It's Too Late, Democrats - Save Your Money!

I mailed in my absentee ballot today, October 13, 2010. I could have mailed it in a week ago when I received it - I had already made all my selections among the candidates and propositions before it arrived, so I should have filled it out and dropped it in the mail immediately.

Why the rush?

No rush. Unlike many other citizens, I've been studying the candidates and issues for months while never watching a political ad on TV. Since the only thing we use our TV for is watching videos and football games, at the start of each game I put the DirecTV unit on record and pause, go off and do some chores, then start watching. When the game goes to commercials, I fast forward to the resumption of play, paying little attention to the fast flickering images of the commercials I zip through. The past weekend I noticed one ad repeated constantly. It featured a picture of Republican candidate for California Governor Meg Whitman with a Pinnochio-growing nose. "How clever," I mused sarcastically, and congratulated myself for not wasting any time watching such sophomoric programming.

The Pinnochio nose was tired and old political advertising when we Republicans ran it repeatedly over 16 years ago about Bill Clinton.

Maybe its use now is a tribute to the Green movement - recycling of old political ads to save the time and energy of creating any that are new, clever, and pertinent.

At any rate, all televised political ads are wasted on me - my ballot's in the mail, just in time as the avalanche of expensive Democrat ads hits the airwaves. I think that interested California voters have already done as I have, and mailed their ballots. The ones who haven't voted yet should get so turned off by the barrage of political advertising that they skip the election in disgust. Since most who lay around watching TV all day are Democrats, Republicans win!

Ant Breaking Wind in Hurricane

What is the sound of an ant breaking wind in a hurricane?

I think the California Air Resouces Board just duplicated it.

The Air Resources Board adopts a landmark regulation expected to slash gasoline consumption by 25% and encourage development of low-carbon fuel sources for cars and trucks.

Ethanol is a proven disaster, causing food prices to increase while releasing copious quantities of greenhouse gases (which I care not about), guzzling scarce water resources, and costing more in energy to produce than it delivers in usable energy.

Other biofuels are just as bad or worse, demanding water, land clearing, fertilizers, and burning lots of coal to produce electricity to make biofuels.

Hydrogen as a fuel is even worse, requiring even more electricity while delivering very little in useful product. Hydrogen at its best will be a totally impractical fuel for transporation.

My state, California, as usual leads the way in idiotic approaches to solving the problems of the future.

And as usual, most of the other states will follow California in a stampede of idiocy.

Idiots, like birds, flock together.

Berkeley Kicks Out Its Poor

Berkeley has come up with a plan (Hot debate ahead on Berkeley's energy plans, Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer, Saturday, April 18, 2009) to rid itself of poor homeowners and earn the applause of Liberals for “fighting global warming.” When Berkeley mandates that all homes meet strict energy standards, at a cost per home of $33,800 or more, poor homeowners will be forced to sell out and move away. Wealthy buyers will benefit from the forced sales, and the poor sellers’ homes will have lost value equal to the cost of compliance with the new standards. The poor will be forced to sell their homes at lower values, in effect paying the costs to meet the new standards for the wealthy buyers.

What a deal! Berkeley upgrades the economic status of its residents, increases its property tax base, and becomes the darling of global warming activists. Berkeley’s greenhouse gas reductions will be less than the increase from a new Chinese coal-fired plant in its first week of operation, but as with all liberals, it’s the gesture that counts.

UPDATE: Just after I posted this, I found a new Chronicle report that Berkeley was having second thoughts about the wording of their 145-page Climate Action Plan (Berkeley councilors: Home upgrades not required). Apparently Berkeley now is saying that the word "require" in its plan should be replaced with "set a goal." That's a welcome and unexpected sign of sanity on the part of some Berkeley politicians, but it leads me to wonder what that does to "The Plan." The obvious answer is that it pretty well voids it, since the things that Berkeley says are essential to meet its goal to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions by 80 percent won't be happening.

But the poor of Berkeley are not out of the woods yet. There still may be compliance costs - the sum of $10,000 was mentioned - required when the "home is sold or remodeled."

But most at City Hall agreed that Berkeley will continue to aggressively crusade for environmental improvements.

"We're not backing off this," Marks said. "We're very certain we're going to have to get there."

I'm very certain that Berkeley is not going "to get there" by backing off their "Plan," but then again I'm absolutely certain that Berkeley wasn't going to accomplish anything anyway, no matter if they shut Berkeley down completely. Certainly there must be at least one person in Berkeley who will tell the rest that Berkeley is an unmeasurable blip in greenhouse gas emmissions. Even if Kyoto had been totally implemented successfully, the reduction in global temperatures would have been an unmeasurable 0.07 degree Centigrade. Somehow the Senate was bright enough to recognize that and voted 95-0 to not ratify Kyoto, even with Bill Clinton and Al Gore as President and Vice-President.

However, I'm sure that Berkeley will declare its "Climate Action Plan" a complete success, because to liberals, it's the gesture that counts.

Democrats Set House on Fire, Then Run to the Rescue

Alice was chatting with some friends and Sarah Palin and the coming debate was mentioned. One woman remarked about “how dumb Sarah Palin is.” At that point Alice interjected that Joe Biden was really dumb, and for an example told her friends how he had said that as soon as the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt had immediately gone on television to explain the situation to the American public.

None of the women had heard of Biden’s remark, but one of them said: “Well, of course he meant radio.”

Alice replied, “Maybe he did, but Roosevelt wasn’t President then.”

“Well he soon was, so that’s when he told Americans what was happening,” the woman continued.

“No he wasn’t,” Alice corrected her. “He wasn’t President until three years later. Do you know who was President?”

None of the women knew, so Alice answered her own question: “Herbert Hoover.”

Then Alice wondered why none of her friends had heard of Biden’s remark. Alice assumed that it was because the main stream media chose to ignore it to avoid embarrassing a Democrat.

“That’s not it,” said another of her friends, “it isn’t being reported because it’s just not important.”

