One of the great benefits of old age is accepting the fact we never learn from our mistakes. Those of us who do learn are not important enough to matter. All the important people have the memory of a kitten. Thus we see stories like this over and over, despite allegedly having learned our lesson.

Drawn in thick marker along the map of upstate New York, the line snaked down the Niagara River and zigzagged east to outline a swath of Buffalo and its surrounding neighborhoods.

But one area of the city — neighborhoods in east Buffalo, where more than 75 percent of the city’s African-American population lives — was explicitly excluded, cut off from access to mortgage credit.

That map, ringed by a line, is at the center of a sweeping investigation by the New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, into whether banks are “redlining” — deliberately choking off mortgage lending to predominantly minority communities — people briefed on the matter said.

The investigation was expected to reach its first target as early as Tuesday, the people said, with Mr. Schneiderman’s office taking aim at Evans Bank, a regional lender whose business in the Buffalo area dates to 1920, accusing it of denying mortgages to African-Americans regardless of their credit.

The case, expected to accuse Evans Bank of violating the Fair Housing Act — a federal law intended to ensure equal access to credit — is a harbinger of other lawsuits that could be brought against some of the nation’s largest banks, several people briefed on the investigations said.

We nearly blew up civilization with insane lending rules in the last decade. That stampede to the cliff’s edge began with lawsuits claiming the banks were not lending to black people. Here we are again, doing the same thing expecting a different result.

In the suit, expected to be filed in state court, prosecutors were to outline how, since 2009, Evans Bancorp has created a map that defined the “trade area,” places in the Buffalo metropolitan region where the bank would make mortgages and other loans. The bank, prosecutors contend, deliberately excised much of Buffalo’s East Side.

Rival banks, the authorities said, lent to neighborhoods on the East Side at a far higher rate than Evans Bank, suggesting that the lending patterns did not stem from a dearth of willing minority borrowers.

If the bank actually had a map with a red line around the black neighborhoods, then they deserve what they get. That’s just stupid. If they simply refused to market to poor neighborhoods based on credit bureau reports, then that’s their business. The fact that the other banks were charging “far higher rates” says this bank is not interested in high risk lending. That’s why banks charge high rates. The risk is high. That’s news to the NYTimes, but not to people with an IQ above room temperature.

That unequal access to credit, the authorities say, threatens to exacerbate the country’s yawning wealth gap. Part of the problem is that the foreclosure crisis disproportionately affected black and Hispanic communities, wiping out billions of dollars of housing wealth, federal mortgage data shows.

Mortgage lending is critical, the authorities say, to bolster homeownership — a cornerstone of upward mobility — in minority communities still trying to dig out from the recession. Denied access to credit, state and federal authorities warn, minority communities are helpless to address problems like boarded-up homes, foreclosures and blight that have long ravaged neighborhoods.

When I see stuff like this, I often wonder if the writer is mildly retarded. People with high default rates should not be getting loans. The reason is they have no money. That’s why they defaulted on the loans.

As far as those boarded up homes, that’s the fault of the same “authorities” whining about inequality. Those homes should be condemned and bulldozed. But, the rich guys who own them give generously to those authorities complaining about the wealth gap. Alternatively, the homes can be condemned and taken by eminent domain and then sold off to developers. But then the prices would go up and the poor would be moved out so the children of rich white liberals can live in crime free hipster-villes.

The sporting press and liberal America is in mourning today. Gay gay person Gay Gayington was cut by the Rams.

Michael Sam, who is seeking to become the NFL’s first openly gay player, was passed over by 31 teams Sunday just one day after being cut by St. Louis, USA Today reported.

The rookie defensive end cleared waivers and is now free to try and sign with the Rams’ practice squad.

Sam was cut by St. Louis on Saturday as the Rams tried to get their roster down to 53 players for the first game of the season.

Sam thanked the Rams on Saturday for the opportunity and said he would continue to try and land a position on an NFL team.

