Stones Cry Out

Sweden, long an example that the Left has pointed to as a socialist enlightened economic haven, has been running away from socialist progressive ideals.  The latest domino to fall is the realization that tax cuts spur on the economy.

Sweden’s centre-right government on Saturday announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and three other ministers in the four-party coalition said the reduction would mean most wage earners would have 200 to 250 kronor (20 to 25 euros, 29 to 36 dollars) more in take-home pay every month.

The proposal, to be presented to parliament on Monday as part of the 2010 budget bill, is the fourth leg of a tax cut programme introduced in January 2007 to stimulate employment.

The fourth leg would enter into force on January 1, 2010.

With that step, 99 percent of full-time employees will have had their taxes reduced by a total of 1,000 kronor per month, while 75 percent will have had reductions of 1,500 kronor, the government said.

"The coalition government has agreed on reforms for jobs and entrepreneurialism that will increase employment in the long-term. It has to be more profitable to work and more companies should be able to hire employees," the government said.

Imagine that; looking at the long-term rather than a quick "stimulus" "fix" for the here-and-now.  Not only that, but letting the people keep their money rather than spending their childrens’ is predicted to increase employment in the long-term, in hopes of reducing this:

Since coming to power in late 2006, the government has launched a series of measures aimed at inciting Swedes to return to the job market instead of living off of state subsidies.

The success of public assistance shouldn’t be how many people are on it, but how many no longer need it.  That line is not original with me, but it is an idea that the Swedes are coming to grips with.

Thanks, Ronnie.

1. Of race and anti-race and their connection to policy.
2. The NYTimes offers that a decade of no warming, which was not predicted, might pose problems for the predictions of global warming. D’ya think?
3. Celebration of a Saint. 
4. Iran and the persecution of a blogger for blogging.
5. Silencing the opposition … a theme?
6. Not unrelated.
7. How not to calculate network extends in finite sets.
8. The left’s tendency to over-extend their praise for Mr Obama, merely a fancy on the right … or not?
9. A sad truth noted, I’d offer that a better portion of that evil is done by people who fancy they are doing good but haven’t really thought it through.
10. Puns in headlines? A good idea or not?
11. Poland and the start of WWII.
12. House rules … or at least goes to the bank with full pockets.
13. NATO and the bear.
14. For when there is something in the air.
15. Again, not unrelated to the prior link.
16. On government spending in recession.
17. Christianity in Russia, perhaps not so pro forma.
18. Thoughts on smashing the icon.

global warming, race, icon, Orthodox, WWII

During the last to night time basement biking sessions I’ve watched the movie Katy?, see here and here for more. In the context of the some of the conversation that arose today over my short essay on the UN some remarks come to mind. One commenter (JA) remarked:

This distinction is really just a symptom of the deeper distinction — the right, being more nationalistic, looks at the UN solely from a what-can-we-get-out-of-it point of view, while the left, being more humanistic, believes that the same principle that says a nation’s citizens should have a say in their government also says that the nations of the world should have a say in whatever passes for global “government.”

Yet this gets it backwards. Read the rest of this entry

Hunter Baker, writing at the American Spectator’s AmSpecBlog, relates a conversation with his boss:

I was telling my boss, Robert Sloan (former Baylor president and current president of HBU), about Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story.  We briefly discussed an interview of Moore by the Wall Street Journal yesterday in which Moore asserted that the auto workers should own 100% of the auto companies.  

Sloan responded, "The interviewer should have asked Moore if the crews on his films own the projects they work on for him."  That would be a nice question for the filmmaker, wouldn’t it?  

"Mr. Moore, do you pay your workers a wage to perform their functions or — consistent with your philosophy — do they own the films you make along with you?"

Any doubts as to what the answer is to that?  Yeah, me neither.

Baker asks any reporters out there to ask Moore that question.  However, any doubts as to whether the MSM will be reluctant to push that point?  Yeah, me neither.  Guess it’ll fall to Fox News or some independent conservative upstarts.

Speaking truth to power indeed.  More like gushing.