“Don’t you think it’s at least as important as Dan Quayle misspelling “potato”? asked Alice. “Don’t you remember the big deal that was made of that? People still talk about it.”

“You know, you’re right,” the woman replied.

The purpose of my presenting this exchange is not to once more prove the already proven, that Americans are history illiterates. Test after test, and example after example has provided ample proof of that. My purpose is to illustrate that people are willfully ignorant, that they call something a “fact” only as it is relevant to supporting their viewpoint.

However, as the last fair-minded Democrat, the late Senator Patrick Moynihan, remarked: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts.”

Patrick is rolling over in his grave now, as Democrats and the main stream media place the blame for the financial crisis on Republicans for favoring deregulation, when it is obvious that Democrat policies going back to Jimmy Carter caused the collapse.

To get to the core of this issue, answer one simple question: “Why did lenders loan to very bad credit risks, and make them loans which could only survive if the housing market continued to go up, and interest rates continued to stay down?”

These loans were made with no down payment, low introductory interest rates changing to variable, stated income instead of verifiable (including income not declared on tax returns), and even interest-only loans to be restructured in two years.

So again my question, why were these loans made?

The answer is obvious: because of pressure from Democrats to enable low-income families to buy “affordable” housing. Republicans recognized the potential for problems and opposed the lowering of standards, but Democrats got their way.

It started with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 under Jimmy Carter and the Democrats, which was “reformed” in 1993 by Bill Clinton and the Democrats. According to Robert Rubin, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy: "(In) conjunction with (President Clinton’s) Community Development Bank and financial institution legislation, which recently passed the House of Representatives, CRA reform will generate billions of dollars in new lending and extend basic banking services to the inner cities and to distressed rural communities around the country.”

Banks were to be judged by how well their statistics for loans to low-income families matched the rates for higher income earners. In other words, on a percentage basis the rates for loans to high-risk and low-risk borrowers should be the same.

In 2003 the Bush administration recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis over a decade before.

Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, and the Democrats disagreed and blocked the reforms: ''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Frank. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Shortly after Frank’s statement, Congress held a hearing on accounting irregularities at Fannie Mae. By the end of 2004, Franklin D. Raines, former head of the White House Office of Management and Budget under President Clinton, and then chief executive of Fannie Mae, was forced out by the board, accused by regulators of overseeing accounting manipulations to bolster his compensation.

Raines settled charges brought by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight by agreeing this spring to pay $2 million and forfeiting $22.7 million in stock and other benefits – all covered by insurance.

Some think that the distorted profitability numbers Raines reported at Fannie Mae contributed to its current slide.

Still Democrats didn’t learn, and in 2005 and 2006, Republicans including John McCain as a co-sponsor, put forth S. 190 [109th]: Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, “(a) bill to address the regulation of secondary mortgage market enterprises, and for other purposes.”

Again reform was blocked by Democrats, and three of the top Democrats blocking it – Chris Dodd, John Kerry, and Barack Obama – were the top three recipients of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

When you read the articles warning about the consequences of making loans, it is no mystery why or how the current financial crisis occurred. Democrat handwriting is on the Wall - all over the wreckage of Wall Street, that is.

Joe Biden, Democrat Messmaker

Democrats are all over Sarah Palin because she will be on OJT as Vice-President, unlike Obama who would be on OJT as President. Sarah Palin is a work in process, unlike Joe Biden who has been on the shelf a long time, as befits a factory second.

Biden has been in the Senate long enough to participate in all the recent Democrat foul-ups. He exemplifies the motto: “If you have a little problem, give it to the Democrats and they’ll make it a big mess.” For example, Democrats are crying to control excessive executive compensation. As noted by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, "In 1980, CEOs were paid 40 times the average worker; today they are paid 600 times more."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Many experts see the beginnings of the explosion of executive compensation pay as dating back to 1993 when Congress, responding to the outcry over executives' pay, banned companies from taking tax deductions of executive salaries greater than $1 million.

Charles Elson, a University of Delaware compensation expert, said companies quickly began getting around that limit by giving their CEOs stock options "and there was an overuse of options that basically put us in the pickle we are in today" regarding executive pay levels.

So the Democrats – in control of Congress for over forty years, and with a Democrat in the White House – fixed the problem then, and created the mess now.

While Palin gets grilled, Biden gets a free pass. Remember the uproar when Dan Quayle misspelled potato? Biden said his Democrat saint, FDR, was president when the stock market crashed in 1929, and that FDR immediately went on television to begin repairs. That was news to FDR and TV viewers. Biden also stated Democrat positions that were news to Obama, too.

Joe Biden, “only a heartbeat away.” Be afraid. Be very afraid.

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?

How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After they've seen how the other half lives)

You notice many things while travelling in foreign countries that should be obvious, but just never come to mind while living in the United States. Last month in Guatemala my attention was drawn to farming.

When I was born in 1942, about twenty percent of Americans lived on farms. Now the number is only two percent, and the number of farms has shrunk from six million to two million. Conversely, the average farm size more than doubled, and farmers produced even more food at a cheaper cost to consumers on roughly the same amount of farmland. Scientific advances, mechanization, and specialization all contributed to increased productivity, and have made United States farmers the most productive and efficient in the world.

Much of the third world is going the other direction primarily because of their continuing population explosion. More people living on the same amount of land means less land to support each person. Farming in the United States never faced that dilemma, because the Industrial Revolution provided an outlet for the surplus farm population.

In fact, industrial needs were so great that scientific advances, mechanization, and specialization were driven as much to overcome farm labor shortages as they were to improve productivity. Even with the rapid improvements in farming methods, farm labor continued to be in short supply resulting in the “Wetback Movement” (commemorated by Lalo Guerrero and his masterpiece, "The Ballad of Pancho Lopez") and later what is now referred to as undocumented immigration.

Third world cities, on the other hand, can’t absorb their farming population surpluses effectively because they have neither the capital nor do they produce sufficient energy to meet the employment needs and living standards of their burgeoning urban populations.

