Category — Government

“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”

Robert Heinlein

Lede in today’s NYT trumpets the flight of investors into “safe” places for parking money.
Like T-bills, which were paying about 1.5%, but now in demand, pay under 1%. Revisiting the golden age of the Weimar Republic, our fearless leaders busily reproduce history by fabricating the “Weimar T-bill” just in time to crush the economy ending 232 years of successful existence. After this last round of bailouts, the inflationary spiral will start.

As soon as these idiots realize they aren’t making any money in T-bills, out of the “safe” place the money comes and back into the market it goes where it is at risk.
NOW, where does the government get the money it is using to pay off the incurred debt? Remember no T-bills; does the government jack up the interest rate, which slows down the housing market or does it default on the debt?
Neither, the Treasury just prints more money, boosting inflation.
Oil is back over $100 a barrel. Food is not coming down in price, thanks to the clowns putting corn in gas tanks. Now the government is giving the taxpayer all the toxic debt and the fat cats their money back. We are the proud owners of some where north of a half trillion dollars of crap.
Personally, I rather see the fat bastards jump out windows after they lost everything.

Excerpt from Paper Money by “Adam Smith,” (George J.W. Goodman), pp. 57-62.

Before World War I Germany was a prosperous country, with a gold-backed currency, expanding industry, and world leadership in optics, chemicals, and machinery. The German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914.[snip]

Germany abandoned the gold backing of its currency in 1914. The war was expected to be short, so it was financed by government borrowing, not by savings and taxation. In Germany prices doubled between 1914 and 1919. [snip]

America is off the gold standard too since 1971. We’re on a system of fiat money. So much for full faith and credit, since that change, we too have become a debtor nation,

But the bourgeois habits were very strong. Ordinary citizens worked at their jobs, sent their children to school and worried about their grades, maneuvered for promotions and rejoiced when they got them, and generally expected things to get better. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18. There were complaints about the high cost of living. Professors and civil servants complained of getting squeezed. Factory workers pressed for wage increases. An underground economy developed, aided by a desire to beat the tax collector. [snip]

The nervous citizens of the Ruhr were already getting their money out of the currency and into real goods — diamonds, works of art, safe real estate. Now ordinary Germans began to get out of Marks and into real goods. [snip]

The flight from currency that had begun with the buying of diamonds, gold, country houses, and antiques now extended to minor and almost useless items — bric-a-brac, soap, hairpins. The law-abiding country crumbled into petty thievery. Copper pipes and brass armatures weren’t safe. Gasoline was siphoned from cars. People bought things they didn’t need and used them to barter — a pair of shoes for a shirt, some crockery for coffee. Berlin had a “witches’ Sabbath” atmosphere. Prostitutes of both sexes roamed the streets. Cocaine was the fashionable drug. In the cabarets the newly rich and their foreign friends could dance and spend money. Other reports noted that not all the young people had a bad time. Their parents had taught them to work and save, and that was clearly wrong, so they could spend money, enjoy themselves, and flout the old. [snip]

Sound familiar? Put it on plastic, live for now. In debt to the eyeballs and no hope of paying it off.

The Middlebury Institute has promoted Vermont secession. Nothing they have provided shows a grasp of the intricacies faced in this process even if it passed.
Today, Vermont is a cassava root ahead of being a Third World Nation; if not for the earmarks dragged in by Sen. Leahy, it would be one.

These numbers below are probably close, given the level of education in this country.

Secession, Ignorance, and Stupidity:

A recent Zogby/Middlebury Institute poll shows that 22% of Americans believe that “any state or region has the right to peaceably secede and become an independent republic.” Belief in states’ and regions right to secede was especially common among blacks (40%), Hispanics (43%) and people aged 18-24 (40%). Interestingly, Political liberals (32%) were more likely to believe in a right to secession than conservatives (17%). 18% of respondents say they would support a secession movement in their own state, including 24% of southerners.

Constitutional law professor Ann Althouse claims that these poll results show that “all these people [who believe in a right to secession] have the law wrong and don’t seem to know the basics of the history of the Civil War.” She concludes that the pro-secession survey respondents are “fascinatingly stupid.” [snip]

I certainly agree with Ann that much of the public is shockingly ignorant about American history and constitutional law. This is one aspect of the more general widespread political ignorance that I have often written about on this blog and elsewhere (e.g. here and here). At the same time, I don’t think that ignorance is necessarily a sign of stupidity. [snip]

I agree with Althouse, fascinatingly stupid is a mild term however. I think the largest majority of them are clueless to what will be in order.
Unlike Althouse, I would encourage them to secede while they still know everything. And once out they cannot return. Citizenship is revoked.

First lets look at the demographics and their political suasion (this is important): from above

• Blacks–40%
• Hispanics–43%
• 18 to 24–40%
• Political liberals–32%
• Conservatives–17%

There are two groups, which I suspect fit in the prior numbers but listed separately:

• Own state respondents–18%
• Southerners–24%

The odds are good that each group has their own ideas as to how and where to form their country. This may cause some discombobulation in some areas for an unknown duration. For the sake of this discussion, all is amicable; selection and agreement is with minimal delay. People leave who wish to and others arrive all done equitably.

