"From 1914 onward, there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hard-working labourer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the rise of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine."
F. A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom: The Socialist Roots of Naziism."
---------------------------------------------------
If you watched "V for Vendetta", then you know that it was a right-wing politician who rises to become Big Brother of a futuristic England.
The movie got it wrong. This is not how Big Brothers rise to power in real-life totalitarian governments.
Nobel economist F. A. Hayek studied the rise of Marxist dictators in The Road to Serfdom. In Chapter 12 ("The Socialist Roots of Naziism"), he demonstrates that liberals and the liberal traditions of Germany are what made Adolph Hitler’s rise to power possible.
At first, Hayek’s position might seem counterintuitive. But it’s not if you really think about it. To get people to live their lives under the doctrine of Karl Marx, you have to apply force. Once the vogue of equality wears off, people will want creature comforts and privileges that only a capitalistic system can deliver.
If Conservatives are truly the builders of evil empires, then the enactment of the Patriot Act would have already turned America into a police state. But that has not come to pass. Even Jay Leno has given up writing jokes about the government reading his mail.
Conservatives do deserve their share of criticism. Conservatives decry the Miranda decision and blame its restrictions for allowing criminals to go free on a technicality. Conservatives should know better.
Miranda was an important case. But let’s make an important distinction about its application. It was a very liberal U. S. Supreme Court that empowered the police to read a suspect his rights. I have always maintained that police officers are the last people you want telling you what your rights are under the law. But liberals cannot understand the danger of entrusting that authority to the state’s armed police force.
This is how the fabric of a free society unravels. Liberals invariably appoint the government and its agents to control everyone’s lives.
We are fortunate to have a modern example of how liberals would apply your legal rights if they controlled the government-the Duke lacrosse players rape case. We are also fortunate that this civics experiment took place in a test tube and not across the breadth of our society.
As soon as the news broke that a young black woman had accused three white Duke lacrosse players of raping her, the liberal community on the Duke campus and its surrounds demanded swift justice, which in this case was a euphemism for a lynch party.
In Hitler’s Germany, Jews were not persecuted because they were Jews per se. Their crimes were twofold. First, they were foreigners in the sense that they had not assimilated into the German mainstream. And second, but more important, Jews were cast as the controllers of the capitalistic system. The money ills of the post-WWI German economy were blamed on Jews, the convenient scapegoats.
In the aftermath of the Duke rape allegations, you can easily see that a group of privileged white boys fit nicely into Hitler’s model. These boys were athletes who lived in unassimilated fashion with the rest of the campus. And being white boys of privilege, they quickly became the metaphor for controllers of the capitalistic system.
German Jews wore fine leather shoes.
Duke athletes preferred their Nikes.
The spats were not about the shoes,
But instead about the Piggies.
Mike Nifong, the Durham prosecutor, saw his opportunity to seize power. He threw fuel on the fire and denied the accused athletes their legal rights. He even hid exculpatory evidence from the defense. Nifong won election by a slim plurality, a victory made possible only by the hideous frenzy that he created.
Perhaps the saddest story of this affair was the response of the "Gang of 88"-the 88 Duke faculty members who published an ad (some would call it a manifesto) proclaiming the alleged rape "a social disaster." Their condemnation of Duke society came two weeks after the news broke.
The Gang of 88 used this incarnation of Tawana Brawley to repaint Blue Devils as white devils. But their motives in doing so had nothing to do with race. Their goal had everything to do with instilling class warfare to promote the extreme socialism that they ascribe to.
If you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler came to power, then read The Road to Serfdom. And then study the Duke rape case. Once the gangs of 88 elected enough Mike Nifongs as prosecutors, Hitler was unstoppable.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
With Abacus in Hand, the Chinese Eagerly Engage the World
If they were Americans, you'd say they suffered from math brain. But they're not -- they're Chinese. So allow me to coin the term "abacus brain" so we might understand China's situation.
What is abacus brain? Consider the poultry farmers in China's Hebei province. Until last year, they sold duck eggs at a premium because the yolks had a reddish tint, a trait prized by consumers. To create that reddish tint, the farmers mixed red food dye with the ducks' feed. The particular red dye is a human carcinogen.
