Reflections From a Murky Pond

Life Is Short? Bullshit! Life Is Long

For most of us this is so very true. Life is not short and we will live to reap the whirlwind if we foolishly sow the wind.

You want jobs? You want companies to start hiring again and start spending their “war chests” on expansion and development? You want unemployment and “underemployment” figures to drop to more comfortable levels? If so, you’d be best served by voting the Republicans into Congress and taking both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate away from the Democrats in the upcoming Congressional Mid-Term Elections because that’s the only thing that likely to work.

The Liberals running the Democratic party’s actions over the last two years haven’t helped assuage unemployment at all. TARP, Porkulus, the Auto Bail-out, ObamaCare,  and the rest of their efforts have not even been aimed at creating jobs – with the exception of bolstering certain union jobs so their personal campaign finances stay in the black – though they’ve tried to spin things to look like they were.

The market knows this and is reacting accordingly. Corporations are sitting on over $1 Trillion in capital instead of using it to expand their production capabilities and workforce largely because Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, along with their coterie of anti-business Leftists have created such uncertainty in the market that it would be utterly foolish for corporations to commit their capital to expansion projects.

Research the market trends since January 2009; every time Obama speaks and every time some piece of his agenda looks to become law or starts being enforced the market drops.

Conversely, when Obama’s silent and stays away from the national stage the market recovers a bit. Tangentially, the same is true of Obama’s approval rating.

The neo-Socialist agenda of “Obamaism” was and is an utter failure. It will have to be quashed if America is to see a true revival and restoration of our economy, one that includes jobs for Americans. That means voting out as many Democrats as is possible in the upcoming 2010 Congressional Mid-Term elections.

Vote enough Republicans into office in the House and Senate to “geld” Obama and the American corporations will almost immediately start using their over $1 Trillion in “war chests.” They know, and the Liberals incessantly bemoan, that the GOP is pro-Business. Since business is the only thing that can drive employment and those businesses know who their friends and enemies are, electing Republicans to Congress will de facto create jobs and lower unemployment.

Dr. Sam Peltzman, a renowned professor of economics from the University of Chicago Business School, espoused a hypothesis which became known as the Peltzman Effect. It dealt with the unintended, negative, and contrariwise effects of safety regulations.

Distilled down to its simplest terms the Peltzman Effect is a theory that claims that the safer people believe they are the more likely they are to engage in risky behavior.

Dr. Peltzman is certainly no crackpot and the Peltzman Effect has been discussed by experts in a variety of fields for years, though the public at large may have remained unaware of it.

The Peltzman Effect is the hypothesized tendency of people to react to a safety regulation by increasing other risky behavior, offsetting some or all of the benefit of the regulation.

— Paul G. Specht
Journal of SH&E Research, Volume 4, Number 3 (2007)

I think this rather prosaic phenomenon is one that Conservatives had long ago internalized, whereas Liberals have yet to grasp it. This causes a fundamental chasm between how the two groups view government involvement in people’s lives.

Dr. Peltzman’s rhetoric on the topic focuses on willful contrarian or reactionary risk taking. This I disagree with. I think the results are largely caused by subconscious false security instead.

It truly simple; every “safety net” that is emplaced results in people feeling more secure, often overly so, and results in them taking greater risks. AIDS relief, TARP’s “Too Big To Fail,” the Auto Bailouts, repeated extensions of unemployment benefits, ObamaCare, Union labor contracts, gated communities, and Peltzman’s favorite, seatbelts & airbags – they all result in the same thing, a reduction in perceived personal risk. They also all result in the unintended secondary or follow-on effect of increased risky behavior by those “protected” by such things.

Sadly, Liberals haven’t internalized Peltzman’s hypothesis and keep expecting regulation of people’s behavior to have positive results in the long run.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. Both were dire, dystopian works that speculated upon a horrid future. The two great authors were, however, wildly divergent in their fears and warnings.

George Orwell v. Aldous Huxley – Divergent Distopian Predictions

Both Orwell and Huxley feared a future when we would be a captive culture. Orwell feared captivity by the State but Huxley feared captivity by own venality and pleasure seeking.

Orwell depicted a future society where books were banned and where the State would deprive us of information. Huxley posited a future society where would be no reason to ban a book, because there would be no one who would want to read one, but where so much data would be provided that we would be sunk into egoistic pacifism.

Orwell feared that the State would conceal the truth from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned out by the constant nattering stream of irrelevancies.

Simply put, Orwell feared hate and pain whereas Huxley feared love and pleasure. There is grim sense in both men’s fears; both the “carrot” and the “stick” are used to gain and maintain control.
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The Democrats, desperately trying to maintain their control of the House and/or Senate in the 2010 Congressional Mid-Term Elections which are predicted to be a bloodbath, have hit upon a new strategy – pruning away their dead wood and more embarrassing characters.

The first Democrat to fall before the proverbial headsman’s act was President Obama himself, who had galvanized and inspired them in 2008 but whose various actions, inactions and rhetoric have alienated and angered the majority of the American populace.

Obama: Want Me To Campaign For You?

Not only do many Democrat candidates not want Obama to campaign for them, they refuse to even mention his name while on the campaign trail.

From the Telegraph:

Al Gore failed to mention President Barack Obama at a campaign rally in Florida as Democrats extended their new tactic for next month’s elections – ignoring the man who so inspired them in 2008.

Representative Kendrick Meek, the Democratic candidate for the United States Senate in the November 2nd mid-terms, also neglected to let Mr Obama’s name pass his lips during an appearance with the former vice-president in a union hall.

Instead, the black congressman lauded “President Gore” – a reference to the 2000 election, when hanging chads in Florida and the US Supreme Court cost the Democrat the White House.

With their party facing a possible landslide defeat in a month’s time, Democratic candidates are running away from Mr Obama and his record. Polls indicate Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate, a result that could cripple to Obama presidency.

In Tampa, neither Mr Gore nor Mr Meek made direct reference to Mr Obama’s historic health care legislation, his proudest achievement, or the financial bailout. Both measures are unpopular with all but hardcore Democratic supporters.

Two years ago, every Democrat in the country was invoking Mr Obama’s name as they hoped to ride on his coat-tails to electoral victory. This year, he is a near-pariah, with many of the party’s candidates doing everything they can to distance themselves from him.

From Messiah to Pariah in just under two years. I believe that President Obama may have set some sort of record for political and personal collapse and failure. I’ve never heard of any elected head of state becoming anathema to their own political party any where near so quickly.