Congress Conducts Weekly Inquisition

To the unbounded joy of the Daily Kos crowd, the Congress held their weekly inquisition of an American business leader yesterday. In this case the leader was Edward Libby, CEO of AIG. If anyone deserves to be raked across the coals it is certainly AIG and their irresponsible and overleveraged investments. Problem is that the CEO who got AIG into that position and who probably should be raked over the coals is long gone. Libby took the job of trying to steer the company out of it's morass for the salary of 1 dollar per year. But this made no difference to the House subcommittee as they heaped their show of indignation upon him.

There are several things that I find positively frightening about this last inquisition. First of all, I want to say that I don't approve of bonuses for failure. But is illegal and unconstitutional congressional taxation the answer. Let's keep in mind that these bonuses were legal. There was nothing in the TARP or the stimulus package that prevented them. It's another case of Congress fixing their bills after the fact; or should we say, after voter anger. In possibly the only insightful thing that Donny Deutch of CNBC has ever said in his life, he remarked that the bill that resulted from this inquisition was basically a bill where Congress legislated out of anger for the benifit of the angry. For clarity, let me add that the House passed a bill today that would tax 90% of the bonuses that these people received. And the bill extends to any company that has taken more than 5 billion of bailout money from the government.

The problem that should be quickly apparent is that Congress passed the TARP and the Stimulus bill; encouraged banks to take the loans in order to increase the availability of credit; and then made up the rules that the recepients were required to follow after the money had already changed hands. This is a powerful omen of things to come after we have nationalized health care. Congress will make the claim that they have a right to legislate how we conduct our lives because our healthcare is being paid by the taxpayer. As an aside, here is a powerful story about the workings of the British health care system.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/03/19/here-to-help-you/

But before I ramble on any further, let me get to the gaping problem with the latest congressional inquisition. The 165 million that AIG paid in bonuses is less than one part in a thousand of the 170 billion that Congress has voted to give to AIG. Why all the sound and fury about less than one tenth of one percent of the total. Because it is a distraction for the way that the other 99% was spent. We are to believe that our Democrat led Congress is competent because they dealt so harshly with the rich guys, all the while ignoring the 99% of their appropriation that was misspent. In fact the largest part of that 170 billion was given by AIG to foreign banks. 60 billion of the 170 billion that US taxpayers sent to AIG went to non US banks. Had AIG never been bailed out, and had it simply been allowed to go bankrupt, as it should have been, then this transfer of US taxpayer money would never have happened.

But since it did happen, what is the result? The government now owns 80% of AIG. And AIG still has 1.5 trillion in unresolved credit default swaps and other dubious financial instruments. Some of the people who understand these complex financial instruments have agreed to stay on with AIG and unwind those positions. Oddly enough, the people needed to do this very complex unwinding are the same people that recieved most of those bonuses. What is their reason for staying with AIG now? Congress, along with Andrew Cuomo, have turned them into virtual criminals. Their compensation package will now be trivial compared to what other banks pay. Banks like Deutche Bank are offering them jobs with much better compensation. The answer, of course, is that they are going to leave. This means that the most sensitive financial transactions that AIG will be required to do will now be left in the hands of people that are simply too incompetent to get one of those higher paying jobs at some other bank. In other words, the financial well being of a company that is 80% owned by the government will be in the hands of the D squad. The losses that will be incurred by this D squad may well be hundreds of times as large as what the Government saved by retroactively taxing AIG employees, as well as other bank employess, at 90%.

There are many slippery slopes in this story, not the least of which is the use of putative taxation by the government. Class warfare has always been an obsession of the left, and this bill certainly opens the door to government abuse of power in the service of that war. Today they are using the excuse of rescuing taxpayer dollars - even though it is only one thousands of the total that they squandered on AIG. Tomorrow they will need no such excuse.

Then there is the issue of contract law. How meaningful are contracts in the US if the government feels that freedom to violate them at will. They are doing this now, and they have done it in the case of mortgage principal cramdown. How will America conduct business when contracts between private groups and individuals are no longer worth the paper they are written on?