However, that doesn’t mean the rural poor are content to stay on their farms just because their cities don’t have much to offer. The World War I song, "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They've Seen Paree)” can be applied to the rural poor in undeveloped countries. They don’t have to travel anywhere to “see Paree.” They see Paree, and LA, and New York, and London, and the other exciting world cities on TV every day. If their own county’s major cities can’t satisfy their dreams of a better life, they soon learn that they can join the ranks of the undocumented immigrants.

Hello, Los Angeles! New York! London! Amsterdam! Paris!


How do growing populations increase the number of farms and shrink their size?

I already explained how the Industrial Revolution caused the opposite in the developed world. Unfortunately, the Industrial Revolution bypassed the countries that are home to over half the world’s population.

Suppose a farmer has ten acres, and suppose he and his wife have ten children, five boys and five girls. Because of the small size of the farm, the lack of powered farming equipment and seeds to grow scientifically improved crops, and the great distance and lack of transportation to get crops to markets, the farm is diversified and primarily produces for consumption by the farmer and his family. If the farm was larger, and access to markets was better, the farmer could specialize and grow a cash crop. But that’s not the case.

The farmer has chickens, maybe a cow, probably pigs. He has to devote some of his time, land, and crops to them, because they will provide what little protein he and his family consume. Then there are the beans and corn, nutritious and filling staples that do well in storage if the farmer is careful. During harvest periods, the farmer will have tomatoes and other vegetables in excess that don’t store well. He can sell or trade his excess, although all his neighbors also have excesses of the same crops at the same time he does.

As the farmer’s children grow, their help with the work in the house and field is very useful, since the work requires physical labor because of the lack of powered farming equipment. However, at some point each child grows to be more of a burden on the family food supply than an asset. Fortunately for the farmer, at that point each girl is old enough to get married and leave to live with her husband’s family.

It’s the boys that are a problem. They’re going to stay, and want to get married, and add their wives and children to the growing burden on the land. Further, each new, young family will want to have part of the farm for their own purposes. The ten-acre farm that barely supported one farmer and his family becomes five two-acre farms supporting five young families and the aging farmer and his wife.

After this has repeated over several generations, and the population has far exceeded the carrying capacity of the land, a revolution is necessary for land reform to take it from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, because the rich won't just give it away.

Zimbabwe provides the best current example of this. The rich landlords are killed or driven away, and their land divided amongst the poor. However, the poor still don’t have access to capital and skills to improve their farm productivity, and the former owners and their capital and skills are gone. Also gone are the wages that were paid to the workers and the contracts the former owners had to sell their specialized and abundant produce to multinational corporations.

Soon the poor farmers are back where they were before the revolution, only worse off because the country’s fund of capital, jobs, and skills has shrunk, and the aura of political instability will keep it that way.

California Governor Hopeful San Francisco Mayor Newsom Protected Illegal Alien Murderer

As a result of San Francisco’s sanctuary law, a father and his two sons were murdered by an illegal alien who San Francisco had twice shielded from federal immigration authorities when he had committed felonies and should have been deported.

Today (July 23, 2008) Edwin Ramos pled not guilty to charges of murdering San Francisco residents Tony Bologna and his two sons, Michael and Mathew near their home on June 22nd. Ramos, a native of El Salvador whom prosecutors say is a member of a violent street gang, was earlier found guilty of two felonies as a juvenile: a gang-related assault on a Muni passenger and the attempted robbery of a pregnant woman (San Francisco Chronicle reporters investigated and discovered Ramo’s prior convictions, and that city officials had shielded him from federal authorities).

In neither instance did officials with the city's Juvenile Probation Department alert federal immigration authorities, because it was the city agency's policy not to consider immigration status when deciding how to deal with an offender. Had city officials investigated, they would have found that Ramos lacked legal status to remain in the United States (see SF Chronicle article).

Were it not for the incalculable tragedy of the murders of three honest, innocent, beloved, and productive citizens, the way San Francisco complied with their illegal alien sanctuary law would be comic. Their first approach to preventing convicted illegal alien felons from being deported and banned for life from United States immigration was to fly, at taxpayer expense, the felons back to their home countries.

As Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders notes, this "put the welfare of juvenile gang-bangers and drug dealers, who also were illegal immigrants, before the safety of law-abiding residents who are victimized by gangs and thugs." It signaled drug dealers that using juveniles, or undocumented individuals claiming to be juveniles, to conduct drug dealings in San Francisco was the way to go. When caught the “juveniles” received soft treatment through the city’s Juvenile Probation Department, and when returned to their home countries, were immediately sent back to San Francisco to resume dealing drugs.

When a city official and two convicted “juvenile” offenders were stopped at the airport in Houston enroute to being returned to Honduras, San Francisco’s defiance and violations of federal immigration law finally came to light. That didn’t stop San Francisco officials from compounding their idiocy at taxpayer expense.

Continuing to shield felons from immigration officials, San Francisco recently placed eight illegal immigrant “juvenile” crack dealers in unlocked group homes in Southern California at a cost of $7,000 per individual per month. All eight immediately escaped (i.e., walked out the door) to return to their illegal activities.

For those who believe they escaped to reform themselves and now lead honest lives in America, there is always a place for you in the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department.

Overlooked in all the tragic-comedic aspects of San Francisco releasing felons to continue drug dealing and murdering is the San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris’ vow to never seek a death penalty. Since San Francisco has repeatedly earned its reputation as “The City That Knows How…To Really Foul Things Up,” a group is calling on the U. S. Attorney to prosecute the triple murder case.

Not only does San Francisco have a well-deserved reputation for fouling things up, but it would be a conflict of interest, particularly in this case, for San Francisco to prosecute Ramos when they were responsible for him being free to murder in the first place. The San Francisco DA would be under pressure from San Francisco officials to rush to sweep the whole embarrassing matter under the rug rather than seeking justice.

Particularly while the primary offender, Mayor Gavin Newsom, is poised to launch a bid to become California Governor. When this issue was first brought to his attention, he looked totally surprised and immediately blamed the courts for what city officials were doing to comply with San Francisco sancturary policy.