If you think with an abacus brain, you consider ways to increase egg sales but ignore the impact of feeding your customers cancer-causing food. The reliable abacus can calculate the difference in profit between selling normal and dyed yolks. On the other hand, no amount of abacus calculations could predict when the customer base would die from eating food-borne carcinogens.
Abacus brain, or solving for X while ignoring Y, is prevalent in China.
To calculate China's future energy needs, the government has concluded that 50 new coal-fired power plants will have to be built every year for the next few years -- that's one per week during the present five-year plan.
Some major cities already suffer from terrible air pollution. The smog is so bad that local citizens have developed a new way to measure it -- the building index. If one looks down the street and counts 10 buildings, the building index is 10. On a clearer day, the index might be 20, and so forth.
China's government has projected the country's future electric needs without any thought given to breathable air. In fact, China's air pollution has become one of its leading exports. From Los Angeles to Seattle, the west coast now receives a windblown blanket of smog and soot from the Orient.
Americans do worry that China will become the world's major economic power in this century. And when it comes to pets, Americans are petrified that China will poison their precious flea hosts. However, unless and until China learns how to run its banking system, these worries are premature.
China has approached banking as if banking is a math equation waiting to be balanced. Banking is a system, and as a system it has no relation to mathematics.
Banking is another word for trust. Yes, banks balance accounts daily, but that is a chore, a chore analogous to restaurants cleaning dishware and refilling salt shakers.
Your checking account is known in banking parlance as a demand deposit because you can demand every penny of it at any time. In China, checks haven't caught on. The typical Chinese worker is paid in cash. Businesses haven't taken to accepting checks for payment either. Debit and credit cards are seldom used and remain novelties.
In China, the government runs the banking system. The Chinese people know that their government leaders think with abacus in hand. Thus, if too many customers demand their money on a given day, the government will simply declare a bank holiday.
China also maintains tight restrictions on foreign currency transactions. Again, inflows and outflows are viewed as an equation to be balanced rather than as a measure of global trust in China's economy.
As long as the Chinese people allow Communist party hacks to run the banks, then China will remain what it is now -- a nation on the cusp of financial collapse. Yet for China to change its ways, there is the irony that a complete financial collapse may have to happen. Something drastic will have to occur to cause one billion people to rise up against their suffocating masters. Protests on the scale of Tiananmen Square just won't do.
At present, China is publicly responding to complaints about tainted foods and pharmaceuticals, as well as its lethal air pollution, corrupt banks and restrictive foreign currency policies. But it is too soon to tell whether the government's response is genuine or just another exercise in face-saving legerdemain for which the Chinese are famous.
China can have a modern banking system any time it wants. But to do so, the Chinese must learn that "No MSG!" means more than just no MSG.
What is abacus brain? Consider the poultry farmers in China's Hebei province. Until last year, they sold duck eggs at a premium because the yolks had a reddish tint, a trait prized by consumers. To create that reddish tint, the farmers mixed red food dye with the ducks' feed. The particular red dye is a human carcinogen.
If you think with an abacus brain, you consider ways to increase egg sales but ignore the impact of feeding your customers cancer-causing food. The reliable abacus can calculate the difference in profit between selling normal and dyed yolks. On the other hand, no amount of abacus calculations could predict when the customer base would die from eating food-borne carcinogens.
Abacus brain, or solving for X while ignoring Y, is prevalent in China.
To calculate China's future energy needs, the government has concluded that 50 new coal-fired power plants will have to be built every year for the next few years -- that's one per week during the present five-year plan.
Some major cities already suffer from terrible air pollution. The smog is so bad that local citizens have developed a new way to measure it -- the building index. If one looks down the street and counts 10 buildings, the building index is 10. On a clearer day, the index might be 20, and so forth.
China's government has projected the country's future electric needs without any thought given to breathable air. In fact, China's air pollution has become one of its leading exports. From Los Angeles to Seattle, the west coast now receives a windblown blanket of smog and soot from the Orient.
Americans do worry that China will become the world's major economic power in this century. And when it comes to pets, Americans are petrified that China will poison their precious flea hosts. However, unless and until China learns how to run its banking system, these worries are premature.
