Big Government

Why I’m not stocking up on 100w light bulbs

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Contrary to Instapundit’s regular reminders, I am not stocking up on 100 watt light bulbs right now. That’s because Monday I plan to try and buy them after the toothless New Year’s dead line passes and they are “banned”. It will be an educational experience all around. If I find them stocked, well and good. I have regular retailers with the stones to do the right thing, offer a legal product despite the protests of the nannies. That’s a useful thing to know and something that ordinary people don’t have a chance to find out in the regular course of business with their retailers. As economic corporatism becomes more and more accepted on the left, this will increase in importance.

I’m going to set aside enough time for this chore that I can have several calm conversations with managers at my local retailers in case they have been cowed or are on the other side. Those on the other side lose my business and I go into “name and shame” mode. Not only are these people siding on the side of the green fascists, they’re taking sides in a constitutional battle between the Congress and the Executive. If defunding a regulation doesn’t stop it from taking effect, what point the power of the purse? Those who have been cowed get to find out that they’re between a rock and a hard place and they might as well pick the option that at least gives them additional sales.

This has to change.

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One huge problem we have in America is that the millions of people who are struggling to start or grow businesses, or go solo through self-employment, have no voice. The people who talk and write — the chattering classes — do that for a living. The people who live off the public teat are often talkers and writers, and thus dominate the conversation. The major business guys are in bed with the government or have a lot to lose, so they lie low. The big middle band of actual and potential self-starters and wealth-creators is inarticulate and it needs someone to speak for it, and to learn to speak for itself.

The regulatory state is structured to punish and thwart solo workers, self employment, small businesses, and start ups. The regulatory state has several missions. Expanding its power is one. Moving resources to its clients is another. Insulating its clients from possible threats — incumbent protection — is another.  The very thing which will allow us to dig out of this recession is what our government is structured to prevent.

This has to change.

Cross-posted at America 3.0

America 3.0 [bumped]

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James C. Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), and Michael J. Lotus (who blogs at Chicagoboyz.net as “Lexington Green”), are proud to announce the signing of a contract with Encounter Books of New York to publish their forthcoming book America 3.0.

America 3.0 gives readers the real historical foundations of our liberty, free enterprise, and family life.  Based on a new understanding of our past, and on little known modern scholarship, America 3.0 offers long-term strategies to restore and strengthen American liberty, prosperity and security in the years ahead.

America 3.0 shows that our country was founded as a decentralized federation of communities, dominated by landowner-farmers, and based on a unique type of Anglo-American nuclear family.  This was America 1.0, as the Founders established it.  The Industrial Revolution brought progress, opportunity and undreamed-of mobility.  But, it also pushed the majority of American families into a new, urban, industrial life along with millions of unassimilated immigrants. After the Civil War, new problems of public health, crime, public order, and labor unrest, on top of the issues of Reconstruction, taxed the old Constitution.  Americans looked for new solutions to new problems, giving rise to Progressivism, the ancestor of modern liberalism.

America 3.0 shows that liberal-progressive solutions to the challenges of America 2.0 relieved some problems, and kicked others down the road.   But they also led to an overly powerful state and to an overly intrusive bureaucracy.   This was the beginning of America 2.0, the America we grew up with, which dominated the Twentieth Century.

America 3.0 argues that the liberal-progressive or “Blue State” social model has reached its natural limits.   Even as it continues to try to expand, it is now dying out before our eyes.   We are   now living in the closing years of the 20th Century “legacy state.”  Even so, it has taken the shock of the current Great Recession to make people see the need for change.  As a result, more and more Americans are calling for a return to our founding principles.  Freedom and individualism are on the rise after a century-long detour.

America 3.0 shows that our current problems can be and must be transcended with a transition to a new America 3.0, based on modern technology, decentralized communities, and self-reliant families, and a reassertion of fiscal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government and free market economics.   Ironically the future America 3.0 will in many ways be closer to the original vision of the Founders than the fading America 2.0.

America 3.0 gives readers an accurate, and hopeful, assessment of our current crisis.   It also spotlights the powerful forces arrayed in opposition to the needed reform.  These groups include ideological leftists in media and the academy, politically connected businesses, and the public employees unions.  However, as powerful as these groups are, they have become vulnerable as the external conditions change.   A correct understanding of our history and culture, which America 3.0 provides, shows their opposition will be futile.  The new, pro-freedom, mass political movement, which is aligned with the true needs and desires of Americans, is going to succeed.

America 3.0 provides readers a program of specific “maximalist” proposals to reform our government and liberate our economy.  America 3.0 shows readers that these reforms are consistent with our fundamental culture, and with our Constitution, and will make Americans freer and more prosperous in the years ahead.

America 3.0 provides a “software upgrade” for the Tea Party and for all activists on the Conservative and Libertarian Right.  It provides readers with historical evidence and intellectual coherence, to channel the energy and enthusiasm of the rising mass political movement to renew America.

America 3.0 shows that our capacity for regeneration is greater than most people realize.  Predictions of our doom are deeply mistaken.   We are now living just before the dawn of America’s greatest days.  Within a generation, positive changes beyond what we can currently imagine will have taken place.   That is the America 3.0 we are going to build together.

(Cross-posted from the America 3.0 blog.)

Virginity of global warming activist questioned.

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During all the argument about global warming that has gone on over the past decade, warming activists have questioned the motives of defenders of traditional energy sources, implying they are all funded by fossil fuel companies. The motives of those warning of the risks of global warming have rarely been questioned, implying they are only worried about the planet and nothing so crass as accepting money for their efforts.

Now, it seems, they had normal acquisitive instincts, as well. And some of them have done quite well, I might add.

NASA records released to resolve litigation filed by the American Tradition Institute reveal that Dr. James E. Hansen, an astronomer, received approximately $1.6 million in outside, direct cash income in the past five years for work related to — and, according to his benefactors, often expressly for — his public service as a global warming activist within NASA.

This does not include six-figure income over that period in travel expenses to fly around the world to receive money from outside interests. As specifically detailed below, Hansen failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in global travel provided to him by outside parties — including to London, Paris, Rome, Oslo, Tokyo, the Austrian Alps, Bilbao, California, Australia and elsewhere, often business or first-class and also often paying for his wife as well — to receive honoraria to speak about the topic of his taxpayer-funded employment, or get cash awards for his activism and even for his past testimony and other work for NASA.

Oh, Oh. Normal instincts after all. This will set the sainthood movement back a few years. We already know about Al Gore, of course.