RE NYT LIGHT BULBS STANDARDIZATION AND THE CONTINUING NEED FOR AN INDUSTRIAL POLICY HERE

And for a little sense of history, always risking ignoramitocracy, with any expert, really, as well.


She refers to another NYT editorial, that is more useful really:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/11/opinion/11pielke.html?_r=1&ref=contributors

Term search: competitiveness, etc.

RE SOCIAL FRAMEWORK EVIDENCE BIELBY FORENSIC EXPERTS AND IGNORAMITOCRACY

Just a brief reference here, to the uses and abuses of so called science, 
and social science, in Wal Mart class action  case.


Forensic experts are dangerous. 


They often earn their livelihoods for one side in remunerative litigation.

RE CAPITOL INJUSTICE MOST AMERICANS TRULY UNAWARE

Great article. How many have time, or inclination, or energy, to follow up politically, on such a thing?


That is an example of the permanent 'drift' of America.

Team Play table of contents from another version

PROLOGUE: THROW DOWN CASES

INTRODUCTION

TOPIC OF MY TALK

PICKING THE TEAM

PICKING THE THEME

TEAMING UP ON THE FACTS

ATTACKING THE AGGRESSIVE TEAM

THE PYRAMID OF EXPERTS

ATTACKING THE URGE TO WIN

FAMILY PLAY IN EMINENT DOMAIN

THE LAWYER’S ROLE

CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS FOR EXCESSIVE TEAM PLAY

CONCLUSION

re GOOGLE TO BE AUDITED ON PRIVACY BBC ARTICLE

What do you think the chances of the honesty, or utility, of such an audit?


Ditto Facebook, Zuckerberg, and what I would call the 'Russian connection'. 


Laissez faire Americans need to smell some coffee on where the wind has long been blowing here.

re where the bailout went wrong NYT editorial

Term search: Thurston, Boca, Michael Lewis, term search, etc.

RE FRIEDRICH HAYEK, ZOMBIE ON KRUGMAN BLOG

Krugman is correct here about Hayek being misguided.


Another common alleged cause for the depression, beside the bogey of deficit spending, has been Smoot - Hawley, also incorrect.


Term search, Eckes, Krugman, Smoot, Hawley Smoot, Hoot Smalley, refudiated.

RE WHO DO YOU THINK THEY WILL BAIL OUT YOU OR ME MICHAEL LEWIS IRISH ANSWER

Thurston's question, back in Boca, answered by Michael Lewis here:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/02/michael-lewis-on-how-merrill-lynch-and-brian-lenihan-stuck-the-people-of-ireland-with-a-debt-of-106-billion.html

RE TEAM PLAY AND EXPERTS AND OTHERS

This is an article from some years ago, re such themes as the ignoramitocracy, etc. This is only the Prologue, and Introduction:

ATTACKING THE TEAM IN EMINENT DOMAIN

       PROLOGUE: THROW DOWN CASES

Back when I was a public defender, the police used a popular technique to make drug arrests.  “Drug holes,” so called by police, especially in front of juries, were places where dealers and customers gathered.  These were just places on the street or in a building.  There was no hole there.

Some of you may be faintly reminded of “remainder” holes.  These are places where the owner’s experts claim the owner was put, “down in a hole”, as a result of a condemnation.  Usually, in neither case is the place really a hole. If you said this to someone who lives in the mountains, or even in Atlanta, they would laugh.  But in Florida, which is mostly flat, it goes over well.

The police watched these places for drug activity, then charged with spotlights, trying to make ‘em all freeze.  

Some, perhaps the most guilty ones, ran away.  Those remaining ‘in the hole’ were arrested.  Drugs were inevitably found on the ground nearby.  The officers later reported that they saw a particular person throw a particular drug down. 

These cases became known as “throw down” cases.  Arrests and convictions played a part in officers’ advancement.  Some said that previously confiscated drugs were sometimes planted to frame people.  I don’t know about that.

