Larry Anderson writes for American Thinker, Venture Capitalism Not Crony Capitalism, 1/20/12:

Excerpt:

The moral difference between a Governor Keith and a Thomas Denham (venture capitalist)  is staggering. Keith made lavish promises (not just to Benjamin Franklin) based on the use of money that Keith did not have or that did not belong to him. People were seduced into Keith’s “investments” because of his position in the British government. Spending someone else’s money is easy, painless, and risk free — for both the “lender” and the recipient. (Benjamin) Franklin described Governor Keith thus, “He wished to please everybody, and, having little to give, he gave expectations.”

Denham, on the other hand, could not afford to tarnish his reputation by making promises he could not keep. Like many entrepreneurs, Denham was a venture capitalist and a retail businessman. He loaned and borrowed real money to and from real people. Franklin admired Denham..

HKO comments:

Venture capitalists take risks with their investors’ money, voluntarily placed at risk; crony capitalists use taxpayers’ money.  Venture capitalists do not make money buying companies and then shutting them down. Politicians use taxpayer money to buy votes and enjoy the fruits of their political power long after their Solyndras have paid their executive bonuses and shut down.

Crony capitalism is to capitalism what National Socialism (Nazism)  is to socialism.

I have posted several excerpts from Alan Reynold’s book Income and Wealth in this blog.  You can find them by putting his name in the ’search the archives’ window in the upper right.  Income and Wealth was written years ago and focused on how misleading and erroneous much of the information we have about income and wealth distribution in his country has been.

When the data takes into account individuals instead of households, the mobility among the categories, hours worked, government transfer payments, tax effects, and consumption we find a very different picture from the one the redistributionists want you to believe. ( It may be more accurate to say the picture THEY want to believe.)

Rick Moran writes in American Thinker 7 reasons why Obama is wrong about income inequality October 29,2011.

Excerpt:

And why did the top 1 percent do particularly well? One potential explanation from CBO: “The compensation of ’superstars’ (such as actors, athletes, and musicians) may be especially sensitive to technological changes. Unique characteristics of that labor market mean that technical innovations, such as cheap mass media, have made it possible for entertainers to reach much wider audiences. That increased exposure, in turn, has led to a manyfold increase in income for such people.” The CBO also mentioned “changes in the governance and structure of executive compensation, increases in firms’ size and complexity, and the increasing scale of financial-sector activities” as possibilities.

HKO comment:

Alan Reynolds pointed out several statistical distortions in the numbers as well and Moran highlights one of them.  Because of the superstar syndrome where a success such as Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook can earn billions while still in his twenties, the uppermost bracket becomes distorted. In other words the variance within the upper brackets is far more pronounced than in the lower brackets. Statistically this widens the difference between the average income and the median (the  midpoint of the number of earners).  This is logical since there is no real limit for the highest income but the lowest can not earn less than zero.

Policies that focus on such outliers are hazardous when applied to the whole group.  Tax policies that would have little effect on the super wealthy would create severe job killing disincentive for the other upper quintile working wealthy.

In American Thinker Randall Hoven writes Science for Stupid Idiots, 9/22/11.

Excerpts:

we get to why we must believe “science,” meaning taking whatever “scientists” say is incontrovertible truth.  If we start having doubts about any of it, we just might start thinking for ourselves.  We will no longer simply swallow what our betters feed us.

The irony is that so many “scientists” have become the enemy they once fought.  They now sit like the elders of the Church at the time of the Guttenberg press.  Imagine the chaos that would result if people could read the Bible themselves!  Better not teach them to read.

Real science is the scientific method.  It means skepticism.  It means publishing your data (as Samuel Morton did).  It means doubt.  It means humility.

HKO comments:

I may not know which end of the test tube the cork goes into, but I do realize that there are so many variables and unknowns in the world of climate that the debate is never over.   Scientists can fall into the same emotional and logical bias traps as any other.   Hoven’s article makes a grand tour of the fallibility of science.

When skepticism is demonized, truth suffers.  Ideologues  present us with a false choice; if we do not ‘believe’ then we are fools, deniers,  and idiots.  This not the logic of science; it is the logic of narrow minded fanaticism.  When ‘non-believers’ are demonized as Al Gore has done so often he is acting like a religious fanatic, not a scientist.

Evolution is a theory, but it is a pretty damn good one.  It does have gaps, which should simply invite further study.  This does not mean that the theory is thus proven false.  And the only alternative to evolution is not creationism.  Creationism can be a poetic metaphor, but as an explanation of our world it is not science and it is foolish to treat it as such.

There is always the unknown, the unfound and the unproven.  Perhaps evolution  will evolve into or be replaced by a better theory.

Philosophers have long debated the intersections of religion and science.  While religion and science may not mix well, they both mix poorly with politics.

Abin Sadar writes in American Thinker The Professional Poor 9/24/11

Excerpt:

The genuine poor are people who, through debilitating circumstances great or small, have become incapable of sustaining a work life, and sometimes even a home life.  Because of mental illness, physical disability, and other unfortunate and unfair acts of man and nature, there are people in our country who genuinely need the help, to varying degrees, of others.  These folks are truly helpless and need assistance from the government and/or through involvement bycharitable organizations.

