Listening to a story about the SEC persecuting Apple because Steve Jobs is in poor health on the [WSJ](http://wsj.com/) daily read, They compared it to a situation with HP where a director resigned. According to the article, "Under securities laws a company needs to disclose the reasons if a director leaves over a disagreement about company policy." Is the persecution of a company about a sick CEO or for the specific reasons behind a high level persons resignation an example of the "atmosphere of deregulation and deference to industry" I've been hearing so much about?
A quick analysis of my eating habits.
Links to details on positive discipline, and a great tool: thinking on paper.
Tonight I had a discussion on voting with Allison. She asked me what it meant. I explained, "It's like when mommy asks you if you want cereal or toast for breakfast, and when you pick one that is voting for it." She said, "Or pancakes?" I said, "sure, or picking pancakes over the other choices." I then added the democratic majority wrinkle. I explained, "If 10 people were asked to vote, and you said you wanted pancakes, but the other 9 wanted toast, then you would all have to have toast." She said, "I wouldn't like that." I said, "Sometimes I don't like it either."
Michelle had talked with her earlier about voting and told her about my decision to not vote for any of the Presidential candidates. So she said, "Mommy said you didn't vote for one." I told her, "If you had to vote for food, and you had to pick tomatoes or sausage (two things she doesn't like) which would you pick?" She said, "I wouldn't vote for either." And neither did I.
In other news the barbie lamp won in a historic vote, defeating fish by a narrow margin of one vote and "play games on iPhone" defeated "go to sleep now" by a similarly narrow margin.
"A government of laws, and not of men." -John Adams This statement rang out loud and clear to me when I saw the [Extent of Federal Regulation](http://extent-of-regulation.dhwritings.com/) made concrete, [here](http://extent-of-regulation.dhwritings.com/).
What John Adam's statement makes clear is the essential fact in a proper government that the law must be knowable and objective not subject to arbitrary whims of arbitrary men.
This does not mean 25 feet thick of books of regulations, and 6 feet of laws. When both are being added to at a [rate of thousands of new laws and regulations per year](http://cei.org/articles/%E2%80%98hidden-tax%E2%80%99-rules-hits-economy), you have a situation where it is not possible to know in a single lifetime what is *permissible* action in a *free* society.
I do not advocate anarchy, rather objective law. It is impossible to have objective law when every action could require months or years of research to determine if it is punishable by the state. This of course is only the Federal regulations. Every state and town has their own collections of law books.
The solution, stop and repeal. The obvious starting point for repeal is any and all regulations that handcuff industry. And stop all of the regulation mills. There are many government agencies that issue *Rules*. Congress has delegated it's law making responsibility to faceless, nameless, and unaccountable bureaucrats.
[Dr. Leonard Peikoff](http://peikoff.com/), friend and intellectual heir to Ayn Rand, publishes a podcast approximately every other week. Despite the fact that he generally refuses to talk publicly about narrow political questions, he took some time in [his October 20 podcast](http://peikoff.clublogic.org/podcast/getaudio.php?filename=2008-10-20.033.mp3) to discuss the current batch of candidates. He managed in a few sentences to say the obvious about each of the candidates in a way that would be funny if one of these gangs wouldn't be the head of the Executive branch of the United States of America on [January 20th](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inauguration_Day). > I think McCain comes across as a tired moron. Obama as a lying phony. Biden as an enjoyably hilarious windbag. And Sarah Palin as an opportunist struggling to learn how to become a moron a phony and a windbag.
He gave some additional brief commentary as to why none of the Presidential candidates is fit to take office. If you think there is still some reason to choose one over the other but aren't sure which you may want to listen, it could give starting points for further investigation.
I decided some time ago that [I will not vote for any presidential candidate](http://twitter.com/mclazarus/status/943152811). It was with that decision in mind that Dr. Peikoff's statement takes on a tragic humor and does cause me a brief chuckle.
Today [Alan Greenspan stated](http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49M58W20081023), "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholder's equity (myself especially) are in a state of shocked disbelief." He's shocked? That's surprising. He, himself, wrote about the result of government intervention in the economy, in [Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal](http://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ideal-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451147952/mclazarus-20/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224778300&sr=8-1). Maybe he should pick up a copy and try and understand his role in the destruction.
