Archive for January, 2020

Old Bernie, Old Yellowstain, old arguments, old hatred and two young QBs Under the Fedora

Posted: January 31, 2020 by datechguy in elections, News/opinion, nfl, politics, Sports
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The sheer panic of the left of the possibility of Bernie Sanders getting the Democrat nomination is really funny.

As he’s not a Democrat it’s their own fault for letting him in but to see them fret has been a bit cathartic and quite comical but the real comedy is this whole impeachment drama which has Damaged the Democrats in general and Joe Biden in particular is likely the only thing that might keep the Democrats from getting Biden on the 2nd ballot which has been my prediction for a long time.

Alas poor dems when he does the Bernie Bros will take their ballots and go home.

Sean Davis notes something interesting about John Roberts

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This is what happens when you’re more worried about staying in the good graces of the media/elites than to do your job. There’s a reason why I’ve called him Old Yellowstain for years.

Saw this tweet from human progress and answered it thus

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  1. Christianity for the concept of the equality of all before God
  2. British common law for the concept of the equality of all before the law
  3. the Industrial revolution for freeing man from the limitations of his own physical strength
  4. The Free market for giving man a chance to progress based on his own effort & strength beyond his means

My leading with Christianity set off several on twitter and you can check out the threads (and the old arguments of centuries dusted off by those ignorant of them) but it’s worth noting that nothing sets off the left than the mention of Christianity in a positive historical light. They’ve obviously never watch this CS Lewis Doodle

One more point that hatred of Christianity isn’t just confined to some rubes on twitter to wit

The Commission report that quote appeared in got a lot of attention when it was released, because the Chairman’s Statement (which I discuss at length in my Statement) was essentially a screed against Christianity. It was astonishing. To this day, I can’t imagine what got into him. But it served to remind me that Christians (and no doubt people of other faiths too) really do have opponents in high places.

Christianity has always had foes in high (and low) places and the willingness of those foes to embrace things they supposedly despise to oppose it I think speaks more to the truths of the faith than anything else.

Finally the Superbowl is this weekend and there are two young QBs starting for the 1st time in the game. Patrick Mahomes who will bring his high powered pass offense and Jimmy Garoppolo  who brings a run game, a strong defense and two Superbowl rings won while learning under the greatest player in the history of the game.

Maybe it’s because I’m in New England but it seems like nobody at all is talking about the game, either on TV or anywhere else. Everything has eclipsed it. Which is a shame because I suspect this will be a much more interesting game than anyone gives credit for.

Licensing Laws do far more harm than good

Posted: January 30, 2020 by Jon Fournier in Uncategorized
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Licensing laws, and similar regulations, are a product of the progressive era which began around 1913.  These laws are meant to protect society as a whole, and individuals in particular.  A careful study of these laws will demonstrate that they have produced far more negative effects than positive effects.   This is explained in great detail in the Mises Institute article The Deception behind Government Licensing Laws

The primary justification for these licensing laws and regulations is:

One of the favorite arguments for licensing laws and other types of quality standards is that governments must “protect” consumers by insuring that workers and businesses sell goods and services of the highest quality.

There is one great flaw in that argument:

The answer, of course, is that “quality” is a highly elastic and relative term and is decided by the consumers in their free actions in the marketplace. The consumers decide according to their own tastes and interests, and particularly according to the price they wish to pay for the service.

Individuals are far better than a government bureaucracy, especially a gargantuan one at the federal level, at determining what constitutes a quality product.  Word of mouth and other forms of reviews by actual customers is a far better way of regulating the quality of products.  When potential customers hear that a product is no good or harmful then they won’t buy it resulting in the company losing money and possibly going out of business.

Licensing laws most always limit competition which is why they are championed by established large businesses.  That is why they spend so much money lobbying for them.

How much these requirements are designed to “protect” the health of the public, and how much to restrict competition, may be gauged from the fact that giving medical advice free without a license is rarely a legal offense. Only the sale of medical advice requires a license. Since someone may be injured as much, if not more, by free medical advice than by purchased advice, the major purpose of the regulation is clearly to restrict competition rather than to safeguard the public

Regulations meant to ensure quality products quite often stifle innovation.

Other quality standards in production have an even more injurious effect. They impose governmental definitions of products and require businesses to hew to the specifications laid down by these definitions. Thus, the government defines “bread” as being of a certain composition. This is supposed to be a safeguard against “adulteration,” but in fact it prohibits improvement. If the government defines a product in a certain way, it prohibits change.

Regulations imposed by government bureaucracies stifle private sector innovation for the following reason:

A change, to be accepted by consumers, has to be an improvement, either absolutely or in the form of a lower price. Yet it may take a long time, if not forever, to persuade the government bureaucracy to change the requirements. In the meantime, competition is injured, and technological improvements are blocked.

