Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
From an interview with Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a man of whom Bill Clinton said “We should all heed his advice”:
You’ve talked before about the civilizational challenge that climate change poses, how confident are you that the human race is up to meeting that challenge?
We don’t know and there is no guarantee that we will. But we do know that change can come very quickly. Look how quickly the US restructured its whole economy in 1942. At beginning of 1942, the automobile companies were producing automobiles. By the middle of 1942 they were all producing tanks and planes. It didn’t take decades or years, just a few months and they totally converted. If they could do that then, certainly we can restructure the world energy economy today. What Roosevelt did was ban the sale of cars. He didn’t say they couldn’t produce cars. He just banned the sale of cars.
Would you like to see President Obama do that?
I’d like to see him ban the sale of coal and oil.
Dear heavens, the Imperial President should “ban the sale of coal and oil”? Oh, yeah, that’s the ticket. Some 40% of US electricity, lots of our industrial energy, and ~ 100% of our transportation fuel comes from coal and oil, so I’m sure that other than the small matter of impoverishment, suffering, death, and economic ruin, banning them wouldn’t cause any disruption at all … while I want to ask “is this Imperious Idiot for real?”, the sad truth is that Lester Brown is totally serious.
But even more frightening than the horrendous economic disruption and human suffering from such a suicidal course of action is that Lester Brown is advocating tyranny, and given his history, our Imperial President Obama would likely be more than happy to accommodate him.
As a candidate, Obama spoke out strongly against expanded executive power, saying in October of 2007:
These last few years we’ve seen an unacceptable abuse of power at home. We’ve paid a heavy price for having a president whose priority is expanding his own power.
and
I taught constitutional law for ten years. I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that were facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all, and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.
After watching George Bush, Obama’s position on limiting executive power was one of the reasons I voted for him in 2008 … back before I realized that if Obama’s lips were moving, there were non-zero odds that he was lying, as in this case. Which is one of the reasons why I voted against him in 2012.
Now that he’s in power, and particularly now that he’s in his second term, he’s decided that he gets the last say on everything under the sun, and has presided over a huge increase in executive power, viz:
Whenever this Congress refuses to act in a way that hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, I’ve got an obligation as president to do what we can without them.
Despite being a “constitutional scholar”, he seems to misunderstand the separation of powers. He has no such obligation. It’s not his job to decide what “hurts the economy and puts the people at risk”, and more importantly, he has no such power. If the Congress decides not to pass a law, that’s their choice. The President’s job is to be the “Chief Executive”, and as such, the Constitution says he is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Nowhere is he given the power to make or interpret the laws. That is the job of Congress on the one hand and the Courts on the other … and if Congress won’t act, well, tough. If you don’t like the Congress, vote them out of office.
However, obviously, neither President Obama nor Lester Brown see it that way. As we just saw with the new regulations involving coal plants, President Obama is more than happy to make new “environmental” laws by presidential edict. And I’m sure that both the Imperial President and the Imperious Idiot firmly believe that Obama has the power to ban the sale gas and oil.
The Founding Fathers were very concerned that the President should NOT have this kind of imperial powers, and for good reason. They’d seen the damage that strong-men had done in a variety of monarchies and tyrannies. So they devised a system of “separation of powers”—Congress makes the laws, the President enforces the laws, and the Supreme Court interprets the laws.
Sadly, we have fallen very far from that, and President Obama has done immense damage to that system by “solving” every problem, from glitches with Obamacare to interim appointments to immigration reform to destroying coal plants, by imperial proclamation. At this point, all I can do is fervently hope he doesn’t listen to Lester Brown …
Gotta say … 2016 can’t come fast enough for me.
w.
End Note: Please do not use this as a springboard for general political attacks on either side. There are lots of web pages for doing that. The issue here is the Imperious Idiot’s asinine proposal to ban the sale of coal and oil, and the Imperial President’s claim that he has the executive power to do just about anything, presumably including Lester’s proposed ban.
The Usual: If you disagree with something that I or anyone has said, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU DISAGREE WITH. This avoids many misunderstandings.
The Interview: The full interview is here.
Willis Eschenbach says:
July 5, 2014 at 6:13 pm
Marc says:
July 5, 2014 at 1:23 pm
There are two questions about a vote for Obama in 2008:
…
And no, I have never been fooled by any politician ever.