Then there is the issue of financial punishment of the incompetent. But I don't see anyone punishing Barney Frank or Christopher Dodd for their responsibility for the subprime loan mess that brought all of the banks to this position to begin with. I don't see them being punished for wasting 170 billion of taxpayer money to bail out a completely non-viable financial institution like AIG. In the darkest of times for our country, our liberty, and our financial well being, the asylum is in the hands of the inmates.

The Global Warming Debate is Over

Isn't odd that you constantly hear the AGW alarmists claim that there is complete scientific consensus about AGW. But it seems that whenever you go and look for the scientific supporters of AGW you constantly come up with the same handful of leading suspects. When any government comittee is interveiwing people in order to get everyone on the AGW bandwagon, they always come up with the same few people, like Michael Mann, James Hansen, and Gavin Schmidt. These agencies try to convince us that these people represent reality, and that everyone else is a hack. But a closer look will show us that Mann, Hansen and Gavin are in fact the hacks, and that most of the scientific community does not agree with them. Let's begin with Mann.
Mann is the author of the famous hockey stick temperature reconstruction graph. This is the graph that Al Gore, chest puffed out, proudly displays in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth". The graph and the paper it came from was supposedly peer reviewed and the work had supposedly been reproduced. But in looking at the reviewers and reproducers, they all turned out to be friends and associates of Mann. This group is now collectively called "The Hockey Team".
But when a couple of hard nosed Canadians named Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick reviewed Mann's data, it fell apart like so much dried manure. At first, Mann refused to provide them with his data and methodology. Mann never wanted anyone to look closely at his results. We were just suppose to accept them. But eventually he was forced to turn the stuff over.
When McIntyre and McKitrick began to look at Mann's work they found a veritable laundry list of errors, inaccuracies, and what sometimes looked like purposeful omissions and selections and weightings designed to get a specific result. M & M generated temperature test data that was essentially white noise and they ran it through Mann's analysis methodology; and behold they produced a hockey stick result.
They found that Mann relied heavily on tree ring data from the brissel cone pine. And he weighted this data much more heavily that his other proxy data sets. These tree ring data sets were the only ones that were capable of making the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age virtually disappear. A result Mann wanted in order to make contemporary climate look unique. But as everyone knows, pine tree growth is dependent on far more than temperature - like nutrients, CO2, rain, etc.
Mann should either have discarded the tree ring data or weighed it very lightly. Mann also used data that was badly time correlated. Data that was used more than once, and he did selective truncation of some data sets. Some of the proxy data sets had results data Mann didn't like over certain periods of time, so he used the portion of the proxy data sets that he did like and threw away what he didn't like. Mann is a person that ReduceGHGs considers to be a "credible" source.
McIntyre and McKitrick published their findings about Mann's work. Their paper was heavily peer reveiwed, and because of it, the IPCC was forced to pull Mann's hockey stick from their own publications.
Then we have AGW suspect number 2, James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Hansen is often considered the high priest of the AGW cult. His pronouncements make him sound more like a comedian in a panick than a serious scientist. This makes him perfect for Algore, a man for whom no exaggeration is too great. By the way, Algore is still using the hockey stick that the IPCC has discarded. Let's look at one of Hansen's testimonies before a government comittee.
From Hansen:"If additional human-made global warming (above that in 2000 is so larg, say 2-3deg C. that the expected equilibrium (long-term) sea level rise is of the order of 25 meters, there would be the potential for a continually unfolding disaster of monstrous proportions." 25 meters of sea rise is about 82 feet. If the entire Greenland ice shelf melted it would only contribute 25 feet.
But unlike sea ice, which is only a few feet thick, the Greenland ice shelf is a couple of miles thick. The odds of it all melting in the next century, even using some of the IPCCs more shocking scenarios, is almost nill. And where would Hansen get the rest of his 82 feet of sea rise. It could only come from Antartica. But the temperature in Antartica is so cold that the worlds temperature would have to go up 8 to 10 deg C to get any significant melting there.
