whose advocacy shears university social science departments of any claim of providing science rather than ideology. In other words, Cronon's left-wing allies have silenced Republicans within the University of Wisconsin and now object to Republicans' debating them from without.
Cronon has chosen to involve himself in the political process . He states that he has been careful to separate his personal e-mails from his university computer, and makes the spurious argument that communications with students constitute records under the Buckley Law (perhaps Cronon has not heard of redaction). Cronon had already made his views public, and any GOP attempt to silence him would be irrational and counter-productive to the GOP's aims. Rather, as a public official with a partisan affiliation Cronon has entered the political fray. He ought to expect that he be treated as a political player subject to the same tactics to which Cronon and his allies would subject GOP-affiliated officials. Even in his self-serving bloviation about the GOP's request Cronon cannot refrain from partisan rhetoric. He writes:
"My most important observation is that I find it simply outrageous that the Wisconsin Republican Party would seek to employ the state’s Open Records Law for the nakedly political purpose of trying to embarrass, harass, or silence a university professor (and a citizen) who has asked legitimate questions and identified potentially legitimate criticisms concerning the influence of a national organization on state legislative activity. I’m offended by this not just because it’s yet another abuse of law and procedure that has seemingly become standard operating procedure for the state’s Republican Party under Governor Walker, but because it’s such an obvious assault on academic freedom at a great research university that helped invent the concept of academic freedom way back in 1894."
Rather than silence Cronon, the Wisconsin GOP seems to be aiming to obtain information that would be consistent with a long standing pattern around the country: the nation's university professors often use tax exempt and public resources meant for education for partisan advocacy. Outrageously, Cronon claims that his partisan activities ought to receive special consideration and be exempt from Wisconsin's open records law. He claims that college professors ought to be publicly funded, that their partisan advocacy ought to be treated to special protection, and that their partisan opponents be prevented from asking whether professors are illegally using public money to participate in partisan advocacy.
My sincere hope is that Cronon's hypocritical bloviation will not deter the Wisconsin GOP. Perhaps Cronon would like to see repeal of the Wisconsin Open Records law, or better yet, a provision that it ought to apply to Democrats but not Republicans, which is his ultimate message, undoubtedly based on value-free social science.
The Wisconsin GOP's request was made under the Wisconsin open records law. Professor Cronon asserts, correctly in my view, that the Wisconsin GOP's request was intended as political retaliation. Cronon also claims that the GOP's aim was to silence Cronon, but I do not agree with the second claim. Political retaliation is part of the political process and it has not slowed political debate yet.
If there has been silencing at the University of Wisconsin, it is Cronon's and his partisan allies' silencing of Republicans. The ratio of Democrats to Republicans at universities around the country is six to one, and at a left wing-biased place like the University of Wisconsin I'll bet the bias is more extreme. The bias comes about because leftists exclude anyone who does not agree with their ideology, an ideology which has repeatedly failed and whose advocacy shears university social science departments of any claim of providing science rather than ideology. In other words, Cronon's left-wing allies have silenced Republicans within the University of Wisconsin and now object to Republicans' debating them from without.
Cronon has chosen to involve himself in the political process . He states that he has been careful to separate his personal e-mails from his university computer, and makes the spurious argument that communications with students constitute records under the Buckley Law (perhaps Cronon has not heard of redaction). Cronon had already made his views public, and any GOP attempt to silence him would be irrational and counter-productive to the GOP's aims. Rather, as a public official with a partisan affiliation Cronon has entered the political fray. He ought to expect that he be treated as a political player subject to the same tactics to which Cronon and his allies would subject GOP-affiliated officials. Even in his self-serving bloviation about the GOP's request Cronon cannot refrain from partisan rhetoric. He writes:
"My most important observation is that I find it simply outrageous that the Wisconsin Republican Party would seek to employ the state’s Open Records Law for the nakedly political purpose of trying to embarrass, harass, or silence a university professor (and a citizen) who has asked legitimate questions and identified potentially legitimate criticisms concerning the influence of a national organization on state legislative activity. I’m offended by this not just because it’s yet another abuse of law and procedure that has seemingly become standard operating procedure for the state’s Republican Party under Governor Walker, but because it’s such an obvious assault on academic freedom at a great research university that helped invent the concept of academic freedom way back in 1894."
Rather than silence Cronon, the Wisconsin GOP seems to be aiming to obtain information that would be consistent with a long standing pattern around the country: the nation's university professors often use tax exempt and public resources meant for education for partisan advocacy. Outrageously, Cronon claims that his partisan activities ought to receive special consideration and be exempt from Wisconsin's open records law. He claims that college professors ought to be publicly funded, that their partisan advocacy ought to be treated to special protection, and that their partisan opponents be prevented from asking whether professors are illegally using public money to participate in partisan advocacy.
My sincere hope is that Cronon's hypocritical bloviation will not deter the Wisconsin GOP. Perhaps Cronon would like to see repeal of the Wisconsin Open Records law, or better yet, a provision that it ought to apply to Democrats but not Republicans, which is his ultimate message, undoubtedly based on value-free social science.
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