I thought all along that it was a bad move by his agent to turn Michael Sam into a gay action hero. The NFL is a heartless racket where tiny differences in talent can make the difference between success and failure. Coaches are paranoid control freaks because of it. Anything that distracts from their focus and the team’s focus on the tasks at hand is rooted out of the organization. They have no choice. Otherwise they get fired. Jeff Fischer knows the pressure was on to make a spot for Sam, but he has to win and Sam is an extra he does not need. End of story.

On the other hand, no team will roll the dice on a marginal rookie because the lunatics in the press will not stop yapping about the gay stuff. That’s the thing about life in the NFL. High draft picks get a longer leash than late picks, but there’s not a lot of patience with any of the rookies. Once a guy proves he can help you win, then it swings the other way. The NFL will tolerate a child molester who can help a team win. Right now, Sam is not a guy that can help a team win so the media circus following him around is a major liability.

But, the press corp is wearing black armbands anyway.

One of my fascinations is why it is people believe things. Belief is a vital part of human existence. In fact, you can’t have human society without the human trait of belief. It allows for the building of cultural institution, which are the storehouse of human knowledge.

The natural tendency of humans to accept, on faith, what is told to them by their parents, other adults and even their peers is what allows us to advance in a material sense. If everything your parents told you, for example, had to be proved to you before you would accept it, humans would not have got past hunter gatherer.

Biology explains the why to a certain extent, but not the what.Norse mythology developed over a long period of time, probably a 1000 years before the runic alphabet. Throughout human settlement, there is a similarity of belief. You have a pantheon of gods, creation myths, codes, explanations of the natural world and so on.It’s easy to see why these people believed in this stuff, but it is hard to figure why they settled on this specific stuff. Yet, they did and did so just about everywhere.

In modern times, belief is most on display when it comes to politics and culture. For example, Liberals believe the Red Team is evil. So much so, they oppose everything the Red Team supports. Liberals believe Christians and Southerners are evil too. That’s why they refuse to go to Chick-fil-A and WalMart. I knew moonbat women who were visibly spooked by images of Sarah Palin.

You see some of this on the Right, but it is less clear. Lots of non-Liberals watch ESPN and 60 minutes, despite the fact these outfits are run by lunatics. Still, you have a lot of non-Liberals convinced the GOP is the only answer, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.Americans outside the liberal hive tend to be into conventional religions so maybe that’s why their political intensity is much lower.

Anyway, I saw this posted on MR  and saved it for later use. It got me thinking about the topic. This bit from Thomas Sowell is what got my attention:

Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries’ “real” reasons, which must be “unmasked.” Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied by references to those adversaries’ “blindness,” “prejudice,” or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make, while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversaries be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complex that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken — and dangerously so. They ‘may do the worst of things without being the worst of man,’ according to Burke. (pg 59-60)

This is why I prefer to look at our political tribes in terms of religion, rather than conscious philosophical outlook. What Sowell sees as a ranking of character traits, I see as in-group/out-group signaling. The hive minded always assign the worst imaginable traits to those outside the hive or anyone they see as a threat. Paul Krugman’s hive puts purity of faith above all us, therefore those outside the hive lack faith or sincerity.

It’s why the concept of indifference is alien to the Left. Everyone is either inside or outside.We’ve all probably had that weird conversation with a lunatic about something like homosexual marriage. Shrugging your shoulders and saying you don’t care is not enough. You have to be either for or against. In the old days abortion was this subject. You could easily have lost friends over it. On more than a few occasions I just walked out of the room when the subject came up. Being rude was better than being an apostate.

For the hive minded, people are not just wrong; they are a mortal threat because they oppose that which gives the adherent a reason to exist. Early Greek generals started to figure this out while observing how their men fought differently on their home turf than on the road. Additionally, Greeks fighting other Greeks could feel empathy for their enemies when they saw how they defended their lands and families.

The remedy to this was to find ways to convince the fighters that the enemy was evil in some way that made them undeserving of sympathy. Plunder was simply not enough to motivate men to kill their neighbors. The solution developed over time was small unit training to build loyalty within the ranks. When the men saw one another as blood brothers, those opposed were blood enemies. It is why trench socialism is still a part of Progressive proselytizing, despite their own social chauvinism.

