Posted on Random Musings

the war on poverty

“Too many journalists seem unable to break free of their old assumptions, even when new evidence should cause some new thinking. Three articles in the Sept. 22 edition of the Washington Post endorsed the view that giving more money to poor people and poor countries can solve the problem of domestic and global poverty. It’s remarkable that so many smart people in our society are unaffected by the evidence that such transfer programs just don’t work.”

from Time for New Thinking About Poverty by David Boaz

read the whole article at the cato institute website. it has become conventional wisdom that throwing money at poverty would help to eradicate it. if only the U.S. wasn’t so “stingy” with our foreign aid, africa wouldn’t be suffering today. if only we cared more and sent more money to poor, depressed areas in this country, we could save the people from living in depressed neighborhoods or on the street. in fact, what we had always believed about poverty is wrong, as the rest of the article points out.

  • we have spent over $10 billion(counting $3 billion in food stamps and other federal aid) in louisiana trying to fight poverty. how has that worked out? not well. we have seen the evidence of this.
  • this article even suggests that there is a relationship between government dependence on welfare and illegitimacy rates. they make a convincing case here.
  • we have spent over $1 trillion on foreign aid. according to boaz:

    “Government-to-government aid has tended to strengthen governments in poor countries at the expense of business and individuals and has made governments increasingly dependent on their rich lenders. Few countries have “graduated” from aid to self-sufficiency. After all that aid, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study, sub-Saharan Africa is actually poorer than it was 30 years ago.”

why is that? it’s a distribution problem for some of those poor countries. some of these governments cannot be trusted to pass the aid along to their citizens instead of lining their own pockets. even when the money actually gets to the people, it doesn’t improve their lives simply by being there. this is true especially in this country. people with jobs are less likely to get caught in the cycle of poverty. that’s the right approach here: encouraging the creation of more jobs, not writing more big checks that ensure dependence on the government.

it’s worth the experiment. the current approach doesn’t appear to be working very well.

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Posted on Random Musings

stupid human news of the week

welcome to today’s edition of stupid human news.

Oh, heavens! Thug sues God –good luck with that. no lawyer would take THIS case.
Police: Former bar employee stole six-pack marked ‘busted’–this guy’s a real risk-taker.
Man Parked Near Police Headquarters Has Meth On Him–but not as much as this guy.

Memphis Police Bust Illegal “Drug Store” in a Home–that’s guaranteed to happen when there is a sign outside of the home that says “crack house”.

from the good idea/bad idea file:
After Burger King Crash, Man Parks, Eats— bad idea. it’s so much easier to get arrested that way.
Woman returns bag of full of cash to Dunkin’ Donuts–$771 worth. good for her.

that should be enough linkage to keep you busy. 🙂 serious stuff returns tomorrow at the regularly scheduled time.

Posted on Moonbats

the new enemies list

the inspiration for this post came from p.j. o’rourke, the unofficial muse of this blog. he had the original idea behind bernie goldberg’s 100 people who are screwing up america. i have a few names/groups that i would like to add. they may or may not be original additions. feel free to add names to this list. i only ask that you stick to people you don’t know personally.

louis farrakan– conspiracy theorist and race agitator. if he really wants to help african-americans and other minorities, he needs to ditch the tin-foil hat, and encourage less dependence on government checks and government programs.

cindy sheehan– she has become the story. any reasonable, rational debate over the war in iraq becomes lost in sheehan’s irrational, unhinged rhetoric, and that of her supporters.

the ACLU– they started out as defenders of freedom and individual rights, and have become a haven for child molestors and those who wish to totally remove faith and religion from public life.

air america radio:

  • for giving springer and randi rhodes 3 hours each and rachel maddow/kent jones only 1 hour

bill belichick:
for ditching former browns QB bernie kosar for vinny testaverde.

  • for suddenly becoming a genius when he got to new england.
  • for being a total jerk as the browns’ head coach.
art modell:
for ditching cleveland and taking the good browns players we had left just to line his own pocket.vinny testaverde–for replacing bernie kosar and for throwing the ball to the opposing team. (it’s amazing the guy still has a job in pro football)

the sports talking heads who anoint head coaches/managers as geniuses after only 1 world championship win. just stop it.

any other suggestions?

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Posted on Random Musings

monday’s food for thought

in today’s edition: abortion, MSM negativity, and the million more march.

Miers Nomination: The Future for Abortion –an intelligent, thoughtful look at abortion from the cognoscenti.

all the news that’s fit to spin — a post on the MSM’s negative iraq/terrorism slant from thinking right

Million Moron March: kook nuts–not that it should need to be said, but louis farrakan is to the african-american community as cindy sheehan is to the anti-war crowd. They are demagogues whose only overarching desire is to promote themselves. This is no way to advance intelligent debate on race relations. the smart move would be for the black community to file for divorce from farrakan, jesse jackson, and any rhetoric similar to theirs. name-calling and conspiracy theories only end up hurting the cause. (credit: Cao’s Blog)

more later. maybe.

