Economic Recession Looms while the Civil Service Booms

No big surpise here, when government’s go on uncontrolled spending sprees, the only one who benefits are those who work for and in government:

The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

What are the odds the same result isn’t occurring in Canada?

Most Influential American Conservatives

The Telegraph recently released its ranking of the most influential American conservatives. The list numbers 100 women and men, with the top ten ranked as follows:

1. Dick Cheney
2. Rush Limbaugh
3. Matt Drudge
4. Sarah Palin
5. Robert Gates
6. Glenn Beck
7. Roger Ailes
8. David Petraeus
9. Paul Ryan
10. Tim Pawlenty

That list looks correct, at least in its broad strokes.

Were I to rank the list, however, I would reorder it in some respects. And I would also replace Paul Ryan and Tim Pawlenty with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. That would in turn precipitate further changes in the rank ordering. But those are relatively minor changes.

Do you agree with this top ten?

Questions of Conscience, etc.

A nurse in the US who is a practising Catholic was forced by her employer to participate in an abortion against her will on threat of losing her job and her license. I don’t really have a cogent analysis for this, so I’m putting out a series of unconnected ideas on the subject to spur further debate (if anyone has the urge to sink back into the infinite swamps of the abortion debate yet again, on this chilly December weekend.) Some of these ideas are kind of balled up, so feel free to take them apart at your leisure in our conveniently provided comments section (free of charge!). [Read more]

Californian Governor Proposes SkyNet To Save State

Well…not quite, but he did say that technology will be needed to save San Francisco from global warming. One is quick to propose that an army of T-1000s invading the city is more likely, in light of recent events…

Rethinking Terrorism

This post isn’t as timely as I’d have liked, but it’s taken a while to bang these ideas into shape.

Let me begin by getting right to the point: we aren’t fighting a war against terror. We’re fighting a war against jihadism.

This may seem like nitpicking, or even wilful obfuscation, as terrorism and jihadism are often used interchangeably. Allow me to explain why I think it‘s an important distinction worthy of further consideration, since I also believe that this distinction is already being made in a way that suits our enemy more than it helps our cause.

A couple of weeks ago a Fox News poll came out showing that some 61% of young people in the US didn’t see the Fort Hood massacre as a terrorist attack per se, but as a killing spree. Conservative bloggers responded with anger and disbelief. To them it was obvious that Hassan was a terrorist. That the American public was getting it wrong was the fault of liberal media bias and the Obama administration’s overall failure of leadership regarding defence and security. [Read more]

Big Government vrs. The Virtue of Governing Oneself

I’m all for gun and property rights. But I can’t understand people that always want to get tough on crime, particularly with stiffer prison sentencing. Can’t they be more imaginative? Why don’t they buy a gun, then get involved in some group or another to elevate the character of young people or the otherwise dispossessed.

The political culture is such that we are subjects of a massive state apparatus and comforted with infinite means to entertain ourselves, but why such little appreciation for the responsibilities that come with citizenship? with looking out for your own self-interest, especially in the community where you live? taking pride in your own capacity for self-governance?

Such prison policy is bearing fruit south of the border and it is rotten! … Reform is needed, and as the New York Times reports, it’s becoming a bipartisan issue.

I watched Gran Torino for the first time last night. Great movie!

There is a scene in Gran Torino where Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt, is asked why he didn’t call the police instead of confronting a gang outside his house. Walt’s response, “Well you know, I prayed for them to come but nobody answered. … when things happen quickly like that, you have to react.”

When faced with any individual or social “problem,” be it crime, the need for some agent of welfare, or even some public works project or another, we need to consider how civil society engenders a much larger definition than Big Government prefers to accommodate. Big Government is not the natural result of civil society, rather, Big Government is what Max Weber called an “iron cage,” and we require a responsible citizenry to moderate its role in civil society.