I think what Sowell views as sincerity, rather, an obsession with sincerity, is actually an obsession with piety. Inside the hive, public displays of piety are critical to reinforcing one’s place in the hive. Those who fail in their devotions are, in effect, personally rejecting the group. Pretending to be pious, but secretly rejecting the group is of crime because it undermines the very foundation of the group. Therefore, assigning this quality to the enemies of the group is not a lot different than ancient soldiers hurling curses at their enemy before battle. It reinforces reasons for the group and motivates the adherents to make war on their enemies.

I was traveling over the long weekend. It is always good to see old friends, even when it is not so good to see old friends. As you get older, some of your friends get weird for periods and some get really boring for a while. Kids tend to make people boring, but when their kids grow up makes some people get weird. Women often go a little bonkers when their kids outgrow them. Men get weird when the gray hair begins to arrive. Still, it is always good to catch up with old friends, even when they are going through a weird or boring phase.

Travel, of course, has its own rewards. America has not been completely homogenized so there’s plenty of weirdness still left in her. New England, for example, retains its quirky Yankee flavor. Even within New England, there is a lot of diversity still. Boston is not Connecticut. Rhode Island is different from New Hampshire and Maine. Mass media has driven a lot of old weird America into extinction, but a lot of it is still around. This map from American Nations does explain a lot.

Anyway, when you travel to see friends you have not seen in a while it can bring some odd surprises. I’ve let my beard grow over the last month. I have no good reason or it. I just felt like it. If extreme beard growing is the new trend, then I figure I can let my beard grow if I want. Over the weekend, I had at least four people ask me what I use to dye my beard. I don’t dye anything and I have a little grey so that should be obvious. Come to find out, men are now dying their beards and even their whole head. One of my friends is now getting his head dyed on a regular basis.

I asked him about it and he said it bugged him so he figured he would give it a shot. I’m guessing his wife talked him into it. Women have been getting dye jobs forever. The guys getting the beards done are doing it for the same reason and they were casual about it. Maybe it is a Boston thing or just a trend I am just learning about now. Out of curiosity I walked through the hair care section of the local market today and they had a lot of various treatments for gray hair. That suggests I’m the last guy to hear about it.

Now that I have, I can’t imagine ever dying anything. It seems like a lot of work. On the other hand, if it really bugs you I guess it is worth the effort. I’m very conscious of my weight so I torture myself daily to keep the scale happy. Vanity works on all of us differently. I see a lot of old guys huffing and puffing just like me so maybe there are lots of guys at the hair salon getting their beard dyed. It does mean I can no longer mock the young for getting beard transplants and shaving their chests…

Also on the travel agenda was the Tom Petty show at Fenway Park. I have been to Fenway Park for Sox games more times than I can count. I never saw Petty in concert and I did not know what I was missing. He does a great show and Fenway is a great venue for a concert, if you have field seats. I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan, but I highly recommend his show. These old touring pros really know how to do these things.

I wonder if the rock concert is going to be a thing of the past once these guys die off. Starting in the 80’s and 90’s, bands that can play instruments in public have given way to dance shows with lip-syncing and piped in music. A few years ago I saw Madonna on TV doing a show for something and she looked ridiculous. Tom Petty can still play and sing and not look foolish. A fifty year old woman in a cat suit dancing around to her old club tunes is not something you want to see. It’s hard to imagine Justin Beiber touring in his fifties…

One of the things I never get over about New England is the provincialism. Everywhere has some of it, but New England is unique in this regard. I was talking to a woman at the show who wondered where in the south I lived. I was a puzzled and she said she could detect a southern accent. As far as I know, I have no accent, but to the locals, that is an accent. She has a brother living in Tennessee or Kentucky and wanted to talk about the south for what she thought was an authentic southerner.

That’s something you don’t run into elsewhere. Outside of New England, people have a decent understanding of New England. Most of it is gleaned from pop culture. Boston is a trendy place. On the other hand, the typical Yankee still thinks the south is dotted with plantations and fighting the civil rights movement. They think California is a version of Beach Blanket Bingo and the Midwest is just a vase unpopulated zone. The woman I was speaking with was incredulous when I told her life is better for black people in the Old Confederacy than in the north…

On the way home, I passed a group of bikers, member of the Wheels of Soul MC. I’ve always had an interest in gangs and motorcycle gangs in particular. There’s a lot to learn about the human animal from studying criminals. WOSMC is a unique group in the 1%’er world because they are multi-racial. I thought the Feds had put most of them in jail so I looked them up when I got home. The fact that they have a website is pretty funny, when you think about it.

