Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
The solution to this scandal is not to fire the likes of Lois Lerner (though that would be a good start). The answer is to abolish the agency entirely, and to make a concerted effort to shrink the size and reach of the entire federal government apparatus.
RTWT.
Bookworm discovered and embedded a video by Professor Anthony Esolen, in which he challenges the common belief that the Middle Ages were a dark and dreary era with few redeeming attributes. Book adds thoughts of her own, and there is a good comment thread on the post.
Pseudodionysius posted the same video at Ricochet, resulting in an extensive discussion thread…192 comments so far…which includes significant pushback against the Esolen thesis. The thread became pretty contentious…unpleasantly so, at points, but it includes some worthwhile discussion and useful links, especially on the comparison of Medieval with Classical technologies.
Airplanes, dogs, romance, adventure…sounds like a good set of ingredients for a successful book, does it not?
Meredith and Dana Holladay are both pilots and flight instructors. They met in 2010, fell in love, got married, bought a 1938 Piper Cub and flew it around the country–to all 48 states in the contiguous United States–and they recently became parents of a baby girl named Alexandra. A busy 3 years.
This is quite likely the only romantic story ever written that begins with a citation from the Code of Federal Regulations, specifically:
Federal Aviation Regulations 91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command
(a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.
Meredith suggests that the above rule not only provides guidance for the conduct of aviation, but also provides a good principle for the management of one’s own life.
The title of the book is taken from a phrase frequently spoken by flight instructors to students, often in a sharp tone: Fly the airplane. The point being that no matter what other important things need to be done–adjust the mixture, communicate with Air Traffic Control, change the settings on the GPS–the pilot must first and foremost maintain control of the aircraft. Again, Meredith suggests that the applicability of this principle goes far beyond aviation.
After the breakup of her first marriage, Meredith decided to give on-line dating a try and put up a profile on Match.com. She included a photo of herself taken the previous summer after landing at a grass strip in Pennsylvania with a student and his girlfriend. Dana–himself an experienced flight instructor–could tell from the photo that Meredith was an instructor as well as a pilot, since she was sitting in the airplane’s right seat.
After a lightning courtship and marriage, they decided to move forward with their idea of a trip covering all the 48 contiguous states. The aircraft they chose for this project was a Piper J-3 Cub, a type for which Dana had long had a strong affection:
I like that they are mechanically simple with minimal instrumentation. I also like the door and window design, which allows you to fly with both opened wide to provide a mostly unobstructed view of the world. It also allows people on the ground to get a good look at you as you fly overhead, and they’ll often wave and can see you waving back. I’ve never had that happen in any other airplane.
(Taking a trip in a Cub does require, though, that you keep your baggage to a seriously absolute minimum. The Cub also lacks a self-starter: one person turns the prop over by hand while the other manages the throttle and magneto and holds the brakes.)
Highlights of the trip included flying over the New Jersey Turnpike (with Simon & Garfunkel’s America playing in Meredith’s head), up the Hudson River corridor at about 1000 feet, right past the Statue of Liberty and over the George Washington Bridge, and through a mountain pass near Yellowstone. On-the-ground adventures included a scary climb up a cliff in Acadia National Park, a visit with a friendly/hungry seal in Oregon, and many more.
This is a fun and meaningful book, whose appeal will not be limited to pilots
I’ve flown with Meredith several times for flight reviews, etc…if you’re looking for flight instruction in the Washington DC metro area, you might want to consider getting in touch with Meredith and Dana. Their website is here, and they also have a Facebook page.
The book is available through Amazon in both paper and Kindle formats.
Related: Retro-reading…some interesting content in the March 1939 issue of Aviation magazine, including an ad for the then-new Piper Cub Coupe model for $1995.
Peggy Noonan is getting there. A few days ago she was still talking about “restoring trust.”
But the IRS scandal is about facts not trust. She has apparently figured that out.
Now she says “If it isn’t forced back into its cage now, and definitively, it will prowl the land hungrily forever.”
