I dream of living in ... a World Without Dictators! I'm a Libertarian Paternalist in Slovakia - Freedom with Responsibility - 10% of income into your own Pension; Tax Loans for education, health, housing; now supporting Employment Maximizing Companies!

blog posts on immigration at The Truth Laid Bear

Michael on Iraqis being better off :: Thanks for a mostly excellent defense, Kimmit.  Do you notice argument parallels with failed gov't schools (in opposing vouchers): the NEA engages in stupid, counterproductive policy which increases gov't school exposure to black illiteracy, then points to the increased risk as a reason why their stupid, counterproductive policies must be rewarded with increased funding.

 

My point is that ALL gov'ts have problems with policies, and use their own failures as a reason to increase and strengthen their own positions. Rewarding failed gov't policies with more taxpayer money.  The Big Gov't Dems, historically, far more than the Reps.  But Bush is a far bigger deficit spender than (the Reps would let) Clinton (be)!

 

Iraq needs more local elections, see: my http://tomgrey.motime.com/1067554482#165951

where I also support loans ... to Iraqis, where the Iraqis decide how to use the money.  Not just Iraqi politicians, but any organization or company of Iraqis -- local finance is a major issue in getting the local Iraqi economy more market oriented.

 

On Iraq being better off,  I was booted off Alternet over disagreements on this question.  It is true that the particular 8000 or so dead Iraqis, and the almost 500 dead Americans would prolly be alive had Bush not invaded and freed the 23 000 000 Iraqis.  (including how many Baathists?)  How many Iraqis died in 2001-2002 from the sanctions? 

According to the Campaign Against Sanctions  "if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998" Unicef, 12 August 1999.

 

So let's say it's some 50 000 children under five MORE deaths, per year, with sanctions.

 

The 8000 who died are worse off. The 50 000 who did NOT die (25k in 6 months), and the 50 000 or more who will not die each year from now, are better off.

 

This are real life tough tradeoffs.  I admit, I would NOT trade the life of any of my three children for 10, 100, or 1000 Iraqis.  But I WOULD accept a higher risk of my dieing, or their dieing, in order to reduce Iraqis dieing.  And all US soldier volunteers (mercenaries so much better than slaves) accepted the risks.  That's why they're noble, and deserve the honor they get, and more.

 

And even why Bush, ordering them to do great things while knowing some will tragically die, deserves more support for the GOOD of booting Saddam.  As long as the Left cannot accept this goodness, they're lost.

 

On Dems for Bush:: Sorry Kimmit; Bush has the best national security policy, by far, of any candidate for pres.  It is more arguable if his other mistakes, er, policy are better; and it's arguable how important security is.  Lots think it's most important (I do). 

 

The positive side, Michael, might well be that self-proclaimed Dems for Bush can try to help Bush have better domestic policies; for instance policies which help more black kids learn to read before they're out of High School, etc.

 

Less corp. pigfare might be better, too.  They might even start with helping Arnie out in CA with better policies.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/31/03 23:53 | link | comments

I'd like to auto-blog comments elsewhere.

“Silent conversations” a good phrase in weblogg-ed; later the reader-writer issue "I don't think we know what journalism will be like when every reader is also a writer.":: Silent conversations is excellent. In addition, I like to record my comments on OTHER blogs, on my own. But there is no blog tool/ comment tool to automatically record this comment here, for instance, as well as on my blog. That I know of. So I write, copy here & submit, and paste on my blog (or into word first then onto mine.) A bit awkward.

 

On student portfolios::From a more business perspective, what about setting up a SCOOP database engine, like kuro5hin or, now, dailyKos  (the latter explicitly leftist).  K5, especially, allows lots of ratings of others, and comments & ratings of comments.

On the plagiarism issue, it's prolly going to get worse before better, if ever.  Short in-class tests about what was written should help: even those who copy others would then have to know a bit about what they copied.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/31/03 20:17 | link | comments

Democratic Elections begin in Iraq!!!  "TALLAFAR, Iraq (Army News Service, Oct. 28, 2003) -- Members of the newly elected Tallafar city council took the oath of office Oct. 25 at their city hall after one of only three truly democratic elections in the history of Iraq."