Most everyone I know is concerned about the genuine poor.  These people help with money, when appropriate, and in the form of one-on-one volunteer hours at effective charities.  As Dennis Miller has said, “I’m willing to help the helpless, not the clueless.”

At one point I asked Mike, who was an intelligent and capable guy, why he never went out looking for a job.  I mean, with some effort, he should be able to find a job that would easily pay him more than $270.00 a month.

Mike set me straight.  “If I got a job, not only would I lose the $270.00 I get for not working, I would not qualify for rent at $180.00.  So I would lose my apartment, too. ”

Mike would have had to get guaranteed, steady  employment paying about five times what the government handed him for free every month in order to afford even low New York City rent, let alone have something left over for electricity, phone, and food.

So Mike was trapped.  He wasn’t motivated to learn any skills or try to advance socially.  Over the years, he became bitter and defensive.

HKO Comments:

The vast majority understand that some people will need help, but when 45% of the population is unable to sustain itself, then we should question whether the solution is the problem.  The vast array of benefits creates a vast array of incentives not to work.  The threat of losing your benefits makes the marginal cost of work enormous.  When facing hard times we used to fall back on family and friends, now we fall back on government programs. Furthermore there is a network of government agents who make a living managing and administrating the programs.

Higher minimum wages have wreaked havoc on the unemployment of those entering the workforce.  We raised minimum wages 40% just before the recession.   Extended unemployment benefits have stifled the incentive to look for jobs, and the threat of impending tax increases has stifled the willingness to create them.

We can not support this without growing the economy and you do not grow an economy by raising taxes.  Even with modest economic growth we can not support the benefits that too many Americans are becoming used to.  It must unwind and our only decision is how to unwind it with the minimum amount of social unrest. The longer these benefits persist the harder this will become.

In the 7/30/11 New York Times Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg writes Why Voters Tune Out Democrats.  It was a thoughtful piece, but was stronger on analysis than prescriptions. It earned some great comments and retorts:

At American Thinker, Why Some of Us Tune Out Democrats by Robert Oscar Lopez.

At Real Clear Politics, Americans Want the Honor of Earned Success by Michael Barone

An excerpt from Barone:

But Americans prefer to see themselves as doers rather than victims. They do not see themselves, as the masses in the Progressive Era a century ago may have done, as helpless victims of large corporations and financial interests.

They want public policies that enable them to earn success, and they resent policies that channel money to the politically well positioned or to those who have not made decisions and taken actions necessary for earned success. They want to be empowered, not patronized.

That’s why voters here and, as Greenberg notes, in other advanced countries are rejecting policies that give more power to the mandarins who run government and provide less leeway for ordinary people to work for earn success.

But the most thorough treatment of Greenberg’s article is The Progressive Crisis by Walter Russell Mead in The American Interest.

Excerpts:

Meanwhile, Greenberg has not yet come to grips with the deepest and most difficult aspect of the crisis of liberal legitimacy.  He roots the dangerous and corrupting special interests outside the state: with their money and their lobbying the corporations and the fat cats influence and pervert the state. But the state and its servants do not, in Greenberg’s story, constitute a special interest of their own.

This is not how voters see it.  For large numbers of voters the professional classes who staff the bureaucracies, foundations and policy institutes in and around government are themselves a special interest. It is not that evil plutocrats control innocent bureaucrats; many voters believe that the progressive administrative class is a social order that has its own special interests.  Bureaucrats, think these voters, are like oil companies and Enron executives: they act only to protect their turf and fatten their purses.

The problem goes even deeper than hostility toward perceived featherbedding and life tenure for government workers.  The professionals and administrators who make up the progressive state are seen as a hostile power with an agenda of their own that they seek to impose on the nation.

Progressives want and need to believe that the voters are tuning them out because they aren’t progressive enough.  But it’s impossible to grasp the crisis of the progressive enterprise unless one grasps the degree to which voters resent the condescension and arrogance of know-it-all progressive intellectuals and administrators. They don’t just distrust and fear the bureaucratic state because of its failure to live up to progressive ideals (thanks to the power of corporate special interests); they fear and resent upper middle class ideology.  Progressives scare off many voters most precisely when they are least restrained by special interests.  Many voters feel that special interests can be a healthy restraint on the idealism and will to power of the upper middle class.

At bottom, that is what the populist revolt against establishments of all kinds is about.  A growing section of the American population wants to think and act for itself, without the guidance of the graduates of ivy league colleges and blue chip graduate programs.

The fight for limited government that animates so many Americans today isn’t a reaction against the abuses and failures of government.  It is a fight to break the power of a credentialed elite that believe themselves entitled by talent and hard work to a greater say in the nation’s affairs than people who scored lower on standardized tests and studied business administration in cheap colleges rather than political science in expensive ones.

HKO comments-

Progressives are failing to capture the American Voter because they are fighting the last war and have not adapted to the changes in the voting populace.

Tips to Bob Cain for the articles.