So long as the Democrats rule the political landscape in Congress and in the Executive branch, I’m willing to pull out my magical 8-ball to make a few predictions.

1. Obama won’t do anything for the economy. Don’t worry, we’ll hear how terrible our condition is and how we have such a long process to recovery but Obama’s policies will do very little to encourage anything remotely related to economic recovery. Economic recovery does not come from attempting to spend your way out of the doldrums. Trust me. I have a few thousand examples stacked up neatly in credit card bills that still arrive monthly. The difference is that I can’t walk away from my debt or ignore it or my credit rating suffers. Congress seems to think it has no credit rating.
2. Republicans will make a half-assed, half-hearted attempt to rally under the conservative banner only to mock it by electing more incompetant, mediocre representatives to office who are still bitter about homosexuals obtaining equal rights.
3. We’re going to gain a few civil liberties. We’re going to lose a lot more.
4. Democrats will raise taxes on the wealthy – only to realize the wealthy will only pay the same amount of tax if not less due to their incomprehensible economic policies.
5. Government will grow to new heights even leaving George W. Bush shaking his head at the size of government.
6. The war on drugs will continue to incarcerate a disproportionate number of minorities while ignoring the real costs and effects that it is leaving on our society. As long as Obama ignores the reality and complexity of the situation his presidency will degrade from historic to nothing more than the same.
7. Keynesianism will reveal its ugly head only to run into the same problems in created in the first place. You can’t spend your way out of debt. Balanced budgets don’t cut it when you have nearly 57 trillion dollars of debt piled up over the past 20 years or so.
8. A horribly neutered and irriducibly irrelevant health reform bill will make it through Congress that will be sure to make mediocre health care the standard rather than the occasional case. The only people who will be happy with it will be the insurance lobby and the medical community. A congressman will then tell us that we’re somehow better off now without ever substantiating the claim and ignoring the reality taking place right behind his back. (Think officer Brady from South Park)
9. All branches of government will continue to ignore the GAO.
10. Public schools will still be their mediocre selves.
11. Earmarks will reach a new height in dollars while the stupidity level of what Congressmen are earmarking funds for will remain the same (abyssmally high).
12. The Pentagon will pay some ludicrous sum of money for something ironic and moronic and then plead for more money to ensure they can equip our soldiers. The whole Rumsfeld painting is exempted – this was under Bush’s watch.
13. The Federal Student Loan system will teeter on the edge of failure only to be rescued by the same dolts who created it in the first place: government bureaucrats.
14. A giant corporation will collapse in a smoldering heap of failure after some stupidly arrogant crime is committed by an overpaid, well-parachuted executive. The executive will take a leap to safety on the parachute while stockholders will get bilked out of their equity. There will be plenty of fist shaking and a revision to SOX to ensure that all of those businesses who are doing honest business are punished for the crimes of a very small few.
15. Our tax system will continue to grow more complex leaving IRS employees more confused on just what money they are not entitled to.
16. The federal government will continue to pass off surplus and used military gear to local police departments who will be more than happy to deploy anti-personel armor and weapons for no-knock drug raids only to find a small amount of marijuana residue and a violently dangerous dog who was shot running away from the officers assaulting the home.
17. Police officers will continue to be held to some other standard rather than the law. The “Blue exception” to the law will prevail more often than not.
18. Paul Krugman will continue to write political pieces while completely ignoring the laws and rules of the very academic science he is known for: economics. He will violate at least 3 different economic laws or make at least 3 arguments that violate economic fallacies. To go one step further but not included in this prediction – I’ll guess he’ll violate the such staid axioms of economics like the “Broken window fallacy”, “The law of supply and demand”, and, oh, let’s say a contradiction of “opportunity costs”. The media will be quick to point out that he is a Nobel Laureate without paying attention to the fact that whatever he is commenting on directly violates one of many rules of the science of economics for which he won the Nobel.
19. A new drinking game will evolve from Obama speeches in which the rules dicate you must drink once every time Obama says “hope”; two drinks when he says “change”;  drink whole beer every time he attempts to relate to some historical situation as if today is as hard (or harder) than the past.
20. And one for the technology crew: Some new-fangled Internet service will take 10% of the population by storm. This service can do one stupid thing pretty damned well. Someone or some company will buy this other company only to realize that they have no way to monetize the damned thing and have a giant, gaping whole in their books where something like revenue or profit should be.

