Gerry Charlotte Phelps

Revenge of Left Across World

                        (Image from graphics.boston.com)

"Whatever the result of the US election tomorrow, we must assume that the whole governing machinery of Washington and the state capitols will be hostile to laissez-faire thinking."

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, November 3, 2008, in the UK Telegraph.*

It is not just that the Democrats will win a crushing victory in both houses of Congress, perhaps reaching the 60-seat Senate threshold that lets them steam-roll legislation. It is also that the incoming class of 2008 is of a new creed. Many no longer believe – or actively reject – the free trade and free market catechisms.

As commentator Markos Moulitsas put it in Newsweek: "The big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply 'win' the night–or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a 'center-right' country?" he said.

No matter that statist policies were responsible for this global crisis in the first place. It was Western governments that set interest rates too low for too long, encouraging us all to abuse credit.

It was Eastern governments that held down their currencies to pursue mercantilist trade advantage, thereby accumulating vast foreign reserves that had to be recycled. Hence the bond bubble. This is the deformed creature known as Bretton Woods II. Protectionist Democrats are right to complain that the game is rigged. Free trade? Laugh on.

But at this point I have given up hoping that we will draw the right conclusions from this crisis. The universal verdict is that capitalism has run amok.

In any case the damage caused as credit retrenchment squeezes real industry is likely to be so great that Barack Obama may have to pursue unthinkable policies, just as Franklin Roosevelt had to ditch campaign orthodoxies and go truly radical after his landslide victory in 1932. Indeed, Mr Obama – if he wins – may have to start by nationalizing the US car industry.

For those who missed it, I recommend Edward Stourton's BBC interview with Eric Hobsbawm, the doyen of Marxist history.

"This is the dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union: we now know that an era has ended," said Mr Hobsbawm, still lucid at 91.

"It is certainly the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. As Marx and Schumpeter foresaw, globalization not only destroys heritage, but is incredibly unstable. It operates through a series of crises.

"There'll be a much greater role for the state, one way or another. We've already got the state as lender of last resort, we might well return to idea of the state as employer of last resort, which is what it was under FDR. It'll be something which orients, and even directs the private economy," he said.

Dismiss this as the wishful thinking of an old Marxist if you want, but I suspect his views may be closer to the truth than the complacent assumptions so prevalent in the City.

To those who still think that business can go on as normal now that EU taxpayers have had to rescue the financial system, I can only say: what will happen to London if EU exchange controls are imposed, or if leverage is restricted by draconian laws – as demanded by the German, Dutch, and Nordic Left?

Does the UK still have a blocking minority under EU voting rules to stop a blitz of directives that could shut down half the activities of the City – or the 'Casino' as they say in Brussels? I doubt it.

Who thinks that the three key Commission posts – single market, competition, and trade – will still be held by free marketeers when the new team comes in next year?

In Germany, Oskar Lafontaine's Linke party now has 23pc support in Saarland on a Marxist pledge to nationalize banks and utilities. Needless to say, the Social Democrats (SPD) are shifting hard Left to protect their flank.

"The rule of the radical market ideology that began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has ended with a loud bang," said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and SPD candidate for chancellor next year.

"We need a comprehensive new start, so we can reestablish our society on fresh foundations. People create value, not locusts," he said.

France has its own Gaullist version on this, seizing on the crisis to launch the most far-reaching strategy of state intervention since the 1970s.

"Laissez-faire, c'est fini," said President Nicolas Sarkozy. "We will intervene massively whenever a strategic enterprise needs our money."

Such language can now be heard daily across Europe. It can only intensify as the fall-out from the EU's €1.8bn trillion (£1.4 trillion) bank rescue becomes clearer, and as Europe's elites discover that their own banks are the most leveraged in the world and have played their own Wagnerian part in Gotterdammerung.

European and UK banks are five times more exposed to emerging markets than US banks. They alone hold the collective time-bomb of $1.6 trillion (£990bn) in hard currency loans to Eastern Europe – now starting to detonate in Hungary, Ukraine, Romania, and even Russia.

At some point, Europe's political class will face the awful truth that their own credit bubbles are just as bad – and perhaps worse – than the excesses of US sub-prime property. As that occurs, the shock will move by degrees from revulsion to political rage.

Professor Hobsbawm, who spent his youth watching Hitler's rise in Berlin, has a warning for those who think this will help the Left in any recognizable form. "In the 1930s, the net political effect of the Depression was to enormously strengthen the Right," he said.

America was the great exception, as it may prove to be again. I for one will take the enlightened "socialism" of Barack Obama any day over the Hegelian broth nearing the boil in Europe.