My congratulations, go to the head of the class.
w.
I would, but I accomplished such on the backs of men wiser than me that revealed the full capacity of human nature long before me. That’s a nice dodge of my questions. It was monumentally obvious what kind of person Obama was in 2008, so it doesn’t speak highly of someone at your age who could have missed that.
The man who can be trusted with power is so rare as to be irrelevant today. When given a vote, it must always go to the person who least promotes the power and expansion of government, and then expect to still be terribly disappointed.
Marc says:
July 6, 2014 at 5:37 pm
Great, you’re a freakin’ unique genius and I’m an idiot, you’re a man who has never been fooled by any politician ever.
Me, I saw the 2008 election as a choice between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin. Obviously, you thought McCain/Palin was the better choice …
Sarah Palin, one heartbeat away from the Presidency … and you claim you’ve never been fooled?
Look, Mr. Anonymously Arrogant, in a choice between Obama/Biden and McCain/Palin, all you can do is choose who you think might be fooling you less. I thought Obama was the lesser of the two weevils … so sue me.
And if you’re so damn smart, why are you hiding your identity under a bushel? Are you afraid your friends or your boss will find out about your boasts? You worried that your mom might read your fanciful claims and realize that the reason you haven’t ever been fooled by a politician is that you are sixteen and have never voted?
As one of the anonymice, of course, there’s no way to confirm or falsify your braggadocio. So go ahead and declaim of your amazing brilliance, tell us how you voted for Sarah Palin, there’s no way for us to check any of it … sorry, not impressed in the slightest.
In my book, any man who anonymously claims he has never been fooled, by a politician or anyone else, is experimenting with the stress/strain curve of veracity … but I must say, for a man who’s never been fooled by a politician, it’s been a pleasure watching you make a fool of yourself.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming …
w.
At 8:16 PM on 6 July, Willis Eschenbach had written:
Hrm. With regard to “Barry” Soebarkah (by way of his own “official” biography, he’d been adopted – with his name thus changed – by “Lolo” Soetoro to become a citizen of the Republic of Indonesia, and there has been – even at the time of the 2008 elections – no history of any action in law to restore his legal appellation to “Barack Hussein Obama II”), what I did hear from him was his troth plighted to the great war on “climate change,” when in January 2008 he stated quite explicitly in an interview with the editorial board of The San Francisco Chronicle:
Bad as Crash Test Johnnie was and still is (and having grown up and lived most of my life in the Delaware Valley to know all about Joe Biden, I can tell you that Sara Palin would be a helluva lot preferable in that “only-an-impeachment-away” slot), that explicit dedication to the great “Liberal” fascist war on atmospheric carbon dioxide instantly put the harpoon in Michelle’s Metrosexual Meatpuppet insofar as I was concerned.
Mr. Eschenbach, that guy wasn’t “fooling you” AT ALL.
And still you voted for him?
———————————–
You VOTED for HIM??? What kind of blind sucker are you?? I saw through that creep the moment I set eyes on him. He was so obviously unqualified, such an obvious fake, so clearly a communist idiot. How simple does someone have to be, to have EVER been taken in by the likes of him?? Nice that you have finally figured it out after all of what has happened, but you were sure an idiot. Hard to believe that someone can stop being an idiot – yeah, you have been slapped in the face in this particular case and forced to recant, but your credibility is destroyed forever as far as I can see.
In making his comment, Mr. Wilson seems to have the purpose of reminding us that in debating an issue it is logical to avoid characterization one’s opponent when the character of this opponent is unrelated to this issue. Thus, for example, in debating CAGW it is logical to avoid characterization of Mr. Obama as “imperious” because whether or not he is imperious is unrelated to whether or not we face CAGW. Well said!
William Wilson says:
July 6, 2014 at 8:46 pm
So sue me … I find this parade of genius folks that have never ever been fooled, the line of ‘never made a mistake’ folks to be hilarious.
