Only a Liberal…

Why did an earthquake in California only kill 63, while a similar earthquake has killed over 100,000 in Haiti?

The News media keep referring to what has happened in Haiti as a “natural disaster.” This could NOT be further from the truth. This is a poverty disaster.

Now why would I bring this up now in Haiti’s time of need? Even if you agree with me, you may be thinking, “why can’t we talk about this later, after we stabilize the devastation?” Because every dime we spend on ineffective aid is a dime wasted, and I find it to be despicable. Haitians are not helped by billions of our tax dollars being sent to their country. In fact it probably hurts them.

While we have sent no money to China over the last few decades, they have made gargantuan leaps and bounds in their economy and the quality of life for a billion people. Why is Haiti still awful, while China is booming?

The reason is not as complicated as you think. We cannot fix these countries; they must fix themselves. All we can do is hand them a crutch, in the form of billions of dollars that do nothing but teach them how to walk on a crutch. To run, they must reform their infrastructure to foster an environment where each individual can reach their full potential.

Political bottom-feeding opportunists

Now if you can believe it, there are people who strongly believe, or pretend to strongly believe, that capitalism is the culprit in the Haitian disaster, not the solution. I would generally dismiss such nonsense as unworthy of acknowledgment but I will use it as an illustration of why countries like Haiti never get fixed. This was written by Tanya Golash-Boza at the Dissident Voice.

The story of Haiti — a nation that broke the rules from the beginning by standing on its own two feet — is the story of how global capitalism works to keep most people in poverty.

Tanya Golash-Boza is on the faculty at the University of Kansas. Here’s another quote from Golash-Boza:

The earthquake in Haiti is a prime example of how unbridled capitalism kills.

Slum in Jakarta, Indonesia

In the same article, Ms. Golash-Boza cites the Bay Area earth quake of 1989 where only 63 people died, yet she still identifies capitalism as the CAUSE of over 100,000 deaths in Haiti. This woman is a highly paid educator at an American university who hates the very system that provides her with her way of life and career.

Look at this building… what planet do you have to live on to believe capitalism is the cause of this? Buildings like this don’t exist in capitalist societies.

The real problem caused by capitalism

You want to know what the real problem with “unbridled capitalism” is? It makes a country so rich, so prosperous, that intellectuals get bored being prosperous and think up pseudo-compassionate, ineffective techniques to waste their money in pursuit of social status. Start a charity, collect money, and then send it to a poverty-stricken dictatorship, and reporters will write soaring articles about what a nice person you are. The results of your work will never be evaluated. The money will never be tracked to see where it ended up or if it had any positive, long-term effect.

People like the capitalism-hating Professor are the negative side-effect of capitalism and free speech. They live in a country with so much wealth, they can produce feel-good movements that can politically pressure legislators to send other people’s money to countries less rich than us. Whether that money makes a difference or not does not matter… assuaging their own guilt is more important than actually helping. If those good intentions result in more poverty and weak building construction that causes thousands of structures to collapse on their inhabitants, that can’t possibly be placed at the feet of the people who had good intentions. They convince themselves, and unfortunately others, that the problem is they didn’t send enough money.

On top of that, they wriggle around with cockamamie arguments that their ideology combined with capitalism attempting to intervene in the socioeconomic progress of these poor countries is proof that capitalism has caused their plight rather than their own ideology.

Direct aid still doesn’t help

Even if you manage to magically ensure every penny makes it to the people instead of the coffers of the rich dictator, it still doesn’t help. Poverty-stricken people don’t know what to do with lots of money. They don’t use it to change their situations. It doesn’t help them learn economic best practices that Americans don’t even realize they know. It doesn’t change social or religious hurdles that live on in those countries.

The dominant religion in Haiti is voodoo. While voodoo is probably most widely known in America from an Indiana Jones movie, the fundamental issue with it is when bad things happen to Haitians, they believe it is the will of god and they must accept it rather than deal with it. This is not conducive to progress.

Can we fix problems like this? Should we fix problems like this? The latter is a much tougher question, while the former is slightly simpler. No one can fix the economic problems of Haiti until the Haitian people remove the relevant social obstacles. Every year we send them more useless money is another year their people don’t move in the direction necessary for change.

And frankly, as much as I think voodoo is superstitious nonsense, it is not my right nor my business to determine the beliefs of other people. If we as Americans believe that Haitians are entitled to their religious and cultural practices, and we can also determine these same beliefs will hinder their progress, then we must learn to accept the situation. Spending time and money pretending to help them is not for their benefit, but for the benefit of our own egos.

Accepting reality

Alcoholics Anonymous learned long ago that forcing people to attend is futile. The alcoholic must choose to make a change, or else any advice and counseling given will not help in the slightest. The problem is not that we aren’t spending enough money on helping alcoholics deal with their problem. Continuing to send money to Haiti is like deciding you’re going to fix alcoholics by giving them more money to spend on getting themselves help. They will spend it on booze.

Please, send your money to the Red Cross if you’d like in an effort to help rebuild parts of Haiti, but don’t convince yourself you are changing anything. Only the Haitians can do that.