China has approached banking as if banking is a math equation waiting to be balanced. Banking is a system, and as a system it has no relation to mathematics.
Banking is another word for trust. Yes, banks balance accounts daily, but that is a chore, a chore analogous to restaurants cleaning dishware and refilling salt shakers.
Your checking account is known in banking parlance as a demand deposit because you can demand every penny of it at any time. In China, checks haven't caught on. The typical Chinese worker is paid in cash. Businesses haven't taken to accepting checks for payment either. Debit and credit cards are seldom used and remain novelties.
In China, the government runs the banking system. The Chinese people know that their government leaders think with abacus in hand. Thus, if too many customers demand their money on a given day, the government will simply declare a bank holiday.
China also maintains tight restrictions on foreign currency transactions. Again, inflows and outflows are viewed as an equation to be balanced rather than as a measure of global trust in China's economy.
As long as the Chinese people allow Communist party hacks to run the banks, then China will remain what it is now -- a nation on the cusp of financial collapse. Yet for China to change its ways, there is the irony that a complete financial collapse may have to happen. Something drastic will have to occur to cause one billion people to rise up against their suffocating masters. Protests on the scale of Tiananmen Square just won't do.
At present, China is publicly responding to complaints about tainted foods and pharmaceuticals, as well as its lethal air pollution, corrupt banks and restrictive foreign currency policies. But it is too soon to tell whether the government's response is genuine or just another exercise in face-saving legerdemain for which the Chinese are famous.
China can have a modern banking system any time it wants. But to do so, the Chinese must learn that "No MSG!" means more than just no MSG.
Friday, June 22, 2007
George Marshall Defined American Leadership
If you wonder how far the United States has slipped, then you need only look back sixty years to June 5, 1947. On that date, Harvard University’s commencement speaker, George C. Marshall, outlined the European Recovery Program.
Whenever I ask people under the age of sixty, "Who was George Marshall?", I almost always get a blank stare. Rare is the young person who can identify him; rarer still is the person who knows any details of his life.
George C. Marshall was a humble man born in Uniontown, PA. He later became General of the Army and commanded our armed forces in the first true world war, that being World War 2.
After the war, President Truman appointed him Secretary of State. The European Recovery Program is known as the Marshall Plan.
Europe went to war on September 1, 1939-the same day Marshall was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff. By the end of May, 1940, the German army had routed Allied forces. British and French forces were in retreat but managed to escape annihilation in the famous Dunkirk boatlift.
The United States aided Allied forces with shipments of arms and supplies during the period 1939-1941. But our nation just did not see itself getting involved in combat.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the Selective Training and Service Act in 1940, and Congress approved the first peacetime draft. The draft came up for renewal in the summer of 1941. The U. S. House of Representatives did extend the draft, but only by a single vote.
When Marshall became Chief of Staff, the U. S. Army consisted of 200,000 poorly-trained soldiers. The draft authorized an army of 900,000 soldiers. However, the draftees were anything but willing soldiers given the isolationist mood of the country.
Then the die was cast on December 7, 1941. Japan declared war, and Germany followed suit the next day.
Winston Churchill, England’s Prime Minister, was perhaps the only man on Earth who believed that Gen. Marshall could defeat the Axis powers. Indeed, Churchill tried at every juncture to drag the United States into the war. He knew that England would eventually be defeated if we did not come to their aid.
As for the rest of the world, I doubt that anyone believed that Gen. Marshall could build a fighting army from scratch, replace the sunken Pearl Harbor fleet, and wage a global war, let alone win it. You can bet that Germany and Japan didn’t think that he could (or would).
George C. Marshall was the greatest military commander in all of history. Churchill called him the "organizer of victory" which is the kind of fitting understatement that the Brits are famous for.
In our times, Colin Powell held the titles of Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of State. I like Colin Powell. But somehow, victories against Iraq’s Republican Guards and Panama’s police force don’t quite measure up to defeating Japan and Germany.
As Secretary of State, George C. Marshall sold the world a bold new idea-the Marshall Plan. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
As Secretary of State, Colin Powell sold the world a bill of goods-Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
FDR was a mediocre president happily turning America toward Socialism until a great war ended his agenda. "W" is a mediocre president without a plan of any kind. His war hasn’t been big enough to give him an agenda.