In one case I tried, three officers said they saw my client throw drugs down, right at their feet, drugs bouncing off their toes.  What they said may have been true.  The wording of all three reports was identical.   All three officers’ testimony at trial was identical: a veritable chorus of accusation.  Sounds like an open and shut case.  The jury somehow let him go. Why?  Lets hold that question.

INTRODUCTION

I’m going to talk about team play in eminent domain. Most of you have heard nothing but praise for this approach.  The CLE manual pretrial chapter talks about the need for coordinated action between lawyers and experts.  Many illustrious practitioners  have praised a team approach.

Condemnors are equally eager to apply team concepts.  My comments here apply equally to both sides. In government, someone other than the lawyer may be “quarterbacking” the case.  So when I talk about a “quarterback”, I may be referring at times to a lawyer, a right of way administrator, a review appraiser, or a property manager.

An outline from a recent seminar provides a nice summary of what I would call the prevailing wisdom of the lawyer’s role in eminent domain.  I agree with much of what it says.  Something like teamwork is necessary in eminent domain. Though this outline provides some juicy morsels for my talk, these are ideals shared by most lawyers. 

It says, quote, “unlike many other types of litigation, eminent domain is a team sport.  Each of the experts involved in the case is an integral part of the team and the attorney is the quarterback.”  

Jacobs and Camins, ALI-ABA 1999, say “... The preparation of the appraisal report is part of a game plan.”

Just think about the implications for a moment. The lawyer a quarterback.  He tells the others on his side what to do.  Most people seem to think that’s a good model for what a lawyer should do.  Let’s take a closer look.

Quote, “as the quarterback, the attorney has the ability to choose the experts he or she wishes to retain on any particular case.”   

The quarterback gets to pick his players. Let’s look at who he picks and why. 

He picks good players.

Players he believes are right for the case.  Players he can work with.

Players who have independent judgment, but know when to yield to a higher cause. 

Players who know how to take orders. 

Players who have played together often before.

Players he can trust.    In a word,       team players.

In eminent domain, a good quarterback can pick a dream team!  Teams don’t win games unless they practice together and learn to play as a team.  Many  extol the virtues of playing together regularly.

Some warn against using well qualified non-team players: an individual may have exceptional talent and yet be ineffective because he or she is not a team player."


Term search eg team play.

re Yeats' The Second Coming What Rough Best Its Hour Come Round At Last

This is apparently in the public domain, so here it is, a propos seeing an early post on David Kaiser's site, quoting a part of it:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

I have a weakness for some poetry, 
but am not myself suggesting that 
anything remotely like a 'second coming'
is at hand. Quite the contrary.

RE BBC CHINA TO OVERTAKE US ON SCIENCE IN 2 YEARS THOMAS FRIEDMAN

BBC just posted that they, China, had surpassed the US in 


MANUFACTURING, NOW. 


Maybe that is inflated....they admit the quality is not there.....


Who cares, what a comment.......


Kind of too late to smell any coffee really, for the US, or for anyone else concerned, really.


Then you get US 'pundits' like Thomas Friedman, yesterday, in the BBC, saying ridiculous, and long passe, and for those reasons, stupid, things like this:


"That's part of a broader concern of people which is that 


China is still in many ways a freeloader on the 


international system. It's not a stakeholder."


Friedman's view has been that globalization is a 


wonderful thing that has been partially ruined by 'bad 


actors' like 


China. 


It's like the BBC is saying, in a way, 'take a look at Tom 


Friedman. What a bozo. He has been the big 


globalization pander.': 


Friedman: 'Globalization is good 


for you'. 'If you aren't feeling well economically, you 


must need a little more globalization.' Or, perhaps:


'If China is burying you with its globalizing cheapness 


and 


resources, you need a little more 


globalization to dig out.'




Ideologically, he has long been toast.

the menu

This is a walk on the wild side, for most.


How about leftover roast duck pieces and duck neck curry, 
with leftover Angus ribeye steak fries, 


in a 'butter' tomato curry sauce, ala, so to speak, Moti Mahal's, 'butter chicken', in Delhi, many years ago.


