Lumaj

It’s a shame that most people today aren’t familiar with Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Alexander  Solzhenitsyn and numerous other dissidents that put their lives on the line to reveal to the world that evil exits.  I name only those few simply because they’re the most famous.  There are others, perhaps too numerous to mention.  That is why Sergei Brin and Peter Thiel decided to make the Vaclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent.

The power of the powerless was on display Friday, May 11, 2012 as the names, biographies and political appeal of three individuals dominated the news wires.  Team Lumaj thought it necessary to give short appeal to just a few admirable individuals that suffer for their convictions.

Ai Weiwei is a 54 year old Chinese dissident.  After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that took the lives of thousands of children in badly built schools, he decided to cover the façade of a Munich art museum with 9,000 children’s backpacks spelling out in bright Chinese characters, a mothers lament for her 7 year old daughter.

After being nearly beaten to death in 2009, he tweeted images of his brain scan to followers.  For American liberal Republicans throughout the ‘establishment’ that fear China, we must admonish you to discover the fragility of contemporary China.

The second laureate is Manal al-Sharif, a 33 year old Saudi women nearly flogged to death for driving!  The Saudi medieval appeal to coercion never quite makes its way to the State Department, foggy bottom always pursues policies inimical to the moral foundation of freedom:  individual liberty.

The third Havel Prize goes to Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma.  Her National League of Democracy currently has gained minority status in parliament; but 15 years of house arrest (read coercion) is breaking under international pressure to recognize Burmese rights.  The hermetic cultures throughout the Pan-Pacific region, ones traditionally informed from the passivism of Buddhism, are discovering the appeal of political engagement/reform that comes with international trade.

The odyssey that dominates the lives all these individuals is a stark reminder that defeating tyranny is a lifetime struggle.

We owe it to those who suffer the brutalities of tyranny, a refuge, a hope, firm knowledge in the belief that goaded Jefferson:  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants.

At 92 years old and still working at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Washington D.C., Team Lumaj recently read Dr. Ann Schwartz’s book who along with Milton Friedman in 1963 penned the authorized version of A Monetary History of the United States.  She happily recounted how both media, Congress and most of establishment types just don’t understand how we got into our current fiscal, monetary mess, nor do they understand how to fix it.  For Dr. Schwartz, it’s really quite simple:  we’re getting it wrong again!

Dr. Schwartz said that to understand the nature of contemporary market disturbances we have to understand why banks are not lending to one another and why credit spreads are so high (a credit spread is the difference in cost between what private/government borrowers pay.)  This is not due to a lack of money available.  It has nothing to do with the money supply. It has to do with the complete lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay debts.  The Federal Reserve as gone about this problem as if there’s a shortage of money/liquidity.  That is not the problem.  The basic problem for the market is the uncertainty that balance sheets of financial firms are credible.

Even after the Federal Reserve floods the country with money, credit spreads remain far too high.  Credit spreads haven’t budged because banks don’t know who is solvent and who is not.  It is this uncertainty that is the fundamental problem of our contemporary political economy.

Our problem, she says, is made more difficult in that banks have all these exotic assets on their ledgers that they cannot price, they don’t know the value of.  Selling them to the Federal Reserve was only part of a solution.  Look, saving the dollar and saving banks is two different things.  Why are they toxic?  You cannot sell them, no one knows what their worth and your balance sheet is not credible with them residing on it, so the whole market freezes up.  The problem is compounded by acknowledging the dilemma:  how do you price toxic assets, so she sees the Fed’s original move in toxic asset purchasing fine but it doesn’t address fundamental problems that besiege our market.  The dirty little secret was that selling toxic assets at market prices would lead to bank insolvency and the freezing of credit markets.  Paulson did the right thing to switch from buying bank assets to recapitalizing banks directly.  According to Dr. Schwartz, saving the banks and saving the banking system is not the same thing.  After all, keeping insolvent banks afloat only prolonged the crisis, according to Schwartz they should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down.

Manias have their origin in an expansive monetary policy; the Federal Reserve is responsible for generating the boom of an asset.  And as for creditors, they are no more worthy of being rescued than ordinary people who’ve been hurt by this.

Dr. Schwartz firmly believes that our current mania and subsequent bust must be laid at the feet of an irresponsible Congress and a Federal Reserve that sought to fight the ‘last war’, not perceiving accurately the synoptic problem of how an overly accommodating liberal Congress created through overt centralization the very seeds to destroy this great Republic.

You often hear about the catastrophic collapse that was American manufacturing.  True to form but not quite historically accurate, for Americans are an exceptional people, we’re the most resourceful even when Socialist policies are imposed on us.  Given how George Orwell lamented how British Socialists decried the loss of manual labor to market efficiencies, we here at Team Lumaj thought to put Connecticut’s manufacturing loss in proper perspective.