I take no credit for investigative journalism in encountering this scoop. A coworker of mine, over lunch with 8 people said their spouse, who works for Senator Barbara Boxer, doesn’t think they’ll still be with the Boxer team after November.

I have no poll statistics to back this up. I have no signed affidavit. Just the loose lips of a stressed out coworker.

Just read the excerpt from the Associated Press:

Winemakers and grape growers who forgo pesticides, sow cover crops, reduce waste and energy consumption, provide workers health insurance, and are mindful of their non-farming neighbors will be able to distinguish themselves as certifiably sustainable under a new third-party audit system announced Wednesday by the Wine Institute, a public policy advocacy group.

The article is titled, “Red, White or Green? Calif. Wine Choices Expand.” So believe it or not, the term “Green” now also covers health insurance. Whether a company is considered “sustainable” depends on whether employees of that business are given health insurance.

I will not be nice here. If you have bought into the green nonsense for all these years, you are an idiot. WHAT DOES HEALTH INSURANCE HAVE TO DO WITH THE ENVIRONMENT? And you’re sustainable if you’re “mindful of your non-farming neighbors”? What kind of irrational babbling is this? Being “mindful” is now environmentally friendly.

The Green movement has NOTHING to do with saving the environment. At its best, it is a feel-good (but no good) meaningless movement to label some businesses as evil and hurtful and others as good and compassionate. At its worst, it is simply communism wearing the mask of environmentalism.

The Green movement supports electric cars and opposes gasoline cars, even though the environmental impact is identical. Electricity pollutes when it is created (with coal mostly) and is clean when used. Gasoline is clean when created and pollutes when used. There is no difference. The only way currently to make electricity cleaner is nuclear power… which the green movement opposes.

So why would the green movement support something that doesn’t prevent pollution and oppose something that does? Because the Green movement doesn’t give a crap about the environment. They hate capitalism. They hate corporations. Here’s a great excerpt illustrating the Green/Red movement:

At the 12/09 Copenhagen U.N. Climate Change Summit, Hugo Chavez, the nutty quasi dictator of Venezuela got huge applause. What new scientific data did he provide? Why was he even there at all?

He said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really an imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships.” [Rousing round of applause]

[There was a] “silent and terrible ghost in the room” [a ghost called capitalism] [even louder applause]

“our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” [standing ovation]

Nevermind that the attendees all showed up to the conference in private jets that they supposedly think are killing the planet.

Nevermind that opposing drilling for oil in the U.S. simply exports the task to countries who don’t have an EPA, and therefore hurts the environment more than if we did it ourselves.

The Green movement does not care about the environment. The evidence is staggering.

I recently read an article that typifies the Liberal vs Conservative media fight. While Liberals would have you believe that Fox News succeeds because there are a lot of Americans who yearn for wall-to-wall lying, the fact of the matter is in most debates, Conservatives have the facts on their side, and Liberals are simply scratching for approval (I said most debates, not all).

The article is “Dick Cheney’s lies about President Obama” by Eugene Robinson. After starting the article by comparing Cheney’s wisdom to that you would hear from homeless people sitting in bus shelters, Cheney’s big lie is “exposed” by Eugene. After the Christmas day underwear terrorist failed in his attempt, Obama’s behavior in the wake prompted Cheney to say the following:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war.

And Eugene’s immediate response in his article:

Flat-out untrue.

Ok, Eugene, I’m listening.

The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists.

Obama has said many things, Eugene. That doesn’t mean he believes them. Eugene’s analysis is laughable if put in perspective. Picture his article being about the following fictitious quote from Cheney:

As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are broadcasting all legislation on CSPAN.

And Eugene responds with:

Flat-out untrue. The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are going to broadcast all legislation on CSPAN. See the video.

Now for those that don’t know, healthcare deliberations are NOT being broadcast on CSPAN, despite Obama promising it on at least 8 different occasions during the campaign. So we have established that Obama’s word is worthless.

The big picture

Before I continue analyzing, I want to highlight the overall issue. This is the best Liberals can do when accusing their opponents of lying. They always cite some lame, hard to pinpoint, crime that under scrutiny pales in comparison to Liberal lies. I’m not saying that Conservatives tell the truth… that’s preposterous. I’m saying Liberals are TERRIBLE at exposing it.

So is there a CSPAN-promise-like lie on the Conservative side? The CSPAN lie by Obama is a slam-dunk, so surely there is a slam dunk on the other side of the aisle. I decided to check by looking up the top-rated “lies” that Dick Cheney and Glenn Beck have reportedly told.

Dick Cheney

The Huffington post has an article about Cheney’s top 10 lies. You would figure #1 would be devastating.

Cheney’s Comments on unauthorized wire-tapping: “This was always a policy… to capture those international communications… It is legal. It was legal from the very beginning. It is constitutional, and to claim that it isn’t I think is just wrong.

Huffington Post rebuttal: “the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither “legal” nor “constitutional.”