You pretend that I chose Obama/Biden out of a host of good candidates. Instead, I voted for him instead of John McCain and Sarah Palin … so to use your words, you VOTED FOR HER??? What kind of a blind sucker are you? I saw through that creep the moment I laid eyes on her … your credibility is destroyed forever as far as I can see, blah, blah, blah …
Do you not see how foolish you sound when you start spouting off like that? Neither my credibility nor yours hangs on who you might have voted for in 2008, that’s ridiculous.
It’s a judgement call. I thought Obama/Biden was the lesser of two weevils, as I said above … and while you may disagree, your vile attack on me in response is unpleasant, unwarranted, and unsupported.
Go back to tearing the wings off of flies or something, William the Perfect. Clearly you’re not mature enough for a political discussion.
w.
Willis,
In response to:
In my book, any man who anonymously claims he has never been fooled, by a politician or anyone else, is experimenting with the stress/strain curve of veracity … but I must say, for a man who’s never been fooled by a politician, it’s been a pleasure watching you make a fool of yourself.
1). Didn’t claim never been fooled by anyone. Can’t get fooled by politician because I never believe their words, I examine their preexisting character and actions the best I can, knowing that is also inadequate. To the extent I have ever been “fooled,” I have only fooled myself.
2). I stay anonymous because I have a highly visible professional position where I keep my politics invisible as that is necessary to work most effectively with the broad cohort of people who work for and with me. Furthermore, I still have to put my children through college, so I don’t take chances with any impairment of my livelihood.
3). My mother recently passed away at 88.
4). I am sorry that it offends you to be criticized on this. I am not going to argue about Palin except to say she philosophically believes in a more restrained federal government than Biden, but that was irrelevant. I was voting for president as it seemed remote that Biden or Palin would rise to the presidency. Given the statistical chances, I ignored that dimension.
5). I met McCain as a teenager in 1977 in a group of 10 students who listened to and spoke to him about his then very recent POW experience. He certainly now evinces some post-traumatic tics, but his character and experiences versus Obama’s couldn’t be much more fundamentally different. I don’t love McCain, but the comparison to Obama at the time, and even now, is not a close call.
6). While it may be comforting to you to assume I am making things up because I am anonymous on publicly accessible forums, you might want to consider the alternative too. Your willingness to write me off without considering the valid reasons many people have for remaining anonymous doesn’t address the substance. Plus, I am not trying to be smarter than anyone; as I said the things I said are broadly known by millions, you just missed them somehow. I assure you, I have not made anything up, but you can believe whatever you like.
7). Again, I am most interested in what lesson you think you learned by the choice you made. It was a shocking admission, but if you have learned something fundamental about something, more power to you — just curious what you think that is.
8). It is all OK, I will still read your stuff as you seem to be seeking the truth in your efforts — a value I hold in the highest esteem.
Terry Oldberg says:
July 6, 2014 at 10:10 pm
Thanks, Terry. Since I didn’t say that Obama was “imperious”, I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
I called him the “Imperial President” because in the past he has way overstepped his powers in the fight on climate change, in exactly the manner suggested by Lester Brown … which is extremely relevant to the discussion.
w.
Only one president hasn’t used executive orders and that’s because he died of pneumonia thirty days after taking office. We had one president issue over 3,500 orders during the great depression. All orders are subject to judicial review and can be struck down if deemed by courts to be unsupported by statute or the Constitution. So there really is no imperial proclamation.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php
Also, there is more to the “Whenever this Congress refuses to act…” quote. Any president would say something pretty strong about a Congress that blocks job creation and economic recovery for political gain. I’m a third party voter.
http://m.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/09/remarks-president-campaign-event
…The crisis that struck in the months before I took office put more Americans out of work than any time since the Great Depression. But it was the culmination of a decade where the middle class had been losing ground. More good jobs and manufacturing left our shores. More of our prosperity was built on risky financial deals and homes that we couldn’t afford. And we racked up greater debt, and incomes fell and wages flat-lined. And the cost of everything from college to groceries went through the roof.
Now, these problems didn’t happen overnight. And the truth is they’re not going to be solved overnight. It is going to take us a few more years to meet all the challenges that have been decades in the making. And the American people understand that. What the American people don’t understand are leaders who refuse to take action. They’re sick and tired of watching people who are supposed to represent them put party ahead of country and the next election ahead of the next generation. That’s what they don’t understand. That’s what they don’t understand. (Applause.)