Red Truck California pinot noir is a good accompaniment.

THE PYRAMID OF EXPERTS EARLY VERSION FROM 03

An early version, but why not show the evolution of the 'notion'? This notion, that of combining experts from different fields for a political, or forensic, predetermined purpose, has been a very powerful tool for many apologists in many fields, not at all limited to law:

"The “Pyramid of Experts".

In eminent domain condemnors and their counsel often aren’t confronting an isolated property owner’s, appraiser’s, or CPA’s, value opinion.  He, usually the appraisal expert witness, piggybacks other experts' opinions: engineers, planners, and others.  

Whole engineering, or land planning, conclusions are perhaps even first incorporated into one another, and then, later, into his appraisal opinion, “lock stock and barrel”.  

This creates what I have coined a “pyramid of experts”.  

This happens because experts may rely on other experts, and in a complex world, often they must do so. See Ehrhardt, Florida Evidence, secs. 301.1 and 704.1. 

Thus it becomes necessary to attack not just an isolated opinion, but the opposing 'team', by attacking how it is put, and hangs, together.

Some pyramiding in a complex, and technical, world is legitimate, valid, and necessary; much is not. 

In the real world, in this narrow field, predicate experts insulate value experts from responsibility, and can bolster false positions. 

Predicate opinions can cast a false veneer of objectivity on value opinions.

A big assumption behind rules allowing incorporating predicate opinions is that they are independent and impartial. 

Otherwise, pyramiding them is highly speculative and incompetent.  See F. S 90.105. 

Absent independence, the basis for incorporation vanishes.

Courts (in Florida) are reluctant to police evidentiary abuses and risk reversal, perhaps especially after Armadillo Partners, Inc. v. DOT, 849 So. 2d 279 (Fla. 2003); see Dissent. See Meyer v. Caruso, 731 So.2d 118, refusing to follow Vallott v. Central Gulf Lines, 641 F.2d 347, cited in Ehrdhardt. See Ross Dress For Less, Inc. v. Irene Radcliff, 751 So.2d 126 (Fla. 2d DCA 2000).  Who should police the cottage industry of professional expert witnesses?  The answer in Florida seems to be: juries.

The incorporated opinion must be the type reasonably  relied on during professional practice when not in court.  See Ehrdhardt 704.1, and Burnham v. State, 497 So.2d 904 (Fla. 2d DCA 1986); See especially Bender v. State, 472 So.2d 1370 (Fla 3d DCA 1985).

More importantly, “field” shouldn’t mean the 'playing field' of eminent domain.  Eminent domain is not a very large or neutral “field”.  

The rule of evidence clearly contemplates experts who have a professional life in a larger field or subject, outside, and not involving the courtroom. 

These larger fields, outside the courtroom, legitimize the process of in-court reliance. 

An important implication is that predicate experts should be experts in fields based primarily “outside the courtroom”. See Bender.

Yet there is authority (in Florida, and probably elsewhere where the issue exists) for a narrow interpretation of 'field', or subject, for incorporating one opinion into another.  See Ehrhardt 704.1 and Thunderbird v. Great Am. Ins., 566 So.2d 1296 (Fla. 1st DCA 1990). 

In eminent domain, experts might even claim their “field” is testimony always for one side in litigation, only. Some even so hold themselves out, at their peril. 

Most importantly, the rules of evidence are far behind courtroom practice, and tend merely to sanction the loose practices and prejudices of the 'team players'."


Term search, eg, pyramid experts, bonobo pyramid, Boca, natural moral pillars, ignoramitocracy, anti intellectualism, compartmentalization, The Stone, etc.


Compare NYT article today, re SOCIOLOGY forensic EXPERTS:

'Supreme Court to Weigh Sociology Issue in Wal-Mart Discrimination Case'

RE GLOBALIZATION PANIC NYT EDITORIAL ON THE HORIZON

Fear of Shortages Drives Panic Buying of Japanese Goods

When markets are global, they are very fragile, 'yes, fragile'.


