"You cannot put the institution ahead of anything when it is corrupt or has lost its way."
And, if you don't think you are capable of being corrupt, well the Devil has done his job. Corruption has a way of sliding into existence. A little turn of the head here, a, 'well I'll take that Board position at Theranos' there... good for my CV. Then then you find yourself a line in the Godfather “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” It doesn't matter where one is in that process... stop it when you can still look yourself in the eye.
That’s what he wants you to think. All these po-faced elites having to stoop so low as to explain themselves to we, the unwashed masses. It’s exasperating!
"Yes, I am calling the leaders of the global warming cabal Marxists." Exactly. That would include all Democrats, leaders & otherwise. Our elections this November are becoming a plebiscite on whether you want to live under a capitalist state or a Marxist state. At this point, never Trump people must pick too - not voting or voting for a third party candidate is also a choice for Marxism.
Actually at this point it seems the choice is between quasi-socialist and full blown Marxism/Maoism. I'll take the lesser of those two evils (quasi-socialist) all-day everyday. Capitalism is a long road from here, sadly.
Take your Ed Dept numbers. Were the 4400 employes compensated, all-in, $200k, the payroll would be $880MM. In other words, ~1% of the budget, with ~99% as system graft: funds to state Ed Depts and school districts (and consultants) funding bureaucrats and teachers (Democrats) all down the line.
Many other cabinet departments are much the same--funding a core of federal bureaucrats, while distributing funds to state and local governments to fund their payroll employment. It's a gigantic vote-buying scheme for public employees, a Democrat party constituency.
Who dares vote against their self-interest (employment) for the good of the country's taxpayers...
Most of the budget is for grants to individuals (student aid) and various programs that existed well before the EdDept. One of the subsidies is pre-Constitutional having been done by the Northwest Ordinance. Other increases happened during the Lincoln administration and Reconstruction (Land grant universities, Indian schools) or Jim Crow (separate but equal). The New Deal added a large new increment but the Great Society was the biggest increase. All of this happened before establishment of the EdDept and were simply consolidated into it.
Once a federal govt funding/subsidy program has begun, it must continue in perpetuity? No spending or subsidy program can ever end, by definition. You'll have to pardon my abruptness, but I don't think the origins in history of any expenditure obligates its continuation. In fact, the origins cited merely serve as funding conduits to the same bureaucrats, administrators and other employee-voting constituencies that serve to perpetuate such expenditures. Century old rationalizations would be reason enough to discontinue... Cheers.
No but whining about Jimmy Carter and the umbrella agency doesn't get it done. Abolish programs but good luck since even Reagan said they were immortal. Best place to start is student loans and Title One
"When Democrats defended Bill Clinton for getting a blow job in the Oval Office from a 19-year-old intern, they sent a price signal to the marketplace".
Great insight, yep. Your post is great once again, thanks.
34 felonies for a payment to a hooker also a message. Even 1 count was a stretch, let alone 34. Probably not another recent day conviction in the world where the prosecutions full-blown-throw-shit-at-the-wall charges were so blessed.
Now that’s calling a spade a spade. Well said too. In the 1860s the children of Russian landholders (who provided work and protection for thousands on their estates) who had been sent to university for a higher education were told that their Christian parents were barbarians that secretly ate children. And many believed their professors and turned against their own families. By the end of that century peasant revolts and other social upheavals destroyed Russian society, and revolution had even spread to France. Marx’s philosophy had been published less than a generation earlier. The 19th century closed in chaos, the 20th immediately saw major revolutions, mass murders, assassinations and two world wars throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, China… Communism was accepted first at Columbia university in the 1920s (where your children are taught “journalism”) and spread across Ivy League campuses. Two American presidents quietly accepted and employed Marxist philosophy in social engineering programs. Now, one hundred years later, only the United States and Israel, two nations founded by God’s divine intervention, are all that stand against the chaos and madness of the godless trinity of communism, fascism and totalitarianism. Isn’t it about time to say, “Enough already. It cannot stand.” God told Abraham that for the sake of ten He would not destroy Sodom. For the sake of ten. Do we not have ten men faithful to our Lord today?
DEI is on its way out and within a half decade will be 95% eliminated, because it is ineffective, racist and counterproductive to success.