Now if you made it this far, you’ll realize that I think I can have most of these crossed off as accomplished in about a month or so. My larger point is that if you expect there to be some great change afoot, you’re probably more wrong than I am.

Reason – Nick Gillespie

I always love watching Republican values at work. Sarah Palin’s daugher has a baby out of wedlock. This was released just after news arrived that Virginity pledges don’t work.  I wonder if Google has an irony detection system – I was browsing Google and found this:

Oh the irony of Republican reproductive values

LA Times runs an article where David Axelrod, an Obama advisor states:

Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” David Axelrod, a senior advisor to Obama, said, “We have to act. Every economist from left to right agrees that we have to do something big in terms of job creation, but we want to do it in a way that will leave a lasting footprint.”

I bet I can think of at least two economists who disagree with Axelrod’s assumption. And there are a host of other economists who disagree, whether they view the Austrian tradition in a positive/negative light.

The problem here is that our new administration is posturing this as a Global Warming-type “scientific consensus” issue that has already been used and beat into the ground. I’m sure Axelrod will start backpedaling and trying to reign in the comment with something to the effect of “the best economists” or the “brightest economists” to properly qualify the statement. Unfortunately, those definitions would be at the sole discretion of Axelrod and only as qualified as Axelrod is to determine who is the best and brightest.

The problem is that we don’t turn to scientific study to determine what the future is. We infer from the data that we have in an attempt to predict, with some reasonable probability, of future events.  There is a significant difference.  Prediction carries the inherent possibility of chance – the product or outcome of the unexpected is a distinct probability.

With this in mind, an economist’s opinion is only that – the opinion of the scientist. To assume an economist can predict the future with any certainty, which Axelrod appears willing to assume through the “consensus” opinion, is nothing short of malarky. If you believe that an economist knows the future any better than a carnival fortune teller, you are sadly mistaken.

Mathew Yglesias replies to a recent Cato unbound topic here.  While I can humbly accept many of Mathew’s points, the one part I am generally confused by is this:

The libertarian utopia is no more realistic than the socialist utopia of a perfectly informed and perfectly benevolent central planner.

I’ve heard this argument before. Typically it will launch into a degrading debate on “it’s never been tried before” by libertarians who will then put themselves into the position of supporting a fallacy that is far too common at the Internet-level of discussion.

The argument I raise is that where we have some factual examples of socialism at work throughout history. We know through historical study and the realistic outcomes of socialist (and communist) utopianism that it falls far from its promises. The reality of socialism requires compulsion, if not force, to ensure the ideal can meet fruition. By some course of action, you must dehumanize man to compel him to betray his own natural ways.

Libertarianism is far different. I must acknowledge that I’m painting with broad strokes, so my argument is may not fit everyone’s bucket. Matt illustrates one area where progressives fail to understand libertarians. Libertarian utopianism is not modeled on a perfected society – nor does it fit the conventional assumptions made of the ‘utopian’ definition.While there is an ideal libertarian state, it is far removed from the trappings of “perfection” or an “ideal society”. What a progressive labels as libertarian utopianism is nothing more than an assertion of the nature of man and the constraints of an individual within society. Libertarianism makes no claim on the form or motives of any given society. Rather, libertarianism deals specifically with the individual actor in the socio-political economy.

I fail to see where Yglesias derives his concept that libertarian utopianism is “no more realistic” than a socialist one. My question to Mathew would be: why? Given, progressives have, for the most part of a century, ruled the American political roost while wearing the stripes of both political parties. For all the evidence we have, given America’s hell-bent adherence to a mixed economy, we can say that progressivism has failed to achieve its own unrealistic utopianism of a well-managed government with a highly regulated and efficient business environment. Why? Because progressivism ignores many basic facts. You have to be willing to suspend belief in unintended consequences, ignore the reality of scarcity, and be willing to negate individual liberty if it suits the needs of the majority. If anything, progressive policies attempting to deliver on progressive utopianism have failed on a greater order of magnitude. Yet few progressives are willing to admit this, if even to themselves.

When Congress was granted certain powers to regulate trade those powers created the incentivization system. As politicians worked the system, it brought new mouths to the trough – both consumers and businesses alike. Every subsequent regulation that occurred was nothing more than dealing with the unintended consequences of its own predecessor. If the regulation did not have a predecessor, child regulation would evolve to counteract the unintended consequences of the parent.

Progressivism has never and will never deal with the reality of the position they advocate. They can hurl insults against the wealthy and businesses but they still can not come up with a plausible and sensible argument supporting wealth redistribution or provide any means of thanks for all of the loot plundered. Progressives never quite stop to ask whether forcing someone to give up what they rightfully own is truly right or virtuous. Instead, the argument is largley nothing more than “deal with it.”