Network Neutrality is offensive to the concept of private property.
A day late, but here is my thought on yesterday's holiday. Ninety men in three small ships sailed west from Europe for over a month, when dawn came on October 12, 1492, the sun rose on a new world. Columbus, the motive power behind this expedition, was a man of independent mind that challenged the authority of the "experts" and of the whole world. He discovered America, bringing European civilization to our shores. A critical and historic event that sowed the seeds of what was to become the freest and most prosperous country ever, the United States of America.
When thinking of yesterday, I remember the greatness, the courage, the independent judgment of a man.
"The time is past when the notion of economic self-seeking and unrestricted use of profits made can be allowed to dominate…. The economic system must serve the nation." This could have been written in any editorial recently, and certainly a similar sentiment was spouted on Capitol Hill in the past weeks. But it is a quote of the Nazi Minister of Economics in the book [The Omnious Parallels](http://www.amazon.com/Ominous-Parallels-Leonard-Peikoff/dp/0452011175/mclazarus-20/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223927521&sr=8-1).
With the economic controls and the sacrifice of individual rights to the nation, we are putting a motor on our drift from freedom to fascism.
Today I forgot to eat breakfast and got moving very late because I was immersed in what I was doing. Spending so much time being interrupted and allowing myself to be interrupted I had started to forget the pure and simple joy of focused, productive work. I intended to try and achieve that state as often as possible. I need to blow off a few meeting reminders, phone calls and the like. It's good for the soul.
The MSM had plenty to say about a 600 point drop in the Dow two Fridays ago when the house rejected the initial bailout plan. The blamed congress for not violating individual property rights and granting a large scale bailout of wall street to try and prop up a failing economy. Lucky for us they were able to paint the picture as simplistic that the federal government had an button under glass in the Capitol building which said in case of economic emergency break glass. So the congress got to work, they broke the glass. Now as I write the market is down significantly and is bouncing, but I suspect this is just a harbinger of greater plummets. The Fed of course will print more money and lower interest rates, but this will serve to drive inflation even faster. The problem is not the wrong intervention or even not intervening quickly enough, the problem is government intervention in the economy at all. Government is the agency of force. Economic prosperity requires freedom, freedom to act on ones own judgment for ones own interest. The only role for the government in the economy is rooting out and prosecuting fraud and other uses of force. It is not a coincidence that the nation that was founded on individual rights and freedom is the most prosperous ever. It is government intervention that caused this problem and that will continue it. If the Congress wanted to act quickly they should have been discussing how to repeal laws which are applying friction to business, not make the biggest power grab for the central economic planners since the Great Depression.
The politicians have been blaming the "greedy" capitalists. But those capitalists that are so greedy, are the ones that create wealth and jobs.
The long term outlook of government intervention in the economy is clear and clearly terrible.
*[MSM]: Main Stream Media
It is clear from the results and the form letters I receive from my Congressmen, for spending time writing well reasoned arguments, is not worth the effort. I have therefore decided to change my tactics. While I know at best my letters will be tallied into No support or Yes support piles by bored staffers, and at worst ignored completely, I can only hope to amuse myself through the time spent writing such letters. As such I couldn't stop myself when I received a form letter from Senator Robert Casey in response to my many pleas to vote 'No' on this bailout plan in which he rationalized his position. I decided the only tactic that would prevent me from becoming homicidal was to introduce sarcasm. As such my letter follows:
Senator Casey,
Thank you for your words on the bailout, I mean stabilization bill. I do agree with your sentiment, "I'm angry about the climate of deregulation and deference to Wall Street over the last eight years that got us into this mess." If only the congress actually understood what deregulation means, but instead of actually deregulating the economy they have been adding new regulations nearly weekly. Hopefully through this unprecedented power grab and the inevitable resulting economic destruction to follow, in terms of years, people will finally learn that even the first sliver of government involvement in the economy puts us on the road to economic destruction.