Keep an eye on the current leaders of many schools, because they will be gone within 4 years, or less.
More people are beginning to realize that we have to come back to center politically and it appears that the only way to do so is to build up a groundswell of support on the right of people who are sensible and point out to those on the left that their old ideas don't work, throwing good money after bad with the idea that spending more and working harder at doing the wrong thing will all of a sudden magically make it the right thing, when that is total nonsense, and the old mindset of the far right being the bigots instead of the far left is getting disproven on a daily basis.
If that change does not occur, one of two things, and maybe both, will happen in the next 5 years or sooner:
1) Civil War II
2) a significant drop off in the power and influence and wealth in the United States relative to the rest of the world.
The encouraging thing is that a lot of European elections coming up in the next few weeks and months look like there will be more people on the right elected than people on the left, at least more than have been in the last decade.
So many Nations have seen the problem with open border immigration and bending over backward to accommodate immigrants from hellhole countries and when you accept people from hellholes almost indiscriminately, you are going to pay a very heavy price. Many people are finally waking up to that reality.
Somebody needs to constantly remind them that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. They also need to be reminded that theory does not equal reality every single time.
Great writing! I forwarded your Chicago “Trading” articles to a couple of good friends with “trading” history: Jim Skelly who worked with Mickey Callaghan at the MERC and Pete Brown who was at the CBOT. They enjoyed your articles.
Yes, I know, late again. David Brooks is an empty suit. He may have gone to Chicago but basically he's from Oakland, in the Gertrude Stein sense. There is no "there" there. He's a purveyor of conventional wisdom and a pointer outer of the obvious for the chattering classes. Always has been, always will be. As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out Brooks rejection of the Tea Party conservatives led to the rise of Trump. Choose the form of your destructor.
"You cannot put the institution ahead of anything when it is corrupt or has lost its way."
And, if you don't think you are capable of being corrupt, well the Devil has done his job. Corruption has a way of sliding into existence. A little turn of the head here, a, 'well I'll take that Board position at Theranos' there... good for my CV. Then then you find yourself a line in the Godfather “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” It doesn't matter where one is in that process... stop it when you can still look yourself in the eye.
I still feel that I made the right decision when I decided about 20 years ago to ignore everything David Brooks says. Propagandist for oligarchs
The sad thing is he doesn't even realize he is being used.
That’s what he wants you to think. All these po-faced elites having to stoop so low as to explain themselves to we, the unwashed masses. It’s exasperating!
"Yes, I am calling the leaders of the global warming cabal Marxists." Exactly. That would include all Democrats, leaders & otherwise. Our elections this November are becoming a plebiscite on whether you want to live under a capitalist state or a Marxist state. At this point, never Trump people must pick too - not voting or voting for a third party candidate is also a choice for Marxism.
Actually at this point it seems the choice is between quasi-socialist and full blown Marxism/Maoism. I'll take the lesser of those two evils (quasi-socialist) all-day everyday. Capitalism is a long road from here, sadly.
Well said.
Take your Ed Dept numbers. Were the 4400 employes compensated, all-in, $200k, the payroll would be $880MM. In other words, ~1% of the budget, with ~99% as system graft: funds to state Ed Depts and school districts (and consultants) funding bureaucrats and teachers (Democrats) all down the line.
Many other cabinet departments are much the same--funding a core of federal bureaucrats, while distributing funds to state and local governments to fund their payroll employment. It's a gigantic vote-buying scheme for public employees, a Democrat party constituency.
Who dares vote against their self-interest (employment) for the good of the country's taxpayers...
Most of the budget is for grants to individuals (student aid) and various programs that existed well before the EdDept. One of the subsidies is pre-Constitutional having been done by the Northwest Ordinance. Other increases happened during the Lincoln administration and Reconstruction (Land grant universities, Indian schools) or Jim Crow (separate but equal). The New Deal added a large new increment but the Great Society was the biggest increase. All of this happened before establishment of the EdDept and were simply consolidated into it.
Once a federal govt funding/subsidy program has begun, it must continue in perpetuity? No spending or subsidy program can ever end, by definition. You'll have to pardon my abruptness, but I don't think the origins in history of any expenditure obligates its continuation. In fact, the origins cited merely serve as funding conduits to the same bureaucrats, administrators and other employee-voting constituencies that serve to perpetuate such expenditures. Century old rationalizations would be reason enough to discontinue... Cheers.