Yes, and THESE guys should get a loan, if they want, with a 2 year grace period. Starting with 3 cities, and expect problems as the Iraqis learn what mayors, and councils, can do. And how to cooperate.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 23:54 | link | comments

Loans to Iraq, Yes.  Bush should set up some $20 bil. Iraq-American development bank, with initial capital.  Then the BANK loans the money to specific Iraqi groups, who promise to repay it, with interest.  Or, instead of with interest, to use the loan like non-voting preferred shares of stock, with priority dividends (interest), which can be rebought (principal) by the group/ corp./ individual Iraqi.

OFFER the loans; don't make anybody take them.  Collateral & repayment may be a problem?  FIX that.  Ask Hernando De Soto for help in getting property laws right, so Iraqis can use what they own to help borrow money to build what they need/ want/ are willing to work for.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 09:26 | link | comments

More Ornery and patents, LetterRip has a fine idea of patent reform::

Good job, LR. But I'm pretty sure society will soon need to find another way to reward innovation other than copyright. Patents, resulting in real hardware (at least somewhat expensive to copy), are easier to police.

A major undiscussed issue in the cost-benefit analysis of IP is the enforcement cost, to society, which must paid in order to encourage the, presumably desirable, innovations.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 09:21 | link | comments

Thomas Friedman's NYT article:

Expanding Club NATO

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: October 26, 2003

ARTICLE TOOLS E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles Columnist Page: Thomas L. Friedman Forum: Discuss This Column TIMES NEWS TRACKER Track news that interests you.

RUSSELS

I've been a long and cranky opponent of NATO expansion, out of fear that it was going to dilute the organization. But now that NATO is expanding to 26 countries, I say: why stop there? Virtually all of NATO's future threats are going to come not from the east and Russia, but from the south — the Middle East and Afghanistan. So if NATO really wants to secure Europe, it can no longer just be in Europe. It needs to help stabilize these other regions. To do that, NATO needs to add three more members: Iraq, Egypt and Israel. Yes, you read that right.

Let's go through the logic, starting with Iraq. If a legitimate government emerges in Iraq, we will quickly face two security challenges there. First, how big an army should Iraq have? As Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs expert, notes, "Iraq needs an army that is big enough to deter Iran and yet not so big that it could be used to smother Iraqi democracy and threaten the whole neighborhood, the way Saddam's huge army did."

In short, we want Iraq to have a small army, but to still be an effective counterweight to Iran. The best way to manage that would be to have Iraq join NATO, which would give Baghdad credible deterrent power without having to maintain a large army.

In addition, even if Iraq gets a democratic government, it will be a fragile democracy for a long time. It will need some kind of force in reserve, over the horizon, to serve as a guarantor of Iraqi democracy, so that no party or individual could ever run off with the system again. This force would serve as the guardian of Iraqi democracy the way the Turkish Army does in modern Turkey. The ideal force to do this would be a combined Iraqi-multinational force, like NATO, that would also include an Arab-Muslim component. If Iraq were in NATO, it would be politically so much easier to deploy such a force, which could be stationed in a base out in the desert, but always be in the background just in case.

And that brings us to why NATO should invite in Egypt: manpower. As Lord Robertson, the NATO secretary general, explained to me, all of the NATO European members, plus Canada, have a combined total of 1.4 million soldiers on active duty — but only 55,000 are actually "usable" for missions abroad. The others are either deskbound, untrained for anything other than sitting in one static position in Europe to deter the Soviet Union or lacking in logistical, engineering and command and control support for long-range missions. Also, many Euro-armies are unionized and don't care to work weekends! Since all 55,000 of NATO's usable Euro-Canadian troops are now deployed on peacekeeping missions, absent military restructuring, NATO is pretty well maxed out — and so are we.

Egypt, however, has a huge surplus of military manpower with little to do. Bringing Egyptian soldiers into NATO would give it the Arab-Muslim character it needs, make it much easier for NATO to do peacekeeping in Afghanistan and Iraq and provide resources and status for the Egyptian Army, while tying it into the West. Moreover, the main justification that NATO proponents gave for expanding NATO to the shaky democracies of Eastern Europe was that this would promote democratization and stability there. Where better to promote reform than Iraq and Egypt? Surely they are as important as Latvia.