You know, President Kennedy used to say after he took office what surprised him most about Washington was that things were just as bad as he had been saying they were. (Laughter.) And I understand what he meant. (Laughter.) When you’ve got the top Republican in the Senate saying his party’s number-one priority is not to create jobs, not to fix the economy, but to beat me — that gives you a sense of the mentality here. Things aren’t on the level. That’s how you end up with Republicans in Congress voting against all kinds of proposals that they supported in the past. Tax cuts for workers and small businesses, rebuilding roads and bridges, putting cops and teachers back to work used to be bipartisan ideas.
Now, I’ve said I will continue to look for every opportunity during the course of this year to work with Congress to move this country forward and create jobs.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We can’t wait!
THE PRESIDENT: But we can’t wait. (Laughter and applause.) When Congress — whenever this Congress refuses to act in a way that hurts our economy and puts our people at risk, I’ve got an obligation as President to do what we can without them. (Applause.) I’ve got an obligation to work on behalf of you and the American people. (Applause.) I’m not going to let members of Congress put party ideology ahead of the people that they were elected to serve — not when there’s this much at stake.
This is a make-or-break moment for this country, for the middle class in this country and folks who want to get into the middle class. So, for example, that’s why last week I appointed Richard Cordray as America’s consumer watchdog. (Applause.) Now, this is a man whose sole job is to look out for the best interests of American consumers — to protect families from the kinds of unfair or deceptive, abusive financial practices that helped to bring the economy to its knees. That shouldn’t be controversial. Why would somebody be against that? (Laughter.)
And yet, for almost half a year, Republicans in the Senate blocked his appointment. They wouldn’t even vote on it, not because they said he wasn’t qualified, because they couldn’t say that. Former attorney general — you had Democrats and Republicans across the country, including his home state of Ohio, saying he was qualified. They just wanted to weaken Wall Street reforms. They thought, well, this might be too tough on these financial firms.
Now, does anybody here think that the reason we got into this financial mess was because we had too much oversight?
AUDIENCE: No! …
At 10:56 PM on 6 July, Ed Mertin praises our Indonesian-in-Chief for adopting an explicit “King Stork” attitude toward our national pondful of frogs, writing:
In this there is the pernicious assumption that there are purposeful dirigiste interventions which government goons – elected politicians and appointed bureaucrats – can undertake to engender “job creation and economic recovery” by way of coercion, and that this command economy policy is justified by the assumption that the people voluntarily participating in the private sector of our society are incapable of wealth creation absent the wise and all-knowing thuggery of career popularity contest winners and officious “experts” battening on public payrolls.
Hrm. There’s a concept in political economics known as “the knowledge problem” (articulated by Mises nearly a century ago, and much discussed by Hayek and other scholars subsequently) which cogently puts the spike in the premise that any government officer (or banditti of such perfumed arrogants) can know enough about the manifold factors of production, distribution, and consumption even in small subsectors of national or world economies to substitute beneficially for Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” of peaceably interacting voluntary market participants.
If I put in a link to any supporting reference, my comment will get held – yet again – “for moderation,” so I won’t do that. Instead, let me direct your attention – as a beginning – to Israel M. Kirzner’s very straightforward review article on “Economic Planning and the Knowledge Problem” in Cato Journal Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 1984), in which he quotes Hakek (1945):
Further investigation is left as an exercise to the student. The fascisti have been squirming and squealing unsuccessfully against this rocket rammed up their collectivist dupa ever since Mises published “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” (1920).
In your extensive quotation of the lovefest gull-and-diddle session from Soebarkah’s 2012 campaign, you’ve more than amply made it clear that your beloved Community Organizer hasn’t got the least goddam clue about what the proper role of civil government in society is, or has ever been.
And you’re using this to extoll him?
Bad as the Republicans are – and I’ve no doubt at all that they’re an execrable bunch of weasels, thieves, and blind idiots – when it comes to “Barry” Soebarkah, I have to go along with what P.J. O’Rourke had written back when Bubba was a-squat on the presidential commode:
Marc says:
July 6, 2014 at 10:30 pm
Willis,
So you never believed John McCain, you never believed JFK, you never believed LBJ, you never believed Olympia Snowe, nor Barry Goldwater, nor Ronald Reagan, in fact, you simply have never believed a single word that any politician has said.
