Month: May 2004

It’s hard to tell if the author and the sources for this piece in Time are helping Kerry, or damning him. Explaining why John Kerry sounds like an unprincipled opportunist when he’s just the opposite:

Kerry’s verbal meanderings are partly a reflection of a mind that sees complexity in almost every issue. The son of a diplomat, educated partly in boarding schools in Europe, Kerry learned to look at current affairs from multiple perspectives. Says an adviser: “It’s not like he’s trying to shade the truth. He overintellectualizes his explanations.” Asked by TIME in a March interview whether the Iraq war would be worth the costs if no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, Kerry replied, “No, I think you can still — wait, no. You can’t — that’s not a fair question. You can wind up successful in transforming Iraq and changing the dynamics, and that may make it worth it, but that doesn’t mean [transforming Iraq] was the cause [that provided the] legitimacy to go.” Kerry may in fact be right when he argues that a successful outcome does not justify an illegitimate war, but a listener has to work hard to understand his point.

You got that? No? Put a little effort into understanding it, and you’ll come away with the message that John Kerry is too smart for you to understand.

Perhaps the Kerry campaign should not deploy senators whose understanding of nuance match Kerry’s own:

“If you look at his public career, it’s been just the opposite. He’s not been unclear on the environment, on labor and education issues,” says former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey. “His reputation in the Senate is that you can trust his word. If he believes in something, he’ll fight for it.”

Got it?

• Kerry’s not been unclear.
  This does not say that he has been clear. Just that he is not unclear.
• His reputation … is that you can trust his word.
  This does not say that you can trust John Kerry’s word. This says his reputation is that you can trust his word. He’s got Senate cred, werd.
• If he believes in something, he’ll fight for it.
  This does not address whether Kerry says what he believes, nor whether he will fight for what he says he’ll fight for, or anything, really.

Thanks for not being a cartoonish or obfuscating character, little Kerrey. No, that sort of babble conveys precisely the slippery meaning the speaker intends, and both Kerry and Kerrey know it. They just have to tell the American people that they don’t, sort of, know it or mean it except when they don’t not.

More from the Brian J. Noggle “Capitalism: It’s All Good” School of Economics. Take this story, which says:

High gas prices are forcing families to shop in cut-rate grocery stores, a food industry analysis finds.

“High oil prices, both at the pump and for home heating, depress consumers’ ability to spend more,” said a report by the Food Marketing Institute released at its annual trade show in Chicago yesterday.

“It is not surprising that more shoppers are buying food today in discount stores and other low-price venues than ever before,” the study said.

It’s all good. As rational consumers, those who allocate their resources to fuel and to food discount stores are acting in their own best interests. The free market at work.

What about the grocers out there? Well, people are choosing low price over….what is it again a full grocery offers?

You see, the Brian J. Noggle “Capitalism: It’s All Good” School of Economics sees through every little ping of “bad” news as a net positive. When the man on the radio says copper prices are going up, that’s good for the miners and it’s good for the people who make alternatives to copper. Copper prices going down? Good for people who want to buy or make things with copper. Gas prices going up? Good for refineries and Big Oil, as well as for people who make hybrid automobiles, mass transit, and pastimes close to home. Gas prices coming down? Good for transportation companies, consumers, and tourist destinations.

Keep that in mind when these reports come out. The news is typically bad for whomever is releasing the report (well, probably good fro whomever got paid to prepare the doomsday scenario), but it’s good news for someone else, and it’s probably not zero sum. It’s better news for everyone when capitalism is unfettered.

Once again, highly paid academic consultants decide what’s good for cities: the creative class.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 29:

Yet another theory is dumping on St. Louis’ ability to create jobs, bashing the region and others like it on the most unlikely of economic measures: its lack of gays and bohemians.

It’s an argument waged by author Richard Florida, and it has set off a firestorm of debate about what makes up a vibrant economy.

Easy for someone to say, but what really makes a city? Hmm, why do people come together from their scattered hovels on the steppes? It’s because the city offers:

• Protection from nature and enemies. Better police coverage, fire protection, and better medical care than the small towns or rural areas.
• Jobs. A livelihood that does not involve slaughtering your own pigs or scratching dirt.
• Infrastructure. Since one’s not slaughtering one’s one pigs, one would prefer to not have to drive into the next town to visit the bazaar. One would also like roads, commerce, schools for the children, and other amenities that one cannot find in the wilderness.

Cities do not arise, or afall, because of gays and bohemians. The “artistic” class arises from a vibrant city.

Stupid schnucking city planners and elected officials keep shoveling money to consultants who want to elevate their cool, unemployed academic bohemian friends, all the while anticipating the day when they’re highly-paid consultants with with cool artistic friends.

From a story on Yahoo! news:

A judge gave a Tennessee zoo six months to convince him that an African elephant named Ruby is adapting well to her new home after being separated from a pachyderm friend in Los Angeles last year.

Judge George Wu ordered the report from the Knoxville Zoo on Thursday during a hearing in a lawsuit that seeks to return Ruby to the Los Angeles Zoo.

I think the judicial system’s rapidly becoming a joke, and this story is but one punchline among many.

According to Yahoo! news:

He is one of Hollywood’s best-compensated actors, but matinee idol Ben Affleck (news) came to the US Congress Thursday to lobby for higher pay for some of America’s lowest-paid workers.

Affleck, who earns millions per screen appearance, appeared alongside Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy to urge lawmakers to increase the federal minimum wage from its current five dollars and 15 cents per hour to seven dollars per hour.

Apparently, the pressure was getting to be too much, and Affleck had to open his mouth to let a little pressure out.

Instead of just talking the talk, Affleck could choose to spend his own damn money, of which there is no shortage from my vantage point but about which his fleet of accountants are undoubtedly concerned, to open a series of fast food restaurants and discount groceries wherein he could somehow pay workers $7.00 an hour and still keep in business. That would probably put some of his accountants in the morgue with heart failure, because they know (even if they don’t communicate this with their client) that higher labor costs and higher employment tend to work against each other, much like higher labor costs and affordable prices.

Instead of risking his own “earned” capital, Affleck wants to sacrifice that of real entrepreneurs. He chooses to “give at the office” by making other people and corporations pick up the tab for his community ideals, much like people who want to take care of the poor but don’t volunteer or donate because they already paid taxes but think the government could do more.

If the country were filled with people like you, Mr. Affleck and like-minded, we’d have a world….. well, much like the screwed-up one we have now.