You would want to bring Israel into NATO because it would make any peace process easier by giving Israelis a deeper sense of security. Also, if Egypt were in NATO, Israel would have to be as well to maintain the balance of power. But lastly, if Israelis and Palestinians can ever, one day, reach a peace accord, they will very likely need a credible multinational force to police it, and the only one I can think of is a U.S.-led NATO force. If Israel and Egypt were both in NATO, NATO peacekeepers would be much more acceptable to the Israeli public and to Palestinians.

No, I haven't lost my marbles. I am just sitting here at NATO headquarters, listening to NATO officials tell me that their future is to the south, but that they have no manpower to go there, then matching that up with the needs and resources of the countries to the south. Do that, and the answer becomes obvious: If you can't bring Muhammad to the mountain, bring the mountain to Muhammad — and to Moses.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 08:23 | link | comments

Merde in France referenced me but also noted: "Claude Imbert, Director of the French news weekly Le Point stated recently 'I am islamophobic, and I do not mind saying so. "

If the French can be more honestly against, or at least seriously questioning, Islam, good. Religions, especially those used to justify violence, need questioning.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 08:21 | link | comments

Oxblog has notes on inner city culture, from a book by Elijah Anderson: "Anderson says time and again that it is not wrong to fear a young black man walking towards you with a North Face jacket, Timberland boots and an unwelcoming expression. And it is not just white America that fears him. Decent black America fears him. Other young black men may fear him. And perhaps most disturbing of all, this is exactly the reaction that the young man in question wants to provoke...
For the young men Anderson describes, persuading the mother of your child to accept your total abdication of responsibility for its welfare is an achievement, a demonstration of masculine bravado. In contrast, supporting one's child -- either financially or through marriage -- is considered a weakness."
I am furious. What to do??? I have some radical ideas. Like, castration for fathers who don't support their children. Abortion is worse than castration.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 08:18 | link | comments

Human spirit exists.  From Ornery

Something "greater" than the sum of the people. The feelings of unity with others, when unified. Almost everybody has felt it, so its existence is available for testing.  The purpose of religion is to direct the human spirt into becoming holy. Without religion it will become mob violence evil, or sports watching irrelevant (which, at least, is morally neutral).

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 07:35 | link | comments

Andrew Sullivan's great quote of Orwell: " "It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." - from Notes on Nationalism. It's a helpful quote when slogging through yet another left-liberal column on why we can't win in Iraq.

I have to ge my Bush hate, Jew hate, Success hate note.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/30/03 07:32 | link | comments

Univ. Texas has great Iraq & other country MAPS.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/29/03 21:41 | link | comments

Zeyad in Healing Iraq notes Riverbend's Baghdad's Burning, and disagrees with her nicely, while supporting her in writing.

::GREAT post Zeyad (from Michael Totten). Perfect take on Riverbend; though I suspect her family of being Baathists, she DOES have a right to write, and I'm GLAD she's writing. I'm glad it's stuff I disagree; and wish she added more that I agree with, but honest criticism is valuable.

Israel/Pali stuff is best deferred; [my own WASPy take is that Hitler's murders added a big push to Zionism, and the anti-Israeli response of Arabs from 1948-1967; -73; -90 were all most unhelpful.]

Do you feel any local Iraqis are becoming good leaders?

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/29/03 21:21 | link | comments

More anti-war John Prine from Filipino, but::

Would John Prine oppose fighting Hitler, too?  Are you, like Ganghi, willing to die for many things, but unwilling to kill?
Booting Saddam was good.  Booting Hitler was good.  Pearl Harbor was bad.  World Trade Center murders was bad.
Mercy makes better art than justice, but civilization fails faster without justice.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/28/03 23:27 | link | comments (1)

Cool Natural Language Question site, thanks Filipino-American::

Cool, yes.  But still not great.  Prolly fine to replace an encyclopedia.  Where is Andorra gave a fine answer.  A couple tougher questions, no.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/28/03 23:19 | link | comments

Upon the Soapbox thinks attacking Saddam was a mistake, wrong::

Bush I wimped out, and there was an abortive attempt at a local rebellion in 92-94, but when the US let Saddam use helicopters to murder the rebels, it was all over.