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* At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/3366575/Revenge-of-the-Left-across-the-world.html

America's Burden: Next Prez Shapes World

                            (Image from freerepublic.com)

We're condemned to lead.  (Written before the election)  By Ralph Peters, NY Post, 11-3-08*

No matter which presidential candidate we choose tomorrow, his decisions to act or not to act will determine not only the safety of our country but the future of the world.

Allies and non-aligned states kick and complain, but expect us to make their boo-boos go away. Ignore the nonsense about America's (oft-predicted and yet to be witnessed) decline: We remain the indispensable power.

When we act, we'll be called a bully. When we fail to act, we'll be mocked as weak. No president can enduringly please foreign powers and populations. Our might - which remains unparalleled - was resented, is resented and will be resented. That's human nature.

Nor will we ever have the luxury of withdrawing from the world. If we tried, the world would simply come to us - as it did on 9/11. It's always better to act abroad than to wait to be acted upon at home. And we'll always be stuck with the dirty jobs - our international coworkers just want to collect their disability checks.

Consider the failures of the "world community" in cases when a strained Bush administration shrugged off a leadership role: As an endless civil war in Congo killed millions, the United Nations sent a few thousand military welfare recipients with pea-shooters. Rape and slaughter drag on as you read.

Ditto for Darfur. Zimbabwe starves as a tyrant fakes negotiations (the opium of the chattering classes). Russia invades its neighbors, murders dissidents and sells its newest weapons to rogue regimes. China commits ecogenocide against its own people. (Our allies prefer to criticize the United States.) Iran yearns for a nuclear Armageddon. Peace in Lebanon? Baloney.

The greatest danger to the United States and the world isn't from a president who does too much, but from one who does too little - or one who believes that words substitute for deeds. There are times when we must act, and damn the torpedoes.

For our part, we, the people, must accept that we'll never be loved by each last Syrian secret policeman. Jealousy is far too powerful an emotion. If we expect thanks, we'll always be disappointed. We must back our presidents when they do what is right, even if the world does not applaud.

For all that, we're not nearly as "hated" as our Left would have you believe. Anti-Americanism was far worse in the 1950s and '60s than over the past eight years. The 1970s seethed with Yankee-go-home sentiments (as I saw first-hand). And American power was supposed to be finished at the end of the Vietnam War. It's just that today's irresponsible media amplify every negative event.

Convincing themselves that President Bush spoiled a fairy tale, American leftists forget how gruesome fairy tales really are. When no one takes on the wicked witch, she wins. Sometimes, she wins anyway.

The recent efforts of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to galvanize the European Union to fill the current leadership vacuum only underscore Washington's indispensability. The boldest leader the old world has produced since Margaret Thatcher could not unite Europeans to buttress their economies in this crisis - nor could he convince the European Union to muster a few thousand troops to save a few million lives in Congo.

To whom should the world then turn? To the Russians? The Chinese? The Taliban?

An American president too anxious to please the world is bound to do it great harm. Should the American electorate choose Sen. Barack Obama tomorrow, his first challenge will be deciding which groups of his supporters he'll disappoint first. The struggle against Islamist fanaticism will continue to demand costly, long-term commitments - it isn't a problem we can solve by sending in the San Francisco Police Department.

Without our military leadership, our allies would restrict themselves to defense in the global terror emergency. And you can't win on defense. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but terrorists love one. The demand for disciplined, capable men and women in American uniforms is only going to increase (while economic problems and campaign promises will threaten defense budgets). In this horribly troubled world, our troops remain the ultimate foreign aid. Only they protect us from global darkness.

All the conflict-resolution theories in the world aren't worth a single rifleman with an American flag on his sleeve. Aggressors won't be stopped with earnest petitions, and terrorists don't cower at repartee. As Jimmy Carter learned so very painfully, good will is no substitute for strength.

The political campaigns are ending. Even Sen. Joe "Backfire" Biden recently admitted that our new president soon would need to do the right thing as he faces his first crisis. And the right thing may not be popular at home or abroad.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

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* At http://www.nypost.com/seven/11032008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/americas_burden_136577.htm?page=0, Ralph Peters, NY Post, 11-3-08.

Murdoch to Aussies: Embrace Technology

            (Image from farm2.static.flikr.com)

Murdoch to Aussies: Embrace Technology*

In his second of five Boyer Lectures, The Challenge of Technology, which will be aired on ABC Radio National at 5pm tomorrow, Mr Murdoch says people should stop whingeing about the challenge of new technology and "get out in front of it".

He says new technology, such as the internet, is destroying business models that have been used for decades, particularly those with a "one size fits all" approach to their customers.