Congress today is just as inept as it was in 1941. Whereas the 1941 bunch loved isolationism, the 2007 bunch cannot muster the votes needed to close the borders.
Our modern generals don’t seem to be mad at the enemy. Given the sneak attack on the Pentagon, you would expect them to at least act indignant. No. Today’s generals focused more on turning Jessica Lynch into "G.I. Jane" than they have on leading decisive victories.
When I took the public school version of American History in 1966, my teacher never made it to the chapter on World War 2. I suspect that your history teacher was just as derelict. And that is probably why so few people know of George C. Marshall.
Going forward, maybe we should start our American history classes with World War 2 and the role of George C. Marshall. Compared to Marshall, most historical figures are footnotes at best.
Sixty years is not a long time. It is, unfortunately, long enough for Americans to forget a great man.
Whenever I ask people under the age of sixty, "Who was George Marshall?", I almost always get a blank stare. Rare is the young person who can identify him; rarer still is the person who knows any details of his life.
George C. Marshall was a humble man born in Uniontown, PA. He later became General of the Army and commanded our armed forces in the first true world war, that being World War 2.
After the war, President Truman appointed him Secretary of State. The European Recovery Program is known as the Marshall Plan.
Europe went to war on September 1, 1939-the same day Marshall was sworn in as Army Chief of Staff. By the end of May, 1940, the German army had routed Allied forces. British and French forces were in retreat but managed to escape annihilation in the famous Dunkirk boatlift.
The United States aided Allied forces with shipments of arms and supplies during the period 1939-1941. But our nation just did not see itself getting involved in combat.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the Selective Training and Service Act in 1940, and Congress approved the first peacetime draft. The draft came up for renewal in the summer of 1941. The U. S. House of Representatives did extend the draft, but only by a single vote.
When Marshall became Chief of Staff, the U. S. Army consisted of 200,000 poorly-trained soldiers. The draft authorized an army of 900,000 soldiers. However, the draftees were anything but willing soldiers given the isolationist mood of the country.
Then the die was cast on December 7, 1941. Japan declared war, and Germany followed suit the next day.
Winston Churchill, England’s Prime Minister, was perhaps the only man on Earth who believed that Gen. Marshall could defeat the Axis powers. Indeed, Churchill tried at every juncture to drag the United States into the war. He knew that England would eventually be defeated if we did not come to their aid.
As for the rest of the world, I doubt that anyone believed that Gen. Marshall could build a fighting army from scratch, replace the sunken Pearl Harbor fleet, and wage a global war, let alone win it. You can bet that Germany and Japan didn’t think that he could (or would).
George C. Marshall was the greatest military commander in all of history. Churchill called him the "organizer of victory" which is the kind of fitting understatement that the Brits are famous for.
In our times, Colin Powell held the titles of Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of State. I like Colin Powell. But somehow, victories against Iraq’s Republican Guards and Panama’s police force don’t quite measure up to defeating Japan and Germany.
As Secretary of State, George C. Marshall sold the world a bold new idea-the Marshall Plan. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
As Secretary of State, Colin Powell sold the world a bill of goods-Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
FDR was a mediocre president happily turning America toward Socialism until a great war ended his agenda. "W" is a mediocre president without a plan of any kind. His war hasn’t been big enough to give him an agenda.
Congress today is just as inept as it was in 1941. Whereas the 1941 bunch loved isolationism, the 2007 bunch cannot muster the votes needed to close the borders.
Our modern generals don’t seem to be mad at the enemy. Given the sneak attack on the Pentagon, you would expect them to at least act indignant. No. Today’s generals focused more on turning Jessica Lynch into "G.I. Jane" than they have on leading decisive victories.
When I took the public school version of American History in 1966, my teacher never made it to the chapter on World War 2. I suspect that your history teacher was just as derelict. And that is probably why so few people know of George C. Marshall.
Going forward, maybe we should start our American history classes with World War 2 and the role of George C. Marshall. Compared to Marshall, most historical figures are footnotes at best.