And again, even the exaggeration prone IPCC has no models that produce anything close to a 8 to 10 deg. C temp rise. So James Hansen's treat of a possible 25 meter sea rise is almost non existent. Yet he advertises this kind of crap because he is more of a politician than a scientist. Next we need to look at the temperature record of which James Hansen is in charge, the GISS surface temp record.
And again, even the exaggeration prone IPCC has no models that produce anything close to a 8 to 10 deg. C temp rise. So James Hansen's treat of a possible 25 meter sea rise is almost non existent. Yet he advertises this kind of crap because he is more of a politician than a scientist. Next we need to look at the temperature record of which James Hansen is in charge, the GISS surface temp record.
But before we go to Hansen's temp record, let me say that compared to his 82 feet of estimated sea rise, the exaggeration prone IPCC estimates 19 inches; and the world's top sea level scientist estimates 4 inches.Now, there are four primary, corrected, global temperature records. RSS (Satellite), UAH (Satellite), HadCrut (surface thermometer) GISS (surface thermometer). GISS is the record that Hansen runs. And, of course, it shows by far the highest temperatures.
The two satellite records are extremely well correlated. The HadCrut surface temp record is reasonably well correlated with the satellite records. Hansen's record is by far the outlyer. It is about .3 deg C higher than the satellite records and .2 deg C higher than HadCrut. Whenever you see someone quoting this or that recent year as being the 2nd or 3rd hottest on record, they are always using Hansen's records. The others disagree.
In addition, the disparity between Hansen's records and the others is growing all of the time. Hansen uses about 2000 thermometers around the world. You can find some of them sitting above blacktop or concrete, you can find some of them sitting near to where air conditioners are exhausting hot air. Recently Hansen found that 1939 was a hotter year than his prefered hottest year of 1998. Hansen didn't like that. So what did he do?
He found a temperature data set that he owned that showed 1939 to be statistically equal to 1998. Without informing the world, or even the scientific community, he switched his data set in mid stream to the data set that showed 1998 to be equal to 1939. So now he can say that 1998 is the hottest year on record without appearing to be a liar. Of course, "hottest year on record only means - since we have been keeping thermometer records.
Of course when Hansen speaks about "hottest year on record", he is speaking for the time that we have had thermometers to record. And that has only been since coming out of the Little Ice Age.
Let me just add that when Steve McIntyre tried to get a copy of Hansen's raw data set and a copy of his method of analysis, Hansen fought against it for a long time. Obviously he has no desire for transparency. Hansen is also the scientist that was crying about the government stiffling his freedom of speech. But he is still employed and still shooting off his mouth. Meanwhile, the lead climatologists of Washington State and Oregon have been fired for disagreeing with AGW.
The next in our set of "usual suspects" is Gavin Schmidt. Gavin is a light weight scientist serving as a front man for the AGW movement through his web site "RealClimate". His function is to attack anyone who disagrees with the AGW orthodoxy and to defend any AGW alarmists whose science is being questioned. He also serves to spread the word with government committes and debate groups.
Gavin has made little in the way of his own scientific contribution, but he wants to give the impression that RealClimate is a place open for public debate on the AGW issues. Unfortunately, the impession he wishes to give is an entirely false one. I went to discuss AGW on his site, taking care never to be abrassive and never to retaliate for any personal attacks.
I was allowed to ask questions and make comments as long as they were easily answered and were not a threat to the accepted way of thinking at Gavin's site. But when I asked the difficult questions, or when I supplied links to scientific papers that challenged AGW, my posts were always moderated out. I found that if you agreed with AGW you could say anything you wanted, no matter how controversial, absurd, or one sided. But if you disagreed with AGW you needed to walk on egg shells.

The Idiots Guide to CO2

If we are going to talk about CO2 in the context of Global Warming, let's see where the GW alarmists and the GW skeptics agree:

1. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing since the beginning of the industrial revolution in an almost linear fashion.