The show Sons of Anarchy has popularized the motorcycle gang again. Hollywood glamorizes crimes and criminals, but that’s to be expected. The reality of life in one of these groups is not good TV. The typical biker is an 85 IQ, randomly violent and completely unpredictable. They live hand to mouth because they usually can’t hold regular jobs. That means they make money in drugs, hookers, strippers, stolen goods and so on. Selling crank retail in the parking lot of a strip club is not going to result in a lot of income. It also makes bad TV.

The message on the membership page of the WOS site reads:

If you are 18 years of age or older, male and own a motorcycle with a minimum displacement of 750cc, you may have what it takes to begin the journey to becoming a Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC member. We have chapters in every region of the United States and representatives who will be happy to discuss your options with you. The Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC is not structured to facilitate all applicant’s success in becoming a member. Our lifestyle is not recommended for everyone. Though it has it’s rewards, The Wheels Of Soul Nation, MC is not about being rewarded….it’s about brotherhood.

That’s the weird thing about bikers. They are the rare criminal organization that is honest with itself. Mobsters used to think they were doing good for the community. Heroin dealers in the 70’s carried on like they were local chieftains. Modern street gangs have no sense of self. Bikers know they are bad people and criminals. They put a lot of effort into making sure new members get this fact and they work hard to screen out people who can’t cope with being outside society. I must admit that I admire that aspect of biker life.

Bikers are the people who put the lie to much of libertarians. Organized barbarians are always a threat to civilization. A group of 500 bikers can hold a city hostage unless the cops get to do things the libertarians hate. RICO has been the main weapon to bring down biker gangs and the Mafia. Surveillance and deal making has been most effective with bikers. Getting them on video doing crimes is then used to get them to roll on their associates, often using the information to extort confessions from other  members. Sometimes civilized people have to do bad things to protect civilization from barbarians. Too bad we have never figured out how to do the same against fanatics…

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I’ve been calling American Liberalism a cult for a long time. I get some grief for it from normal people, because they think I’m engaging in name calling. There’s some truth to it. The word cult has some baggage. We typically think of cults having a leader, a person who is worshiped. That leader is more than a little nuts and eventually leads his followers to a Jonestown like end. Of course, this the point at which right thinking people begin to see I’m probably right about these people. The messianic nature of American Liberalism is not always obvious, but it’s right there if look hard at the Left.

Modern times and the trendiness of the Left means their various beliefs burst forth for a while and then recede into the background, only to come around again with a new marketing pitch. State rationed health care is a good example. The American Left has been dreaming of it since they discovered Bismark. Every ten years or so they have a new way to pitch having their cult decide how much and how often you get medical treatment.

The cultish properties of American Progressives is clear in the story of ObamaCare. It was supposed to be the final step into the Eden of free health care for all. The rank and file members of the Cult of Modern Liberalism were convinced that a fountain of unlimited health care was hidden away somewhere, maybe next to the golden plates Joseph Smith found out west. If they could slay the evil insurance monsters that guard it, the people would be free to dip their cups into it and get all the health care they desired – free! They used different words, but that was the sales pitch and they truly believed it. They still do.

Then reality, that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, came roaring into the room. Millions saw their policies canceled. I’m on my third cancellation. Rates went up and the public went crazy. As was described in When Prophecy Fails, the Left was at first stunned into silence. The disconfirmation was soul crushing. Instead of Eden, the result was chaos. Then, the faithful rallied and they are now ready to proselytize once again.

You’re looking at the biggest story involving the federal budget and a crucial one for the future of the American economy. Every year for the last six years in a row, the Congressional Budget Office has reduced its estimate for how much the federal government will need to spend on Medicare in coming years. The latest reduction came in a report from the budget office on Wednesday morning.