Got it. Must make your life easy, you never have to wonder if they’re telling the truth or not.
However, despite the fact that you have never ever been fooled by a politician, not once in your entire life … on those occasions when you have been fooled by a politician, you’ve actually been fooling yourself.
Got it.
Makes perfect sense. No politician ever fooled you, by gosh, but when they have fooled you it’s only an illusion, because actually you have fooled yourself … Q.E.D.
We’ve all been fooled at one time or another, Marc. It sounds like you were badly fooled by Sarah Palin, for example. Her character was so weak that she walked out on the governorship … couldn’t make it as Governor, wimped out on the job, but she’s fine by you to be President? And you were more than fooled by the pair to so cavalierly discount the chance that a 72-year old man might die before he turned 80 … yeah, like that’s never happened.
But those are all just matters on which reasonable men can disagree. What is unpleasant is your sneering, triumphant tone of your basic claim.
You see, your basic claim is that anyone who votes for some lying politician other than the lying politician that Marc The Unfoolable Genius voted for is an easily-fooled idiot who needs to be grilled by Marc the Magnificent to find out whether he’s learned the proper lesson from his unbelievably stupid mistake, viz:
But OK, since you insist, here’s what I learned by the choice I made:
Never answer political questions from a pretentious unpleasant arrogant anonymous braggart with the alias “Marc” and an ego the size of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.
Go away, little man. I voted for a different pair of lying politicians than the pair of lying politicians you voted for. Get over it.
w.
PS—I don’t care why you are anonymous, nor am I saying you are wrong to be anonymous. I’m just pointing out that unlike me, you could lie through your teeth all day long about your life and what you’ve done or not done … and nobody, not even your friends or co-workers, could ever falsify those claims. So unlike people who sign their own names and have to pay a price if they don’t tell the truth, you will never pay any price if you stretch the truth until it breaks.
As a result, I have absolutely no reason to think that you are not lying. And given the actions of other anonymous bloggers around the web, I have every reason to believe that you may well be lying.
Be clear I’m not saying you are lying. That is an accusation I never make without clear evidence in hand that it is incontrovertibly true.
What I am saying is that your claims make no impression on me, because there is very real possibility that you are lying, you will pay no price if you are lying, and we have absolutely no way to determine if you are telling the truth or not. So I just put it in the “so what” pile.
Ed Mertin says:
July 6, 2014 at 10:56 pm
Thanks, Ed. Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but just about every politician of both parties firmly believes that the other party is blocking legislation that will lead to job creation, and that the opposition’s policies won’t lead to economic growth. Republicans clearly believe that about Democratic polices, and vice versa. That’s how it’s always been.
Given that, most bizarrely you are claiming that simply because Obama doesn’t like the economic policies of the opposition, he is justified in governing by imperial diktat. Sorry, but that’s exactly the kind of misuse of executive power that the Founding Fathers feared. If your claim is true, there is no situation where the President would not be justified in intervening. You don’t like the opposition’s policies on Michelle’s school lunches? Must be time for an executive order. You don’t like the Republican’s position on abortion? Hey, neither do I … but that doesn’t mean that Obama gets to make the rules.
Nor am I alone in my dislike for this kind of imperial action. For example, who said:
So spare me the pious nonsense about how executive orders are not part of the Imperial Presidency. Obama was very clear that that is exactly what they are … or he was clear, until he became President and could use Executive Orders to reward his friends and screw his enemies.
Now, he has even enlisted folks like yourself as apologists for his change of heart, making the claim that if the President doesn’t like his opponent’s economic policies he can wipe them out with the stroke of a pen …
I’m sorry, Ed, but that is indeed an Imperial Presidency.
w.
Tucci,
Re: the knowledge problem…
Every individual makes many thousands of decisions every day. Some are important, some less so, but each one influences how the organism will act. Those decisions are in turn acted upon by other organisms. It is an amazing system that efficiently allocates resources.
Multiply those thousands of decisions by hundereds of millions of people [billions, if you include overseas investors], and you have a quantum computer. That computer is infinitely more powerful and accurate than the large, but limited number of government bureaucrats who think they can make better decisions than a quantum computer.
