Sunday, March 1, 2009

Welcome, Warts!



I do get tired of doing the research, writing and editing a decent essay, and having ABSOLUTELY NO REACTION.  To add insult to injury, a far less authoritative and poorly researched version of my blog on “Crap and Tirade” (see Jan 20, 2009 issue of this blog) just came out on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (“An Inconvenient Tax”, page A16, Feb 27, 2009).  Yes, Mr. Gigot et al, it’s a tax, not an environmental mandate.  Glad you finally got it.  Too bad you can’t do the science or you would have known a lot earlier.

We wrote here about the need for a major capacity increase for the electric grid, and even suggested how to do this AND reduce transportation costs at the same time AND make cars we all would like to buy (“The System is the Solution - Part 3”, Dec 7, 2008).  I’m glad to see $30 billion appear in the  2009 Financial Stimulus Package to build new electric infrastructure, but I’m chagrined that much of the money will be spent on a
“smart grid”, which is a series of otherwise annoying gadgets designed to make it easy for the utility companies to charge you a completely unpredictable variable rate, and make it impossible for you to challenge it.  Trust me, the cost of electricity for the Chevvy Volt, even after you bought GM with your tax money, will be revolting.

We wrote here about the various sources of alternative power and their likely availability on this planet (“World Energy, The Questions and the Numbers, Post 2”, December 7, 2008).  Those conclusions are in broad agreement with Scientific American (“A Concise Guide to Renewable Power” March, 2009).  Well, SciAm did a good job on that article, as they always do.  I only wish Dr. Chu and the rest of the Gummint would read it.  They are not moving ahead on nuclear energy, and their belief in wind power must be due to their experience with hot air.

We wrote about the FDA clinical trials as a pinch point in the development of effective medicine (“Economists, Listen Up!  Market Forces in Health Care” December 19, 2008). Well, the FDA will move half way to the goal line by implementing clinical research protocols based on “surrogate endpoints”  instead of waiting to see how many people treated with a new drug die of cancer, for example.  

There’s more, but I’m beginning to feel like a pariah.  I’m sorry to bring you more downside news, but you are likely to be warts on the backside of government by 2012.  You know what happens to warts.

If the three major policy and spending bills pass this year, and they probably will, your value to the powers that run this country will go from necessary to less than tolerated.

It used to be that we contributed tax revenues, votes and cannon fodder to government.  I recall a clause about a “government of the people, by the people and for the people”.  I think I heard something about “inalienable rights”.  You have the inalienable right to pay taxes without anything to say about them, to vote for liars whose real agendas are never revealed, and to die in outlandish places for vague causes that you are required to take on faith.  But for these things you were vital.  The government needed you and had to woo you to some extent.  You were baldly manipulated but you were still people.

The aforementioned bills will make most of you, more than fifty percent of the US population, redundant, expensive and unnecessary.  How long do you think you will be tolerated when that happens?  Will you enjoy the necessary surveillance, repression and enforcement to keep you in line?  I don’t think so.  

After these bills pass, more than half the population will pay no taxes.  This redistribution of wealth is a deliberate policy of the people in power.  The people that pay the taxes, the smaller half, will not become less valuable.  They will become essential to the  plan.  Money flows easily to other countries,  The offshore Chinese have perfected the methods of hiding currency from an oppressive government, and the taxpaying class will learn from them.  

So most of you warts will not be in the taxpayer class, you will be in the tax supported class.  As the taxpayers get better at hiding and shifting their money, there will be less available for you on the doles.  Warts, guess what will happen to your life style and your pursuit of happiness?

There is a lot of money to be spent on tactical weapons technology for fighting extended insurrections like Iraq and Afghanistan.  That means highly automated weapons controlled by educated specialists.  They will be far too expensive to become cannon fodder.  You won’t be in much demand for a glorious military career.

You will continue to vote.  Economic forces will move you Warts into ghettos, and the manipulated census, now directly controlled by the Administration instead of Commerce, will make sure you vote only for the parties that give you your dole.  Do not deign to insult the likes of Senator Dodd or Congressman Frank.  They will be your liege lords.  Your vote will be your fealty, and if you lose it, Wart, you will be cut off.

Electronic surveillance, SigInt, Omnivore devices, stop and search, antiterrorism laws and a host of technologies directed against civilian, not military, targets are in place.  National ID systems, such as the new driver’s license “real ID’, and cameras on every every lamppost, taps on millions of phones, spyware that cannot be removed on your computer, sending your passwords to the authorities, are already common tools of domestic and foreign police agencies.  You will never know about them.  The law says it is a crime to reveal them to the targets of surveillance.  

You will never go to trial.  With a universal ID tied to your bank accounts and health code, they can simply turn you off with a few computer entries.  In a short time you will be jobless, broke, homeless and ill.  

You will not vote them out of office, because it will be easy to contrive the number of Warts to outvote the taxpayer class.  That is, until the Warts die off.

3 comments:

  1. The biggest problem is that everyone wants government to solve their particular problem FOR THEM.

    Therefore people with problems can be divided into groups. Those groups can then vote together to form a government to solve their problems by taking money from everyone else.

    Too bad our constitution was so easy to eviscerate. The founders tried to prevent exactly what is happening today by severely limiting government.

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  2. LOL I do sympathize with your frustration, but go back to you heading: ideas eventually leak. From my evolutionary approach, Snowflake, it takes evolutionary time, God's time if you will. See, 3 million years of evolution to get from the firs hominides to Bush, nuclear deterrence and TV soap opera, so it is fair to wait 3 million years more to become a merely tolerable species in terms of mediocrity.
    But ideas eventually do leak (and they do not even have to be THAT good). Just see, 400 years to spread Mr. Hobbes' paranoiac corld view. So - if even HOBBES could impress the cultural mainstream THAT MUCH, I have NO SHAME WHATSOEVER OF BEING A BLONDE and spreading my blond ideas in the air as well. Most thinkers that made it to the cultural mainstream
    are not better off than Hobbes, Snowflake, so please go on thinking because an extraordinary mind like yours has much more chances of creating something much better than the Hobbesian "war of man against every man".
    I'll be here to follow you so that you do not feel like St. Francis preaching to the fish (although a blond audience is not much better or flattering to a thinker like yourself) LOL
    I'll be back to you often, especially on weekends when savage capitalism allows us not to be labouring turnips for some hours :0)

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