Oh, wait, upon re-reading your letter you seem to think that you are actually doing the right thing here and are actually solving problems not just making them extremely worse. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you and I were in on a joke together, oh well, maybe the next Senator will understand individual rights and economics.
Well I can say one good thing about the "stabilization." 9 Trillion[^1] is such an odd number, so boring. But 10 Trillion, well now, that is excellent. A number you can really sink your teeth into. And you almost entirely triggered the change with the passage of one bill. Tremendous. Maybe with all the other entitlement bills that passed this year we'll even hit 11 Trillion that is great, and prime! Nothing is better than prime. If Keynes were alive I am sure he would send you a thank you note and maybe even a box of chocolates. Must stabilize the economy by continuing to spend, heck, throw in some flowers too.
I for one will do my part. I plan to apply for several more mortgages and loans. It'll be a great win for the economy. The builders will get paid, and all the people who sell to the builders will also get paid. There is no discrimination, I can get my loans even if I am considered high risk, so no one can cry "UNFAIR LENDING PRACTICIES." There is no bank failure, they aren't allowed to fail, you said so yourself. And there is no way I can lose my "property." I mean really we can't have banks going around seizing property, that is something that is best left to the federal government.
Thank you for your time.
Anyway, I feel much better now.
[^1]: Referring to the National Budget Deficit
Any idea what this is used for?
The EPA issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), on July 11, 2008, [Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act](http://epa.gov/climatechange/anpr.html). Ordinarily this would be of passing interest to me. But their own analysis shows that they will have to have control of **Everything** in order to handle this mandate, from Page 5 of the ANPR: > EPA’s analyses leading up to this ANPR have increasingly raised questions of such importance that the scope of the agency’s task has continued to expand. For instance, it has become clear that if EPA were to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act, then regulation of smaller stationary sources that also emit GHGs – such as apartment buildings, large homes, schools, and hospitals – could also be triggered. One point is clear: **the potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land**.
This doesn't only include reaching into your home and setting your thermostat for you, or deciding how many cars you can own or what type of home or business you can build, it also extends to the food supply as commented by the USDA on page 67 of the ANPR:
> … many of the emissions are the result of natural biological processes that are as old as agriculture itself. For instance, technology does not currently exist to prevent the methane produced by enteric fermentation associated with the digestive processes in cows and the cultivation of rice crops; the nitrous oxide produced from the tillage of soils used to grow crops; and the carbon dioxide produced by soil and animal agricultural respiratory processes. **The only means of controlling such emissions would be through limiting production, which would result in decreased food supply and radical changes in human diets**.
This amount of control will effect you, this is not just an additional tax on the rich, or other such nonsense. These are real proposals that will limit your ability to live your life. The idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant is factually wrong. As a matter of fact high concentrations of CO2 are required for plant life, our food supply, to flourish. Bureaucratic control of where you set your thermostat, or if you are allotted enough energy to take two hot showers a day, or what types of food you can purchase is absolutely antithetical to freedom and the life of humans who depend on their reason and judgment to survive.
The EPA is now accepting feedback on this until November 11th. Now is the opportunity to make your voice heard.
There is information on how to submit on the EPA site, or distilled along with example letters and arguments [here](http://www.classicalideals.com/EPA_Ruination.htm).
*[EPA]: Environmental Protection Agency *[ANPR]: Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking *[USDA]: United States Department of Agriculture *[CO2]: Carbon Dioxide
The rich guy had to use their mind to get rich. Without him there is no money to steal. I have to use my mind, my skill, my effort to design a communication system. If you "need" a communication system, does that give you the right to send armed thugs to my house and threaten me with imprisonment to force me to build it for you?
Today I was really hit by the fact that one of the hardest parts of parenting isn't even in the same building as cleaning up bodily fluids or going upstairs to "fix the covers" for the 3rd time in 15 minutes.
It's in encouraging the push for independence, and growth.
My wife sent me a snapshot of Allison before running her to her first day of pre-school. And I felt quite a strong bit of emotion. I am still not sure if it is reluctance, fear, sadness, joy or all of them pushed together.
Happy first day, Allison!
The Simpsons were prophetic in their lampoons of political discourse.