That is why central planning fails. It cannot possibly be as intelligent as the free market.
Anent “the knowledge problem,” at 1:19 AM on 7 July dbstealey writes:
There’s really nothing “amazing” about how organisms act and interact (sez the former Biology major) or how sapient entities undertake purposeful human action guided by their best appreciations of the situations and circumstances they encounter. Like physiology and ecology, praxeology really ain’t beyond understanding by way of simple skull sweat, particularly when you don’t lose focus on the concept of negative feedback as a controlling mechanism.
What makes the free market (which is to say the voluntary interactions of self-interested individual human beings in a milieu free from coercive intervention either “picking winners” or buffering the adversities of error and objective reality’s blind perversities) work better than any top-down ordination is that the market process leverages with greater efficiency the incentive for people to perceive negative feedback, both anticipated and ongoing, thereafter to observe, analyze, and act accordingly.
As regards the “quantum computer” analogy, nobody can honestly say that groups of people (even in great numbers, all cooperating like crazy) are somehow smarter or more reliable than the individual even if left to function without government thugs “guiding” them. There are accounts a-plenty of flaming idiot fads and fancies throughout history, and the power of willful ignorance and egregious stupidity en masse might actually be a good candidate for use of the word “amazing.”
What’s important, however, is the fact that (particularly with the increasingly accelerated dissemination of information about successes and failures) the effects of negative feedback are more rapidly and more readily appreciated when people mingle their individual choices together in a division-of-labor society such as ours, refining the quality of our knowledge and therefore the effectiveness of our actions.
That can look sort of like a “quantum computer” in operation, but think of it less as a grand difference engine grinding away than as an error-checking mechanism functioning on an almost uncountable number of branching decision trees.
“””””…..RobRoy says:
July 5, 2014 at 7:03 pm
george e. smith says:
July 5, 2014 at 4:11 pm “It also has nothing to do with militias.”
george, than why are a militia mentioned?
Certainly not to mean “nothing”.
———————————————————————————–…..”””””
Well RobRoy, I guess you just didn’t read my post on the subject.
For starters; nowhere in that document is a “militia” defined, nor is a “well regulated militia” defined.
Nor does it say just who is going to “regulate” this militia, whatever it is. Do the people regulate it or someone else.
Mentioning something, does not make it a condition on something else. As I pointed out, mentioning the sunrise, or a free state , also would not make those conditions.
Get yourself an English grammar book, and learn about sentence structure, and what makes one clause depend on another; or in this case be quite independent of another.
Some have argued that the various State National Guards, are militias. Far as I know, they are part of the DOD.
Stating a reason (ANY reason) why you believe in something (a militia), does not make it a condition on something else. Article 2 of the Bill of Rights does not make the right of the people conditional on ANY thing else.
Also if you hold that it only applies to a right of States to have a national guard (milita), and not the people, then simply move on down to Article 9 of the Bill of rights, where it says the people have ALL rights, that are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution; and that would surely include things like a right to privacy, and also the means to defend oneself.
Lester Brown is also an idiot about history. It didn’t take six months for American industry to switch in 1942 from making cars to making tanks. It took years. The process had begun in about 1938. FDR saw the inevitability of war and quietly engaged industrial leaders to plan and invest, particularly in machine tools –the tools that make the tools that make the products, be they Buicks or bombers. Brown seems like many warmunists to suffer from Progressive Disease, where hand-waving substitutes for real knowledge of how things work.
Liberals like the idea of being dictators. A couple of years ago the NYT was editorializing about how easy the rulers of China have it. If they see a problem they can just go fix the problem without having to worry about any interference from those who disagree with them.
richard verney says:
July 5, 2014 at 1:11 am
—-
You would be amazed, and perhaps saddened by the number of liberals who actually believe that the reason why the standard of living has improved over the last 200 years has been because govt regulations required it.
The idea that the industrial revolution created wealth and free enterprise distributed that wealth is completely foreign and even repulsive to them. They believe that the wealth has always existed, only the rich had stolen it and were keeping it for themselves, until govt came along and redistributed it.
Willis,
Of course I am not going away — with children in the mix, I have a dog in the hunt regarding the direction of civilization.