Licensing laws make it difficult for individuals to find jobs in a particular field. Take hair dressers for instance. It takes a lot of schooling to become a hair dresser, approximately 1500 hours.. Is it all necessary? The same holds true for many fields.

Here is the proper free market solution to low quality or harmful products and services:

In the free economy, there would be ample means to obtain redress for direct injuries or fraudulent “adulteration.” No system of government “standards” or army of administrative inspectors is necessary. If a man is sold adulterated food, then clearly the seller has committed fraud, violating his contract to sell the food. Thus, if A sells B breakfast food, and it turns out to be straw, A has committed an illegal act of fraud by telling B he is selling him food while actually selling straw. This is punishable in the courts under “libertarian law,” i.e., the legal code of the free society that would prohibit all invasions of persons and property.

Licensing laws and government regulations have affected me personally in a very negative way.  For the past several years I have been attempting to raise money to open a nano brewery.  I have created and perfected a large number of recipes that rival the best craft breweries.  Because of government interference the start up costs for this type of brewery is many times higher than what they should be.  The approval process for opening a brewery is about one year.  The beginning step is establishing a location before you begin the licensing procedure.   That means you have to rent or buy a location, before you begin the paperwork.  That is a whole year you have to pay rent when you are not taking in any money, and there is a good chance you could get turned down at the end.  Before federal government regulation put a stop to this, many started a brewery in their kitchen, then opened an actual brewery after they sold enough beer to afford this.  Because of the nature of beer it is a product that it is virtually impossible to make someone sick if you brew bad quality beer.  It is very expensive to outfit a startup brewery to meet federal standards, standards imposed by bureaucrats rather than brewers, There was no need for this change except to limit competition.

Five Impeachment Realities: Appeasement, Indifference, Inevitability, Outrage and Panic

Posted: January 30, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, politics, primaries, Uncategorized

As I get older I’ve become more experienced and thus cynical but what I’ve also become is more amazed that people, particularly people in power don’t see things as they are.

1. This is all Appeasement for the Liberal Activist Class

The entire impeachment exercise from the hearing tin the house to every single “we’re gonna get Trump this time” meme that we’ve had since day one. To satisfy the activist class who were making primal screams on election day.

To that end they have insisted that each book, each event, each investigation is the one that is going to bring Trump down if they just stick with them and keep sending cash.

It’s a big con and impeachment is just about keeping it rolling.

2. Polls Don’t Matter if most People Aren’t Watching

I’ve seen people quoting various pols concerning impeachment and the desire to have witnesses called polling quite high.

The problem is that if nobody except the activists (see #1) is paying attention it does’t matter how high witnesses poll. The people who aren’t paying attention now aren’t going to suddenly think impeachment is important based on if the Senate calls witnesses.

Anyone who thinks their election or re-election is dependent on the senate calling is paying consultants too much.

3. The Democrat/Media story is already written:

It isn’t often that Allahpundit hits the nail on the head these days but he managed to do so inadvertently in this post concerning the calling of Witnesses at the impeachment trial:

They seem to be calculating that they’d rather get torched by nine months of Democratic “COVER UP!” attack ads than put Bolton on the stand, which is cynical but rational. Those “cover up” ads are coming no matter what, after all. They could call Bolton, Mulvaney, Pompeo, even Giuliani, and so long as they vote to acquit Dems will accuse them of being Trump’s co-conspirators. 

The stories are already written and the blame is already assigned and the faux outrage is already and the ads are already prepared with only the video to be spliced in.

No matter what the GOP and/or Trump does it will be the greatest outrage in history since the last thing the gop and Trump did, which was also the greatest outrage in history.

Why play their game? Why give them anything?

4. Liberal Outrage is the GOP’s Friend

As I noted in item three the left/media repeatedly has been crying havoc for three years assuring us that the tax cuts, the wall, net neutrality, the death of Soleimani etc etc was the end of the world that was going to kill millions while resulting in every single group of the left into labor camps.

Instead the country has gotten rich, Black, Hispanic and female unemployment is at historic lows with only the places run by the left like Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco being danger zones.

The More outrage that the left proclaims while the country is and the people in it are doing well the more likely that people will turn out for, rather than turn on the president, and given the lengths of fraud they are going to unleash this time around, every mistake we can help them make is worthwhile.

5. Desperate People Make Mistakes

It’s very possible that once the President is re-elected that the political class might decide that all they have to do is wait him out and then business as usual will return.

