Domestic Policy

Andrew Carnegie on Poverty

Tickler Leave a comment

I recently read “The Gospel of Wealth”, and essay by Andrew Carnegie, and many quotes from it continue to resonate in my mind, to the point where I feel compelled to post some here.

In just the introduction there are so many gems of wisdom that if a person just read that, it would necessarily change forever the way they see their lot in life. Each time I begin to complain about my situation think of this quote from the essay…

But I never told them at home that I was having a hard tussle. No, no! everything must be bright to them. This was a point of honor, for every member of the family was working hard …and we were telling each other only all the bright things. Besides this, no man would whine and give up — he would die first.

And each time I hear about yet another social program designed to take self-sufficiency away from society, I think of this next quote about poverty itself and the blessing it can be in crafting a grateful heart and determined and self-sufficient disposition…

You know how people moan about poverty as being a great evil, and it seems to be accepted that if people had only plenty of money and were rich, they would be happy and more useful, and get more out of life.

As a rule, there is more genuine satisfaction, a truer life, and more obtained from life in the humble cottages of the poor than in the palaces of the rich! I always pity the sons and daughters of rich men, who are attended by servants, and have governesses at a later age, but am glad to remember that they do not know what they have missed.

They have kind fathers and mothers, too, and think that they enjoy the sweetness of these blessings to the fullest: but this they cannot do ; for the poor boy who has in his father his constant companion, tutor, and model, and in his mother— holy name!— his nurse, teacher, guardian angel, saint, all in one, has a richer, more precious fortune in life than any rich man’s son who is not so favored can possibly know, and compared with which all other fortunes count for little.

It is because I know how sweet and happy and pure the home of honest poverty is, how free from perplexing care, from social envies and emulations, how loving and how united its members may be in the common interest of supporting the family, that I sympathize with the rich man’s boy and congratulate the poor man’s boy; and it is for these reasons that from the ranks of the poor so many strong, eminent, self-reliant men have always sprang and always must spring.

If you will read the list of the immortals who “were not born to die,” you will find that most of them have been born to the precious heritage of poverty.

It seems, nowadays, a matter of universal desire that poverty should be abolished. We should be quite willing to abolish luxury, but to abolish honest, industrious, self-denying poverty would be to destroy the soil upon which mankind produces the virtues which enable our race to reach a still higher civilization than it now possesses.

I have been to the squalor of the cottage of his birthplace (in Dunfermline, Scotland) and to his beautiful grave in Sleepy Hollow, NY, millions of dollars and many years later, and can tell you this man’s accomplishments and wisdom are to be listened to and considered. If only all people were as honest with themselves as this man was, self-sufficiency and accountability would be the norm and society would be much farther along.

Katrina vs Iowa: Strong Contrast

Tickler 1 Comment

There’s an interesting email going around lately. I don’t know the origin, but the message is spot on and should be considered by all.

  • As you watch the coverage of the flooding in the Midwest, take notice of the following…
  • There are no farmers running around with stolen high-end tennis shoes and big screen plasma TVs or wading through water holding stolen liquor over their heads. Have there been reports of looting at all?
  • They’re not yelling “Where’s Bush?”, “Where’s FEMA?,  Where’s my check?”, or  “Why isn’t the government out here saving me and my farm?”
  • Likewise, I’ve also noticed there are no reports of any other country coming to help or sending aid.
  • Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
  • Where is all the media asking the “tough questions” about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem, and asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?
  • Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?
  • When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?
  • Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
  • When will we hear Iowa Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it?
  • Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?
  • Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?
  • How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

It’s hard to look the facts in the face for some, but the facts are the facts and nothing changes until people face them. And it goes to show how helpless people get when they aren’t expected to be self-sufficient.

Obama’s Grand Energy Plan…

Tickler Leave a comment

Here’s the word for word on his latest ad…

On gas prices, John McCain’s part of the problem. He and Bush support a drilling plan that won’t produce a drop of oil for seven years. McCain will give more tax breaks to big oil. He’s voted with Bush 95% of the time. Barack Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority, raise mileage standards, fast-track technology for alternative fuels, a $1,000 tax cut to help families as we break the grip of foreign oil. A royal plan and new energy.

“…Obama will make energy independence an urgent priority…” – Wow, if only it were that simple greenhorn.

“…Raise mileage standards…”

Wow, great idea. Once again, if only it were that simple greenhorn.

“…Fast-track technology for alternative fuels”

What, like ethanol, which practically takes as much energy to produce as it provides? Oh, and that production energy comes from oil because the Left is afraid of nuclear. Make no mistake, I’m ALL about alternative energy and the environment, (that and animal rights are categories on which I tend to agree more with the Left), but stating the generalities makes his clear lack of ideas painfully obvious. And what’s worse, he obviously hasn’t been able to hire anyone with ideas or his rhetoric would eventually present one. Fishing from an empty idea pond…

“…a $1,000 tax cut to help families…”

Throw out one from the Right strategy of lower taxes to seem reasonable and score points, before it counts. They’re so out of ideas that they’re using ones from the Right?

The Left must know their candidate has the same leadership experience, but less street smarts, than his driver, but that bed’s made and that’s the best they could do (giggle). That said, it’s not all that different from the Right. No idea how it happened, but we ended up with the worst of the initial bunch (save Paulson). McCain’s in dire need of someone with some economic savvy and real world experience in the private sector (Romney).