2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and as such is able to increase global temperature.

3. The relationship between CO2 and temperature is logarithmic. What does this mean? For example, let's say that going from 250 ppm CO2 to 500 ppm CO2 causes global temperature to rise 2 deg C. Then in order to get another 2 deg C of rise, CO2 would have to go from 500 ppm to 1000 ppm. And to get another 2 it would have to go from 1000 ppm to 2000 ppm.

4. The temperature increase that is caused by a doubling of CO2 - without any positive or negative feedback - is about 1 deg C per doubling.

So where do GW alarmists and GW skeptics disagree? They disagree on the amount of global temperature rise that is caused by each doubling of CO2.

1. GW alarmists believe that each doubling of CO2 causes global temperature to rise about 3 deg C. plus or minus 1 deg C.

2. GW skeptics believe that each doubling of CO2 causes global temperature to rise about 1.2 deg C. plus or minus .6 deg C.

Why does this difference in opinion exist? Basically it exists over the estimated amount of positive feedback that comes with CO2 warming. What do we mean by feedback? For example, let's say that you doubled CO2 in the atmosphere and it gave you a 1 deg C temperature rise. That rise in temperature would make the air hold more moisture( H2O). H2O is also a greenhouse gas and it would therefore cause even more heating. In other words, it would amplify the effects of CO2 heating.

But here is an example of estimating the problem. H2O also forms clouds, and clouds increase the earth's albedo (reflectivity), thereby lowering temperatures. There are dozens of factors involved in estimating feedback - many of them poorly understood.

The basic difference between the GW alarmists and the GW skeptics is then this. GW alarmists believe that positive feedback causes the natural effect of about 1 deg C rise for each doubling of CO2 to be boosted to about 3 deg. C. GW skeptics believe that positive feedback is very small and causes the natural 1 deg C rise from CO2 doubling to increase to about 1.2 deg C.

Who is right? The evidence seems to favor the GW skeptics. Here is why.
1. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution we have had about a 50% increase in CO2 above what it was before the industrial revolution. In other words, we have had about half of a doubling already. The amount of temperature increase that accommodates this amount of CO2 increase is about .6 to .7 deg C. Because of the logarithmic effect of the CO2, we would expect less temperature increase for the second 50% of that doubling. So, let's say that the second half of the doubling yields from .3 to .5 deg C. Adding this to the first half's temperature increase we get about .9 to 1.2 deg C for that CO2 doubling. This is empirical evidence that favors the GW skeptics.
2. We are able to generate computer models that take a given number for positive feedback for CO2 increase and generate temperature charts of the result that should come from such a feedback number. We find that when we use large feedback numbers, such as 2 to 3 degree positive feedback for each CO2 doubling, the resulting temperature charts simply do not look like our real temperature records. The positive feedback takes over to such a degree that it shoots temperature up in a way that cannot be seen in any portion of the temperature record. When using a smaller feedback number, like .2 deg C for each CO2 doubling, the resultant chart looks much more like what we find in the temperature record. This computer modeling then also favors the GW skeptics.

Congratulations, you now understand more about Global Warming than 99% of the population of the earth.

Why do we think what we think?

I was just thinking about the Jonathan Swift statement, "You do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into." As a first reaction this might allow us to engage in a little bout of ego building and personal arrogance. We are all quite certain that our own positions and believes are founded upon sound reasoning and a firm grasp of reality. I know that I'm convinced that all of my firmly held idealogical comittments come from a combinantion of real world evidence and impartial reasoning. Probably most of us feel the same way. Considering the variety of opinions and positions, however, some of us must be deluded.

When I look at the ideaologies of Communism I shake my head and think, "How could an educated thinker like Marx have been such a fool?" When I look at Islamists blowing up innocent people I think to myself, "How can over a billion people have been taken in by such an obvious self serving snake oil salesman as Mohammed?" I have no doubt that other people look at my system of believes and respond the same way. So, are we going to be able to figure out who is right and who is wrong; who's ideas are based upon rational tinking and who is just a pseudo intellectual fool. Probably not! At least not in a way that will yield common agreement.