No but whining about Jimmy Carter and the umbrella agency doesn't get it done. Abolish programs but good luck since even Reagan said they were immortal. Best place to start is student loans and Title One
You're right. You have to start somewhere, and the best place is where you can get a win.
"When Democrats defended Bill Clinton for getting a blow job in the Oval Office from a 19-year-old intern, they sent a price signal to the marketplace".
Great insight, yep. Your post is great once again, thanks.
34 felonies for a payment to a hooker also a message. Even 1 count was a stretch, let alone 34. Probably not another recent day conviction in the world where the prosecutions full-blown-throw-shit-at-the-wall charges were so blessed.
Great tag photo with FJB's evil grin when asked about Trump's sham conviction. The half century face of corruption in American politics!
Now that’s calling a spade a spade. Well said too. In the 1860s the children of Russian landholders (who provided work and protection for thousands on their estates) who had been sent to university for a higher education were told that their Christian parents were barbarians that secretly ate children. And many believed their professors and turned against their own families. By the end of that century peasant revolts and other social upheavals destroyed Russian society, and revolution had even spread to France. Marx’s philosophy had been published less than a generation earlier. The 19th century closed in chaos, the 20th immediately saw major revolutions, mass murders, assassinations and two world wars throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, China… Communism was accepted first at Columbia university in the 1920s (where your children are taught “journalism”) and spread across Ivy League campuses. Two American presidents quietly accepted and employed Marxist philosophy in social engineering programs. Now, one hundred years later, only the United States and Israel, two nations founded by God’s divine intervention, are all that stand against the chaos and madness of the godless trinity of communism, fascism and totalitarianism. Isn’t it about time to say, “Enough already. It cannot stand.” God told Abraham that for the sake of ten He would not destroy Sodom. For the sake of ten. Do we not have ten men faithful to our Lord today?
DEI is on its way out and within a half decade will be 95% eliminated, because it is ineffective, racist and counterproductive to success.
Keep an eye on the current leaders of many schools, because they will be gone within 4 years, or less.
More people are beginning to realize that we have to come back to center politically and it appears that the only way to do so is to build up a groundswell of support on the right of people who are sensible and point out to those on the left that their old ideas don't work, throwing good money after bad with the idea that spending more and working harder at doing the wrong thing will all of a sudden magically make it the right thing, when that is total nonsense, and the old mindset of the far right being the bigots instead of the far left is getting disproven on a daily basis.
If that change does not occur, one of two things, and maybe both, will happen in the next 5 years or sooner:
1) Civil War II
2) a significant drop off in the power and influence and wealth in the United States relative to the rest of the world.
The encouraging thing is that a lot of European elections coming up in the next few weeks and months look like there will be more people on the right elected than people on the left, at least more than have been in the last decade.
So many Nations have seen the problem with open border immigration and bending over backward to accommodate immigrants from hellhole countries and when you accept people from hellholes almost indiscriminately, you are going to pay a very heavy price. Many people are finally waking up to that reality.
Somebody needs to constantly remind them that just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. They also need to be reminded that theory does not equal reality every single time.
Great writing! I forwarded your Chicago “Trading” articles to a couple of good friends with “trading” history: Jim Skelly who worked with Mickey Callaghan at the MERC and Pete Brown who was at the CBOT. They enjoyed your articles.
Thank you! I traded with Mickey (DUKE). Really liked him. Only saw him get really mad once.
if you haven't read this, you should: https://www.thefp.com/p/ayaan-hirsi-ali-we-have-been-subverted?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_id=145282846&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=ixt4&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Yes, I know, late again. David Brooks is an empty suit. He may have gone to Chicago but basically he's from Oakland, in the Gertrude Stein sense. There is no "there" there. He's a purveyor of conventional wisdom and a pointer outer of the obvious for the chattering classes. Always has been, always will be. As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out Brooks rejection of the Tea Party conservatives led to the rise of Trump. Choose the form of your destructor.
FWIW, Monica Lewinsky was 22, not 19, when she started giving blowjobs to Bill Clinton.