You have seen I am sure from this thread that many people are disturbed by disastrous course the presidency is on, which any evidence-based decision-making in 2008 clearly predicted, and legions of people understood that. I am sorry that you don’t want to address that.
Yes, everyone, including me, makes mistakes and misjudgments, but the problem is that most people don’t learn the true lessons from them. My mistakes and misjudgments have arisen nearly entirely from my own ignorance or my assumption of greater knowledge than I actually had — not from information that was actually missing. That is not circular.
Through a difficult childhood due to exogenous circumstances, I learned early on how difficult it is to know people’s characters. However, I would not wish my education process on others, even though it has made me pretty clear-eyed about humans — good and bad.
No the choice between McCain and Obama was not a “liar” neutral choice as you posit it — but I can see that you are unpersuadable.
By the way, the first vote I ever cast, at my first voter eligibililty, was in 1980 for Ronald Reagan — highly contrarian to my college classmates at the ultra-liberal institution from which I graduated.
Your dismissal of my comments because of anonymity is the opposite extreme of argument ad verecundiam, and just as invalid. If that is your stance, I suggest you ban anonymous comments from your threads — though I suppose Anthony’s views would dictate that.
Marc is my real name, just not all of it.
Sounds like Obama has a lot in common with the Kommisars of the EU – except that he was elected of course. I’m sure he could swap a few stories with Juncker, the president-appoint of the EU commission, about how to strangle the democratic process.
Still, Obama has plenty of supporters, as does the EU. A friend recently giving an argument in support of the EU, explained that the EU is “inclusive.” That’s the problem with sound bites, they’re just too damn enticing. Perhaps Obama is “inclusive” as well. There you go,as long as you find some popular attribute it can be used to justify all kinds of wrongful behaviour.
–Despite being a “constitutional scholar”, he seems to misunderstand the separation of powers. He has no such obligation. It’s not his job to decide what “hurts the economy and puts the people at risk”, and more importantly, he has no such power. If the Congress decides not to pass a law, that’s their choice. The President’s job is to be the “Chief Executive”, and as such, the Constitution says he is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Nowhere is he given the power to make or interpret the laws. That is the job of Congress on the one hand and the Courts on the other … and if Congress won’t act, well, tough. If you don’t like the Congress, vote them out of office.–
I think it’s obvious the president does not have the authority, but I also don’t think the congress has such authority.
Instead, what is needed for government to have such authority, is a amendment to the Constitution granting such authority.
Marc says:
July 7, 2014 at 10:37 am
Marc, I didn’t “dismiss your comments”. Let me take an example. You say:
And I say
So … what is the difference in our two statements?
The difference is that anyone who wants to can go to Ancestry.com, as people have done regarding my statements about my life, and verify that what I have said is in fact true.
So my statements are verifiable, but for all I know, you are 24 years old, your mom is 48, and you are still living in her basement.
So I have not dismissed your comments as you claim, Marc.
You have dismissed them, by making them unverifiable.
There is another important difference. I can’t lie about what I say. I have to stand behind my words, because you or my friends or my wife or anyone can check their veracity. So I can’t make stuff up like you can … note that I have said like you CAN, not like you DO, because I have no way to know what is made up and what is real.
In addition, you can change your name to Markk21 and walk away from your words. I don’t have that luxury. Everything I write I have to be willing to defend.
So as I said above, I’m not claiming that anonymity is wrong or bad.
I’m just saying that there is a price to pay for anonymity, which is that in essence you are dismissing your own comments. Why should I believe anything you say, Marc? It is unverifiable, and you will pay absolutely no price no matter how much you lie … and I’d be a fool to believe a word out of anyone’s mouth who is in that position …
… so I don’t.
But that’s not my choice, to give your words no weight at all.
That’s your choice, and bitching about me treating you differently because you are anonymous goes nowhere. We’d be crazy not to treat anonymous people differently, you don’t operate under the same constraints that people have who are willing to sign their own name to their words.
Now, if you make scientific claims, that’s totally different. Those stand apart from the man saying them, and they CAN be checked and verified.
But your story about your mom? Sorry … might be true, might not, no way to tell.
w.