That’s progress.
But “forced back into its cage” is a metaphor. Peggy can’t bring herself to say what it must mean.
Let’s think out loud about what it must mean.
The IRS is staffed by unionized employees who are aligned with one political party. The IRS is about to be given sweeping new powers under the ACA. This entity cannot be forced into a cage. The incentives drive the conduct, and the incentives are destructive for the liberty of anyone who opposes the Democrats on anything. That is structural, it is not a matter of individual incompetence or malice.
The only solution is too radical for most people to consider: The existing IRS has to be shut down and replaced. The only way this limitless menace can be removed is if the existing IRS, the existing tax code, the existing storehouse of personal data on all Americans, and the capacity to destroy people’s lives at discretion are ended. A new simplified type of tax code and a new taxing authority to enforce it, staffed with a new workforce, is a massive proposal, but anything less won’t work.
The monster can’t be caged, it has to be eliminated.
BTW, this is Cook County on a galactic scale. We have seen the Black & White version of this movie in Chicago, the color version in Springfield and now this is the 3D IMAX version of the same horror story. Government power for partisan oppression is too normal to talk about here in Chicago. Fifty Democrat alderman and zero Republicans is too normal to mention. Democrat super-majorities in Springfield at the same time they are reducing the state to an international dunce is somehow the way things inevitably go.
We know where this is going. America is next.
But America is a big place, and the Chicago Way may not play well in the other 49 states.
I hope the rest of the country figures out what is happening.
Soon.
The NY Times had a solid article called “China’s Expanding Economic Empire” in today’s paper. It describes how China is using its’ state owned companies to expand globally, particularly in Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Asia.
Ultimately, thanks to the deposits of over a billion Chinese savers, China Inc. has been able to acquire strategic assets worldwide.
In addition to using their savings and financial discipline to acquire companies, China has infrastructure capabilities honed from building out their country and is able to bring staff locally to complete projects such as pipelines, railroads, mines and factories, thereby re-cycling their financial investments back into their own service companies.
The article discusses Greenland, where China has proposed to come in and develop their vast resources in return for access to commodities only if the local government by-passes wage laws and other restrictions to allow the Chinese to being in their own labor. Since no one else is offering to develop Greenland and their native workforce is ill-equipped to meet the challenge of modern infrastructure development and operations, it will be China’s by default.
However, the article does not mention anywhere the key variable that keeps Western countries non-competitive in these regions – our own laws against corruption and bribery which are likely the only way to win bids throughout most of the developing world (the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act). China has no compunction about working with anyone and doing whatever it takes to win these bids.
In addition, China doesn’t care about its reputation with the local workforce, unless things get really bad (i.e. people start getting shot). China brings its own value chain end to end, from the initial financing, to awarding bids to Chinese companies, to China pushing their surplus (skilled) labor and their own infrastructure even to support their staff (i.e. bringing in their own food). Western companies try to bring in the local work force and are sensitive to local suppliers on a relative basis.
While the article is generally full of relevant facts and analysis (except for the critical omission of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which basically gave the world to China on a platter), it ends on a completely false two paragraphs.
As China becomes a global player and a fierce competitor… its political system and state capitalist ideology pose a threat. It is therefore essential that Western governments stick to what has been the core of Western prosperity: the rule of law, political freedom, and fair competition… giving up on our commitment to human rights, or being compliant in the face of rapacious state capitalism, will hurt Western countries in the long term. It is China that needs to adapt to the world, not the other way around.
I am frankly astonished that the editor let them add these paragraphs to let the article end on such a false note. There is no evidence that our methods of not complying with local practices is working; in fact the entire article proves that our Western methods are failing.
If a country is led by a strongman you need to deal with a strongman or you won’t be in business; this is obvious, the Chinese know it, and we don’t have a chance in h*ll of competing with it. As a result, we are handing the Chinese the world on a platter. We will ultimately adapt to China, not the other way around.
Cross posted at LITGM