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Posted on George W. Bush, Iraq

iraqi constitution updates

links of interest:

Numbers Show Iraq Constitution Approval Likely–from FNC
Rice, Iraqi official optimistic about referendum–from CNN
Austin Bay’s Iraqi constitution day recap
Finally, a Smart Iraq Strategy–defending cities and killing insurgents
Iraq’s constitutional referendum-what you need to know about it in a handy one-page summary (would it be too flip to call it the iraq faq? just wondering…)

this is a wonderful development for iraq and its people. getting to vote on their own constitution is something not even americans had the option to do. i am aware of some of the objections to this constitution, and i think that concerns about the role of islam in the law are legitimate. having some skepticism that change is possible and that women’s rights and those of minorities will be protected is certainly understandable based on iraq’s recent history under saddam. i don’t think that this constitution should be feared for this reason. i would like to see those so-called experts point out where exactly this constitution restricts these rights, because i didn’t see that part when i read it.

much has been made of polls about the president’s approval rating and about how the american people feel about the war in iraq. i believe that most of us want to see iraq succeed, and somehow we have lost sight of the bigger picture. this is because we don’t have concrete evidence of progress and tangible proof at our fingertips every single day on our tv newscasts or in the newspaper. the mainstream press contributes to this negativity by putting the worst spin possible on everything happening in iraq and generally ignoring the good that is being done there.

that’s why we as bloggers have such an important responsibility– to provide balance to the MSM and to tell both sides of the story in iraq. we are doing that, and we will continue to do that.

read this from oblogatory anecdotes. it’s inspiring.

related: ( UPDATE 8:57 PM EDT)

all about iraq (me)
Just said my YES –iraq the model
Polls closing, Iraqis celebrating— from Say Anything
Voting on the new constitution — Cao’s Blog
Iraqis Vote for Constitution (A Sad Day for Liberals)— from California Conservative

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Posted on Random Musings

the culture of celebrity

taken from the weekly standard article culture of celebrity:

How pleasing to learn that our own simpler, less moneyed, unglamorous lives are, in the end, much to be preferred to those of these beautiful, rich, and powerful people, whose vast publicity has diverted us for so long and whose fall proves even more diverting now. “As would become a lifelong habit for most of us,” Thomas McGuane writes in a recent short story in the New Yorker called “Ice,” “we longed to witness spectacular achievement and mortifying failure. Neither of these things, we were discreetly certain, would ever come to us; we would instead be granted the frictionless lives of the meek.”

celebrities are useful when they distract us from bad things happening in the world around us. movies, music, and sports serve this purpose well. we forget our prosaic lives and the occasional world chaos to rally behind our favorite teams and players, and to track the curious relationship with tom and katie. being celeb-obsessed is not all bad, just as long we realize that we are the lucky ones.

it’s hard for us, i think, to grasp the concept that we have the charmed lives. no, we don’t have the limos, shopping sprees on rodeo drive, or a reserved VIP table at an exclusive restaurant. we also don’t have the paparazzi snapping bad pictures of us for the next US weekly spread. if we have secrets to keep, the rest of America won’t know and won’t care. we also have the satisfaction of knowing that we have stable relationships we can count on, unlike many of the people whose faces are on magazine covers.

i would like to have a limo and a chauffeur. i hate driving. i’m not opposed to the acquisition of wealth and fame, as long as it’s attained honestly. i just think that the “frictionless life of the meek” sounds like a life i would be more likely to enjoy.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

-Thoreau

simplify, says thoreau. it’s good advice.

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Posted on Democrats, Liberals, Tony Blair

lessons for democrats from tony blair’s labour party

one would assume that british PM tony blair’s policies and his values are reflected by his own labour party. that’s usually how it works here, where a political party usually mirrors the ideology of its leader. not this time. labour has traditionally been a party with a deep socialistic, even marxist belief system. they were at one time the only party representing the working classes and the trade unions. labour was seen as the party caring about the little guy.

labour’s popular support evaporated when their main supporters joined the ownership class. once this happened, suddenly sharing possessions for the common good became less desirable. this socialist idea was ingrained in old labour ideology, such as clause 4. it was not a popular ideology, however, and labour was forced to disguise the roots of this ideology to win elections. it obviously worked.

how did the labour party respond to the shift in public perception of them? they tried appealing to the kook fringe element of their membership. this fell flat. (are you listening, democrats?) as they say, you could look it up.