1. The missile move as an economy of force, i.e., just a shift to the East. And from the same author, danger lurks.
2. On Honduras. I have to say, I’ve seen nothing at all on this matter from the left. Is their silence a sign of ignorance or discomfort?
3. The internet and dissent.
4. The locals might not be stupid. But … this might highlight a problem (follow the aarrg link).
5. (some) Kids today.
6. Perhaps not unrelated … Teachers.
7. Medicare reform on the rocks? More here.
8. A plea to give Mr Obama some rope on Afghanistan.
9. Of right and wrong.
10. Well, there goes $800 billion we won’t get back and certainly will live to regret.
11. The inventor of exercise … really.
12. Parents are not potters, Ms Delsol suggested we are all gardeners.
13. Imagining war.
14. And nightlife in Kiev.
15. Feminism considered in the context of Buffy and Jennifer.

links, Honduras, economy, education, exercise, parenting

One of the defining differences between right and left today in the US is that the left is enamoured of the UN while the right thinks it mainly an execrable waste of time, money, and resources of which not the least is mention bandwidth on the global stage. For the most part, I don’t want to concentrate (with one exception at the end of this piece) on Mr Obama’s speech to the UN, which can be found here. Unlike his predecessor, Mr Bush, Mr Obama had nothing but nice and complementary things to say about the UN, which at the very least supports the statement made in the opening. One of the primary complaints that the right has about the UN is that it has a completely open membership. Dictatorships have equal voice with Democracies. Free societies with closed. Coercive with (mostly) non-coercive. For the left, somehow this is not a fault but a feature. For the right, as a feature, it is sort of like more like the “smell feature” the outhouse has over the water closet. Read the rest of this entry

When Joe Wilson said, "You lie!", when President Obama talked about not covering illegal aliens in the health care reform bill, he may have been both out of order and technically wrong.  But President Obama is now showing that there’s another way that Wilson was technically right.

President Obama said this week that his health care plan won’t cover illegal immigrants, but argued that’s all the more reason to legalize them and ensure they eventually do get coverage.

He also staked out a position that anyone in the country legally should be covered – a major break with the 1996 welfare reform bill, which limited most federal public assistance programs only to citizens and longtime immigrants.

"Even though I do not believe we can extend coverage to those who are here illegally, I also don’t simply believe we can simply ignore the fact that our immigration system is broken," Mr. Obama said Wednesday evening in a speech to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. "That’s why I strongly support making sure folks who are here legally have access to affordable, quality health insurance under this plan, just like everybody else.

Mr. Obama added, "If anything, this debate underscores the necessity of passing comprehensive immigration reform and resolving the issue of 12 million undocumented people living and working in this country once and for all."

Republicans said that amounts to an amnesty, calling it a backdoor effort to make sure current illegal immigrants get health care.

If the President had said that during the original speech, Wilson could have smiled broadly.  Essentially the President is saying (if you take everything he says into account), "we’re not covering illegal aliens, but we’re looking for ways to rename them something other than ‘illegal aliens’, after which they’d be covered." 

That was a bit disingenuous.  I think Wilson is owed something of an apology.

1. Right or wrong … I think is a mis-phrasing, perhaps mistake or not is better, and yet I think it was in fact a mistake. Preaching to the choir, i.e., the watchers of the other networks, is has its purpose. Reaching across to the other side, also has a purpose and deciding it’s not worth the bother … is a mistake.
2. Three on the McChrystal leak of the Afghan report here, here, and here. Oops, sorry here’s a fourth. OK, OK … a fifth.
3. Embarrassment? Hmm, I wouldn’t go that far, the recession is felt world-wide and a cost-benefit analysis might find that a census doesn’t pay … and might just as well wait until after the crises passes.
4. Friends-for-cash, late modernity strikes in Japan.
5. Somebody thinks that RFC’s constitute government regulation. Hint: they weren’t.
6. Travels related.
7. A new show for the new season … and CERN.
8. Global warming predicts and increase in hurricane frequency … oops.
9. Keeping an eye on the healthcare threats, err, bills.
10. A picture essay … and I think more than several Poles will take issue with these history lessons. Oddly enough, right now on Netflix during basement cycling sessions I’m watching Wadja’s Katyn.
11. Vote for Ott.
12. Ugly duckling no longer.
13. On abortion.
14. A reply to an atheist.
15. Mobile tech and southeast Asia.
16. Putting a finger on the failure of aid.
17. It is most definitely not OK, and I think even those who do are doing so because its transgressive.