The changes are big. The difference between the current estimate for Medicare’s 2019 budget and the estimate for the 2019 budget four years ago is about $95 billion. That sum is greater than the government is expected to spend that year on unemployment insurance, welfare and Amtrak — combined. It’s equal to about one-fifth of the expected Pentagon budget in 2019. Widely discussed policy changes, like raising the estate tax, would generate just a tiny fraction of the budget savings relative to the recent changes in Medicare’s spending estimates.

In more concrete terms, the reduced estimates mean that the federal government’s long-term budget deficit is considerably less severe than commonly thought just a few years ago. The country still faces a projected deficit in future decades, thanks mostly to the retirement of the baby boomers and the high cost of medical care, but it is not likely to require the level of fiscal pain that many assumed several years ago.

The reduced estimates are also an indication of what’s happening in the overall health care system. Even as more people are getting access to health insurance, the costs of caring for individual patients is growing at a super-slow rate. That means that health care, which has eaten into salary gains for years and driven up debt and bankruptcies, may be starting to stabilize as a share of national spending.

You see? The prophesies were true! The prophesies were true! The Great Pumpkin will bring free health care for all!

Keep in my that this what “data driven journalism” really means. It is the old time religion sprinkled with statistics. To the faithful, “data” are a topping, like jimmies on an ice cream sundae. The “data” presented here are both fanciful and useless. The threat to Medicare is not cost per patient. The threat is the number of patients when the Boomer retirement is in full bloom. Driving the cost per patient down a few bucks is nothing when the number of patients is growing geometrically.

But, that’s how it goes in a cult. They need to believe and so they will always believe. It took 100 million corpses and 150 years for Communism to finally die. In my youth, American lefties would say that communism was never really tried and that Bolshevism was not true Marxism. I don’t think they were ever convinced to drop it. The Left just decided to go with Cultural Marxism, figuring the economics would take care of itself.

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I’m thinking TED Talks will provide me endless material for this blog. It is a fountain of post-modern weirdness. There’s a creepy feelies quality to these things. It really is Mercerism, just without the empathy boxes. This one has the bonus of transitive victim-hood. That’s where a beautiful person gets to wear the crown of victim-hood, without actually being a victim. They just feel for the victims enough that they can feel as if they are a victim too.

Now, I’ve spent the last 27 years of my life in India, lived in three small towns, two major cities, and I’ve had several experiences. When I was seven, a private tutor who used to come home to teach me mathematics molested me. He would put his hand up my skirt. He put his hand up my skirt and told me he knew how to make me feel good. At 17, a boy from my high school circulated an email detailing all the sexually aggressive things he could do to me because I didn’t pay attention to him. At 19, I helped a friend whose parents had forcefully married her to an older man escape an abusive marriage. At 21, when my friend and I were walking down the road one afternoon, a man pulled down his pants and masturbated in front of us. We called people for help, and nobody came. At 25, when I was walking home one evening, two men on a motorcycle attacked me. I spent two nights in the hospital recovering from trauma and injuries.

Other than her tutor coping a feel and getting mugged as an adult, this woman may as well have seen all of these things on youtube. In a few cases, she just read about the events. Getting beat up is no fun, but hardly the end of the world. I was beaten with a bat once. I could not see for a week. Can I give a TED Talk?

So throughout my life, I’ve seen women — family, friends, colleagues — live through these experiences, and they seldom talk about it. So in simple words, life in India is not easy. But today I’m not going to talk to you about this fear. I’m going to talk to you about an interesting path of learning that this fear took me on.

My sense is these Ted Talk things are aimed at middle aged moonbat women. I have this image of matrons with dangle earrings and lots of scarves sitting enraptured as the speaker emotes about the topic. The word “experience” is popular with old hens for some reason. They also like “empower”  and “learning.” I see those words a lot, usually not meaning what normal people think they mean. This sentence later in her pitch is a good example.

But I was soon to learn that this was not all. As empowered as I felt with the new liberty that this citizen journalism channel gave me, I found myself in an unfamiliar situation.

