select news fit to print

NEWS MEDIA

The news is a report of what is new so they don't report much on what has remained the same. Advertising is their customer so they report mainly to get viewers/readers that advertisers want to reach. The fact that some things are getting better all the time is not news in the sense that no political action is needed. They only report the expose and love to report acute rather than diffuse effects. The 5th generation milk farmer going into default makes better news than the millions of consumers jipped 5cents a gallon because of farm subsidies. Journalists fancy themselves affecting change in a positive fashion rather than just reporting the facts and putting perspective on events. With almost every story, change is needed and implicitly government is the choice change agent (with fiat power). The stratification of America has never been more polarized - a drastic charge. But when one considers the changes since the '50's of a re-castization of America - along intellectual fault lines -it seems to make sense. People can be divided in roughly half - left and right brain people. You see journalists are (left brain - creative/expressive) writers of fiction - they use facts to adjust their template and tell the story along familiar plot lines. The rich get richer the poor get poorer. The latest outrage that needs immediate government action as though it where some unusual event unprecedented in history is what sells. They are sell-outs to truth and reason.

jimmy leaving for caracas

SOCIALISM

Why is everyone leaving? The Democratic Republic of Germany (communist newspeak for socialism) had to build a wall around West Berlin to keep all of east Germany leaving for West Germany. More people left Vietnam after the fall of Saigon then immigrated there. North Koreans are trapped deep inside an isolated totalitarianism. Rafters are leaving Cuba in droves - don't they know about the free health care? In a free society - even the most capitalistic - a group is free to go off by themselves and form a commune, but in a socialist regime the same is not true of a group of market liberals. Now Venezuela is looking to join the club of elite humanitarian disasters by removing the most basic of human rights - property. Jimmy Carter should move there permanently seems how his organization found no fault with the elections of Chavez. One problem Venezuela will not have is millions of people teaming to get in! A lot will be leaving.

research mercantilism

STEM CELLS

How is the nation responsible for a new research discovery assigned? Much research is done and credited as being discovered in the US, but often by foreign born persons - some US citizens, some with student visas. Half of all grad students are from over seas - largess of the US taxpayer to the university system. The brain drain from the rest of the world seems to benefit us well but should not be an end-all be-all. High threats are made that if stem cells are not funded (as though there were a federal ban) that research will go to other countries. These research mercantilists ignore the fact that invitro fertilization was developed without federal funding and that many countries do not allow profits on medical breakthroughs. The US will still benefit from any discoveries in the globalised system. If South Korea wants to take the lead in experiments with human stem cells - let them. Would it not be better to fall behind in humankinds destruction?

the sky is falling again

RECYCLING

Just because one time one trash barge could not get rid of its garbage from NYC does not mean that there is a lack of landfill space. Just because an area you remember as farmland as a kid now has houses does not mean that sprawl is overwhelming farmland. Whoever believes these things has never been on an airplane across the U.S. When you look down there is barely anything there - cities are quite rare - tons of room for landfills, plenty of farmland left. Ok now a primer for those who don't understand information: Prices are information (except to the centralized planning types). They say what/when/how to produce, what/when/how to buy, how much something is valued present and future. If farmland was scarce then food prices would increase and farmland would become more valuable and subdivisions would be bought up by farmers to make the way for new crops - problem solved. If landfills were scarce then it would cost a lot to have your garbage picked up. Just because recycling reduces the amount of solid waste a city outputs does not mean that it is resource or energy efficient. What if the cost and environmental harm were greater to pick up and sort all the recyclables from regular trash - both diesel truck emissions and human carbon dioxide emissions (and bureaucratic red tape)? When they pay me to pick up my glass/plastic/aluminum/paper then I'll sell it to them - until then its going in the trash.

college for everyone

IMMIGRATION

Marxists talk as though people where living an idyllic country life and then rounded up - almost against their will - forced to move to the cities and work in factories. They mention the squalor and suffering of the cities, but most likely this was occurring in the country side - just concentration in the city made the problems more acute, less diffuse. Then Henry Ford came along, cash on hand, not trusting the Jewish banking community, and offered workers a $5 dollar day. So factory work - even if mundane - become harder to leave with the pay so lavish. So if, as the Marxists fantasize, of workers dreaming to return to the country, (there may be some truth behind this) they certainly could not easily accept such a lower standard of living to do so. So to insure a stable workforce, most large companies have paid above market wages to reliable employees. These employee wages can be easily undercut by mass illegal and legal immigration of unskilled workers. One can live quite cheap on rice and beans, bunking with coworkers - yet a more lavish lifestyle than possible south of the border. Advocates of open borders and amnesty must yield on these points. The unskilled American worker will be undercut by mass immigration. Markets always clear - there is no such thing as a job Americans are not willing to do. Mass immigration will largely benefit middle and upper class skilled wage and professional salary earners because prices will go down. Modern progressive liberals insert talking points here: (worker re-training programs, college tuition assistance, universal heath care, living wage) Just never mention the standard distribution of intelligence - if you ignore it, it will go away!