Quote of the Week

World's oldest woman, Besse Cooper of Georgia, celebrated her 116th birthday this week. Asked about her longevity, she answered:

“I mind my own business, and I don’t eat junk food.’’

Well said, Besse; and Happy Birthday.

Quote of the Week - Occupy Wall Street

Nicolas Kristof, writing in the New York Times today, eloquently defines the common and legitimate complaint that both the Occupy Wall Street and tea party movement share.

More broadly, there’s a growing sense that lopsided outcomes are a result of tycoons’ manipulating the system, lobbying for loopholes and getting away with murder. Of the 100 highest-paid chief executives in the United States in 2010, 25 took home more pay than their company paid in federal corporate income taxes, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.

Living under Communism in China made me a fervent enthusiast of capitalism. I believe that over the last couple of centuries banks have enormously raised living standards in the West by allocating capital to more efficient uses. But anyone who believes in markets should be outraged that banks rig the system so that they enjoy profits in good years and bailouts in bad years.

The banks have gotten away with privatizing profits and socializing risks, and that’s just another form of bank robbery.

To steal a phrase, its the crony not the capitalism. And what enables the banks to manipulate the system to their advantage? In my opinion, the fiat money system, whereby the dollar is valued at whatever the Federal Reserve says it is. The more I think into these issues, the more I am convinced that a gold standard is necessary to prevent banking shenanigans. Some banks need to fail and bankers need to lose their jobs, before we are going to get a system that justly serves the interests of the all of these United States.

Further, when one looks at the tax code and regulatory landscape, its very complexity enables the bankers manipulation of the system. Better to have simple regulatory schemes, scrap the current tax code and start over with a simple system, in order to end the odious outcome that we currently suffer through. No extra-legal seizure of assets, as some in the occupy movement propose, but certainly we need to shut down the source of ill gotten wealth in the financial sector, when it accrues to the use of loopholes, bailouts and secret Federal Reserve funding.

Quote of the Week

From George Will, commenting on the Obama administrations fascination with that 19th century technology, trains:

". . . the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.."

Quote of the Week

From IMAO: "People cheering and whistling when Janet Napolitano went to speak at a memorial – I don’t get that on so many levels."

Quote of the Week

Professor Perry has the quote of the week, maybe the decade.

I’d say that Julian Simon’s advice remains as good as ever. "You can always make news with doomsday predictions, but you can usually make money betting against them."

Al Gore, call your office.

Quote of the Week

Jay Cost takes on the current liberal meme that "America is Ungovernable." He argues the correct historical perspective that the Constitution of these United States built a process intended to thwart change that lacked broad consensus. From his article

It's not accurate to blame this [failure to pass cap and trade/Obamacare] on the Republicans. From Arlen Specter's defection to Scott Brown's swearing in, Democrats had total control over the policy-making process. The only recourse the Republicans had was the First Amendment. They used it well, but don't let it be said that the President lacked access to it. Given Mr. Obama's bully pulpit and his omnipresence on the national stage, his voice has been louder than anybody's. If Mr. Obama has lost the public debate to the beleaguered rump that is the congressional GOP, he has nobody to blame but himself.

Exactly. The President took office with a huge store of good will. Instead of finding programs or approaches on which to build a consensus, he chose a rigid ideological approach that has not served him well. Unless he changes course his policies will continue to languish.

Quote of the Week

Over at American Thinker, Publius Varius, writes about the Tea Party movement and its relationship to the Republican party thus:

It cannot be comforting for Republicans to look out at 100,000 plus people on the Washington mall, who should all be part of their natural constituency, booing any mention of their last presidential candidate and cheering speeches that proclaim their movement is not "Republican". This begs the question: "Why isn't it?

Because the Republicans under Bush became the party of big government and the Tea Partyers know one big thing, Big Government is the cause, not the cure, for our ills. When Republicans get that being the party of less government will allow them to build a winning coalition, then they will start winning.

Quote of the Week

James Madison, credited with being the "Father of the Constitution" was surely a man of wisdom concerning the law and human nature. He had this to say.

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?

Did you think he foresaw something like this health care bill? No, he did understand the methods of tyranny, which the nation had just defeated to achieve it's independence.

H/T The Other McCain.