I fear I may hurt myself trying to unriddle that sentence. Strangely, it reminds me of the time I tried cocaine. I felt powerful and free and then in an unfamiliar situation too!

Towards the end, she delivers this sentence.

Don’t get me wrong, the challenges that women will face in telling their stories is real, but we need to start pursuing and trying to identify mediums to participate in our system and not just pursue the media blindly.

I now get the image of heads exploding in the audience. What in the hell does that mean? She may as well be speaking in tongues.

That’s the thing with the post-modern lingo in these speeches. The words are just there to titillate the listener. One of my favorite examples is the word passion. Moonbat women I know always have passion for stuff. “I’m passionate for breast cancer.” “I’m a passionate advocate for woman’s rights.” The word “advocate” is another magic word. I once made the mistake of telling a moonbat friend that Hitler was a passionate advocate too. I love that gag, but she’s still pissed at me for it.

The weird thing with this talk is that the woman giving it is getting all the credit for being a sympathetic victim, without actually being a victim. She’s blending gravity altering self-absorption with exploitation of the true victims to make herself rich and famous. When you strip away the gooey emotionalism, there’s a grubbiness to it. It’s a modern take on the old fashioned faith healer. The only thing missing here is the passing of the hat.

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Way back in the olden thymes, I worked in the Imperial Capital. I was just a kid and that allowed me access to a lot of scuttlebutt. That may seem odd, but no one has anything to fear from a kid running errands and doing office tasks. Consequently, the young people, mostly interns and pages, used to hear and see more dirt than just about anyone else. In the age of cell phones, that’s probably no longer true, but in the olden thymes, cell phones did not exist.

The thing about people in power is they don’t have a high regard for rich people. We like to think that the rich run the pols, but it is not really that way. The powerful of DC live pretty well by normal standards. The currency of DC is power and influence. Knowing how the system works counts for a lot more than money. Knowing who to call will always trump the ability to stroke a check. Lots of people have money. Few people know the right number to dial.

As a result, there’s a degree of contempt for the rich, in general, amongst the ruling class. The Rodney Dangerfield rich guys who barges in thinking they can buy their way into the right parties are particularly loathed by the Ted Baxter set. Even so, the sophisticated classes that run things in Washington are very good at handling wealthy rubes from the provinces. They want their money, of course. They just don’t want to put up with the bullshit that rich people bring with them.

So, they direct them into harmless endeavors. I once had the task of giving some rich guy and his old lady the tour of a UNICEF office. I knew nothing about UNICEF, but the congressman I worked for was on their board, I think. Maybe it was his wife. I was young and earnest looking so I guess I filled a role in the hustle. It was a long time ago and all I remember is how flattered the rich people looked. A Congressman’s wife and her people doting on the rich people made for a good show.

Later in life I figured out that the game was to guide the rich dumbasses into funding projects that employed friends of the political class. It was a form of patronage. It was also a way to keep the rich people from doing something stupid. Think about all of the Hollywood assholes who get involved in a cause. Most of them can’t count their balls twice and come up with the same number, but they are loaded and they have free time. That’s a dangerous combo if they want to “make a difference.”

That’s what you see with Bill Gates and his gun grabbing efforts. The nitwit who wrote the article is generally clueless, but that’s part of the game. The Left needs to keep tools like Cliff Schecter toiling in the fields.

Somewhere in a large glass tower in Northern Virginia, there’s a guy who runs guns with a French name having a bad day. With good reason.

It was reported Monday that Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and incredibly wealthy guy, and with his wife, Melinda, have given $1 million to Initiative 594 in Washington state. The ballot initiative, if passed by voters on November 4 (and it currently enjoys overwhelming support), will require universal background checks for all firearm purchases in the state.

Gates is only the latest Washington billionaire to give to the effort, with original Amazon investor Nick Hanauer providing crucial early funding, and more recently upping his overall donation to $1.4 million. Additionally, Gates’s Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, has provided $500,000 for the cause.

The ballot issue in question, #594 is largely a nothing initiative. It requires a background check for private transfers of firearms. This is a favorite hobbyhorse issue for the crackpots because they think it will lead to registration and then confiscation.