His eagerness to pass the buck exemplified his qualifications to be the Governor of California, where no state officials ever take responsibility for fixing any problem - they just wait for voters to finally lose their patience, pass a proposition, and then have the courts declare it unconstitutional.

Only in California could a serial philanderer (he had an affair with a subordinate, his best friend/campaign manager's wife), recently out of alcohol rehab, who denies any responsibility or even knowledge of what his officials are doing, be considered a serious candidate for any political office, let alone governor.

Unintended Environmental Consequences of Liberalism

The world is filled with solutions to human suffering that Liberals won’t allow. In fact, many of Liberals' pet programs add immeasurably to human suffering.

Examples abound. The most recent is rampant world hunger. What have Liberals done to make it worse?

Liberals vain fight against global warming is the prime self-inflicted wound on the poor people of the world. The quest for alternative fuels is literally taking food out of the mouths of babes, while at the same time causing a net increase in greenhouse gases that will take a century or more to overcome. Biofuels are a horrible idea whose time should never come.

The only reason that Liberals are so hot to find alterative energy sources is because they are totally focused in opposition to the only viable, nonpolluting, environmentally friendly answer to world energy needs, nuclear power. Solar, wind, wave, hydroelectric, biomass – most of these generation methods require huge government subsidies, and even then are only marginally economical when the price of oil is at record highs.

(UPDATE: Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore agrees we must develop nuclear energy, and that alternative power generating systems can't satisfy world energy needs.)

Beside high costs, the alternative energy sources are also incredibly polluting to the environment. I laughed when I read of environmentalists protesting fencing along the United States/Mexico border, and not the plans for huge solar and wind power installations in pristine desert and mountain habitats. The only nonpolluting power source that is economical without massive subsidies is hydroelectric, and it causes unbelievable damage to fisheries and loss of natural rivers and habitat.

Besides diverting government resources from better uses and increasing environmental pollution, the environmentalists’ opposition to nuclear energy has had an enormous unintended consequence: an enormous increase in burning coal, oil, and natural gas to meet the phenomenal growth in world energy needs. If nuclear energy was given the political and economic support it deserves, there would have already been great progress in design improvement and the construction of nuclear power plants. In the absence of support for nuclear energy, the only feasible option for meeting world power requirements has been the wholesale addition of coal, oil, and natural gas generating plants.

Liberals have shown the same genius for fouling things up with food itself, the shortage of which is now causing hunger and death daily at an ever increasing rate. Their opposition to genetically modified foods is a marvel of ignorance and shortsightedness. Plants have already been modified for greatly increased yields per acre, using less water, less fertilizer, and less pesticides, while also providing essential nutrients that eliminate serious health problems like child blindness.

European Liberals, exercising their misguided elitism, call them “Franken foods” and ban them from both production and consumption. How does that protect the environment? Liberals say it prevents the genetically modified plants from crossing with native or natural species, as if species purity was sufficient justification for the ban.

However, besides worsening world hunger, their ban continues the pressure on burgeoning water shortages, causes more air pollution from using natural gas to make fertilizer, requires the use of pesticides and chemicals because natural plants are not as insect and disease resistant as genetically modified ones, and increases water pollution from the pesticide and chemical runoff from farms into streams.

Liberal efforts to combat global warming provides material for a large book to chronicle the messes it is creating for current and future generations. Laying aside the fact that global warming is natural, not caused by man, the solutions that Liberals propose all arrive at the same end: enormous amounts of resources are expended in a doomed, vain attempt to reverse natural climate change. The bottom line on such efforts is very clear. The climate will change, just as it has hundreds of times before for hundreds of thousands of years. Along the way, the economic progress of billions of poor people will be slowed or reversed, and they will be constrained to living short, brutish lives of poverty and deprivation. In turn, this will create more social and political unrest, with resulting wars of revolution fueled by inequality and discontent.

If those same resources were consumed in increasing economic activity, and resultant prosperity and accumulation of wealth, the formerly poor of the world would be able to adapt readily to warming, cooling (very likely, and much more damaging), or any thing else that nature throws their way.

With prosperity, and abundant energy from nuclear power, the formerly poor can do what the citizens of the developed world already do: modify their environment to fit their needs and desires, just as Americans have been doing for decades.

Why are the populations of the southern parts of the United States increasing faster than the more northerly? Because Americans have been voting with their feet for “warmer” ever since air conditioning made comfortable living further south possible. At the same time, better heating, insulation, and air conditioning have also made living and working in the more extremely variable northern climates more bearable.

These are just a few of the many ways Liberal policies create enormous unintended negative consequences, and the ways that economic progress and resulting prosperity would solve even the messes Liberalism causes.

Even as Liberals work their butts off to try and really foul things up.

The Idiot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I titled a previous post,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fool or Fraud.” Since then I’ve refined my labeling, and it’s clear Ferlinghetti is a mere idiot, too educated to be a fool, too ignorant to be a fraud.

Harkening back to my post of yesteryear, in a San Francisco Chronicle article, concerning the atomic bombing of Japan Mr. Ferlinghetti observed that "It was a monstrous, racist act, the worst the U.S. ever committed," he says. "Had the Japanese been white-skinned, those bombs would not have dropped."

I proceeded to document that we had bombed the white-skinned Germans much more intensely, causing the Germans far greater suffering, loss of life, and destruction of property, than we had the Japanese, and further that the atom bombs dropped on Japan unquestioningly saved millions of Japanese civilians, and hundreds of thousands of American military.

If anything, dropping the atom bombs on Japan was an act of mercy. Even an idiot like Ferlinghetti must realize that the Japanese would have been fierce in defense of their homeland. If Ferlinghetti needs further convincing, he need only look at Japanese losses on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, preludes to the invasion of the Japanese mainland.

On Peleliu, which Alice and I recently visited, less than fifty of 11,000 Japanese survived, and almost 2,000 Americans were killed.