All I know is that as oblivious (i.e. Left) as McCain is on many subjects, he’s significantly less dangerous than the horror of letting a blind-eye to history Soros-sock-puppet pull this country’s pants down.

Kenyan Economist: Stop The Aid To Africa!

Tickler Leave a comment

There’s a incredibly insightful article in Spiegel about the damage foreign aid brings to third world countries in very plain language. These are things I and others have been saying for years, but when you have an economist from Kenya saying the same, maybe people will believe it now.

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL:

Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It’s only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it’s not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa …

SPIEGEL: … corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers …

Shikwati: … and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It’s a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn’t do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don’t think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders — drawn by the Europeans by the way — more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?

Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there’s a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn’t do all that poorly either.

SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn’t exist at that time.

Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It’s not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it’s only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

SPIEGEL: And why’s that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa’s biggest business. There’s nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

SPIEGEL: The Americans and Europeans have frozen funds previously pledged to Kenya. The country is too corrupt, they say.

Shikwati: I am afraid, though, that the money will still be transfered before long. After all, it has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, the Europeans’ devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason. It makes no sense whatsoever that directly after the new Kenyan government was elected — a leadership change that ended the dictatorship of Daniel arap Mois — the faucets were suddenly opened and streams of money poured into the country.

SPIEGEL: Such aid is usually earmarked for a specific objective, though.

Shikwati: That doesn’t change anything. Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: “The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it.”

SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags …

Shikwati: … and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany — for three times the price. That’s insanity …

SPIEGEL: … and hopefully an exception.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They’re in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria’s textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

SPIEGEL: Following World War II, Germany only managed to get back on its feet because the Americans poured money into the country through the Marshall Plan. Wouldn’t that qualify as successful development aid?Shikwati: In Germany’s case, only the destroyed infrastructure had to be repaired. Despite the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic, Germany was a highly- industrialized country before the war. The damages created by the tsunami in Thailand can also be fixed with a little money and some reconstruction aid. Africa, however, must take the first steps into modernity on its own. There must be a change in mentality. We have to stop perceiving ourselves as beggars. These days, Africans only perceive themselves as victims. On the other hand, no one can really picture an African as a businessman. In order to change the current situation, it would be helpful if the aid organizations were to pull out.

Shikwati: … jobs that were created artificially in the first place and that distort reality. Jobs with foreign aid organizations are, of course, quite popular, and they can be very selective in choosing the best people. When an aid organization needs a driver, dozens apply for the job. And because it’s unacceptable that the aid worker’s chauffeur only speaks his own tribal language, an applicant is needed who also speaks English fluently — and, ideally, one who is also well mannered. So you end up with some African biochemist driving an aid worker around, distributing European food, and forcing local farmers out of their jobs. That’s just crazy!

SPIEGEL: The German government takes pride in precisely monitoring the recipients of its funds.

Shikwati: And what’s the result? A disaster. The German government threw money right at Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame. This is a man who has the deaths of a million people on his conscience — people that his army killed in the neighboring country of Congo.

SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?

Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

Interview conducted by Thilo Thielke

Translated from the German by Patrick Kessler

READ IT HERE

SPIEGEL: If they did that, many jobs would be immediately lost …

Ice Shelf As Altar: The Faith of the Faithless

Tickler 1 Comment

Bret Stephens of the WSJ wrote a compelling piece on the most obvious issues with the global warming group-think. Here’s a taste…

The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere’s coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

This last item is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn’t evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist, or that global warming isn’t happening. It does mean it isn’t science.

Compelling. Read the whole thing.

Torturing Scum gets… LIFE! Hey NY, Time To Rethink The Death Penalty

Tickler 1 Comment

I don’t care what happened to this animal when he was young. I don’t care what disadvantages he may have had. In my desire for justice I can only try not to think about any of the story. Small consolation is thinking about this guy standing before God, when this is all over, and reporting on how he spent his time and what he did with what he had. It’ll be a short report, I imagine, hopefully followed by a crackling sound, judging righteously, of course.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing here, and the gift the anti-death penalty (mainly left) lobby keeps on giving, lies with the sizable taxes I get to pay to keep animals like this eating for the rest of their wasted useless lives. Oh yeah, and even that doesn’t keep many of them away anymore. Life just means a couple more years to parole in the overcrowding we should no longer tolerate.

Why are those on the left for bans on the death penalty anyway? It’s an interesting question.

Obama Truth Squads Suspend Free Speech in MO

Tickler Leave a comment
Last Tuesday, CBS affiliate Channel 4 TV News in St. Louis reported that some Missouri sheriffs and prosecutors have formed a truth squad to target anyone who engages in misleading ad or statements about Senator Obama.
Here’s the transcript of the lede on the CBS story:
“Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is asking Missouri law enforcement to target anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad during the presidential campaign.”
The implied threat in the Channel 4 report is that prosecutors and sheriffs across Missouri will enforce “Missouri ethics laws” and conduct criminal investigations of “anyone who lies or runs a misleading television ad” against Barack Obama.  Although the report did not directly state that intent, that implied message was clearly conveyed.
Read more here