However it’s also possible that the president will be able to fundamentally change the way business is done around here. That means the era of good stealing, the way that Joe Biden lived under all his political life (which is why he still thinks he did nothing wrong) and the gravy train for tens of thousands of consultants, bureaucrats, and their useless children who would never amount to anything otherwise might be over.

This eventually is a course of abject fear among the political/media/leach class and the more fearful they are the more the mask slips and the more their true nature is revealed.

And the more that American voters see them as they are the better the chance of defeating them.

the only question is, are there enough members of the GOP who want that?

President Trump Sets life and Prosperity before the Palestinians

Posted: January 29, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, Israel, middle east
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Here, then, I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom… I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live,

Deuteronomy 30:15,19

Yesterday the President put out his long awaited peace plan for the middle east.

You might expect me to comment on the details but said details are actually not important because if you are looking at this as a peace plan you are completely wrong.

This is not a peace plan, it’s an ultimatum.

The president is smart enough and worldly enough to understand that any deal with the Palestinians that does’t explicitly give them to right to continue to kill Jews until not one is left alive and the state of Israel is gone is a tough sell at best and a non-starter. Mostly because the leadership knows that agreeing to any such deal, particularly one that involves cracking down on terrorism is likely going to cost them their lives. Then again as Don Surber points out the equation is slightly different than it was a few days ago:

Killing ( Soleimani) jeopardized Iran’s terrorism program which he headed. Today, President Trump followed through with a Middle East proposal that creates a Palestinian state, opens Temple Mount to all three Abrahamic religions, and invests $50 billion to create a million jobs for Palestinians

It’s true that if they grabbed the Trump plan and gave up their vendetta the Palestinians would actually grow in wealth, power and influence to the point where they might actually be able to rival Israel economically and perhaps even militarily in a few generations,

If you were dealing with a western culture this would be a no-brainer but this is a face culture. To publicly concede the permanent existence of Israel is a humiliation beyond them. Much easier & safer to grift off the UN, Iran and anyone else’s aid and live without fear of assassination.

But that’s the other half of the coin.

If Potus can nail Iran’s #1 terror coordinator you had better believe that Israel can nail Hamas’ boss men if they wish so that suggests that they might be able to protect a Palestinian leader who comes to the table, furthermore if they turn to terror as a response you don’t know if Trump might decide that like the late Iranian General they are expendable.

Trump is a deal maker, if this deal is turned down then it’s likely that Trump will not only cut the Palestinians off without a cent but might tell Israel that as far as he is concerned they are welcome to take the gloves off both with Palestinian leadership and their people.

What happens if Israel decides they’ve had enough of this and simply annexes any remaining west bank territory that they won in the 1967 war that they need, fence it off and leave the Palestinians to govern the rest of the land without them.

After all what is anyone going to do? The State is Israel is now self sufficient in terms of water and energy. They are a nuclear power and no state not in the business of suicide is going to risk a war of destruction against them. As for the UN what are they going to do other than make noise, after all they can’t be more anti-Israel than they already are.

And that’s only part of it, what happens if an energy exporting US decides to put pressure on other states to cut aid to the Palestinian state? What happens if the gulf states afraid of Iran are told that any help from the US means cutting these folks loose and Iran isn’t doing all that well these days to begin with.

All of this is feasible thanks to a United States that is energy independent, economically resurgent and rearmed beyond the ability of their enemies to challenge them.

This is the actual question that the Palestinian leadership faces: What do you fear more?

Of course without Trump there is no choice necessary. I suspect they will stall and wait to see if the propaganda they are seeing on CNN about Trump’s imminent defeat is real, but if (OK when) the President is re-elected the stark choice will be before them again. I also suspect that the longer they wait, the more likely that both Trump’s and Israel’s price will go up. There are big rewards with going with Trump and survive, but if they go against him they are basically a local street gang with little to no clout beyond their neighborhood and without that foreign capital and Israel willing to provide what they do their clout within the territories vanishes.

The Donald has set before them the choice of life and death of the Palestinian People. I suspect A Palestinian nation unshackled to war and graft will grow and prosper beyond their wildest dreams to the point where Palestinians in Israel & elsewhere will rush to be part of the growth and prosperity it will generate. That is the choice of life.

Alas I doubt they will make that choice. This plan goes nowhere but it would be nice if I was wrong.

Closing thought: Ironically the peace deal is also the best shot for the radicals to manage to conquer Israel eventually. Take the deal, let the Palestinians grow rich and powerful and Israel grow complacent for four or five generations and then strike Pearl Harbor style when it’s not expected. The problem with that plan is once the population is rich, prosperous and happy they just might decide it’s not worth losing what they have to satisfy a few radicals dreams of genocide.

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