The US television networks are finding their audiences shrinking every day, he says. "People suddenly have a growing multitude of choices -- and they are rightly exercising those choices," Mr Murdoch says.

The near monopoly of classified advertisements that newspapers once enjoyed is being threatened by websites retailing cars and jobs and consumer sites, such as Craigslist in the US.

The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, owner of The Weekend Australian, says new technology is "ushering in a new golden age for human kind". It is becoming easier and cheaper for people to buy and sell.

People can do more of what they want at a cheaper cost and the disadvantaged now have greater access to information than at any time in history, Mr Murdoch says.

Technology is also "allowing the little guy to do what once required a huge corporation".

Mr Murdoch cites the Drudge Report website run by US columnist Matt Drudge, which mainly alerts readers to content on other websites and articles he finds interesting.

"Even those who don't like him click on to his website every day," Mr Murdoch says.

"Drudge has succeeded in challenging all the leading media companies of our day -- including mine. And he has done it with minimal start-up costs: a computer, a modem and some space on a server."

Mr Murdoch says that as technology levels playing fields, the "human factor" is more important.

"If you run a business, you need good people more than ever," he says.

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*At http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24619205-7582,00.html 

When Boys Will Be Girls

                                  (Image from worldofstock.com)

Jim Tonkowich writes:

You might expect to see this article in some other supermarket tabloid.  Instead “A Boy’s Life” by Hanna Rosin appears in the November Atlantic.  It focuses on the story of Brandon (not his real name).

Since he could speak, Brandon, now 8, has insisted that he was meant to be a girl. This summer, his parents decided to let him grow up as one. His case, and a rising number of others like it, illuminates a heated scientific debate about the nature of gender—and raises troubling questions about whether the limits of child indulgence have stretched too far.

Brandon and other “transgendered” children and adults are convinced in spite of physical and genetic evidence that they have been “born in the wrong body.” 

Rosen writes that at school Brandon draws pictures of himself as “a girl, often with big red lips, high heels, and a princess dress” or as “a mermaid with a sparkly purple tail, or a tail cut out from black velvet.”  From an early age he dressed up in his sister’s or mother’s clothes and at five insisted that if God made him a boy, “God made a mistake.”

As I read, my heart went out to Brandon, his mom, and the other children and parents whose stories Rosen tells.  What would I do if my son wanted to be my daughter or my daughter wanted to be my son?  I do not know and so I do not want to minimize difficulties, confusion, or pain.  Nonetheless, it is clear to me that this is a story illustrates a deeply flawed view of what it means to be human.

One mother Rosen quotes said about her five-year-old son, “She could end up being a mommy if she wants, just like me.” The italics are Rosen’s and point to the heart of the issue.

These parents can let their boy dress and act as girls and their girls dress and act as boys.  They can change their names (Brandon is now called Bridget).  As they approach puberty they can and do give their children puberty blocking drugs that Rosen says, “prevent boys from growing facial and body hair and an Adam’s apple, or developing a deep voice or any of the other physical characteristics that a male-to-female transsexual would later spend tens of thousands of dollars to reverse… [and] allow girls to grow taller, and prevent them from getting breasts or a period.”  They can even pay for hormone treatments and sexual reassignment surgery later on.  But that will never change the fact that little boys cannot grow up to be mommies and little girls cannot grow up to be daddies.  Our bodies have made those decisions for us.

But people in our culture are no longer willing to own their bodies as themselves.  We think that “real me” is entirely spiritual.  The body is treated as an appendage that can be manipulated to satisfy the desires and whims of that “real me.” In this, we have taken a Gnostic turn, radically separating body from spirit. 

In his book The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition, James Herrick writes, “In its most elemental form, Gnosticism is the systematic spiritual effort to escape the confines of history and physical embodiment through secret knowledge (gnosis) and technique (magic).” 

Thus we have the wide-spread belief that each of us has a “true self” hidden deep inside and needing to be discovered (gnosis).  That true self is independent of the body which is, after all, nothing but a container—or even “prison”—that will be gleefully cast off at death.  Pharmaceuticals, medical science, and surgery (modern magic) are employed to create whatever sort of body a “true self” requires.  We have, as scholar and IRD board member Mary Ellen Bork has written, “accepted the cultural trend that our bodies are objects to be reconfigured and have lost the sense that the body expresses a person who is not self-created.” 

This is the problem not only for transgendered children and their families, but for the rest of us with our own whole host of personal problems and dissatisfactions.  The givenness of the body, male and female, is a great fact of life that we ignore at our peril—and considerable expense.