There are numerous opinions on this, but in January 2009, a special-intelligence court ruled that the “government does not need a search warrant when it taps the phones or checks the e-mails of suspected terrorists who are outside the U.S., even if Americans may be overheard on the calls.” The LA Times wrote,

Although the Constitution protects the privacy rights of Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” this principle does not bar U.S. spy agencies from conducting surveillance aimed at foreign targets abroad.

So the #1 lie by Dick Cheney according to the Huffington Post isn’t a lie at all. Dick Cheney has been working in the public eye for decades, and this is the number 1 lie according to his biggest critics. While I am sure Dick Cheney has lied at some point in his life, I am simply highlighting the pathetic lack of ability of Liberals to identify them.

Glenn Beck

I also searched for lies by Glenn Beck, and this page came up. The analysis is long, so I will summarize:

1. Glenn Beck claims science czar John Holdren proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.
2. PolitiFact talks about how the book was written by Holdren “more than three decades ago” when he was “then a young man.”
3. PolitiFact: “Holdren and the other authors discuss various “coercive” means of population control — including putting sterilants in the drinking water. But they stop well short of advocating such measures.”
4. Excerpt from Holdren’s book: “Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems.”
5. Another excerpt: “Most of the population control measures beyond family planning discussed above have never been tried. Some are as yet technically impossible and others are and probably will remain unacceptable to most societies.”
6. PolitiFact: “The authors argue that compulsory abortions could potentially be allowed under U.S. law “if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.” Again, that’s a far cry from advocating or proposing such a position.”

A FAR CRY?! Holdren and his coauthors say that sterilizing water “seems to horrify” people. Well, of course it does. Then they say population control measures are “unacceptable to most societies.” PolitiFact actually ends their analysis with the following:

The authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Certainly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate for forced abortions.

You have got to be kidding me. Yes, Holdren’s book says you can’t sterilize the water, not for moral reasons, but because there is no current sterilant that is “uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals.” Holdren is disappointed that sterilization cannot currently be achieved.

This is the “big lie” by Glenn Beck. PolitiFact has applied what I call courtroom logic. Since Beck cannot prove in a court of law that Holdren advocated sterilization, then Holdren does not advocate sterilization. While this certainly means Holdren shouldn’t be prosecuted for his beliefs in a court of law, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe them. The excerpts from his book clearly show he wishes these tactics were acceptable and safe.

Conservative ascendancy

So all these sources, including Eugene Robinson, act as though they have really nailed their targets without a shadow of a doubt. In less than 1000 words, I have shown their attempts to be lame at best and inaccurate at worst. In comparison, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh point out the lies of their political opponents with video and audio of outright, easily provable lies, and juxtapose direct contradictions by individuals themselves. THAT is why they are winning their media battles.

Liberals need to get better at identifying big, and important, lies by Conservatives. I have no desire for one side to win or lose. I want the right ideas to win, regardless of which party is pushing them. Conservatives are dead wrong on the government’s role in drugs and prostitution, and Liberals are dead wrong on the government’s role in redistributing wealth and “promoting the general welfare.”

So Mr. Eugene Robinson, an op-ed columnist at the Washington Post, gets paid to write articles easily refuted by little-old-me. His partisanship is an embarrassment.

A picture of poor people getting fired

I have been warning of the unrecognized consequences of raising the minimum wage. While the cost of a computer continues to go down, politicians make sure that the minimum cost of human labor in America goes up as fast as possible. The blindly driven car of the minimum wage is wilfully unconcerned of the approaching cliff.

We have reached the “wage singularity.” I have been saying for years that if Liberals continue pushing the pseudo-compassion of increasing the minimum wage, fast food workers will soon be replaced by a computer touch screen. Last weekend, I came across just that at a Jack in the Box in the San Francisco Bay Area. Other than Santa Fe at $9.92, San Francisco will enter 2010 leading the country with a minimum wage of $9.79.

I have said it before and I will say it again.

The minimum wage gets poor people FIRED.

While San Francisco brags about it’s compassion for the poor, it is slowly ensuring that our poorest citizens will become even poorer. Before the arrival of these kiosks, employers of poor workers were given a choice: pay someone the min wage or pay them zero. Many can afford to pay their higher wage but many businesses simply can’t. So they choose zero. Now they can choose a computer.

Hal the kiosk will soon be the perpetual employee of the month, as I have no doubt Liberals will be unphased by the arrival of kiosks. Communist areas like Berkeley or elsewhere will likely pass legislation banning the kiosks but most areas won’t.

Hal works 3 8-hour shifts with no breaks, no lunch, never goes to the bathroom, and never gets tired.
Hal does not have health coverage or workers comp or paid vacation.
Hal doesn’t have any tattoos, piercings, or attitude.
Hal doesn’t eat the fries or drink the soda. He doesn’t steal from the cash register. He is never late.

Hal does need his screen wiped occasionally.

Let me add that I do not oppose the kiosk taking people’s jobs. Technology makes our lives better every time it advances, as evidenced by past history. Yes, some people will lose their jobs and find it harder to find jobs, but for society it is an improvement. It just shouldn’t be happening so soon, but it is, thanks to your local politician.

Click the minimum wage category below to read more about the economic realities of minimum wage laws.