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True
North Archives - June 09, 2009
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Featured
Articles
One
State, Under Government
In what or whom do
we believe if not God?
By James Ehlers
If nearly six in ten of us
do not believe that religion is important, and almost five in ten do not
believe in God, then, in what do we believe? Government. We obviously believe
in state government and yet more state government.
Keeping
Debt Profitable: Your Government at Work
By Martin Harris
 In
a line of investigation which runs backward from contemporary credit-card
regulation to the Constitutional rights-of-contract to the Fourteenth
Amendment curtailing some of those rights to Depression-era milk price
regulation to Progressive-era grain-elevator regulation, I stumbled again
(as befits an amateur in history and economics) on a couple of Supreme
Court cases which I had earlier found interesting for wholly different
reasons.
A
Tale of Two Futures
By Robert Maynard
"It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring
of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we
had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all
going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received,
for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
The reader will recognize
this quote from Charles Dickens classic "A Tale of two Cities". This quote
comes to mind every time I ponder the prognosis of our economic future
provided by two different schools of free market economics.
# # #
Quotable
"[The man of system] seems
to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society
with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board;
he does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other
principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but
that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single pieces has
a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which
the legislator might choose to impress upon it." -- Adam Smith,
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
# # #
Vermont
Weekly News Round-Up
Democrats
Pass Budget to Create $200 Million Deficit
Plan also raises taxes
on struggling Vermonters and increases spending
From Vermont GOP, June 3,
2009
Yesterday, every Democrat
and every Progressive voted to override Governor Jim Douglas' veto, thereby
enacting their own state budget over the objections of Republicans and
Independents. What this vote tells us in stark terms is that the Democrat
supermajorities are totally out of touch with reality, and their leadership
is incompetent to govern our state.
Happy
Econ Birthdays
From Vermont Tiger, June
05, 2009
To Adam
Smith, the most influential economist in history, baptized
today in 1723. Most of us are aware of his Wealth
of Nations, which explained a new phenomenon--why and how
England was becoming wealthy. He was explaining the process of modern
economic growth, something that was new in the history of humanity but
that we take for granted today. (One could do worse than having P.J. O'Rourke
explain
Adam Smith.)
Most people are unaware of
Smith's equally important, but far less read, The
Theory of Moral Sentiments. One quote from the TMS
is highly relevant for today:
[The man of system] seems
to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society
with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board;
he does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other
principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but
that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single pieces has
a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which
the legislator might choose to impress upon it.
Where
Were the People Who Make the Money?
From The Caledonia Record
June 6 2009
Three cheers for Duncan Kilmartin
and Dena Gray. Kilmartin, Republican representative to the Vermont Legislature
from Newport, and Gray, owner of Newport's Eastside Restaurant, were the
only private sector business people out of 50 who attended an economic
development forum in Barton. All of the rest were from alphabet agencies
that live directly on taxpayer money or grants that ultimately come from
taxpayer money, i.e. they are on the dole.
Both Kilmartin and Gray pointed
that out, though a bit less brutally than we do. Both wanted to know, "Where
are the people who make the money?" And we ask the same thing. Do academics
and public agency people know how to start, run, and succeed at a business?
Do those whose salaries don't depend upon their brains and energy, but
are guaranteed by a distant public entity, know anything about entrepreneurship
other than what they have read in a book? Do those who haven't ever had
to meet a payroll know the intense pressure of that necessity in hard times?
Brainless
On The Jobless
From Vermont Tiger, June
4, 2009
Language in the bill calls
for a 12-person study committee, comprised of representatives from the
legislative and executive branches, to meet during the summer and draft
a proposal for consideration next January. -- Herald
Ah, yes. The legislature's
default solution to any thorny economic problem facing the state – commission
another study. This one on what to do about funding the unemployment
trust fund, which is rapidly running out of money. Once the fund
goes broke, the state will be obliged to borrow from the Feds to keep payments
going to those who are out of work.
A
Necessary Cultural Sea-Change
From The Caledonia Record,
June 4, 2009
At least three Vermont school
boards, now, have imposed contracts on their local teacher bargaining units.
Colchester, Winooski, and Chittenden. These boards have exercised their
final option when contract negotiations collapse without agreement. All
of them did it because their unions demanded substantial raises in each
of the years of the proposed contract and would not relax their demands.