Consider what John von Heyking writes in his insightful review of “It’s the Regime, Stupid! A Report From the Cowboy West on Why Stephen Harper Matters:”

And so Canadians have come to view their sovereign as the agent of “gift giving,” … This decadent regime has been rendered possible by a decadent Christian culture that has forgotten the distinction between compassion, which benefits bureaucrats (because the purpose of compassion is to feel good about oneself), and caritas, for which the language of costs and benefits are irrelevant (because the purpose of caritas is love for another). Subjects of the modern regime need to balance their interest-calculation with some pride, which Cooper describes as a “something that you hold on to without qualification as to whether it is in your interest to do so – otherwise there would be no ‘you’ to have an interest.” …

In other words, too many take Big Government to be the default solution to whatever ails them. And yet, there is no virtue, no individual dignity to be gained, in not taking responsibility for your own life.

Barack Obama’s Latest Kowtow: An Affront to Liberty

So, Barack Obama is bowing to royalty again.  Not learning from his embarrassing genuflection to the Saudi King, Mr. Obama can be seen to be bowing to the Japanese emperor, Akihito.  What’s the old saying?  Once is political stupidity; twice is political idiocy?

I know my comment will bring many Obama fans to their feet in feigned rage.  As with the Saudi incident, apologists will argue against the facts, partisans deny the significance.  However, make no mistake about it; Mr. Obama’s behaviour was inappropriate.  It is unbecoming of the leader of, arguably, the greatest democracy on earth.  It is an insult to those who worked to make the United States a leader in the fight for freedom and liberty.

The leader of the free world is to be a subject to no one.  He must be humble before the people, but strong and commanding before foreign royalty.  Respect for the culture of another must not come at the denigration of the office the presidency.  In this situation, we are not witnessing two equals partaking in a respectful ritual of bowing to one another – the equivalent of shaking hands in the west.  No, we are witnessing one person implicitly glorifying the majesty of a supposed superior.

Mr. Obama’s actions demonstrate that he is the lesser in his meeting with the emperor.  He is demonstrating that the quintessential American ideal, “that all men are created equal”, is not universally true.  His motives are moot.  His mentallity is moot.  He has, again, violated the essence of liberal democracy.  It should be concerning that he has crossed this line and that he continues to cross this line.

In many ways, this is not a particularly big issue.  If Mr. Obama ends the war in Afghanistan, if he turns around the economy, if he fixes the U.S. health care system, he will be, rightfully, remembered as a great president, no matter how shameful some of his behaviour was on the international stage.  Nonetheless, if he – a former constitutional law professor – hasn’t taken one of the basic pillars of liberty to heart, how can we be confident that he will be an adequate leader in the continuing struggle against world wide oppression?  How can we expect him to be the valiant defender of liberty that the president ought to be?

The shining city on the hill is becoming tarnished.

(H/T: @GregFarries.)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed On Trial

Victor Davis Hanson, writing on The Corner on National Review Online, asks,

Why the assumption that KSM and others will be found guilty?

This got me thinking about a recurring theme in articles written over past decade by George Jonas (a sample of which is here). Mr. Jonas was examining (in part) a central problem of high profile show trials, being that there never really is a presumption of innocence in cases involving the trials of men who commit (or aspire to commit) genocide; as a result, trials like this are actually inconsistent with modern Western traditions of criminal justice. In Jonas’ words, these are kangaroo courts.

There are numerous reasons why giving KSM a civilian trial is wrong. It treats the leadership of an organised, international, terrorist group, with legions of fanatics willing to die to achieve broad socio-political goals, as a mere criminal conspiracy. It exposes classified information and the techniques used to obtain it* to examination by a known terrorist and public review in an open court. It proposes that any number of activities committed on foreign soil, tantamount to acts of war, should ultimately be treated as domestic criminal matters within the American civilian court system.

What it does not do is further the cause of criminal justice. It is absolutely unthinkable, absolutely impossible, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will leave the courtroom in New York a free man. The Supreme Court finding that some of the techniques used in his interrogation constitute torture will surely come up, and in a normal case this would sink the prosecution. It will not have a bearing on the outcome of this case. There can be no other outcome but a finding of guilt and a sentence of death. As it was for Saddam Hussein, so too shall it be for KSM.