The Japanese on Iwo Jima fought ferociously, and when defeat was inevitable, committed suicide. Only about 1,000 of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima survived. US losses were 6,821, more deaths in one month than we suffered in five years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

However, as horrific as the fighting on Iwo Jima was, it was just a prelude to the slaughter on Okinawa. Twice as many were killed (approximately a quarter of a million) during the Battle of Okinawa than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Estimates of civilian deaths go as high as one-third of Okinawa’s population, who when faced with defeat joined the Japanese military in committing mass suicides.

All of this came during the last year of war in the Pacific. What about Germany?

I’ve been reading the campaign diary of the British Royal Air Force Bomber Command, and it exposed Mr. Ferlinghetti’s infinite ignorance of how badly we treated the white-skinned Germans. I was born July 18, 1942, fairly early in the war by American standards, but the British had already been fighting for two years, and had won the Battle of Britain over a year before.

When I was born the British had been bombing German cities for over a year. I was just over a week old when Hamburg was hit by the first of many terrifying night attacks (the British Royal Air Force bombed Germany by night, the United States bombed by day).

This is an excerpt of the bomber diary entry for 26/27 July 1942:

Hamburg
403 aircraft - 181 Wellingtons, 77 Lancasters, 73 Halifaxes, 39 Stirlings, 33 Hampdens dispatched in what was probably a full 'maximum effort' for the regular Bomber Command squadrons. 29 aircraft - 15 Wellingtons, 8 Halifaxes, 2 Hampdens, 2 Lancasters, and 2 Stirlings - were lost, 7.2 per cent of the force.
Crews encountered a mixture of cloud and icing at some places on the route but clear weather at the target. Good bombing results were claimed. Hamburg reports show that severe and widespread damage was caused, mostly in housing and semi-commercial districts rather than in the docks and industrial areas. At least 800 fires were dealt with, 523 being classed as large. 823 houses were destroyed and more than 5,000 damaged. More than 14,000 people were bombed out. 337 people were killed and 1,027 injured.

That was one night in one German city. One year and one day later, Hamburg was hit harder:

27/28 July 1943
787 aircraft - 353 Lancasters, 244 Halifaxes, 116 Stirlings, and 74 Wellingtons - returned to Hamburg. Brigadier-General Anderson again flew in a Lancaster and watched this raid. The centre of the Pathfinder marking - all carried out by H2S on this night - was about 2 miles east of the planned aiming point in the centre of the city, but the marking was particularly well concentrated and the Main Force bombing 'crept back' only slightly.
This was the night of the firestorm, which started through an unusual and unexpected chain of events. The temperature was particularly high (30° centigrade at 6 o'clock in the evening) and the humidity was only 30 per cent, compared with an average of 40-50 per cent for this time of the year. There had been no rain for some time and everything was very dry .The concentrated bombing caused a large number of fires in the densely built-up working-class districts of Hammerbrook, Hamm and Borgfeld. Most of Hamburg's fire vehicles had been in the western parts of the city, damping down the fires still smoldering there from the raid of 3 nights earlier, and only a few units were able to pass through roads which were blocked by the rubble of buildings destroyed by high-explosive bombs early in this raid. About half-way through the raid, the fires in Hammerbrook started joining together and competing with each other for the oxygen in the surrounding air. Suddenly, the whole area became one big fire with air being drawn into it with the force of a storm. The bombing continued for another half hour, spreading the firestorm area gradually eastwards. It is estimated that 550-600 bomb loads fell into an area measuring only 2 miles by 1 mile. The firestorm raged for about 3 hours and only subsided when all burnable material was consumed. The burnt-out area was almost entirely residential. Approximately 16,000 multi-storied apartment buildings were destroyed. There were few survivors from the firestorm area and approximately 40,000 people died, most of them by carbon monoxide poisoning when all the air was drawn out of their basement shelters. In the period immediately following this raid, approximately 1,200,000 people - two thirds of Hamburg's population - fled the city in fear of further raids.

During the next two years over a million German military were pinned down by the need to protect against Allied bombing around the clock. Before the war ended, Germany was forced to send barely trained pilots into combat, and pilots had to fly both day and night missions.

After the Hamburg firestorm, many other German cities, including Berlin, were heavily bombed by day and night.

In March, 1944, the diary of the city of Frankfurt has this entry:

The three air raids of 18th, 22nd and 24th March were carried out by a combined plan of the British and American air forces and their combined effect was to deal the worst and most fateful blow of the war to Frankfurt, a blow which simply ended the existence of the Frankfurt which had been built up since the Middle Ages.

A great historical city gone, centuries of living and building obliterated in a few Hellish nights.

Then in February 1945, the Allies plastered Dresden for three days.

Temperatures reached 1000 degrees, and the air caught on fire, creating a "firestorm” that burned for four days. 1600 acres were destroyed and 135,000 were killed (some reports say the number killed cannot be determined, but that it was certainly over 50,000), including many refugees fleeing the Soviet advance on the Eastern Front.

Some historians estimate more civilians were killed in the firebombing of Dresden than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The Germans' white skin didn't seem to save them, did it Mr. Ferlinghetti?

According to The War in the Air over Europe: "Tactics developed in Europe were employed with devastating effect in the Pacific. 20th Air Force commanding General Curtis LeMay abandoned precision bombing for area bombing with incendiaries, causing cataclysmic firestorms."

From The Strategic Bombing of Japan:

On June 15, 1944, the first B-29 raid flew from China to strike at a factory in Japan. This was the precision target bombing that the United State Army Air Forces (USAAF) had practiced for years. This policy would be abandoned shortly for area bombing of civilian targets. It would represent a major shift from the doctrine practiced in Europe and the policy that had cost so many American lives over German cities.

When Curtiss LeMay arrived and took command in January 1945, he ordered a switch from high altitude high explosive precision daylight attacks to night area bombing with a mixture of incendiaries and antipersonnel weapons. This prevented the firefighters from putting out the fires, which spread wildly.