We accept the writings of Allan Meltzer, David Malpass, even John Taylor on credentialing the total unemployment rate around 15 million citizens.  Nevertheless, the nature of American manufacturing has changed drastically from its peak in the 1970’s.  Since then, America has lost more than 6 million manufacturing jobs, however, our output in manufacturing remains at historic highs!!  Come again?

American manufacturing output is at an all-time high!

Today’s total output is nearly 3 times our 1970’s peak.  This fact is adjusted for both inflation and currency depreciation!  Given the social impact of superior craft in applied robotics, Americans produced $1.8 Trillion in goods in 2010 (last known reported statistic), that’s about $100 million dollars more than China, WITH ONLY ABOUT A TENTH AS MANY WORKERS, thanks to automation and technological advances that increased productivity.  Goods that took one thousand American workers to produce are now performed at higher output levels with only 177 workers.

The choice is not between American workers or Chinese workers, for China’s GDP remains the size of Italy; the choice is between American machines and Chinese workers!

Perhaps the real problem is the relation between US manufacturing jobs and our deficit in requisite skills.  But the bedrock of this problem must be laid at American education.  As our previous posts have elaborated, the crisis of American education is inseparable from the crisis that is the American Family.

Sounds like we need an election.

The feigned outrage that has become the “War On Women” must be exposed for the phony campaign slogan it is, but then again liberals don’t really govern, they admonish the political hay they create.

Don’t look for anyone other than Conservatives to understand the social impact that confiscatory taxation has become for contemporary women.  The sheer ability to muster the daily courage to hold down a job outside the house along with domestic responsibilities as mother and wife is daunting.  Only Conservatism speaks of the “combatant status” that is today’s mother.

Conservatives speak to the reality that has become of today’s women:  exhaustion.

What do women get in exchange for autonomy:  a depreciated currency coupled with confiscatory taxation!  Do we need to be reminded that the least among us are hurt the most by the fierce ideology that is today’s liberalism.

Conservatives can indeed explain why fat-boy government in general disproportionately hurts women; for true liberation would articulate policies that reflect a view of work worthy of true freedom.

In 1950 mothers with children under age 6 accounted for only 12% of the workforce.  Today that number is over 60%.  Many of these women who now work are penalized by outdated polices that haven’t kept pace with big shifts in American demography.

We could start by dismantling a progressive tax code and the serve penalties it imposes on marginal tax rates.  How about the punitive tax burden of child care costs, this is the primary reason why so many women in today’s economy can’t afford to work.  How about junking the antiquated 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act for flex time, this is an invaluable option for many working mothers attempting to juggle both work and family.  Polls indicate that over 80% of women would prefer to pack more hours into fewer days and receive compensation time off.

None of this will happen with liberals.  Why?  Because union allies resolutely oppose any reform of the 40 hour law simply because the status quo gives union leaders more control over crafting working arrangements.  Remember how throughout the 1990’s Senate Democrats blocked Republican efforts to let workers negotiate directly with employers to schedule their hours, a provision that would have mainly benefitted women with children.

We should reform the impact that is meager Social Security benefits, for most women are left to pay for both death taxes and the meager annuity that Social Security provides.

Because women tend to move in and out of the workforce, union driven pension plans that reward long service rarely benefit women.  Meanwhile, arbitrary government limits contributions to retirement savings diminishing their outside savings contributions.

For the 21^st Century, women want and need an economy with fiscal policies that provide choice, opportunity and ownership.  The liberals want a phony war.  Team Lumaj looks forward to the choice of battlefield to fight this one.  By all means Linda, Team Lumaj looks forward to debating the historical precedents that inform how “The Tower” conforms to Republican principals.

Walking around Ossining, New York yesterday Team Lumaj ran into Alexis De Tocqueville, he opined on the State of Connecticut Republicans, especially Liberal Linda and the failed ‘Gypsy Moth’ that is Chris Shays.

Alexis insisted that:  “If despotism were to be established among democratic nations of our time, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.  Sovereigns might more easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own hands, and might interfere more habitually and decidedly with the circle of private interest, than any sovereign of antiquity could ever do.  But this same principle of equality which facilitates despotism also tempers its rigor. 

                I sincerely think that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything which ever before existed in the world:  our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories.  I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately convey the whole idea I have formed for it; the old words despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new, and since I cannot name, I must attempt to define it.  I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the New World.

                Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.  That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild.  It would be like the authority of a parent, if like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood:  provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.  For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances.  What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? 

                Because of the character of this debasement remains in accord with desire, it renders the exercise of free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs man of all the uses of himself; it has preordained and predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.  With this sovereign, the will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting:  such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people.”

How else to say it:  the candidacy of McMahon and Shays embody the principles of this democratic despotism.  The only way forward for Connecticut is to vanquish the extorted obedience both claim to hold as our interests.

May 18 is coming!