Obama, Afghanistan, media, Orthodoxy, late modernity, art, abortion,

One of the themes in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (of many) concerns the ability of great leaders to control the vicissitudes of fortune. In this manner, Napoleon is seen as not, as so many regarded him at the time, as a master of his fate and controller of his and many other’s destinies. But instead he was just the highest chip in the froth. That it was not his will that drove France to Empire and thereby pushing he and they willy nilly to disaster in the Russian snows (giving us Mr Minard’s completely amazing graph as well). Now Lev Tolstoy may have offered that a Higher Power determined the course of history. Alternatively in this modern era, one might instead propose that aggregate behaviour of the crowds might be the driving force.

Mr Obama is the head of our state. But he is likely less in control of events than we pretend. Now it is true that like, Mr Kerry, Mr Obama has been striving for the Presidency much of his adult life. While I find this personally distasteful ambition, I cannot project my personal animosity for the seeking for power on others. There may actually be admirable aspects to ambition even if they are a far cry from my personal makeup. Read the rest of this entry

1. Six, of course those excited about that that ignore the 512 or more cores/processors in many high end video cards.
2. A complete waste of time … surprised?
3. Bigger stadia, more … screen?
4. An offer to redefine “jury of your peers.”
5. For the econ-readers, two books reviewed by Mr Easterly. Another by Mr Bernanke examined here.
6. Fasting and the evangelical.
7. For seeing … art.
8. High school GPA is correlated with college success (as opposed to SAT/ACT test results).
9. TED.
10. ACORN and a really bad defence of the same noted. Another tidbit here too.
11. Remarking in the wake of Mr Obama’s (yet another) media blitz.
12. The title of this piece got me to me drew a wide smile.
13. The NEA scandal/admin … will that catch fire? or just smoke and smolder?
14. Draw to two opposing sides … with the fate of civilization at stake?
15. Big heads, but bigness is perceived only because their chests are so small.
16. Recalling what cruel and unusual punishments really meant.
17. Ethical monad.
18. Recalling Mr Obama’s campaign platforms. 
19. Forgetting that most of us found Plato’s regime with the philosopher kings kinda repellent.

Iran is judged today to be a up and coming mad-as-a-hatter soon-to-be nuclear regime with some short and medium range missile capabilities. Back in 2007 the Bush administration had wrangled some ABM bases in Poland with Radar in the Czech Republic which were at that time designed to knock down long range missiles, of which Iran had none, but of course Russia had (and has) plenty. Russia took umbrage to this and rightfully so, just look at a map, unless you have a much much bigger monitor than I do, you don’t see Poland or the CR on that map at all.

Mr Obama it turns out has been not well served by the conservative current events blogs … although his speeches and on this in fact do have some glaring omissions, in the light of which the conservative commentary does make more sense … but only in the light of those omissions. Here is the text from the Obama speech, although I don’t know how accurately this reflects his actual remarks or whether it has been changed to reflect better in the light of later remarks, i.e., Mr Gates this weekend). This was also released on the same day by WH to the press to accompany the speech. The disservice by the conservative press is that this is touted as a withdrawal of a program, which fails to mention that another is proposed in its place. Read the rest of this entry

Pursuant to a comment conversation I had here recently regarding Jimmy Carter’s charges of racism against anti-Obama protesters, Hans von Spakovsky writing at National Review Online just noted some of that very thing in Carter’s past.

As Laughlin McDonald, director of the ACLU’s Voting Project, relates in his book A Voting Rights Odyssey: Black Enfranchisement in Georgia, Carter’s board tried to stop the construction of a new “Elementary Negro School” in 1956. Local white citizens had complained that the school would be “too close” to a white school. As a result, “the children, both colored and white, would have to travel the same streets and roads in order to reach their respective schools.” The prospect of black and white children commingling on the streets on their way to school was apparently so horrible to Carter that he requested that the state school board stop construction of the black school until a new site could be found. The state board turned down Carter’s request because of “the staggering cost.” Carter and the rest of the Sumter County School Board then reassured parents at a meeting on October 5, 1956, that the board “would do everything in its power to minimize simultaneous traffic between white and colored students in route to and from school.”

I can’t imagine the Carter today being the same man as back then, but one wonders if because of past sins, he sees it everywhere, even where it isn’t.