What I would like to do, however, is talk about why seemingly rational, and intelligent people - people with a great deal of integrity - on both sides of a particular issue, can have ideas that appear so blatently absurd to the other side. The thing that brought me to this investigation was some recent reading in the areas of Psychology and Hypnotism.

Apparently, in a state of trance, it is possible to "program" a person's subconsious so that he or she will carry out actions at a later time without knowing the source or motivation for that action. When someone who has been hynotised to do such a thing is asked why he did it, he will usually try to provide some kind of sensible explanation that has nothing to do with the real reason.

So it seems to me that we have to ask ourselves, "are most of our behaviors, believes, and idealogies based in the pre-rational. Is the sublime structure of intellectual constructs that we live by, are proud of, and regard as being the essential thruths of our existence, simply the guilding upon a set of more basic, programed, learned, indoctrinated, or emotion based set of motivations. Are these motivations working in our subconsious and are they disguised in several layers of intricate rationalizations before making their appearance in the domain of the conscious.

It is quite possible that those who's idealogies are "right" in the sense that they are sound, consistent and in parallel with emperical reality are motivated to those idealogies by emotional, environmental and experiential reasons that are much more basic and simplistic and that come unknowingly from deep within the subconsious. Are we all just creatures who justify ourselves to each other and to ourselves with rationalizations that have been carefully taylored to mesh with that part of society that we wish to be respected in, who's values we have accepted, and of which we wish to be a part? The social groupings of which we want to be a part could be political, religious, atheist, activist or simply anti social and revolutionary. Even the anti-social and revolutionary can be recognized by their uniforms.

The conclusion that I have reached, is that we all, without knowing it, manufacture the reality that we want for more basic and prerational reasons. So our reason is not the primary motivator for our actions; but rather, the majority of time, this grand, respected, and admired attribute of mankind is simply the handmaiden of a purpose of which it is not even aware.

Paris - Bonfire of the Vanities

Is there any question about who will win these riots and who will benefit. The French police have already lost. They have already proven clearly to the rioters that they are impotent. Chirac, Sarcozy and Villepin have also proven that they are inept, confused and cowardly. Now the rioters will be braver than ever before. Any incident, no matter how minor, will serve as an excuse for them because they have no reason to fear becoming lawless again. The French government will be all the more cowed in the future because they understand the nature of the tinderbox and because they have no answer for it. So now and in the future they have only one option, and that will be to buy off the Muslims. After parading their culture, sophistication, humanism and tolerance for the world, the French cannot now enter the brutal fight that is needed to assure the survival of their way of life. The barbarians are at the gate and the French will respond by giving them everthing that they have until there is no more. And then the Barbarians will devour them.
Of course the self-genocidal cowards on the left will rationalize why all this is just fine - why the French and the French government are at fault - why these poor abused Muslim youths are perfectly justified in destroying the country. The only question that remains is how long it will take the French to learn that appeasement will buy them nothing except a little time. The point may already be passed, and the historical France is destined for the dustbin of history, to be replaced by a nation that is nothing more than a mideastern ghetto located in the West.
The French believed that they could please the Muslims and gain their respect by feeding them Israel and then America. But the French have had their heads up their behinds; and they must now recognize that their turn to be the victims of the cult of death has come much sooner than they expected. Well, maybe a few will recoginize it. Most will continue to deny reality right to the grave.
No matter how sick and how idiotic the Cult of Islam is, it will easily defeat a people who believe in nothing, who's central philosophical position is cynicism, who's only life ambition is to have government make life easy, and who's hope is that they will grow old and die before everything crashes around their ears.

A Look At Women and the Iraqi Constitution

The new Iraqi constitutions seems to be a reflection of many hard fought meetings and compromises between people of strongly varying religious views. If often seems contradictory - sometimes within the same article. The reason for this is undoubtely the result of attempts to reach compromise wordings between oposing groups. The second article is a good example:

Article (2)
1st - Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.
(b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy.