Sixty years is not a long time. It is, unfortunately, long enough for Americans to forget a great man.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Re: That Hellhole Issue, Phonebook Tells the Story
Back when Martin Milner wandered along Route 66 in his Corvette, he could have predicted each town’s crime rate by simply reading the local telephone book.
If the number of clergymen outnumbered lawyers, the crime rate would be low. Conversely, if lawyers outnumbered the clergy, then the crime rate would be high. In the 1950s and 1960s, the ratio of clergy to lawyers almost perfectly correlated to a town’s lawlessness.
The ratio of clergy to lawyers painted a picture of the town’s citizens and their values. People who regularly attend church are apt to follow God’s absolute laws-the Ten Commandments for example. On the other hand, people who flock to law offices often view laws as guidelines, or even suggestions, and hire lawyers to mitigate their circumstances.
In a manner of speaking, Martin Milner could have written a "Route 66" tour guide and included a chapter titled "Judicial Hellholes" based solely on phone book surveys.
If you use this survey method today, you’ll quickly notice that lawyers advertise on phone book covers as well as in the yellow pages. Daytime television advertising could well be called the "cavalcade of trial lawyer ads."
I will say this, though: melodramatic personal injury lawyer ads do complement the soap opera milieu of afternoon programming.
The so-called "respectable" law firms advertise just as heavily. They flood trade publications with image ads. On Madison Avenue, image ads are referred to as the silk purse enigma, or the more familiar "put lipstick on the pig."
The practice of law has been a growth industry ever since the Miranda decision (1966.) To sustain that growth, every aspect of the practice of law has succumbed to relativity and compromise. If a non-lawyer read former West Virginia University basketball coach John Beilein’s contract, he’d say that the coach owed WVU $2.5 million for leaving early. In the hands of skilled attorneys, however, the contract was just a starting point for negotiations (Read: more billable hours.)
The practice of law in West Virginia is a growth industry. Our venue laws encourage growth by allowing tourist litigators to spend their workdays suing in our courtrooms while whitewater rafting or skiing on the weekends.
Innovative ways to use the courts, such as medical monitoring lawsuits, have expanded the realm of the once-stodgy definition of torts. It seems that at one time in our history-perhaps before the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer went to law school-the plaintiff actually had to prove damages. Not so now on this warming globe.
When Roane County jurors returned a $400 million verdict against natural gas companies in January, two things happened. The first was national headlines; West Virginia had finally entered the big leagues of jackpot justice. The second result was that businesses across the state realized that a billion-dollar verdict is soon to happen. After all, $400 million is now a benchmark-the four-minute mile so to speak.
Several people, and that includes a few in the natural gas industry, have told me that the verdict in Tawney et al v. Columbia Natural Resources et al was a long-overdue victory for justice for mineral owners. This sounds romantic when heard in isolation. But the future effect of Tawney is unpredictable when you read it alongside the recent WV Supreme Court of Appeals ruling that a law firm (Schrader Companion & Byrd) can claim as its fee a percentage of future royalties from a mineral lease it negotiated on behalf of its client.
To me, the court’s logic in deciding the Schrader case is just plain Stephen King-scary. The Langoliers. Now playing at a law office near you!
A major criticism of West Virginia’s judicial system has been the partisan election of the judiciary. Judges have to be selected in some way. I’d rather see judges elected than trust politicians to appoint them. And that view holds for U. S. Supreme Court justices as well.
By electing judges, especially in a partisan manner, the voting public is exercising a referendum on the judicial system. And this is West Virginia’s downfall. The voters must like the system just the way it is. Otherwise, they’d vote to change it.
Is West Virginia a judicial hellhole? You can’t always judge a book by its cover. But in this case, the phone book would suggest that it is.
If the number of clergymen outnumbered lawyers, the crime rate would be low. Conversely, if lawyers outnumbered the clergy, then the crime rate would be high. In the 1950s and 1960s, the ratio of clergy to lawyers almost perfectly correlated to a town’s lawlessness.
The ratio of clergy to lawyers painted a picture of the town’s citizens and their values. People who regularly attend church are apt to follow God’s absolute laws-the Ten Commandments for example. On the other hand, people who flock to law offices often view laws as guidelines, or even suggestions, and hire lawyers to mitigate their circumstances.