This is not to say along with Alexander Pope that “whatever is is right.”  In a fallen world we should expect homosexuality, transgender disorders, sexual addictions, and a thousand and one other shades of confusion about who and what we are. 

It does mean that central to a Christian understanding of humanness is the notion of a Creator.  None of us “asked to be born this way.”  None of us asked to be born at all.  Life as a human—body knit to soul, male and female—is the gift of God to be received with thanksgiving.

Dems Will Turn Meltdown Into Catastrophe

                          (Image from meidner.com)

With scant elegance, nuance or tact, this "bird's-eye view" is a rough picture of what will happen if we go over this particular cliff at this, "our moment" in history, and why we may never regain what will be lost if we do.

The problem is not only with the presidency.  Increasingly, Congress is the problem.  Congress has much more power than the President now.  If the Democrat majority grows, it will have still more power over the new President, whether Obama or McCain.  What will that mean for the future, and especially for this meltdown?

Remember how this meltdown started.  It was from the Democrat party, and from their mis-handled compassionate desire to help minorities and poor people own their own homes.  The motive was laudable.  The result was ruinous.  We need to assess blame in order to know what not to do, and who not to put in charge next time.

To recap:  President Carter started the CRA, which pushed banks to make sub-prime mortgages to people who could not afford them.  ACORN pushed banks into making sub-prime mortgages that they were forbidden to make, by law and by prudent practice.  ACORN pushed Congress into forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting more of such mortgages than they wanted.  Then Congress forced Fannie/Freddie to make 50% of all its mortgages be sub-prime mortgages.  Then President Clinton's Justice Department under Janet Reno actively threatened any banks who did not comply.  (Clinton has recently acknowledged his mistake.)* 

Madness!  The house of cards started its free-fall when the price of housing started down, and the "housing bubble" burst.  But that house of cards was built, first to last, by the Democrats.  To understand our future, that fact must be remembered at every turn.  Because we must move from Left to Right to have any semblance of a good future.

Why?  Because this meltdown will take years to work out, even if we do everything right.  (Much worse, if we do not do everything right.)  That is because this meltdown is a "perfect storm."  More than one crisis is going on, and more will come.  They will be worse than this one, because this one, at least, has some underlying equity behind the bad debt in the form of property.  The oncoming crises do not.  And these crises will all feed on each other.

The housing crisis will be followed quickly by the Social Security crisis and the Medicare crisis.  It Democrats are elected this time, there will also be the nationalized health care crisis.

Why will they be crises?  Because they are all Ponzi Schemes.  None of them are sustainable.  Each one is a bubble, waiting to burst.  Each one is built on debt.  Sooner or later, debts have to be paid.  If not, there is default on the debts.  Then the bubble bursts.  Then there is a meltdown, like this one - or worse.

Each of these future meltdowns will rapidly become international, world-wide.  Why?  Because the U.S. has become the lynchpin, the cornerstone, that keeps the world economy functioning.  Why?  It is the major market in the world.  Everyone wants to sell to the U.S.  It is also the major "safe haven" for investment money.  Why?  Because money is less likely to be stolen or lost here than anywhere else.  And because it is the U.S. military  - supported by U.S. prosperity - that is the primary guarantor of however much safety and stability there is in the world.

Another more long-term, underlying trend must be factored in.  It is demography (population studies.)  All countries have had declining birth rates for several decades now.  At the same time, life-expectancy and life-spans have also been increasing in all countries.  This has caused a "gray overhang."  That is, the older population percentage has been growing while the younger population percentage has been shrinking.  This means there are fewer and fewer young workers to support more and more older non-workers.  This will ruin retirement schemes all over the world.  Not to mention universal health-plans, which are heavily impacted by the old.  This trend also invisibly underlies many other economic/political problems and will help drive them into crises.  Now that the retirement of the huge Boomer generation has arrived, these crises will not delay long.

But what of the prosperity we have had since WWII?  It cannot last, without drastic changes - toward the Right.  Our prosperity has mostly been based on debt - the promise to pay in the future what we borrow and spend today.  Such promises eventually must be paid, or see the whole system collapse.  The Asian countries save money.  The West saves little.  The U.S., nationally, does not save at all.  Everything, all our prosperity, is based on debt.  (For instance, our Social Security has no "lockbox".  There are no funds, no actual savings there.  Congress spends every dime, in "off-budget" spending.  This "Ponzi  Scheme" has assumed that taxes from younger workers would always pay retirement for the older non-workers.  Our declining birth rates and growing survival rates have destroyed that possibility.)

All over the world, savings from retirement plans have been invested  in the U.S. for security and safe returns.  So when we crash, they crash too.  And we will crash, because we are built on debt.