Islam does not allow any of its laws to be submitted to a vote of the people. And its laws cover much of life. Democracy requires that laws must be man made. (A) and (B) of article 2 will clash from the moment that judges and legislators begin their work. For example, Islam says that a sons share of the inheritance shall be twice that of the daughter. But article 14 says this:

"Article (14): Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status."

So immediately we have a contradiction.

It seeems that the framers of this constitution wanted to allow themselves some wiggle room by adding "undisputed" to Article 2 (a). Article 14, on the other hand, is firm.

There seems to be some concern about Article 39 and what it will do to women's rights.

Article (39): Iraqis are free in their adherence to their personal status according to their own religion, sect, belief and choice, and that will be organized by law.

Some interpret this to mean that Iraqis can choose Sharia in settling family affairs. This may well be the case, and it does present a problem for women. While women are insured equal rights under secular law, if a woman is pressured by her family to accept Sharia, she may be giving up many of those rights. This is certainly a serious area of concern in this constitution. How future laws choose to implement this article will determine how bad the problem is.

There is, however, enough fire power for women in the constitution that it should allow them to obtain true equality if they are willing to use what they have. First, article 14 guarantees their equality; and second, they have article 151:

Article (151): A proportion of no less than 25 percent of the seats in the Council of Representatives is specified for the participation of women.

There should be numerous opportunities where the women's vote will decide a major issue of legislation. By using their leverage in these situations they should be able to trade their support for legislation which increases their position of equality under the law.

The problem that remains is if the nation continues to elect theocratic legislators. In that case women will not have the opportunity to solidify their equality. The parties will be able to find women to run who want to uphold the principles of Islam. But my thinking is that the Islamic parties will attract less and less followers as time goes by. I think that the fanaticism of people like Zarquawi and Al Sadr are going a long way to turn people away from their religion. Or for those who are standing by their religion, they at least will want to see less of it in government.

The constitution has left enough room for interpretation that the country can go a long way in the direction of secularism by choosing some articles to stress more than others. My expectation is that this is what will happen.

For Chirac, It’s Deja-Vu All Over Again

It seems that the pundits who are trying to understand why French President Jacques Chirac appointed Dominique de Villepin to the position of prime minister are forgetting one thing; and that is the emotional side of the story.

With the rejection of the EU constitution, the French voters have effectively put Chirac on the back side, the downhill side, of his career. Chirac had been pushing the EU forward with the probable hope that he would one day be the leader of a united Europe. With the rejection of his dream by the French and Dutch voters, Chirac could see no higher points, no greater glories in his future. The future that now faces him is the probable loss of his presidency to Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2007 and an economic quagmire in France that he cannot resolve without resorting to the hated Anglo-Saxon model.

So why did Chirac pick Villepin as his PM? Did he think that fine speeches and bad poetry were going to unclog the socialism congested arteries of the French economy? That would be a very irrational decision on his part, and Chirac is not quite that irrational. The real reason that Chirac picked Villepin is so that he could relive his past glory.

Probably the highest point in Chirac’s career was when his protégée, Villepin, defied both of the Anglo-Saxon powers at the UN, to the cheers of most of the representatives there, as well as to the cheers of most of the world. It was during that time, when he was the leader of those who challenged the US superpower, that Chirac experienced his proudest moment. Chirac was then strutting across the world stage. He stood tall. He beamed confidence. He was the moral giant and all the eyes of the world were on him. Major powers like Germany and Russia followed his lead and backed his play. The Arab world loved him.

When the coalition in Iraq failed to find WMD, his stock went even higher. His next step would be the completion of the formation of the EU, with himself as its most important statesman. But things began to go wrong. The march to Iraqi democracy began to appear more real every day. Now, it appears that the insurgents there can kill a lot of people, but they cannot stop the march, nor can they stop the growing Iraqi army that will eventually be good enough to defeat them. The voters of Iraq spoke. They want that democracy, and they will have it. In the mean time, Chirac appears as the man that did everything in his power to prevent their freedom. The self interested dealings of French government officials with Saddam and the oil for food program have been exposed.