Bryan A says:
However, there is legislation being brought before the States by such groups as WOLF-PAC and Citizens for Self-Governance calling for an Article V convention (Constitutional Convention) to make alterations and additions to the existing 27 ammendments. Yes that is correct, all 27 would be up for grabs including the 3 listed above. An article V convention could be utilized to keep the currently seated executive in power.
The call for convention passed in Georgia in March 2014. 1 state down and 33 to go.
Bryan – can you please provide some references regarding this?
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And state National Guards did not exist at the time. If the Feds can step in and take over, how can they be state militias?
“I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.”
— George Mason, in Debates in Virginia Convention on
Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788
Militia
“The militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves, … all men capable of bearing arms;…”
— “Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republic”, 1788 (either Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith).
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress shall have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birth-right of an American … The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the People.”
— Tench Coxe, 1788.
“How we burned in the prison camps later thinking: What would things have been like if every police operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive? If during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever was at hand? The organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt.”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize winner and author of The Gulag Archipelago, who spent 11 years in Soviet concentration camps.
If we are ready to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that our measures are forging for them, if they did not resist.
— Edward Livingston
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
— Mao Zedong, Nov. 6, 1938, Selected Works, Vol. 2
People have mentioned the amendment process. That is how “things left out” (for lack of a better term) should be addressed. The end of slavery, women voting etc.
They should not be addressed by the courts changing or stretching the meanings or intent of the words used.
PS If you don’t like the candidates, vote in the primaries along with the general election. And support voter ID laws. Who gains by making voter fraud easier?
Willis,
The interesting thing is that your post is about you complaining about the imperial presidency. This post isn’t about me. As a presenter, yes you do have a higher obligation to be transparent. I don’t think you should ignore central questions about your post just because you can’t verify the identity of the commenter or my collateral non-material statements. I think you would give the benefit of the doubt to earnest inquiries that aren’t meant to impugn.
The issue I and others have pointed out is that you were part of a group of people who put this President into power, while many of us claim (and if you disbelieve us, there are many fact-based source to look at) that his current actions are entirely consistent with the character that he displayed before his first election. There was a cult of personality phenomenon, and it was further obvious that the press was not reporting on him deeply or honestly — which like in the case of CAGW, in and of itself — demanded further diligence. I did mine and saw this monstrosity coming. So did many, many others.
CAGW is a subject half about science and half about political ideology. My skepticism over government power requires me to demand rigorous proof of an existential threat to humanity before I could even consider giving my support to some form of collective, coercive action on the scale being proposed. Clearly, from the beginning, Obama was going to put collective action (Obama Care, climate nonsense, taxation, etc.) well ahead of any proof, as his underlying character demonstrated his fidelity to autocratic technocracy run by his version of the elite. He had a priori demonstrated his unfitness for power due to his prioritization of collective goals and government power over individual liberty – a trait that has consistently led to the grossest abuses of humanity.
I still find it a major lapse in historical and evidence-based political reality to have believed that Obama would do anything but press forward aggressively on the growth in the size, scope and power of the federal government. I again assert this was blatantly obvious to millions of people. So I really wish I knew why you missed something so fundamental to human character, power, and political reality. I wish you were more curious about it too.
Those of us who saw it and militated against an Obama election (not for a McCain election) are still chafed that many intelligent people failed in their duty of diligence before putting him in office. The failure can be addressed in a satisfactory way, and I have heard many do so. But at our age, to be unaware of the dangers of people with Obama’s character, despite the suboptimal alternatives, is hard to bear and cause for ongoing deep concern.
Marc
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TYPO! (sort of)
It makes more sense as, “keeping voter fraud easy?”
Marc says:
1. How could a thinking person possibly make such an egregious mistake?
Obviously I can’t speak for Willis, but what if said vote was not a mistake, but a considered decision? A decision based on the understanding that no matter who was in office, collapse is inevitable, and the better, considered choice would be the one to hasten said collapse?
“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace” – Thomas Paine
Tony,
TonyG says:
July 7, 2014 at 2:22 pm
Marc says:
1. How could a thinking person …………
……..“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace” – Thomas Paine
If that is his answer, I could accept that as a decision arising from a fundamental understanding of human character. It is those who missed his fundamental character that concern me.
Marc
As I said – I can’t speak for Willis, I’m just giving AN answer to your question 🙂