Government

With your own country, you need to form a government and some form of document of guidance. This will be by ballot or bullet. Given the liberal’s past history and for that matter most of the world, I’ll let you guess which method forms the ruling body.

Monetary system

Every country needs to have a means of settling internal debts, trade on the world markets and negotiate as something other than a third world nation. Or did these secessionists think they would use Sam’s money? It doesn’t work that way; you are a sovereign nation, act as one. All we have to do is change the color of the currency, declare the old valueless and issue the new in our banks. Don’t be stupid and think the Government hasn’t all ready printed the necessary notes. Those from the military remember MPC’s being changed to shut down black markets overnight.

Infrastructure

Roadways, airports, hospitals and rail lines are in place. All the new country needs is to equip and staff the existing structures and maintain them. Who says the professionals doing this work now are going to stay there. How will they be paid, housed, fed?
Forget keeping the National Guard equipment, guardsmen stay if they wish, but they are no longer paid nor receive any federal benefits if they do. Why should they, now they are foreign troops.

Business and Industry

Whether you have any industry and business depends on the tax structure. The tax structure depends on the country’s monetary system. If you cannot pay the employees in something other than rubles, your industry moves. No industry, what do you trade for things you need?

Basic services

Most of the listed above believe they will get the same basic services they get now: socialized medicine, welfare, WIC, food stamps, public schools Section 8 housing, police, fire and emergency response and working telephones. Yeah, think about that, working phones,

I encourage the above groups to opt for nationhood; pure emotion drives it and it drives it right into the Swamp of Stupidity.

If this should happen, we need to know who occupies what areas. All borders with new nations are fortified like the Korean 38^th parallel until and if treaties are negotiated.

(Political liberals)
New England–The Democratic Republic of Gated Communities (Might contain NYC, Long Island and NJ)
Who will mow the lawns and plow the snow, I haven’t an idea. After seeing what happened in South Africa, nobody but the swells will live there. That is all ready graven in liberal stone.

(18 to 24)

Southern CA—High Kingdom of Surf
Dude, like it will be soooo tomorrow and full of tatts.
It will be until we shut off the water for non-payment and shut off the power so they can conserve to their heart’s content.

(Hispanics)
Florida—Sovereign State of Sunny Sombrero
They can mow lawns, pick oranges and smuggle illegals to surfeit.

(Blacks)
Louisiana—Chocklit Empire
With Chief Nagin as the Wonka Man and Jesse “Fillin’ Man” Jackson as Minister of Appointees with Al ‘Mouth’ Sharpton as Minister of Graffiti, a government with portfolio is formed. This former state, having been run by liberals and Donks for years won’t know the difference except there won’t be any money.

(Conservatives)
I haven’t a clue who these individuals are. Guessing says Bible people so
Del Rio, Texas.
If that is wrong, then the panhandle of Idaho. They’ll all fit and you’ll never see them again.

This isn’t unheard of in one country’s interest in another’s positions.

FBI: China may use counterfeit Cisco routers to penetrate U.S. networks

Federal authorities in February seized some 400 counterfeit Cisco Systems knockoffs worth $76 million. [snip]

Among the purchasers of the fake equipment were the U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Naval Air Warfare Center, U.S. Naval Undersea Warfare Center, U.S. Air Base at Spangdahelm, Germany, the Bonneville Power Administration, General Services Administration, and the defense contractor Raytheon, which makes key missile and weapons systems.

After the one ringy-dingy phone system changed with the intro of the Stepper and direct dialing, this government worked with AT&T to give away the protocols used in phone operating systems. This avuncular gift belied the trapdoors written in to allow the government to snoop where and when it wanted. In exchange AT&T got a monopoly that lasted for years.

We should expect every other power to do the same. It isn’t a question of are you paranoid, but are you paranoid enough.

Life with the new Donks

James Burnham’s book, THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION, made a considerable stir both in the United States and in this country at the time when it was published, and its main thesis has been so much discussed that a detailed exposition of it is hardly necessary. As shortly as I can summarise it, the thesis is this:
Capitalism is disappearing, but Socialism is not replacing it. What is now arising is a new kind of planned, centralised society which will be neither capitalist nor, in any accepted sense of the word, democratic. [snip]

Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud.
Burnham does not deny that “good” motives may operate in private life, but he maintains that politics consists of the struggle for power, and nothing else. All historical changes finally boil down to the replacement of one ruling class by another. All talk about democracy, liberty, equality, fraternity, all revolutionary movements, all visions of Utopia, or “the classless society”, or “the Kingdom of Heaven on earth”, are humbug (not necessarily conscious humbug) covering the ambitions of some new class which is elbowing its way into power. The English Puritans, the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks, were in each case simply power seekers using the hopes of the masses in order to win a privileged position for themselves.
Power can sometimes be won or maintained without violence, but never without fraud, because it is necessary to make use of the masses, and the masses would not co-operate if they knew that they were simply serving the purposes of a minority. In each great revolutionary struggle the masses are led on by vague dreams of human brotherhood, and then, when the new ruling class is well established in power, they are thrust back into servitude.

This quote from Machiavelli seems to fit very well here:
“Francesco Sforza became Duke of Milan from being a private citizen because he was armed; his successors, since they avoided the inconveniences of arms, became private citizens after having been dukes.”
This is from a person experienced in such matters!