This is a phenomenon that
Vermont is going to see more and more in the future. Back in the 1960s,
when teachers were universally paid starvation wages, they finally organized
and got salary scales that were adjusted upward every year. Nobody objected
for the first 20 years because teachers were necessarily playing catch-up
with other professions and everybody knew it. Unnoticed, though, was a
growing cultural expectation that teachers are entitled to an annual raise
without reference to the growing levels of their salaries. Annual raises
for teachers have become an entrenched cultural expectation, and to question
its justice or wisdom is unheard of.
Burlington
Vt: Judge Denies VSEA Attempt to Halt Layoffs
From WCAX-TV, June 5, 2009
The Vermont State Employees
Association failed to persuade a judge to order a halt to the Douglas administration's
layoffs. The union hoped to get a temporary restraining order -- claiming
the administration violated the law by failing to get legislative approval.
The layoffs of a hundred
or more state employees are part of a larger political confrontation that
resulted in the legislature's over-ride of Governor Jim Douglas's veto
of the budget. The union asked for a ten-day order to stop the layoffs
until a court could hear all the merits of the case. The request was based
on a section of the budget bill, H-441, requiring the administration to
present a layoff plan for approval by the legislature's joint fiscal committee.
# # #
Freedom
Under Fire:
The
Global War on Terrorism
The
State Despotic
By Mark Steyn, The New Criterion,
June 2009
Welcome to the twenty-first
century.
"It does not tyrannize, it
gets in the way." The all-pervasive micro-regulatory state "enervates,"
but nicely, gradually, so after a while you don’t even notice. And in exchange
for liberty it offers security: the "right" to health care; the "right"
to housing; the "right" to a job—although who needs that once you’ve got
all the others? The proposed European Constitution extends the laundry
list: the constitutional right to clean water and environmental protection.
Every right you could ever want, except the right to be free from undue
intrusions by the state. M. Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president
and chairman of the European constitutional convention, told me at the
time that he had bought a copy of the U.S. Constitution at a bookstore
in Washington and carried it around with him in his pocket. Try doing that
with his Euro-constitution, and you’ll be walking with a limp after ten
minutes and calling for a sedan chair after twenty: As Professor Rahe notes,
it’s 450 pages long. And, when your "constitution" is that big, imagine
how swollen the attendant bureaucracy and regulation is. The author points
out that, in France, "80 per cent of the legislation passed by the National
Assembly in Paris originates in Brussels"—that is, at the European Union’s
civil service. Who drafts it? Who approves it? Who do you call to complain?
Who do you run against and in what election? And where do you go to escape
it? Not to the next town, not to the next county, not to the next country.
Little
Rock’s ‘Lone’ Jihadist: How Alone Is He?
By Dr. Walid Phares, Family
Security Matters, June 4, 2009
In an armed attack outside
the Army-Navy Career Center which handles recruiting, in Little Rock, AR,
Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 23, killed one soldier wounded another. Muhammad,
an American citizen who is a convert to Islam, previously known as Carlos
Bledsoe, was already under investigation by the FBI at the time of the
shootings. He had traveled to Yemen, received indoctrination from radical
clerics, according to a watch group, and possessed a false Somali passport.
He was charged in the death of Pvt. William Long, 23, while a prosecutor
said Muhammad admitted shooting Long and another soldier "because of what
they had done to Muslims in the past."
Islamists
Lose Ground in the Middle East
Kuwait's election
is part of a positive trend
By Joshua Muravchik, The
Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2009
The results of Kuwait's elections
last month -- in which Islamists were rebuffed and four women were elected
to parliament -- will likely reinvigorate the movement for greater democracy
in the region that has stalled since the hopeful "Arab spring" of 2005.
It also puts pressure on the Obama administration to end its deafening
silence on democracy promotion.
Kim
Jong-il Chooses Third Son as his Successor
By Malcolm Moore, Telegraph.co.uk,
Jun 02, 2009
Kim Jong-il has formally
named his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor as he prepares to stand
down as North Korea's leader.
Al
Qaeda Operatives Targeting Pakistani Leaders
By Bill Roggio, The Long
War Journal, June 4, 2009
Al Qaeda has transferred
seven operatives from the Iraq theater to target senior Pakistani leaders.
The targets of the planned attacks are President Zardari, Prime Minister
Gilani, General Kiyani, and other senior military officers, cabinet ministers,
and provincial leaders.
The seven operatives, who
were behind deadly attacks in Iraq, reportedly met in Afghanistan's eastern
province of Paktia on May 3 to plan the operations, according
to a report in the Daily Times. The al Qaeda operatives
are assigned to cooperate with the Pakistani Taliban, led by Baitullah
Mehsud
While
in Egypt, Obama Must Address Radical Islam
By M. Zuhdi Jasser, Family
Security Matters, June 03 2009
(Editor’s note: this article
by Dr Jasser was written BEFORE President Obama’s speech in Egypt and makes
suggestions on what he SHOULD have said.)