And one can expect that natural disasters or war will tend to cause a huge pull back in the whole fragile thing, sooner rather than later I suppose.

RE NYT EDITORIAL A SHABBY CRUSADE IN WISCONSIN EXPERTS AND POLITICS IN AMERICA

This article relates to themes I have pursued here for some time, the cooptation of experts, SOME OF WHOM MAY BE TRYING TO SHOW A RELATIVELY OBJECTIVE SET OF FACTS AND CIRCUMSTANCES GOING FORWARD, in all fields, in this case, that of history.
A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin

See also Krugman's NYT article American Thought Police.

Unfortunately, these types of practices have not been limited to the Republican Party, although it is I would admit the worst offender lately by far.

I may post my subchapter on The Pyramid Of Experts, a piece I wrote many years ago, in a specific legal context, 

but with much wider implications, both within and outside the practice of law.

ALSO RE BOOM CHINA CARBON CREDIT TRADING

There is also an incredible story re carbon credits, and Chinese industrial development. 


Take a look. CAP AND TRADE.


Incredible.

RE BOOM BUBBLELIZATION SEE THIS REALECONTV HOUSING CHINA NOW

http://www.realecontv.com/videos/china/real-estate-madness-in-china.html

They have a housing boom, and a bubble, where units are never even sold.


A command economy.


I would say this, at least they have the presence of mind to build useless units, and perhaps much else, within China, not as foreign investments.

Re DARK FORCES A VIDEO REFERENCE FOR THE WEEK BUSH WHACKERS BLEEDING KANSAS

Reading DK's passage: 


"I do not see, sadly, how anyone can deny that such incidents represent a powerful strain in human nature, one that can be documented since the beginning of recorded history." 


I happened to watch, for the first time, last night, an old, important, wonderful western, with Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Walter Pidgeon, Roy Rogers, and Gabby Hayes, call it the video reference for the week:


DARK COMMAND

RE PROFESSOR RICHARD D WOLFF LECTURES

I am not a Marxist, but he does make some telling points 
about the crises we have politically allowed to happen, and why.


I recommend them to anyone wanting a larger view of what has long been going on.


I am not in favor of a blue collar, or populist, or direct democracy, state; 


yet, without a substantial and politically integrated middle class (read: major political reforms long needed), 


a middle class somehow dedicated to the national common welfare, in the developed Western sense, 


we are toast one way or another, anyway.

RE THE SOCIAL BUBBLE BLOBBALIZATION

See dot.Rory, BBC blogger article.


Term search also eg: Bubblelization, blobalization, rail to rail, really erratic, etc.

WHAT IF: IRAQ AND POWER

Maybe this is a rather 'off the mark' 'what if?', 
but if not, then how else to account for it, 


either under Power's account, 
or DK's criticism of her account: 


What if these events and consequences, below, were at least in part your goal, 
rather than events out of your control which you could not prevent?:




"Between 2003 and 2007, according to authoritative sources, tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed in civil war, about two million left the country, and two million more were internally displaced by ethnic cleansing. That was certainly comparable to the ethnic cleansing that took place in the Balkans in the 1990s, which Power is so convinced that the US and NATO could and should have stopped. But the events in Iraq took place while the United States had an occupation force of over 100,000 troops in the country.That huge intervention, which we certainly do not have the resources to impose again, could not stop the killing. Things quieted down after the surge, but many observers, some from the American military, explain that the violence ebbed in large part because the process of ethnic cleansing had been completed." 


Are mere incapacity, ignorance, or indifference adequate explanations, alone or together? 


Force levels were our choice, after all, weren't they?


Another what if, I am sure this has been discussed as well in the past. 


It has often been said that Saddam 'badly misjudged' US willingness to defend Kuwait, comments like that:


What if Saddam was partly at least baited into misjudging US intentions and resolve, either by the US itself, or by third parties with other agendas afoot, there and elsewhere, or both?


What if

SEE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT POST RE LIBYA NO FLY ZONE POLICYMAKING

Also see his squib there of Power's book on genocide.