Furthermore, the French economy has been completely stagnant. Other nations are surpassing the French per-capita GDP. The unemployment rate is 10.2 percent. It is as high as 25 percent for some of the younger age groups. Chirac tried to use Jean-Pierre Raffarin to make some of the difficult changes; to begin to limit the social entitlements and to remove some of the job killing government regulations. Raffarin tried to do this, but he lost all of his popularity as a result. When the EU Non vote occurred, Raffarin was the logical scapegoat.

It appears that Chirac has given up on the idea of doing anything real and permanent to solve the French economic problems. Instead, he has decided to live in the glory of the past. And that is why he appointed Villepin. It is an appointment that reminds both Chirac and the world of Chirac’s moment of greatness. Having been embarrassed by the French voters, and facing his own decline, he badly needed to relive the high point of his life - and to remind everyone else of it again. For the moment it has worked. The European news sources are full of stories reminding people of Villepin’s standing ovation at the EU. But Chirac will have to pay the price for that self indulgence when he meets Sarkozy in the 2007 elections, if not before.

The Glaring Fallacy Behind Communism?

I decided a long time ago that there was no possiblility of a communist state ever being anything other than a police state. I think that this idea is born out by both reason and experience. Here I will assume that the experiential evidence speaks for itself for anyone who wishes to look at how communism has worked in the real world. I will therefore concentrate on the logic of why the communist state must always end up in being a police state.

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". These are magic words; just words; inspirational words. And there must surely be a race of aliens somewhere in the Universe that could apply those words successfuly. But the individuals that believed that these words could be made to work for man were drunk on their own idealism and blind to the reality of the nature of man. Today this attitude of arrogant ultrahumanism still reigns in academic circles and among the sanctimonious pseudo intellectuals who call themselves liberals, leftists, and socialists. In their zeal to accomplish this they feel certain that any means will be justified by such a nobel end. All the failed attempts to bring about this high ideal in the past have only been due to misunderstanding, corruption and the failings of man, they believe. If man could be properly educated and if the right implementation is followed, then the communist utopia is still possible. In fact, not only is it possible, but it is the only acceptable destiny for mankind.

The transparent and even obvious failings of Marx's ideal never crosses the dogmatically rigid mind of the communists and their little brothers on the left. The full impact of the term "From each" is never inspected to see what it can possibly mean in the real world.

In the early years of any communist revolution the "From each" is not according to his abilities, but rather "From each" according to his wealth. The state appropriates the property of the wealthy and distributes it to the poor. The result is a boon for the poor, but a very shorted sighted and short lived one. Wealth is not a static entity and the wealth that is distributed to the poor will not raise their living standard except for a breif period of time. After the wealth is consumed, whether it be in a year or in twenty years, they will return to being poor. The process of appropriating the property of the wealthy cannot be repeated because the wealthy were made poor by the initial appropriation and they have absolutely no motivation to reaquire wealth. Not only do they have no motiviation, but the communist system will not allow it to happen. So the revolution results in a one time windfall for the poor that can never be repeated. In any case, the appropriation of personal wealth is always the first action of the police state, setting the groundwork for the police state that must always remain there after the appropriation phase.

After the property of the wealthy has been distributed, the "From each" takes on a new meaning. Now the property of every individual must be continously appropriated so that the state can redistribute it according to what it determines to everyone's needs. Man being man, he does not volunteer his property. In fact he will make every effort to hide as much of it from the state as possible. So now the "From each" requires a huge and repressive police state to insure that those two little words are accomplished. A network of spies must exist in all communities to insure that no one can refuse to give up the fruits of their labor. Since the entire fabric of the political system depends on the state being able to take everyones property, the punishment for having the gall to try to keep your property must be high. Why, then, is it not obvious to the most casual observer of human beings that "From each" of neccessity requires the establishment of a pervasive and intimidating police state. Why is it not obvious that the individual must be forced to give up the product of his labor and therefore must even be forced to do that labor.