And also via the tip from Instapundit, a reminder of what some have done a bit more recently due to Carter’s one-sided support of actual racists, not to mention terrorists.

ATLANTA, Jan. 11 — Fourteen of the city’s business and civic leaders resigned from the Carter Center’s advisory board on Thursday to protest former President Jimmy Carter’s recent criticisms of Israel and American Jewish political power.

Their joint letter of resignation denounced Mr. Carter’s best-selling book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” for its criticisms of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The letter also took issue with comments Mr. Carter has made suggesting that Israel’s supporters in the United States are using their power to stifle debate on the issue.

“It seems you have turned to a world of advocacy, even malicious advocacy,” the letter said. “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support.”

The 14 who resigned were members of the center’s board of councilors, a group of more than 200 local leaders who act as ambassadors and fund-raisers for the center but do not determine its policy or direct its operations.

Among the letter signers were Michael Coles, the chief executive of the Caribou Coffee Company; William B. Schwartz Jr., the ambassador to the Bahamas during Mr. Carter’s presidency; Liane Levetan, a former chief executive of DeKalb County, Ga.; and S. Stephen Selig III, who served as national finance chairman for the Carter-Mondale Presidential Committee.

Perhaps the recent op-ed by Elliot Abrams, debunking a similarly recent op-ed by Carter and pointing out Carter’s blindness in his advocacy for Hamas, actually is worth a look, regardless of your opinion of Abrams.  A more considered and thoughtful response may be in order.

Even the liberal Frank Rich manages to figure it out (though he does place the blame on other "usual suspects").

The White House was right not to second Carter’s motion and cue another “national conversation about race.” No matter how many teachable moments we have, some people won’t be taught. (Though how satisfying it would have been for Obama to dismiss Wilson, like the boorish Kanye West, as a “jackass.”) But there is a national conversation we must have right now — the one about what, in addition to race, is driving this anger and what can be done about it. We are kidding ourselves if we think it’s only about bigotry, or health care, or even Obama. The growing minority that feels disenfranchised by Washington can’t be so easily ghettoized and dismissed.

(Emphasis mine.)  Rich seems to forget (rather too quickly) that a growing majority of Americans are not in favor of ObamaCare(tm) at this point.  Nevertheless, if racism energizes just a fringe of the protesters, then a President going on about it on national TV is either overreaction or covert slander.  If, however, racism is being blamed for a significant portion of the anger, then be honest about it and come out and say it, and take the political fallout for your overt slander.

And again, the irony of Jimmy Carter complaining about any perceived racism here while lending the full weight of his influence in the Middle East almost entirely to those who spew actual racist rhetoric is astounding.

1. Open source and teaching math, I haven’t looked into it yet, but it sounds like a great idea. Not unrelated, a talk on the Internet and maths by Terry Tao.
2. The missile deal, a summary … prior to the Gates interview. A conspiracy suggested. A letter from Poland here.
3. Home grown jalapeño peppers.
4. A fast lady in red (and yellow).
5. Costs and cap/trade.
6. An atheist asks an interesting question.
7. Memory eternal … a post that aches to be read (HT: the Ochlophobist).
8. I’ve seen this noted before, and usually in the context as a “mood killer”. Hmm, any experimental evidence?
9. H1N1 and Oman.
10. If you haven’t been missing the Anabasis reading at the Chicago Boyz, you’re missing out on some fine historical analysis and discussion of one of the great works.
11. Sound-tracks for electric cars.
12. Immorality, the Bible and Science-fiction.
13. Plantinga online, I guess I bought the right book.
14. Advice for blogging as a Christian, which I’d say I’m not very good at doing.
15. The US and Syria.
16. Mr Beck and the right, one view. For myself, I’ve never seen or heard him, so I’m a bystander to all the hoopla.
17. Trying to grok the President’s rational model.

From Steve Breen.  (Click for a larger version.)

Yeah, and racists.

About a week ago, I wrote a post continuing the development of a model of creativity and intelligence, although at this model might be seen as a tad overstated). In that post, I outlined an ansatze for the semiotic scaffold that the human noetic machinery manages, bridging the gap between mechanism (network and pathway) all the way to meaning and intent. (the rest below the fold) Read the rest of this entry