What President Obama and AG Holder have set in motion is not justice; it is a showy revenge plot, with the added “bonus” of exposing the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terror to unlimited public scrutiny and criticism.

Heaven help us all if this pointless piece of Kabuki theatre goes sideways.

(*Let’s not forget that beyond waterboarding lie techniques such as infiltration that may still be ongoing and valuable; if such operations are at risk of being exposed by the trial they will have to be wound down before lives are put at risk; valuable information in the struggle to protect ourselves against those who would have us all dead might therefore be lost or compromised for the sake of defending the indefensible.)

Update: Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz points out another, potentially far worse problem.

Gregory Craig Steps Down

The New York Times reports that Gregory B. Craig, father of the Obama administration’s Guantanamo Bay closure policy, has stepped down as the President’s chief attorney in the White House. While interesting in itself, what caught my eye was this graf:

Mr. Craig took considerable criticism for those decisions and for not doing more to build consensus within the administration or prepare the political ground in Congress. The prospect of closing Guantanamo in the first year of Mr. Obama’s presidency is now almost certain not to happen.

In particular, I was struck by the use of the word “prospect” in the second sentence. A synonym for prospect is “hope” (a very Obamaian word, to be sure). But wait – if I recall correctly, one of the President’s first acts upon taking office was signing the order authorizing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Aren’t we well past the prospect stage for closing Gitmo? Wasn’t that a done deal?

Apparently not, at least according to The New York Times. No, when this President takes concrete action that was always ill-conceived and now proven untenable, and he is forced to backtrack, his mistakes disappear in a puff of smoke. Back to the happy land of hope ‘n’ change that they sprang from.

In the words of Joni Mitchell, “That was just a dream some of us had.”

Via Ace of Spades

California Stealin’: Taxation and Theft

California is a fiscal basket case.  There’s no real argument about that.  Now they’re trying to find more underhanded ways to wring more tax dollars out of the citizenry.  According to The Los Angeles Times:

Starting Sunday, cash-strapped California will dig deeper into the pocketbooks of wage earners — holding back 10% more than it already does in state income taxes just as the biggest shopping season of the year kicks into gear.

Tax withholding is a scam.  Despite any facile claims of needing a steady stream of income, tax withholding is designed to allow people to ignore the level of taxation and to make people pay more taxes than they rightfully owe.

First off, if the government can spread your tax burden over a long period of time, you’ll notice it less.  Further, by taking the money directly from your employer, you never actually see it.  The government has removed you from the transaction, and you don’t feel the complete tax burden that has been imposed upon you.  However, if they are only taking from you what you owe, there’s nothing too devious about that.

The insidious aspect of tax withholding is that it leads to people paying excessive taxes – taxes beyond what they are legally obligated to pay.

Come April, when we all file our taxes (assuming we do), we all, presumably, are hoping for a refund.  If, after taking an initial stab at completing the ridiculously complex tax forms, we owe money, most of us will look for more deductions or rebates.  If, after taking another pass at the tax forms, we now are owed a refund, most of us are happy.  If, after the initial attempt at our taxes, we are owed a refund, we’re happy.  Basically, we are, in effect, not worried about the amount of taxes we pay; we are worried about getting a refund.

Once we have that refund, we are far less likely to continue to look for more deductions.  We’re satisfied – we have our refund – so why bother?

And, thus, we come around to increased withholdings.  Implementing regulations that command excessive withholdings increases the number of people who will get refunds.  Consequently, it increases the number of people who won’t look for all the deductions they are owed.

But, the government has willfully deceived these people.  They may get bigger refunds, but their tax payment will have gone up even though their tax obligation did not.  It may not be theft, but it’s not that far off.

And, come on, that notion that the government needs the cash and can’t wait until April to get it is an utter lie.  They can just issue I.O.U.s.

(H/T: Veronique de Rugy.)

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