In a manner of speaking, Martin Milner could have written a "Route 66" tour guide and included a chapter titled "Judicial Hellholes" based solely on phone book surveys.
If you use this survey method today, you’ll quickly notice that lawyers advertise on phone book covers as well as in the yellow pages. Daytime television advertising could well be called the "cavalcade of trial lawyer ads."
I will say this, though: melodramatic personal injury lawyer ads do complement the soap opera milieu of afternoon programming.
The so-called "respectable" law firms advertise just as heavily. They flood trade publications with image ads. On Madison Avenue, image ads are referred to as the silk purse enigma, or the more familiar "put lipstick on the pig."
The practice of law has been a growth industry ever since the Miranda decision (1966.) To sustain that growth, every aspect of the practice of law has succumbed to relativity and compromise. If a non-lawyer read former West Virginia University basketball coach John Beilein’s contract, he’d say that the coach owed WVU $2.5 million for leaving early. In the hands of skilled attorneys, however, the contract was just a starting point for negotiations (Read: more billable hours.)
The practice of law in West Virginia is a growth industry. Our venue laws encourage growth by allowing tourist litigators to spend their workdays suing in our courtrooms while whitewater rafting or skiing on the weekends.
Innovative ways to use the courts, such as medical monitoring lawsuits, have expanded the realm of the once-stodgy definition of torts. It seems that at one time in our history-perhaps before the Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer went to law school-the plaintiff actually had to prove damages. Not so now on this warming globe.
When Roane County jurors returned a $400 million verdict against natural gas companies in January, two things happened. The first was national headlines; West Virginia had finally entered the big leagues of jackpot justice. The second result was that businesses across the state realized that a billion-dollar verdict is soon to happen. After all, $400 million is now a benchmark-the four-minute mile so to speak.
Several people, and that includes a few in the natural gas industry, have told me that the verdict in Tawney et al v. Columbia Natural Resources et al was a long-overdue victory for justice for mineral owners. This sounds romantic when heard in isolation. But the future effect of Tawney is unpredictable when you read it alongside the recent WV Supreme Court of Appeals ruling that a law firm (Schrader Companion & Byrd) can claim as its fee a percentage of future royalties from a mineral lease it negotiated on behalf of its client.
To me, the court’s logic in deciding the Schrader case is just plain Stephen King-scary. The Langoliers. Now playing at a law office near you!
A major criticism of West Virginia’s judicial system has been the partisan election of the judiciary. Judges have to be selected in some way. I’d rather see judges elected than trust politicians to appoint them. And that view holds for U. S. Supreme Court justices as well.
By electing judges, especially in a partisan manner, the voting public is exercising a referendum on the judicial system. And this is West Virginia’s downfall. The voters must like the system just the way it is. Otherwise, they’d vote to change it.
Is West Virginia a judicial hellhole? You can’t always judge a book by its cover. But in this case, the phone book would suggest that it is.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Finding The Strength To Endure April's Cruelty
T. S. Eliot’s poem, "The Waste Land", begins: "April is the cruelest month." Were Mr. Eliot living today, he might criticize Americans for taking his imagery so literally. The third week of April will now be remembered for Blacksburg as well as Columbine and Oklahoma City.
While the news media has described the murders on the Virginia Tech campus as the worst such event in American history, I disagree with that assessment. No matter what else happens, nothing can be as disgusting as the murders and wounding, make that planned executions, of Amish schoolgirls in Pennsylvania last October.
Be honest. You were probably numb to the shootings on that fall day at Nickel Mines until the Virginia Tech reports recently reminded you.
In a nation gone so bizarre, one has to ask, "How can we change this behavior?"
The answer to that question might be rather simple. The killing rampages that we now accept as an everyday fact of life did not exist fifty years ago. What was it that we did then that we aren’t doing now?
This past April 19th, I attended the annual dinner of the Highland District of the Boy Scouts of America in Elkins. The district includes Barbour, Randolph, Tucker and Upshur counties. I estimated the dinner crowd at nearly 150 generous people.