Genocide is one of those compartmentalization driven terms, like 'homelessness', or 'hunger'.

RE JACK A GOLDSTONE THE NEW POPULATION BOMB PHI BETA KAPPA

Another globalist pander, now backpedaling and mis describing the phenomenon his type have fostered.


It is not primarily a 'population bomb'.
It is a globalization bomb, fomented by globalism.


TERMS SEARCH ALSO EG: GLOBBAL, BLOBBAL, BLOBALIZATION

RE FREE SPEECH WORTH PAYING FOR NYT EDITORIAL

It's 'laissez faire' free speech here, anymore.


The bigger the voice, the freer the speech, 


so to speak.

RE UPRISING IN SYRIA

Similar topic to previous posts,
re how many rising new bourgeoisie entrepreneurs, 
Mavericks if you will, do you think you want or need?


The number of candidates is in the hundreds of millions.

RE THE EGO ADVANTAGE THE MAVERICK EXECUTIVE AND THE AUSTERITY DELUSION KRUGMAN BROOKS NYT

Col Qaddafi does share some characteristics of the Maverick Executive.


The Maverick does not suffer from an austerity delusion: he believes that austerity is fine, for others.


Terms search, eg,  Maverick, Maverick Executive, Macaire, how he likes his management team

RE G.E.'S STRATEGIES NYT EDITORIAL REAGAN'S FORMER SPONSOR STILL HARD AT WORK

GE, now mostly abroad, ostensibly a big taxpayer, pays no taxes here.


Terms search, for example, Reagan.


Laissez faire, unless you're them.

RE THE US RULING ELITE AND CHINA TAKEOVER

I am going to guess that, when China takes over trade, and of course a few other little things, rather soon, 


American liberal economic order elites, who themselves have long fomented this New Asian Age, certainly since the Nixon shock, but well before then re Japan and elsewhere,


will not necessarily be given so warm and fuzzy a welcome, by their new Chinese elite masters, as some of them may hope, under all the facts and circumstances.


It may cease to be merely a matter of 'profitability', if you know what I mean.


What do you think?


See terms search eg:

RE BBC ARTICLE WORLD TRADE AND DOMINATION OF THE WORLD COMING TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU SOON

China 'to overtake US and dominate trade by 2030'.

Price Waterhouse, etc.

THE EUROPEANS WILL, QUITE RIGHTLY, BLAME LONG STANDING US POLICIES FOR THIS RAPIDLY APPROACHING DEBACLE OF 'GREAT POWER' RELATIONS.

WHAT ELSE CAN ONE SAY?


Term search various terms. Here is a recent post on the subject:

RE GERMANY STEPS AWAY NYT

Smart regime. 


Not many of those in the West anymore.

RE IGNORAMITOCRACY AND AN OLD ARTICLE BY PETER WINCH

I was looking again at Winch's article 'Nature and Convention', in Ethics and Action.


He makes some interesting connections, between fair play (not 'justice as fairness'; I am not one of those acolytes of Rawls....), integrity, the sciences, and experts. He even manages to weave a brief reference to Joe McCarthy, and his show of pseudo-expertise, into the argument. 


It seems a rather inconclusive essay in some ways, but filled with wonderful implications. 


Of continuing relevance is the discussion of nature and convention, is W K C Guthrie's Volume Three of A History Of Greek Philosophy.

RE IGNORAMITOCRACY KRUGMAN NYT WHEN MARKETS DECIDE AND THE FREE MARKET FOR INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY

What he rightly complains about is also related to what I have criticized economics as a discipline for. 


Yet many other disciplines besides economics have also fallen victim to the 'market' for expertise credibility, until, finally, only the market, then only the politicians who increasingly run it, and then finally only the army, who decides increasingly on which politicians decide whom to believe, decide who is scientifically credible or experienced, and who is not.


Terms search eg: when armies decide, etc.