From March 1945 through the end of the war, many Japanese cities were subjected to area bombing with incendiaries. Tokyo, Osaka, and many other cities were burned out by firestorms that reached over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit. The bombings may have killed as many as 500,000 people.

So there you have it, Mr. Ferlinghetti. The tactics used to annihilate Japanese late in the war had been developed over the preceding three-year period of area bombing German cities. Americans had come late into the practice of area bombing cities by night, and had paid for adhering to precision daylight bombing by losing aircraft and aircrews at twice the British rate.

Bomb civilians or sacrifice aircrews and aircraft? The decision makes itself. The duty of a commanding officer is to win the war quickly with the least cost to his forces. The decision was made even easier because the Germans and Japanese committed atrocities and terror attacks on civilians and cities from the start of hostilities.

I’m sure Mr. Ferlinghetti would take the opposite approach and spare the enemy’s cities and civilian populations, with the result that millions more would die, devastation would be far greater, and your own forces and armaments would suffer much heavier losses.

Your way, Mr. Ferlinghetti, would be the worst choice for friend and foe alike.

If what we did to Japan was racist, Mr. Ferlinghetti, what do you call what we did to Germany?

How to Eliminate Alcoholics in San Francisco

Well, maybe not eliminate alcoholics - that would empty San Francisco - but reduce the number of Tenderloin alcoholics, primarily the homeless ones. They're the ones that hit San Francisco's city budget hard. The more affluent ones are budget positives - we don't want to mess with them.

In fact we encourage them to drink more, live it up - at least up to the point their livers can take.

One of my favorite columnists is C. W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle. A few months ago he had some great columns about homelessness in San Francisco which placed most of the blame for homelessness on the homeless. And their wild-eyed enablers of every liberal stripe except a practical one.

That’s earth shattering (a description not in favor in San Francisco) for a San Francisco columnist to see what is real, instead of what political correctness dictates.

However, CW blew it on the proliferation of liquor stores where alcoholics live. The question that immediately sprung forth in my head was: Do alcoholics live by liquor stores, or do liquor stores locate where people want to buy alcohol.?

If San Francisco liquor stores were located at least 500 feet apart, would there be fewer alcoholics in San Francisco? 1,000 feet?

No, although the extra walking would make them healthier alcoholics.

If San Francisco reduced its number of liquor stores by 26 percent, as Oakland has, would there be fewer alcoholics in San Francisco?

Hint: There aren’t fewer in Oakland.

As Jimmy Shamiel, vice-president of the Arab American Grocers noted, “…crime hasn’t gone down in Oakland (Strong Ox Note: it’s gone up). So maybe we need to address the issues rather than scapegoat small businessmen.”

One thing that would happen is that while a bunch of liquor store owners would lose their businesses, the ones left would be much more profitable.

None of the “creative approaches” taken by other cities mentioned in CW’s article seemed to have the slightest chance of reducing alcoholism in San Francisco, or in the other cities either. They might reduce the number of stores, increase fees per store while decreasing total fee revenue by reducing the number of stores, create more vacant store space in already economically depressed areas, and drive some businesses and jobs away.

But reduce alcoholism in San Francisco?

Cutting the number of liquor stores would be like Prohibition without any prohibitions.

Other thoughts:

Combating alcoholism by reducing the number of liquor stores reminds me of the idiocy of rent control. Rent control laws result in fewer rental units being built, in existing units being converted to condominiums, and rental rates going sky high because an ever increasing demand is facing an ever shrinking supply.

One of Alice’s old boyfriends, who owns several rental units in San Francisco, loves rent control, because it restricts and even eliminates competition. It’s easy for him to get very high rents for his units, and to keep raising his rents, as long as he makes sure to rent only to younger, mobile tenants. And to be very vigilant to prevent them from illegally sub-leasing to others.

Rent control is the primary reason that there are no affordable rental units in San Francisco for low-income families.

It’s a landlord’s best friend.

As with most loopy liberal ideas, rent control hurts the ones it was supposed to help, and helps the ones it was supposed to control.

Abundantly Happy - Greens Mess Up Environment with Biofuels

Typical of the Green movement, biofuels are the latest disaster created by their ignorant but spirited crusade to save the world one misguided step at a time.

Previously their attempts resulted in the abominations of ethanol, wind farms, biofuels, and increased dependency on foreign oil.

These efforts to find “Green” energy replacements all require huge taxpayer subsidies and increased environmental damage when compared to the continued use of conventional fuels.

How have the Greens damaged the environment?

Let me count the ways.

Biofuels and ethanol – recently I blogged that producing fuel from plants has driven up prices, for example, corn tortillas in Mexico. Further, demand for agriculture has increased dramatically at a time when water supplies world wide are already stressed out. It goes without saying, but I will have to say it anyway because of the abundant environmental ignorance of the Green intelligentsia, that abundant crop production requires abundant fertilizer use, which necessitates abundant fertilizer production.

Fertilizer production requires abundant natural gas consumption, and abundant water use to apply it. Then after a rain, the abundant fertilizer creates abundant run-off which then causes abundant algae growth, quickly removing the abundance of oxygen in the water, followed by abundant dead fish.

Is all this abundantly clear?

Happily, there’s more. Long-overdue life cycle studies just published in the journal Science indicated that substantially more greenhouse gases result from biofuels production than from conventional fuels. In fact, one study indicated it takes 93 years before savings from biofuels equal the greenhouse gases created at the beginning of their production.

Doubly happy, as wasteful and damaging to the environment as biofuels are, recent studies show climate change corresponds directly to solar variation, and not at all to carbon dioxide changes. Today’s low solar activity indicates global cooling will start soon.

Oh happy day!

Alternative Minimum Tax Cuts - More Fun Than a Barrel of Democrats

Democrats are always good for a laugh, and the way they stumbled all over themselves to cut the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was better than a car full of clowns.