When I arrived at the banquet, I told a friend, "I’ve returned to Mayberry." And I meant that sincerely. I previously worked in the Elkins area and was happy to see so many old friends and acquaintances. I also used the Mayberry reference because Elkins seemed like a safe port during the stormy weather that now accompanies the third week of April.
David C. Hardesty was the guest speaker for the evening. He spoke not as President of West Virginia University, but as a former Eagle Scout. If you have been involved in scouting, then you know that somebody’s mom volunteered to be a den mother and somebody else’s dad volunteered to be a scoutmaster. Mr. Hardesty recounted this spirit of volunteerism and community involvement in his remarks.
He also related the one-hundred-year history of the Boy Scouts. The mission of scouting has always been to teach youngsters skills. Scouting also develops values such as citizenship and personal responsibility. To "be prepared" requires much more of a young boy than any other program that I can think of.
I remember when my scoutmaster taught our troop how to build telegraph keys and wire them together. That was an amazing lesson. We marveled at being able to send clicking messages from one end of Mr. Aylestock’s basement to the other. But that was not the end of the exercise. With a telegraph key in hand, we then learned Morse code.
I know that my telegraph anecdote sounds like a quaint lesson-the kind of lesson you’d expect Andy Taylor to teach his son, Opie. But Samuel Morse revolutionized communication much more than the Internet has. To have built a telegraph system and then operated it gave me a great appreciation for the history of communication in America.
The other motto of scouting is "Do a good deed daily." Unfortunately, this generation of college students has been found by a San Diego State University study to be the most narcissistic group of its kind-ever. College professors who I know also concur with the study’s conclusion. The students, however, call their narcissism "healthy self-esteem", and they do so in a self-congratulatory manner.
Scouting, 4-H, and similar structured youth programs used to be an integral part of Plan A when it came to raising children. We as a nation no longer use Plan A. We are much too sophisticated for that homey nonsense.
We now use Plan B, or Plan C, or whatever plan it is that barely frowns on teen pregnancy or the employment of pedophiles as schoolteachers. The new plan also permits schools to spy on students with cameras rather than engage each student personally. The new plan encourages school administrators to force-feed zombie pills to hundreds of thousands of grade school kids rather than diagnose why little Johnny suffers from anxiety in the first place.
As Dr. Phil would say: "How’s that plan working?"
The answers to America’s social problems are not hidden in a cave. Nor are they known only by the Oracle at Delphi. The answers are as obvious as the noses on our faces. When Americans finally decide to look themselves in the mirror, then they will go back to Plan A.
Until then, expect more cruel months.
While the news media has described the murders on the Virginia Tech campus as the worst such event in American history, I disagree with that assessment. No matter what else happens, nothing can be as disgusting as the murders and wounding, make that planned executions, of Amish schoolgirls in Pennsylvania last October.
Be honest. You were probably numb to the shootings on that fall day at Nickel Mines until the Virginia Tech reports recently reminded you.
In a nation gone so bizarre, one has to ask, "How can we change this behavior?"
The answer to that question might be rather simple. The killing rampages that we now accept as an everyday fact of life did not exist fifty years ago. What was it that we did then that we aren’t doing now?
This past April 19th, I attended the annual dinner of the Highland District of the Boy Scouts of America in Elkins. The district includes Barbour, Randolph, Tucker and Upshur counties. I estimated the dinner crowd at nearly 150 generous people.
When I arrived at the banquet, I told a friend, "I’ve returned to Mayberry." And I meant that sincerely. I previously worked in the Elkins area and was happy to see so many old friends and acquaintances. I also used the Mayberry reference because Elkins seemed like a safe port during the stormy weather that now accompanies the third week of April.
David C. Hardesty was the guest speaker for the evening. He spoke not as President of West Virginia University, but as a former Eagle Scout. If you have been involved in scouting, then you know that somebody’s mom volunteered to be a den mother and somebody else’s dad volunteered to be a scoutmaster. Mr. Hardesty recounted this spirit of volunteerism and community involvement in his remarks.
He also related the one-hundred-year history of the Boy Scouts. The mission of scouting has always been to teach youngsters skills. Scouting also develops values such as citizenship and personal responsibility. To "be prepared" requires much more of a young boy than any other program that I can think of.