RE DECLINE OF THE SPANISH HAPSBURG EMPIRE AND US

The only comparable decline to that of the US, after its accidental pinnacle after WW II, occurring over a roughly similar period of time, that I can recall, was the rather rapid eclipse of the Spanish Hapsburg Empire by, say, 1650; although the Austrian Hapsburgs continued to be predominant for many generations. 


It, the Spanish decline, was also brought about by a comparable growth of competition from many sources at once, both military and economic, over which it had little control, a competition that was global as well. 

RE EDUCATED UNEMPLOYED, AND FRUSTRATED EDITORIAL NYT

This is the kind of phenomenon I have been alluding to with the remarks on how many emerging bourgeoisie entrepreneur candidates do you think you need?


What young Americans were taught is incorrect.


The people telling them that were either politicians who should have known better, or school admissions officers, who have a vested interests in admissions, regardless of market,  parents who have long been told that this is the place of opportunity for talent, or pundits who long should have known better.


This site contains many other posts on the subject, 
do a term search.

RE THE REAL ESTATE BUBBLE LONG AGO

I recall sitting in a car, with my brother in law, in north Atlanta, and we were stopped at a stop sign, and I said, to pass the time on the way to the store, as it had been on my mind for some time then, 'wonder when this real estate bubble is going to burst'.  That was back in 2003-2004-2005, I can't recall when. 


He looked at me like I must be, at the very least, very mistaken, or perhaps, deluded. Said something like there's not a real estate bubble, or some such thing. (He can correct me, if I am wrong, and I won't publish that correction.)


Our respective homes had appreciated, I don't know 50-60% by then, on the way to, say,  100% by, say, 2007-2008.


Terms search: Thurston, Michael Lewis, Wall Street, etc

RE MERCILESS GLOBAL MARKETS THOMAS FRIEDMAN PICKING WINNERS THE WAR WITH NO NAME BEHIND THE COLD WAR HAS NOW BEEN LOST

Some globalist pundits are now talking about what the future holds for their kids, backpedaling fiercely against the global economic and military tsunami they extolled the virtues of for decades, now barreling down on them, and their children, and their childrens' children, and us, and ours. 


I am going to spell out a few things that they should have been thinking about for a long long time, since the mid 60s at least.


Has it been wise, if you were worried about the world for your kids,  to put off your domestic labor issues, to put government against labor as a class in favor of management, to favor foreign over domestically produced goods, to allow your corporations to offshore jobs, and then factories, and then major investments;


has it been wise to think mainly only in relatively short term profitability, as a criterion, for anything, anything, if you were worried, really worried, about your kids, or their kids?


Let's talk briefly about the issue of labor and unions.


Offshoring capacity, and buying foreign goods and services, not only puts your own domestic work force out of work permanently, but also puts the labor force and capital investments of your new global economy at the political, ideological, economic, ethnic, civilizational, and military command of foreign governments, 


which can change, sometimes quite drastically, sometimes to a political stance contrary to your wishes, sometimes almost overnight, 


always however, it seems, transforming fairly quickly, say in 20 years nowadays, the lapse of one generation, 


from a cheap source of labor or materials into a more expensive, and adversarial, competitor. 


That has been the pattern over and over again now for at least 50 years.


How do you 'bust', or for that matter, defend, a foreign labor force, when a foreign regime supports other pressing agendas; like taking over world domination; or dominating its neighbors where you also may have large investments; or dominating your other markets; or dominating your domestic market; or controlling, or taking over your domestic political system, against your own narrow corporate interests, just for a few little examples?


That all kind of starts to sound a great deal worse than would have been simply dealing with domestic management and labor issues in the first place, and trying to keep as much production and consumption as possible domestic, and to build a stronger well integrated domestic economy.  


Many other implications beside labor or unions flowed from foreign investment, trade concessions, and offshored production.  The process really started before WW II, and accelerated with the Marshall Plan, and then especially with Cold War trade and market concessions.


Most people (I mean mainly intellectuals now; almost no one reads Fukuyama in reality) do not know it, they read things like The End Of History And The Last Man, and follow people like Fukuyama, and actually believe that the US, and its ideology 'won' what it calls the Cold War. 