There's no case since WW II of a people overthrowing a dictator willing to murder his own people, without relatively huge amounts of support for rebels.

Not attacking means letting Saddam get nukes, like No. Korea, and prolly Iran.  There is zero chance of rebellion in N. Korea, unless China supports it.

The mullahs, unlike Saddam, are more likely to avoid murdering their own folks by the thousands, and merely putting disidents in prison might mean there is hope for regime change there without foreign invasion.

But do NOT kid yourself.  Not attacking Saddam means letting him develop nukes, though not imminently.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/28/03 23:06 | link | comments (1)

Need to legalize drugs

Important reasonable controlled legalization.  Do the math; see the impossibility of stopping its corruption when it's illegal.

HOW to legalize least destructively.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/26/03 20:37 | link | comments (2)

Brad about natural unemployment; interesting comment on Freddie Mac and mortgages.

Far from expert on Freddie's options -- but this is frightening.  Recall the Long Term Capital Management problems; too much unregulated options.  Barclays is gone because of options.  Gov't agencies have no business not being extremely transparent, and relatively prudent, in their option trading.  This is scary.

On the more fundamental issue: what is the natural unemployment rate?  And how would one know?  Before the dot.bubble, I thought 6%, not 5%.  So, with a few years at 4%, OVERemployment, it's no surprise that it will take a good long time to work that out; especially being America at the top (other countries would have the option of exporting to America).

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/26/03 20:36 | link | comments

Kevin has a post claiming Social Security is not broken, since it's easily fixed by increasing from 4% to 7% the GDP devoted to it.

::Black Oak is right; partial privatization to fix the flat tire breakage (10% mandatory retirement savings seems best).  Means testing to reduce checks to rich retired (should be an increasing portion of the elderly, too). 
And increasing the tax burdens. 
These changes help, the NEED for changes prove the system is not sustainable (as is, today).  Prolly doing all is best.

But going from 4% to 7% GDP is HUGE HUGE HUGE.  I don't think the Pentagon increases, including Iraq, is even close, for instance.  Since this represents pure consumption, zero investment, it MUST mean the future growth is heavily, and negatively, impacted.  Just as Pentagon increases are negatively consumptive; although at least with guns the, relative to no guns, security presumably increases.  (I much prefer Bush's Iraq over Clinton's North Korea, for instance).

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/25/03 01:25 | link | comments (1)

Adding Spoons to blogroll; thinking about loans to "Iraq".

 It's not possible to loan money to Iraq; only to people. Including people representing an organization of other people: gov't, NGOs, firms, individuals. There should be some $20 bill available to loan to Iraqi people who represent organizations of Iraqis, who have a reasonable chance to repay it. Why not loan it to Iraqi business firms? For the first phase, it would be best to have some $100 000 minimum, and no more than the equity of the company -- lowest requests handled first? Get MORE out there, sooner, to more Iraqi organizations. What Iraq needs is the freedom to form new organizations; and a financial environment conducive to honest, wealth enhancing deals and behavior.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/24/03 22:10 | link | comments

Bush Lies: http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/25716/view?viewtype=best

 

“Bush cited a report from the
International Atomic Energy
Agency saying Iraqis were six
months away from developing
atomic weapons. Bogus, No such
report exists.

 

Larry Lindsey told the Wall Street
Journal that the war would cost
between $100 and $200 billion. And
was fired as the White House then
scoffed at the numbers. Bush peeps
were on TV derailing those figures”

 

TCS: http://www.techcentralstation.com/102103A.html

“Third, he systematically questions President Bush's motives. If the president says he did X for reason Y, Krugman says it was really for reason Z. Awarding a contract to Halliburton cannot possibly be legitimate; it must be a case of cronyism. Reducing taxes cannot be based on principle (e.g., that people are entitled to the fruits of their labor; that self-sufficiency is intrinsically good); it is calculated to "secure a key part of the Republican party's base," namely, the wealthy. To read Krugman is to see only corruption and deceit on the part of the president and his staff. It's not that the president's good intentions go awry, mind you. That would be a legitimate criticism. The president has bad intentions.”

 

Among the four reasons of hate.  Krugman’s overboard. Bush lies is way overblown.

Posted by: TomGrey at 10/23/03 09:12 | link | comments