while you could probably argue that labour still has some elements of the old guard involved in government, they didn’t win until they moved to the center (or centre, if you prefer). it has been suggested that former president clinton’s successful campaign moving him to the center was the inspiration for blair’s centrist campaign for the 1997 election –that, and the american-style spin doctors employed by labour.

there’s evidence to support this claim. labour decided that to gain their support back, they had to change their stripes and appeal to the majority of british voters by shaking up the perception of labour’s ideological base. that’s what the democrats have to do– find a way to appeal to the mainstream by advancing policies that people agree with. this could be hard to do, as the natural bent of the party is to promote unpopular policies and beliefs. so the next logical step is to hire their best spin doctors, because it will take one heck of a sales job to convince the american people that they can identify with democrats on issues important to the voters.

the fight democrats will have to have is with the two warring factions in their party. one side is represented by cindy sheehan, michael moore, moveon, and kos. the other side is represented by those who prefer to be seen as more moderate in their views, hillary for example. pandering to the first group will not win them any elections, and continuing to do it will doom them in ’06.

i’ll be honest. i really don’t want the democrats to figure this out, because it’s much more fun to watch the division and sniping happening with them right now. i am concerned that the republicans don’t seem to have any sense of urgency in getting their conservative base back on their side. they must not become complacent and forget why we sent them to d.c., because that base is the only thing keeping them in office in ’06.

friday’s fun links– coming sometime late afternoon. look for ’em.

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Posted on Random Musings

alias

i decided to intentionally avoid one of my favorite shows tonight. did i miss anything? is vaughn still (allegedly) dead? please fill me in if you have a minute. and no, j.j., that blond guy is not a worthy replacement for michael vartan. you’re a fool for letting him go. in case you are clueless about this, we are still mad at you.

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Posted on Democracy, Iraq

all about iraq

Zawahiri’s Advice –power line has a great analysis of zawahiri’s letter here.
Zarqawi’s Losing Strategy–austin bay puts a positive spin on the post-war strategy
IRAQ: Status of Iraq?s insurgency–very balanced look at this subject from the CFR

Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?— this article from foreignaffairs. org suggests that there’s no evidence that it can. he argues that we should encourage all political factions to engage in the process, and that this would result in more stable governments. i agree with this last point, and i hope that’s what we are doing now in iraq.

two slightly different views on the iraqi constitution:
Iraq Parliament OKs Constitution Compromise –from FNC
Iraqi MPs approve charter changes — from the BBC

here are some excerpts from the proposed iraqi constitution. interpret for yourself.

Article 7:

First: No entity or program, under any name, may adopt racism, terrorism, the calling of others infidels, ethnic cleansing, or incite, facilitate, glorify, promote, or justify thereto, especially the Saddamist Baath in Iraq and its symbols, regardless of the name that it adopts. This may not be part of the political pluralism in Iraq. This will be organized by law.

Second: The State shall undertake combating terrorism in all its forms, and shall work to protect its territories from being a base or pathway or field for terrorist activities.

Article 14:
Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, origin, color, religion, creed, belief or opinion, or economic and social status.

Article 20:
The citizens, men and women, have the right to participate in public affairs and to enjoy political rights including the right to vote, to elect and to nominate.

Article 36:
The state guarantees in a way that does not violate public order and morality:
A. Freedom of expression, through all means.
B. Freedom of press, printing, advertisement, media and publication.
C. Freedom of assembly and peaceful demonstration. This shall be regulated by law.

my favorite part of article 65:
A nominee to the Presidency must meet the following conditions:
C. Must be of good reputation and political experience, and known for his integrity, righteousness, fairness and loyalty to the homeland.

i stuck article 65 in because i think these are good qualities we should have for america’s leaders too. we could do worse (and we have) than following these standards for OUR leaders. do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

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Posted on Random Musings

early nominees for quote of the week

jonah goldberg posted this at the Corner on NRO:

“Apparently, lemmings don’t commit suicide. So if you have a lemming in your basement who wears too much black eye-liner, listens to too much heavy metal music, and is constantly drawing really disturbing pictures of Satanic scenes on his notebook, don’t worry.”

tony kornheiser on PTI: ” michigan sucks “. short, sweet, and accurate.

it has occurred to me that there is too much division in this country today. i have a solution to this large problem. i think i have found some common ground for most of america to stand on. most of us can unite behind hatred of the yankees. it’s the right thing to do. see my previous posts for the reasons why.

also, there’s those devilish smurfs. destroying smurfs is a good idea. IMAO has the justification for it here. yes, this won’t advance the cause of world peace very well, but destroying smurfs and the new york yankees will make a lot of people very happy. i know i would sleep better at night…

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