Pundits like Thomas Friedman actually buy this 'Whig Interpretation' (see Butterfield's sense of the term); 


and Prestowitz follows Fukuyama and Friedman in Rogue Nation, buying Friedman's foolish pronouncements, and giving a credibility to Fukuyama's bizarre idealogical positions.


Contrary to their rather puerile views, my view is that The War With No Name that has quietly been waged 'by other means' as Clausewitz so aptly had put it ("War is not merely a political 


act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of 


political relations, a carrying out of the same by other 


means") simultaneously with the Cold War, call it 'The War For Picking Winners In The World Of The Future', has now been lost.


More on these themes shortly.


Terms search Krugman Thomas Friedman David Brooks Milton Friedman Fukuyama Chalmers Johnson Prestowitz Eckes Fallows Van Wolferen  Ohmae George Friedman Meredith LeBard Maverick Executive Mise en scene cartoon Macaire 

RE WASHINGTON VS. THE NOW MERCILESS GLOBAL MARKET THOMAS FRIEDMAN BACKPEDALING ON GLOBALIZATION NOW IN A BIG BIG WAY

Here is our erstwhile big globalization free trade advocate, backpedaling now on its virtues. See Wikipedia on Friedman, globalist advocate. 


They, globalists, all have to backpedal hard now, but it's not enough, as an avalanche of contrary events is tsunami ying down on them.


This is the height of hypocrisy, really.

Re In The Last Crisis

Here is a portion of David Kaiser's current post on his site.  
I recommend it to anyone wanting something more than the usual media editorials:


"By the years 1937-9 the glory days of the New Deal were pretty much over. Roosevelt's first initiative of his second term--his plan to enlarge, or pack, the Supreme Court--turned the public (which immediately opposed the plan, albeit by a relatively narrow margin) and the Congress decisively against him, and only one significant piece of domestic legislation, regulating wages and hours, passed Congress in 1937-39. Yet the philosophy of the New Deal commanded broad support. In March 1937 53% of respondents favored a Constitutional amendment "granting Congress greater power to regulate industry and agriculture." (For most of this period Gallup simply eliminated respondents who had no opinion from his results.) A poll in April 1937 explicitly favored progressive income tax rates, albeit rather low ones, ranging from 1% for an income fo $3000 to 10% for an income of $100,000. In July of that year 63% of respondents thought Congress should remain in session rather than adjourn "to consider new Deal legislation on wages and hours, housing, farm tenancy, and the Supreme Court." 69% agreed that government regulation of stock exchanges had helped investors. In 1938 59% supported the pending wages and hours bill. Large majorities thought the government should cut taxes on companies that distributed some of their profits to their workers and advocated allowing workers to elect a member of the board of directors. ..."


(SEE ALSO MY COMMENT.)

RE PALIN IN INDIA

The new state could be called, Palindia?


The state drink: How about say India Palin Ale?


Palin has to look rather paleinIndia.

RE MOROCCO YOUTH RISING UP FOR DEMOCRACY ENTREPRENEUR SUPPLY AND DEMAND DO THE 'ECONOMIC' MATH

How many of the new, rising, liberal, democratic, laissez faire, liberal international economic order, entrepreneurs do you think you want?


Let's talk 'structural'.........


There is obviously no shortage of 'supply'. Take, as an example Prestowitz' title, Three Billion New Capitalists, a greatly exaggerated estimate of new potential candidates, re entrepreneurs, I would note.


What of 'demand'?


How about this:


Also very very large, but negative, number.


Term search, term search.

PALIN MAY WANT TO ANNEX INDIA SOME DAY

RE PROVING MY POINT KRUGMAN FOLLOW UP ARTICLE WAY BACK THEN ON HIS CRITICS WHOM DO YOU BELIEVE

Krugman was, term search,  'flatly wrong', then, as well, about his critics.


The 'reality' is that international competition, trade, and foreign  investment are more important than his critics had claimed, rather than less important.