Man from birth seems to have a feeling of personal property that is never taught, but is simply innate to the animal. When my 2 year old plays with other 2 year olds she shows jealous ownership of her own toys when playing at her own home. And the other children show jealous ownership of their property when she is playing at their homes. I have never made any effort to teach her this characteristic. Since this feature of mankind is anithetical to the communist ideal, the individual in the communist state must be subjected to a life long regimen of propaganda in order to get him to belive and act in opposition to his natural characteristics. As far as I have been able to determine the propaganda effort is never more than partially convincing. As the Soviet Union has shown, the transition from decades of communist propaganda to a new believe in capitalism took absolutely no propaganda at all.

The natural result of the communist philosophy is that the "From each" requires a repressive police state that is able to extract only a paltry amount of wealth from it's unwilling participants. And that paltry amount will then become a "to each" that gives all a share of a small appropriation and leaves the entire state in a condition of poverty. The state is capable of making everyone equally poor. But it is not capable of making everyone rich, or even of making everyone middle class.

Judges and Religion - The Young / Bainbridge Debate

I think that the problem that Stephen Bainbridge has with Cathy Young's article is that he accepted the way in which she framed the debate; and then he was stuck in a virtually unwinnable position. He did, however, make a good run at it. Let's take another look at Cathy's argument.
The focus of her article is whether or not religious bigotry is involved in the selection of judicial nominees. She then centers her dismissal of such a claim by concentrating on the connection between being anti abortion and being religious."A pro-abortion-rights litmus test for federal judges may be wrong, but it's preposterous to claim, as some conservatives have, that it amounts to a religious test that disqualifies ''serious" Catholics and evangelical Protestants from public office."She then assumes that if she can show that a pro-abortion-rights test is not in fact a religious test, she has then shown that there is no religious bigotry. Unfortunately, proving the one, has nothing to do with proving the other.
A pro-abortion-rights test, along with any other number of test, may or may not indicate religious bigotry, depending on how the opposition to the anti-abortion judical nominee is seen. In Chuck Shumer's, as well as other senators case, the bigotry is fairly clear. When they are refering to Pryor being influenced by his "very deeply held believes", what in the world are they talking about but his religion. The "very deeply held" portion tells you that they are talking about religion without wanting to mention the word religion. This is in effect code that all of the people over at Daily KOS, as well as many of the left's other supporters, will immediately understand. Deeply held believes equals religion and religion equals extreme and irrational ideas.If I had a deeply held believe in saving the environment you would not hear the left using that terminology to describe me.
I think that Cathy fails to make the point that it isn't religion that is the problem, but rather the ideas that come from that religion. She points out that democrats are pro abortion and pro gay rights and that their objection is to the opposing views from people of religion, not to religion itself. If that is the case, then the democrats would make the logical argument for why those views associated with religion are wrong, or even out of the mainstream. But instead they take the shortcut by taring them as "deeply held believes". Having done that they need no further arguments of logic because they have already pressed the magic bigotry buttons among their followers. Their followers nod their heads together - sharing a common knowledge - that religion equals superstition and backwards thinking.
Let's consider, what is it that makes these judical nominees extremists if not their religion. Is being anti-abortion extremist? Certainly not in the minds of most Americans. Can the Democrats make the case that being anti-abortion is somehow irrational or superstitious. It seems to me that taking a position that some magic happens to a fetus such that 5 seconds before birth is is non human while 5 seconds after birth it has become imbued with some transcendent quality called humanity is much more of an irrational position.While I can't personally buy into the father figure in the sky concept, I also cannot accept that everything else is false or backwards or foolish simply because it is religious. And I also cannot accept that all things secular are progressive and intellectual.
So the question remains, what about these judges is extreme if not their deeply held believes. Doesn't Chuck Shumer have deeply held believes about his own liberal principles. Of course he does, but he doesn't refer to them that way because such references are clearly meant of be a shorthand dismissal of people of religion.