You see, there’s no way to enforce regulation of private sales without registration. Registration is the precursor to confiscation. The trouble is it will never survive court challenge. Imagine needing a permit to post comments on the Internet. That’s how the courts will treat this measure.

The bigger problem for the gun-grabbers is that another initiative on the ballot would forbid background checks and it has broad support as well. But, some low-level flunkies get a paycheck for a while courtesy of rich suckers like Bill Gates. That’s what counts.

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I’ve mentioned in some of my Ferguson posts that we have given way too much discretion to the cops. So much so they can just make up laws on the fly. Here’s an hilarious example from Pittsburgh.

A young man is facing charges stemming from an unusual incident in Westmoreland County Monday.

Skyler Connor, 18, of New Derry, is facing a disorderly conduct charge for waving a rubber penis at passing motorists.

According to police, the incident happened on Route 30 in Unity Township around 6 p.m.

Connor was a passenger in the back seat of a vehicle at the time.

The people who wrote the disorderly conduct laws never intended to give the cops the power to regulate teenage pranks. The intent of such laws are to prevent people from disrupting the normal functioning of public activities. Someone drunk in public harassing citizens is an example. Tying up traffic with some sort of distraction like a parade float or naked women could be a public nuisance. A kid waving around a rubber dick is not disrupting public order.

This is also a good example of anarcho-tyranny. You can be sure the cop who made the arrest had a few grand worth of battle gear and a squad car kitted out like a starship. The cops are hyper-vigilant about stupid things like this that have no value to society. Yet, these same cops cannot be bothered to look for stolen cars or roust the hobos out of the local library. The cops treat the citizens as a nuisance, rather than the people they serve.

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I found this linked over at ZeroHedge.

Employees with degrees in fields like English, general studies, and graphic design are among the most likely to report feeling “underemployed” at their current jobs. This is according to a recent survey of 68,000 workers by salary information firm PayScale.

Liberal arts majors (I’m one of them!) are used to being the punchline in jokes about un- and underemployment. But more unexpectedly, majorities of graduates with more “practical” degrees in fields like business administration also said their jobs didn’t put their education, training or experience to work as much as they should.

What is left out is the fact there are maybe 1,000 Business majors for every one physics major. According to this paper, physics majors are 0.36% of all undergrad degrees. Frankly, that seems high, but they include minors in the total. The point being the typical business major is wasting his time and money getting a degree in business. Unless he is also getting a degree in accounting, he is learning nothing of value in college.

The sad truth is we turned college into a quasi-IQ test. If you get into Harvard, it means you have a top-5% IQ or your parents are loaded. Young people at state colleges are paying $50K to get a piece of paper that tells future employers they can sit still, follow directions and have basic literacy and numeracy. The private school degree adds the claim of an above average IQ. It also costs $100K for the diploma.

We really would be better off letting employers administer IQ tests again. Blacks would not like it, but employers will still need to have vibrancy. Passing a literacy test freely offered by an employer beats paying a college $50K for it. It certainly beats having a trillion dollar student debt bubble that is about to burst.

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I’ve mentioned before that I’m re-reading Gibbon. One of things that I keep returning to is how the respect for order eroded amongst the ruling classes of Rome. Once the elites lost respect for the laws and customs it was just a matter of time before the whole thing collapsed. The allowances made for ambitious men and the exceptions made for the sake of expediency eventually gutted the rationale for the Republic.

It’s not just that some men saw the laws and customs as obstacles to circumvent. Those people are always a part of the ruling class. What you have to have, to maintain order, is a willingness to hold them to the law and punish them for their transgressions. That’s what is clear from Marius forward. The ruling elite could no longer police itself and respect for the laws and customs of the Republican collapsed.

Anyway, take a look at this story from the Lunatic Times.

The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.

In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.

“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.

Just look at the casual disregard for the fundamental tenets of the Constitution. You cannot have a republic if the President can willy-nilly sign treaties with other countries. A treaty binds the people of one nation to those of another. Only the people can consent to this. We do that through our chosen representatives in the legislature. What these people are doing is a direct assault on the foundations of the Republic.

If we had a healthy ruling class, Obama would be swinging from a tree branch by now.

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