What can we do?  First, when we are in a hole, we have to stop digging.  So for a long time, we have to stop electing Democrats.  Why?

Democrats want to help people.  At least, some of the people. And they want to do it on a new, much larger scale  To do that, they want to use force.  That is, they want to force part of the population to support the other part.  With what force?  Government.  Government is defined primarily as the ultimate coercive power - the highest power that can force people to do things.  And Democrate, bless them, want to help people in the only way they know - through government.

To spend what they must in order to do what they plan, they must build government debt to great new levels.  Why?  Because there is no way they can spend that much out of current U.S. income.

What can we do?  Don't let them spend what they plan.  How can we stop them?  Don't elect them.  Don't vote for them.

Whatever other preferences we may have doesn't change the equation.  We cannot afford the Democrat way.  We cannot survive this, and the other coming crises, by making it worse.

I'm truly sorry.  And I do realize and acknowledge that the Republicans have many, many problems of their own.  But voting Democrat, at this time and probably for a long time, is to say "Bring it on!" to catastrophe.  I'm sorry.  But I can't argue with facts anymore than you can.**

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* Congress is pushing mightily to shift blame from itself to Wall Street fat cats - who are not without fault here.  But the truth is that it was Democrats in office who pushed Wall Street (through the banks who were forced into making bad mortgages) into accepting toxic debt.  This meltdown belongs to Democrats in office.

**Helping the poor and disadvantaged must not be abandoned.  But we must find ways to help them apart from government.  Fortunately, there are many other ways, with good, less-ruinous track records.

Forecast - The 4 Major World Problems

       (Image from futuresteve.files.wordpress.com)

Herb Meyer, former CIA Deputy Director and the only high official to accurately predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, tells the top CEOs of the world what they will face in the future at a meeting in Davos, Switzerland.  See his predictions about the four major future problems of the world at http://thetemple.wordpress.com/2007/05/30/herb-meyer-on-global-issues/ . 

(Hat Tip to Paul Browder)

Disabled Adult Children of Aging Parents

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Rick and Dick Hoyt (See their story in post below)

    (Image from runnersworld.com)

Jeanette McNeely is tough and canny, but you would not guess that when you first meet this delightful lady. Jeanette and I served on each other's board of directors, back when I was starting and running the San Jose Family Shelter.  We each saved the other's charity from disaster at least once, working in tandem, one as executive director and the other as a key board member.

Jeanette started and ran a group of six homes for retarded adults before she retired.  There were just six clients in each.  They were well staffed and well run, and very pleasant places.  Her's was an exhausting, high-risk and high-stress job.  The agiing parents of her clients would have done just about anything to see that someone like Jeanette was in charge of their adult children's care.  Like all others in their situation, their primary concern was who would care for their disabled child when they were no longer able.

You saw the fascinating story of Dick Hoyt and his paraplegic son Rick in the post just below this one.  But Dick is slowing down now, after a heart attack and with knee surgery probably ahead.  (See here )      Even though Dick has been a famous super-parent, now no doubt he is preparing painstakingly for Rick's care when he no longer is able to help.  And ultimately, when he is no longer on this earth.

In harder times, the choice was to give up a badly disabled child or to care for the child at home, pretty much alone and effectively in isolation, all of one's life, from then on.  It was a hard choice.  But it has been made somewhat easier, and much more practical, as we have done the numbers and found that non-institutional care is not only usually better for the clients, but less expensive.  In addition, high tech has helped tremendously.

We learned to create different levels of living for disabled people, with the goal - both financial and compassionate - being to give each one the most independence possible.  There has been steady progression toward achieving greater independence for more and more severely handicapped people.

Not long ago, the dividing line between various levels in independent living and a 24-hour care facility was between those who could take themselves to the bathroom and those who could not.  Now even that barrier has been pushed back, as we have learned that with a little better design of living quarters, some new products, some part-time help, and sometimes things like a specially-trained service dog, even people as handicapped as Rick are able to live independently.

That is the greatest relief ini the world to loving parents who have chosen to keep handicapped children.  It opens the possibility, not only of continuing care after the parents are gone, but everything considered, of an amazingly good life for these beloved but needy children.

When a nation prospers, more and more ways open up to be more truly compassionate.  The increasing independence we are able to give our handicapped is one of the best by-products of the pioneering combination of American prosperity and compassion.

Intelligence Versus News

           George Friedman of Stratfor

There is a big difference between intelligence and news.   George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, "The Private CIA," describes that difference, and why intelligence is more important than news, in this excellent video.  3 minutes.

(From Stratfor here.)