The simple truth about the AMT was that it was never intended to do what it’s doing now. All the Democrats who passed it in 1969 under the late, unlamented reign of LBJ wanted was to soak a few (166) selected wealthy families. It was just the usual simple Democrat program to use governmental power to harass a few people they didn’t like, constitutional protections be damned. Since the Supreme Court was an agent of liberal activism at the time, there was no worry on that front anyway.

However, thanks to the Democrat’s endemic lack of foresight, the AMT soon became extremely effective at extracting taxes from the unintended who, thanks to patterns of urban settlement, politics, and high state taxes, became higher-class, and increasingly middle-class, Democrats.

Therefore, the Democrats seemed to have a simple task ahead: reduce or eliminate the AMT, and with it the unintended but very real tax consequences to their constituents.

But wait. Nothing is ever easy for Democrats. In a vain attempt to hide their “tax and spend” spots, Democrats had coined the un-Democrat phrase of “pay as you go,” aka PAYGO. In essence Democrats said, with particular intent to protect newly elected members from right-leaning areas, that no tax cuts would be made unless they could be rendered “revenue neutral.”

The problem with the AMT was that its ability to generate tax revenues was increasing exponentially, and Democrats being Democrats, they had big plans for the many ways they could spend their largesse.

“But wait again,” you say (and if you don’t, I will). “Democrats had no intention of taking money from the people who are now being (or soon will be) soaked by the AMT.”

I agree most decidedly. Therefore, those tax revenues are like “found money,” or ill-gotten gain to the government, so why continue taking them from the people?

“Because,” Democrats are quick to point out, “it’s a lot of money now, and will soon be a humongous amount of money, and we can’t think of any other way we can get our hands on that much money to spend on our growing stack of pork – oops, sorry, what we really mean to say – to spend on ‘investments’ for the people – for our people, who are highly dependent on us bringing back some bacon, or why would they have elected us in the first place?”

“Sorry, I was carried away by an unexpected wave of honesty. It won’t happen again, you can depend on that, so help me Nancy Pelosi.”

At that point he lowered his left hand and took his right hand off Nancy’s book: “Pork is Your Friend – How to Win Friends and Buy Their Votes.”

The “Democrat’s Dilemma” – what a nice book title that would be! Like “Pilgrim’s Progress” with no progress – is that if they do nothing about the AMT they will be recipients of an ever increasing flood of tax revenues to pass out amongst their poorer and very hopeful supporters. The problem that creates is that it will make Republicans of their wealthier, and therefore big contributing, Democrat supporters.

“Let’s see,” said Nancy, “on the one hand (left, of course) we have a bunch of people who support us and want us to give them goodies. Lucky for us they will keep supporting us, even if we don’t give them much, because we’re the only goodies-giving game in town.”

“On the other hand,” she continued, but still using only her left hand, “we have a bunch of people who support us who give us goodies. If we don’t cut the AMT, they won’t have goodies to give us, but those rascally Republicans will be happy to cut the AMT – they promised to do so anyway, but we stopped them – and will be overjoyed to accept our grateful former supporters’ votes and contributions.”

(In the interest of honesty and full disclosure, at this point I must admit the obvious: all the above are made-up quotes. However, as CBS News and Dan Rather reporting about Texas Air National Guard letters, and the French press reporting Palestinian propaganda as fact would be quick to point out, made-up news is the best news, because it illustrates the “truth” of an issue in a way that real facts, contaminated as they are by actual events, cannot. Therefore I follow their examples, except I do what they don’t, I admit it when I make things up.)

In the end, Democrats cut the AMT and didn’t raise the taxes on the wealthy.

Even “Dimocrats” have seen the light that “Trickle Down” works, and that it’s not good politics to demonize the rich, then beg for their contributions.

“Global Warming” Will Cause Starvation

“I thought you said that global warming wouldn’t be a problem,” said the frequent reader of this crusading blog.

“That’s right,” reply I. “Global warming won’t be a problem. The Earth has warmed up a lot more in times past, and the effects were salubrious, particularly where agriculture was concerned.”

It’s a fact that modern civilization began about 10,000 years ago when mankind evolved from the hunter/gatherer lifestyle to the more sedentary agricultural mode. It is no coincidence that the Holocene Climate Optimum began at about the same time, and that for several thousand years the Earth was as warm, and usually warmer, than today.

Also not coincidental: the intervening warm periods following the Holocene Optimum - the Roman Warm Period of roughly 2,000 years ago, and the Medieval Warm Period of 1,000 years ago – were periods of rapid human progress sandwiched between colder periods characterized by stagnation and even civil regression.

These colder periods – the Dark Ages about 1,500 years ago, and the Little Ice Age of more recent vintage – were times of crop failures and famine; bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, and cholera pandemics; and terrible weather including violent storms, blizzards, and enormous floods.

So today we’re told by the United Nations and other panels of climate “experts” that global warming will cause starvation.

Why would it do that?

According to the experts, global warming will cause storms and floods. I guess these experts haven’t looked at historical records and found that storms and floods were more frequent, more powerful, and relatively more damaging during cold periods than warm.

Also overlooked in their zeal, famine was much more widespread and deadly during colder rather than warmer periods.

So was disease.

However, if you look into the roots of current concerns about starvation, you will see that they really are caused by global warming. Sort of.

Global warming alarmists convinced many that burning fossil fuels will cause warming through the greenhouse effect. These concerns caused frantic searches for alternatives to fossil fuels, which unfortunately gave rise to such abominations as ethanol and biofuels.

What are the sources of these alternative fuels?

Agricultural products.

What are the primary sources of food?

Agricultural products.

See a problem?

Of course, there is another threat to the poor’s food supply.

Prosperity.

Prosperity in developing nations is fueled by energy consumption.

Prosperous people consume more meat.

Livestock compete for the same agricultural products as the poor, and so do ethanol and bio-fuels.

The poor basically are left with two choices.

1) Starve.

2) Or consume more energy and become more prosperous.

But wait.

Global warming alarmists want less energy consumption, not more. In particular, they want developed nations to drastically reduce their energy consumption below current levels to the levels of an earlier period, a period when there were far fewer people, and far less energy gobbling high-technology industries.