Perhaps that is why the Japanese,  back in the 70s, quietly crowed about hollowing out (and fattening up), as the Chinese premier pointed out, in then secret talks with Nixon in 72. 


Of course when you hollow another out, you fatten up, don't you.


Krugman would of course have to argue that they must have been mistaken, too.


Well, re terms search, fattening things up, fattened herself, trading american interests,


I tend to believe the Japanese, and the Chinese, not Krugman, (never mind Prestowitz, or Chalmers Johnson, or Fallows, or the others).

RE SOCIAL SCIENCE PALOOZA II BROOKS NYT EDITORIAL AND LAZY FARE IMPLICATIONS THE END OF HOME GAMES

Brooks has been a real fan of globalization, 


and laissez faire conservative themes.


But how well, really, does 'laissez faire' go with 'conservative', 


if you really start to think about it?


And, hey, wait a minute, Brooks points out today:


'Home teams win, away games are lost.'


What kinds of things can be said about 


fighting those good laissez faire commercial economic battles in the good old conservative small government global economy? 


What is 'away' for a global commercial world team?


Perhaps a more Huntington esque idiom than an Adam Smithian one might be seen to apply.


Guess what:


There are no 'home games' in the global economy.


Term search various terms, including Maverick Executive.


The Maverick is not your usual team player, is he?


Term search also: team play , entrepreneur, enter preener, Casanova hand, rail to rail, venture capitalists, really erratic

RE WHEN ARMIES DECIDE also a nyt editorial

You suspect that you are heading toward a police state when you see such greater economic deference to military and police forces than to the other public employees, or to employees or to citizens in general.


'Winsor' said, on David Kaiser's blog:


'....Interestingly, the fire and police were not threatened 


with the so-called 'loss-of-workers rights'...am presuming 


the 


Republicans didn't want to bite off more than they could 


chew at the moment.'


The late Roman Empire in the West was there mainly to 


keep the legions on board.


I recommend viewers view:




Garrett Fagan, The History Of Ancient Rome, The 


Teaching Company, eg lecture 46, 


'....The late Roman Empire...entirely at the service of 


the army as the guarantor of its existence....'

RE POLITICAL ENTROPY WEAK LIBERAL LAISSEZ FAIRE AND THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

There was criticism of the Japanese government today in the NYT, as part of the discussion of the nuclear situation there.


Ironically, politically, one might give similar descriptions for the weak American political system, and for the weak political systems of many other Western, and pseudo-Western, liberal democratic regimes. 


'Entropy' was a term David Kaiser used the other day, for our current political status I am guessing, and I like it perhaps as well as Nevins' 'drift'.


These weak regimes, lead originally by the US into this impasse, have allowed globalizing forces to overtake sovereignty for a long time now, originally in the name of a cold war strategy of laissez faire boom, as a way of containing and deterring the spread of communism.


Those pretexts are long obsolete (really were strategically obsolete when created), and other agendas, of MNCs and developing regimes, have long been in the offing under the economic shade of the 'security umbrella' of that Post WW II ideology.

RE THE CURRENT POSITION

My suspicion is that various events, and long standing unrests, which few Americans have been even really very aware of, 


are converging, so to speak, 


into what I have been reluctantly predicting for some time now, 


a generalized global violent episode, call it world war three, but there is not so much a strategic world war focus for the disparate sites of violence, 


as the situation is not even really susceptible to a tidy 'political' ceasefire or settlement, 


I fear that, as with this globalization, no one is, or really can, legitimately, be in charge, (how could they?) 


and the likelihood of ongoing generalized unrest and violence, in many places, both in the developed world, and the developing world, for many years to come seems perhaps now as likely as not, 


under the circumstances.


I see Bobbitt's Shield analysis as, at the very least, impressionistic as it was, not inconsistent with this assessment, at this time, regardless of what he, or others, might perhaps aver to the contrary. 


And I do not necessarily agree with his overarching schematic analysis, or his specific 'possible worlds' scenarios, or hypothetical inferences.


Terms search eg: Bobbitt.