Ken Nelson

Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

via EconomicNoise.com

The Tea Party represents all the people working, producing, and PAYING for everything, while the Occupy movement represents all the people wanting to TAKE things from those who have earned them.

TakiMag.com

College has been oversold. It has been oversold to students who end up dropping out or graduating with degrees that don’t help them very much in the job market. It also has been oversold to the taxpayers, who foot the bill for these subsidies.

Alex Tabarrok
College has been oversold
Marginal Revolution

My son, although just 14, seems fairly clear on what he wants to do as a grownup. He wants to run a small manufacturing concern that builds custom firearms and designs and builds firearms enhancement products (like better triggers).  To do this he will need to know machining, welding, CNC programming, plastic injection molding, as well as math and spreadsheet/analysis skills.  He will also need to design brochures, write business documents, magazine articles, negotiate and build relationships with vendors, customers, and employees, and know how to interpret a balance sheet/income statement.

There is no “college” degree for this.  So is it better for me to drop $40K (or more) on some college degree, or $10K getting training in these fields, and $30K on machinery to start the business, while arranging mentors on some of the business specific things?

Note that paying $40K for an extended adolescence, or letting him borrow for the same, isn’t part of the plan.

I am definitely too stupid to understand how corporations steal anything from me. Unless they’re receiving government subsidies, I’m not forced to buy anything they produce. Not like I’m forced to pay taxes. And it’s the government, not the corporations, that claims a monopoly on violence. Only the government can throw you in jail and call it “incarceration” instead of “kidnapping.” I’ve never seen a corporation claim the exclusive right to wage war, but that’s the government’s reason for getting out of bed in the morning.

Jim Goad
Taki’s Magazine

Anything I can’t say no to…whether government, a religion that doesn’t believe in free agency, or my wife… concerns me.

  “When you’re the janitor reasons matter.” 
  “Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.”

  Steve Jobs
  As quoted in this Wired.Com article about Apple’s methods.

I certainly concur with this view. The gotcha, or challenge,  is having an organization willing to do something with this thinking rather than just spout it.   His does.

The dichotomy I see in talented creative types, like Jobs, or many musicians and actors, is that they got where they are by being smart, talented, and often times, ruthless.  Yet they vote for socialists.

I don’t get it.  How can somebody say something so smart, and clearly back it up with actions, and vote for Barack Obama, and policies that reward lack talent, lack of drive, and punish possessing both?

When the tax-compliance industry employs more people than Wal-Mart, UPS, McDonald’s, IBM and Citigroup combined, there has simply got to be a better way.

Michael Walsh
Today’s NY Post

It happens in the 21st century that some of the nicest, most dedicated people you could ever hope to know have chosen to instruct their kids at home: unable any more to trust the public schools with getting the job done.

Bill Murchison
Townhall

My wife and I are dedicated and nice. And we certainly don’t trust the public schools to “get the job done”.

Well, we are mostly nice. Until you cross us…

The disarmament movement has been tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmanment.

Walter Lippmann
1943

As quoted in Angelo Codevilla’s “Advice to War Presidents“

Lippmann, who has become best known these days when vilified by Glenn Beck, probably deserves vilification. But he did make a valid point here.

It comes to mind as the FIRST cuts the Obama Administration seeks are in our, at war, Defense Department.

I can easily envision cuts in our military apparatus, just not before a few hundred billion elsewhere.

We asked for lean legislation. We asked for decreases in spending. We asked for more personal responsibility. This bill contains none of the things we asked for. If Republicans want to keep the gains they made in the last election they will demand an up or down vote on the tax issues…sans the lard.

Commenter on TheHill.com

“There is the possibility … that after the rate of interest has fallen to a certain level, liquidity preference is virtually absolute in the sense that almost everyone prefers cash to holding a debt at so low a rate of interest. In this event, the monetary authority would have lost effective control.”

- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory

As quoted by John Hussman in “Bernake Leaps into a Liquidity Trap“.

Put another way, would you rather hold cash you control, or debt paying 0% interest but with risk of default?

BTW: This doesn’t make me a Kenyesian. He falls in the category of a broken clock… right some of the time.

Voting Sucks

Wintercow20 at The unbroken Window

He maintains that voting sucks because both parties are horrible choices. I agree. The Tea Party, however, is Libertarianizing the Republicans and when that is complete, voting won’t suck anymore!

Yes! You can now buy We Are Doomed in paperback! A handful of typos have been corrected and some numbers updated, but don’t worry — we’re still doomed.

John Derbyshire
touting his book “We are Doomed”.

"Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."

F.D.R.
1937

On the perils of letting a collection of foxes guard the henhouse.

From this excellent article about the threat of public unions in National Affairs.

And the great thing about a vibrant free speech forum is the way a political party can block every entrance but one and then require you to go through a "security" process that includes taking away any signs you might have.

Ann Althouse
on Obama’s visit to her University of Wisconsin campus yesterday.

She voted for him, but appears apologetic. Apology accepted.

As an aside… I wonder how they would react to Sarah Palin visiting?  Well, actually I’m pretty sure I know how they would react.