George Rebane
The Grand Experiment of America is nothing less than to test the historical question – Can man govern himself? Our Founders repeatedly asked that question of themselves as they labored to give the new nation the appropriate tools of governance so as to stack the deck in favor of a ‘Yes!’ answer. Jefferson’s admonishment put a bow on the prerequisites for such an answer – ‘A nation ignorant and free, that never was and never shall be.’ And over the last fifty years we have embarked on a course that has resurrected the worst fears of those courageous and farsighted men now two and a half centuries past.
I look at the inventory of evidence and cannot help but start with our national education system which has spread multi-generational ‘dumbth’ deep and wide across the land. From its schools emerge legions of young deeply ignorant of history and civics with inadequeate tools to help themselves since they are marginally literate and almost totally innumerate. They join those millions already on the sidelines from the workforce who have no means to evaluate the steady rain of ‘information’ that drenches them daily through countless channels enabled by an accelerating technology. These are what are commonly referred to as America’s sheeple. (cf Bryan Caplan’s Myth of the Rational Voter)
If we examine some of these deficits operating in the daily round, the picture of where we are headed becomes very clear.
The federal government has ‘shut down’ according to the reports from Washington. Well not exactly. But supposedly there are 800,000 federal workers whose services will be dispensed with during this political poker game that the Republicans are destined to lose. The question unasked is how would we manage if these same workers were not recalled. Yes, we could take a more precise scalpel to who will now do what to make sure that we could still visit national parks and museums, etc. But I argue that the overwhelming number of these folks could be given early retirement, and the country would benefit enormously as the friction caused by these same people is eliminated. I argue further that it would even benefit us greatly if we just told them not to report to work while continuing to pay them their usual wages – just stay home and spend the checks you will get without interruption. The expense to buy that relief would be worth it.
As I reported earlier (here), our country’s economy is now permanently on its butt. Obama’s lies notwithstanding, the nation will need and is prepared to print an additional tranche of about $1T annually to maintain interest rates at illusory levels and pump unearned dollars into the economy. This exercise is neither beneficial nor inconsequential. It is the final bamboozle by our politicians and elites that allow them to get out of Dodge before Dodge comes unglued. As always, the then current ‘honorables’ in Washington will tell us that the troubles weren’t caused on their watch as they go on to institute more draconian policies to protect themselves and maintain civil order while Depression2 gains momentum. (more here)
The IPCC’s AR5 report released last Friday and today is a grand exemplar of international fraud. To put it simply, it ignores the stark evidence of the temperature and CO2 record along with the performance of its grossly errant computer models to double down on predictions of dire consequences for the earth’s climate. The models have not been able to corroborate the longitudinal evidence, nor have they been able to predict or account for the recent past. AR5 is simply a propaganda document to allow the world’s central planners to argue for the next round of restrictions on human liberties and actions in the developed world. The ‘developing’ world could care less. Lacking any vestige of critical thinking skills the sheeple will fall into the lines drawn by their socialist elites. (more here)
Obamacare – as the feds use taxpayer dollars to sell the unsellable, we are soothed by statements like ‘even Apple has to fix its software after it is released’ designed to prepare us for the train wreck that is now in full swing. The undisseminated truth is that the system design and implementation for the insurance exchanges and follow-on physician services processing is an unholy mess. Its performance cannot be improved by ‘software fixes’, simply because underneath the coding glitches lies a systems design that is fatally flawed from its first performance requirements specification (if even one was generated) onward. The feds have had two years to get this system up and tested, and the result is exactly as expected by everyone except the clueless and their local lackies. (more here)
While they attempt to redo the system, countless and uncounted people will suffer and die, because this is now the new healthcare system in which you could not keep your old doctor or health insurance policy for reasons known and reasons still to be uncovered by the Pelosi Principle. Meanwhile, the lamestream and the usual choruses will sing anthems to another successful campaign of government taking over one more sector from a market economy that they have vilified for the last century or so.
This litany is not yet complete, but its intended objective – an omni-beneficient state – was already anticipated by Frederic Bastiat in the 1840s as his native France was writhing to give birth to yet another ‘republic’ that would hew more to the principles that Marx was then compiling on the other side of the Rheine. (Over two centuries later, socialist France still hasn’t got its revolution sorted out.) He outlined then what our current crop of collectivist envision now, a munificent state to dispense
bread for all mouths, work for all hands, capital for all enterprises, credit for all projects, salve for all wounds, balm for all sufferings, advice for all perplexities, solutions for all doubts, truths for all intellects, diversions for all who want them, milk for infancy, and wine for old age – which can provide for all our wants, all our curiosity, correct all our errors, repair all our faults, and exempt us henceforth from the necessity for foresight, prudence, judgment, sagacity, experience, order, economy, temperance and activity.
That we expect all this while putting up with the obvious signs of disaster rising is proof enough for this observer to again affirm that the tipping point is a long way behind us.
[2oct13 update] Ramirez
captures precisely what the public accepts as the Left’s justified position to
not negotiate and blame the whole thing on the Republicans.
[more] I have been waiting to hear some media commentators raise the subject of what both parties bring to any negotiation should the Dems grant that privilege as called for in the Constitution. It is clear what cards Team Obama holds in such proceedings. But no one has mentioned the only cards that the Repubs can play – oppose the Continuing Resolution and/or raising the national debt ceiling so we can continue spending without recourse.
And that’s the point, ‘recourse’. In adding to the avalanche of evidence on the national dumbth, the Dems can face the cameras and ask with a straight face for the Repubs to pass a “clean” CR and the President says he will not negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. So if the Repubs do neither, they will be blamed by the sheeple for not knuckling to the Dems’ ‘my way or the highway’, and if they do both what levers do they have left to reduce the country’s maniacal spending and printing spree – none whatsoever. And again, the triumvirate of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi know that the overwhelming number of voters, most certainly all of their constituents, don’t have a clue about this standoff – the proportion of double dummies out there is mind numbing.
I can understand why the lamestream does not educate their viewers and readers about this. But what really puzzles me is why the conservative side of the media are silent about it. Why can’t they say at every opportunity that if the Repubs cave on rolling back parts of Obamacare and entitlements, then they might as well fold their hands and start lighting candles for the 2014 elections.
To add insult to injury, the Dems know that the voters are so ignorant that they will not even pick up on the obvious ‘in your face’ shut downs of national monuments, the feds using extra labor to put up fences around open air memorials and adding guards where none were on duty before to keep visitors at a distance just to emphasize the politics of a government ‘shut down’. You really have to be stupid to swallow all that, and the Dems are betting that they know their audience.
What more would you want to see for proof of concept?
[6oct13 update] My assertion above that the problem with the Obamacare subscriber/patient system was not a ‘software glitch’ as repeated by every Team Obama member during the last week is corroborated in the reports that are now coming out admitting errors in the “design of the system” and architectural “flaws” beyond the usual bevy of software errors in a poorly tested system (more here). The question now is whether these system design flaws were purposefully planted or overlooked in the 3+ years developers had to get Obamacare up and running. Sheer incompetence in these matters of government involvement can never be overlooked, but there is always the pull of going to a single payer system instead of fixing the current mess. But all this flies over the heads of the eternally confused flock out there.
rebanesruminations.com 
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