I hope the Obama administration
will take advantage of the unique opportunity it has on Thursday to stand
up for the universal ideals of human rights in a land where such ideals
are oppressed. Speaking from Egypt which remains a backdrop of authoritarian
rule that has suffocated dissent and reform, President Obama must address
the two-fold cancer which plagues reform and modernization in the so-called
"Muslim world." That cancer is Arab secular fascism (i.e. the Mubarak regime)
and radical Islamism (i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Azhar University).
For President Obama to avoid these two major cancers which ultimately fuel
terrorism is to avoid one of his responsibilities as leader of the free
world.
Terrorism is just a tactic.
We are continually threatened by an enemy which cannot be defeated on the
battlefield alone, but must be combated in a contest of ideas. We must
marginalize and defeat the ideas of political Islam which ultimately drive
the dreams of militant Islamists. Egypt is the birthplace of the Muslim
Brotherhood and thus modern day political Islam which gave rise to hundreds
of splinter groups of radical Islam throughout the world. Egypt is one
of the primary frontlines in this global contest of ideas. To speak in
Egypt and avoid the topics of political Islam, radical Islamism, and the
Muslim Brotherhood, will be like visiting Moscow in the height of the Cold
War and avoiding any mention of the inhumanities of communism and its incompatibility
with liberty.
# # #
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From
Elsewhere
A
Major Force in Education: Homeschooling in America
By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.,
Christian Post, June 04, 2009
Homeschooling was the choice
of families for 2.9 percent of all school-age children in the United States
in 2007, involving 1.5 million students. By comparison, in 1999 only 850,000
children were homeschooled. By 2003, that number was up to 1.1 million.
This report indicates significant jumps in homeschooling as compared to
other educational options. In fact, the report reveals that the actual
number of American children whose parents choose homeschooling for at least
part of their education exceeds 3 million. According to the report, 1.5
million children are exclusively homeschooled while another 1.5 million
are homeschooled for at least part of the school week.
Related: Dumbest
Generation Getting Dumber
Walter
Williams, Townhall.com, June 3, 2009
The
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international
comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving
ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math
and 24th in science.
How
Washington Blew GM’s Bankruptcy
By Michael Levine, Financial
Times, June 1, 2009
As General
Motors finally filed for bankruptcy
on Monday, some critics of the move have already made the case that Congress,
not a White House task force, should have planned the bankruptcy. They
are right about one thing: a White House task force should not have planned
the bankruptcy. But they are 180 degrees wrong about what the government
should have done. The bankruptcy needed much less "public policy" input,
not more. If GM were going through a "normal" bankruptcy, here is what
would have happened:
Related: The
Bailout State: Where it came from--and how to fight it.
Senators
Must Contest Sotomayer's View that Empathy, Ethnicity Can Overrule Law
By Robert
Alt, Heritage Foundation, June 1, 2009
In choosing a Supreme Court
justice, President Obama--like any president--should look for someone who
will apply the Constitution and the laws as written, and interpret them
consistent with their plain and original meaning.
Regrettably, in selecting
Sonia Sotomayor, Obama has rejected this criterion. Instead, he has chosen
a judge who has expressed both openness to judicial policymaking and a
belief that judges probably cannot be, and perhaps should not be, impartial.
The
Nongovernmental Report on Global Warming
By Paul Chesser, Heartland
Institute Correspondent, June 02, 2009
In conjunction with today’s
Third
International Conference on Climate Change in Washington,
the Heartland
Institute (my organization and conference host) is releasing
"Climate
Change Reconsidered: A Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel
on Climate Change." The 880-page book (posted entirely online
at the Web site) challenges the scientific basis for concerns that global
warming is man-made or is a cause for concern.
5
Character Flaws That Are Destroying America's Future
By John Hawkins, TownHall.com,
June 02, 2009
The corrosive effects of
this decline are seen not just in our government, but all throughout our
society in the size of our prison population, the number of unmarried women
having children, drug use, school shootings, and even our staggering abortion
rate.
Governor
Palin's Seward House Address: Washington, DC Stands In Our Way
From Conservatives for Palin,
June 06, 2009
Our resources are there,
and the time is now, right now, and we're ready to develop. And we already
provide about 17% of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, but we could do
more. And it's time. But believe it or not, what prohibits our development,
what stands in the way, is government in Washington D.C.
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