Progressives and libertarians are often at odds simply because progressives have been winning the debate in which they, not libertarians, frame the statements to be argued. Again, to be progressive, you need to ingore certain facets of reality. When progressives attack big business, libertarians often come to the defense largely because progressivism attacks the defensible parts of business. Libertarains know and distrust businesses seeking enrichment at the public trough. But the argument is never quite framed this way.

No one questions progressives on who supports the public trough or why they believe it can be effectively managed or remedied when the same entities running government are the same entities running corporations: humans. Progressives and the ever-optomystics (sic) relentlessly badger and harp on just how horrible corporations are. Most libertarians would not disagree. A business is only as “good” or “evil” as its employees make it. Except the libertarian solution isn’t quite good enough. Where libertarians would dis-incentivize the political world by removing regulation and the ability of government to create new incentives that breed rent-seeking. Progressives would rather perpetuate this system with a few tweaks to the rules of engagement.

Progressivism clings to this notion that human idealism established and pursued through government is somehow more noble and less afflicted by the reality of self-interest. All this comes on the back of a promise that you can and will have your cake and eat it too.

Admittedly, the libertarian philosophy can be tough on the outside. Progressives have pursued a policy of education without question – take everything at face value and thrive on emotion over appying reason; libertarianism pursues education through individual pursuit and reason applied prior to emotion.

Libertarians often apply boiler-plate arguments, not because they are unreasoned, but because they are reasoned (to some degree) as truths. Progressivism holds that there can be no truths, only variations oof truths that can be adapted to fit the situation. And in this sense, Progressivism does win many arguments. Progressivism panders to idealism. Libertarianism panders to reason.

Idealism itself isn’t bad. However when you apply progressive thought on the subject, you often find progressivism, not libertarianism, is unbounded by reality. The failures of progressivism are not those of libertarianism although many progressives would ask you to believe otherwise.

I’m reminded of that scene in “Little Miss Sunshine” where the family is on the road to the pagent and Duane and the little girl are doing eye tests.  It ends up being that Duane is color blind. All Duane wants to do is fly fighter jets in the military. Duane’s uncle turns around and tells Duane that he won’t be able to fly jets.

Libertarians tend to point out the reality of the situation. Progressives would continue to push the fantasy forward no matter how improbable the goal. The exception is that living in the fantasy is fun for a long time – until reality sets in and takes its course.

But hey, that’s just my unqualified opinion.

If you are a “predator lender” (not as in a zoo that lends animals), you may want to consider the infamous monologue from New Jack City:

I’m not guilty. You’re the one that’s guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Wall Street titans, all you who lobby to make housing a right. Just like you did with every other failed social program. You’re the one who’s guilty. I mean, c’mon, let’s kick the ballistics here: Ain’t no houses made for free. Not one of us in here owns a credit swap. This thing is bigger than [your name]. This is big business. This is the American way.

(ok, he really didn’t say to kill yourselves)

I thought I was, well, skeptical of the government. But Lou Dobbs is so depressing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the suicide rate of his viewers is a hundred times higher than the national average. Here’s a talking comb-over who could use a re-adjustment.  I mean, he is perpetually dumbfounded throughout the entire show. He just doesn’t stop. being. dumbfounded.

I fail to see how his ratings can do anything but hinder CNN – making it the news channel that can’t afford anyone with a brain. So I give Lou Dobbs the Jim Jones Club Card of Cult Leaders.

Radley Balko points out that Karen Tandy is leaving the DEA.

Note that I don’t use the word “rapist” lightly. Yet, Tandy’s conviction to ridding the United States of drugs often belies her general lack of depth or understanding. She’s a product of black-and-white/no-inbetween bias. Her actions have left many pain patients in hopeless agony, a badge she wears with pride. So what do we call someone who intentionally pursues policies regardless of the number of cases where the issue is, and can never be, black-and-white?  She’s a do-gooder of the worst kind, completely incapable of recognizing the consequences of her actions – actions that have persecuted and tortured many a soul who would, by any rational argument, have some means finding solutions to treating their own pain in privacy. The woman must have taken some perverse interest in persecuting people, leaving them to suffer, all to her delight. So, if she wishes to use the law to violate the natural rights of a person and the sanctity of the self, I have no qualms calling it rape and Tandy a rapist.