In other words, to a time when there was naturally lower energy needs.

That’s like asking the parents of four children to cut back their food consumption and reduce their family car size to what it was when they only had two, and when the two were much smaller.

So, for the sake of discussion, the developed nations make the cuts.

However, so far only Germany and Great Britain have been able to cut hydrocarbon emissions, Germany because they got rid of old inefficient East German plants, and Great Britain substituted North Sea natural gas for their old coal-burning generators. It was like “found money.” They would have made these emission cuts even if Kyoto never happened.

But anyway, the developed nations will cut emissions, and thereby eviscerate their economies.

Only Al Gore and his Merry Band of Benighted Environmentalists are trying to sell energy cuts as painless and not as sacrifices.

Although I’m sure they know better. Big Al may sound dumb, but he’s smarter than he looks. And he’s fooling a lot of people who think they’re smart.

The big developing nations – China, India, and Brazil - will continue their rapid economic development fueled by prodigious energy consumption and increased emissions.

The undeveloped nations will stay poor and their people starve, because their source of markets and capital, the developed nations, have slashed their economies and dried up the options for poor nations to grow theirs.

So the poor now have two choices.

1) Starve.

2) Leave.

Which would you choose?

And where are they going?

Does anyone want to guess?

Democrat's Alternative Minimum Tax Fiasco

The editorial staff of the San Francisco Chronicle has never been accused of rational analysis of an issue, and their position on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) perpetuates their irrationality.

They begin their analysis by stating that the AMT was an all-time winner of the Good Idea Gone Bad award. That leaves me to wonder, why was it a good idea in the first place?

Because Democrats created it, and now don't know what to do to prevent current and future catastrophes?

What was the purpose of the AMT?

The answer, to prevent people from dodging taxes by adhering to tax law and taking legal and permitted deductions (including long-term capital gains, accelerated depreciation, certain medical expenses, percentage depletion, certain tax-exempt income, certain credits, personal exemptions, and the standard deduction).

The tax laws, of course, were crafted by Congress to encourage and reward taxpayers to do certain things, but Congress didn’t intend that people actually do those things scrupulously and not pay any income tax at all. That offended Congress’ sense of fair play, thinking that in such circumstances that taxpayers should do their civic duty and overpay their taxes.

Since no taxpayers with significant incomes could be found that were so stupid that they paid taxes they didn’t have to, a Democrat Congress and President decided to fix the problem and created the AMT in 1969.

As with the rest of LBJ’s programs, the AMT rapidly became what it wasn’t intended to be, a sloppily devised program that fed on gains from inflation, and increasingly preyed upon taxpayers in high income, high tax urban areas, predominantly Democrats.

Unfortunately for Democrats, the AMT was so successful at taxing inflationary gains that their plans for spending increases are highly dependent upon the increased tax revenues the AMT unchanged would generate.

At this point the Democrats, and their mouthpieces like the San Francisco Chronicle, protest that the tax revenues lost by eliminating or scaling back the AMT must be replaced by increasing some other tax.

What is the logic in that?

If this misbegotten legislation had never been passed there would not be a huge pot sitting at the end of the IRS rainbow causing spendaholic congress-people to desperately search for replacement revenue.

Even Democrats admit that the taxes generated by the AMT are by mistake, that there never was intent to penalize middle-class taxpayers for the sin of scrupulous compliance with tax law by the wealthy. In fact, the original intent was to nail only 155 taxpayers, but it immediately went totally out of control.

And these are the folks you want running health care?

Democrats Get Religion (On Taxes)

No, Democrats haven’t become religious, but they suddenly want to cut taxes, at least the Alternative Minimum Tax.

“Why is that?” a sensible person might ask.

Even a Democrat might ask.

Because many Democrats live in high tax states, particularly high property tax states. The income shielded by deducting those high state taxes has now passed the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) threshold and is being taxed, at a rate high enough to produce a scream from “tax and spend” Democrats. Those are the same Democrats who vow that Americans are not being taxed enough, but really mean that other Americans are not being taxed enough.

In cutting the Alternative Minimum Tax, Democrats are hoist on their own petard. They vowed that any tax cut has to be “paid for,” either by increasing another tax, or cutting spending (PAYGO).

Since cutting spending is not in Democrats’ DNA, and raising taxes is, you know where this is headed.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the New Democrat Coalition, demands an AMT bill that conforms with budget rules. “I want AMT paid for. I think the entire Democratic Caucus wants the AMT paid for. I am very resolved to that."

Tauscher said Senate Republicans need to recognize that a new party controls Congress, and compromise.

“I would remind them we took the majority and decided we were not going to run the government as they did, as profligate spenders.”

Democrats want to return to running the government their own way, as profligate taxers first, then as profligate spenders.

I usually don’t go out of my way to solve Democrats’ problems, but just this once I will, since tax cuts are near and dear to my heart.

In this case, the solution leaped off the front pages of newspapers all over the country today: “Senate rejects overhaul of farm subsidies.” Actually, the farm bill overhaul was more a repackaging. Instead of giving almost all crop subsidies to huge commodity farms primarily in the Mid-West, farmers of previously unsubsidized crops would be invited to join the others already feeding at the government-supported trough.

“Reform” as defined by Democrats.

And only a Liberal rag like the San Francisco Chronicle would characterize a crushing 37-58 loss on a farm bill “overhaul” as progress.

However, it’s perfect. The Democrats want to cut or eliminate a rapacious tax, the Alternative Minimum, and farm subsidies in the Land of Perpetual Agricultural Surpluses should be totally eliminated.

Democrats!

Abolish the AMT!

Democrats!

Abolish farm subsidies!

This is such a beautiful win-win for the American taxpayer, there is no way in Hell the Democrats will do it. They’re looking for a tax to raise to replace tax revenue lost by eliminating the AMT, not spending they can cut.

In fact, as illustrated by their attempt to repackage and expand farm subsidies, cutting spending is the last thing on their minds.

Pity.