I remember when my scoutmaster taught our troop how to build telegraph keys and wire them together. That was an amazing lesson. We marveled at being able to send clicking messages from one end of Mr. Aylestock’s basement to the other. But that was not the end of the exercise. With a telegraph key in hand, we then learned Morse code.
I know that my telegraph anecdote sounds like a quaint lesson-the kind of lesson you’d expect Andy Taylor to teach his son, Opie. But Samuel Morse revolutionized communication much more than the Internet has. To have built a telegraph system and then operated it gave me a great appreciation for the history of communication in America.
The other motto of scouting is "Do a good deed daily." Unfortunately, this generation of college students has been found by a San Diego State University study to be the most narcissistic group of its kind-ever. College professors who I know also concur with the study’s conclusion. The students, however, call their narcissism "healthy self-esteem", and they do so in a self-congratulatory manner.
Scouting, 4-H, and similar structured youth programs used to be an integral part of Plan A when it came to raising children. We as a nation no longer use Plan A. We are much too sophisticated for that homey nonsense.
We now use Plan B, or Plan C, or whatever plan it is that barely frowns on teen pregnancy or the employment of pedophiles as schoolteachers. The new plan also permits schools to spy on students with cameras rather than engage each student personally. The new plan encourages school administrators to force-feed zombie pills to hundreds of thousands of grade school kids rather than diagnose why little Johnny suffers from anxiety in the first place.
As Dr. Phil would say: "How’s that plan working?"
The answers to America’s social problems are not hidden in a cave. Nor are they known only by the Oracle at Delphi. The answers are as obvious as the noses on our faces. When Americans finally decide to look themselves in the mirror, then they will go back to Plan A.
Until then, expect more cruel months.
Friday, April 6, 2007
It’s The End Of The World, And I Can’t Sleep
A few days ago, I dozed off while watching television. I woke to a widescreen scene of parched ground, which reminded me of droughts and locust plagues in Ethiopia. As for the sound, an ominous narrator was ranting about some major crisis at hand.
I was sure that I had woken to the "700 Club" and that the ominous narrator was none other than Pat Robertson.
Was I ever wrong. I was watching An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning (and whining) film about the end of the world as we know it.
All of my life, I have been told that the world is coming to an end post haste.
As a kid, I saw Godzilla, the product of atomic radiation, foretelling our ruination. Not to be outdone, Hollywood mutated every conceivable insect and animal to sell the radiated mutant story. James Arness actually polished his marksmanship fighting giant ants in Them! before he got the job of taming Dodge City.
My neighborhood grade school boasted that its basement was a suitable bomb shelter for over 100 people. That seemed adequate until the Cuban missile crisis started. Then, every family began stockpiling food and water and fixing up their basements.
Although we had erased polio and smallpox by early in my life, the threat of epidemic still gets headlines. Remember the swine flu scare? Or Legionnaires Disease? And Ebola? Now we have avian flu in our everyday fear vocabulary.
When I lived at the head of a hollow in Doddridge County, I found myself often visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses. As you may know from similar encounters, their founders previously predicted the exact date of the end of the world-a date that has long since passed.
Perhaps the most popular cartoon ever drawn has been the one featuring a man holding a sign that reads: "The End of the World Is Near." Cartoonists have had a field day captioning this one.
From The Blob to Alien and from War of the Worlds to Independence Day, Hollywood has exhausted every conceivable plot regarding extraterrestrial destruction of Earth.
Hollywood needed a new villain. Thus a star, Al Gore, was born.
Given the box office receipts for The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow, is it any wonder that Al Gore’s movie won the Oscar? Although the special effects in An Inconvenient Truth are lacking (everyone knows that glacier ice falls much faster), documentaries are not held to the same standard as are feature films.
This new Greenmania has already had an economic effect on the American economy. Ethanol receives a 51-cents-per-gallon tax credit which is paid for by general tax revenue-not at the gas pump. Experts argue both sides when it comes to answering the question of how much energy it takes to produce ethanol. Since ethanol enjoys both a tax credit and tariff protection (54¢ per gal.), we can conclude that domestic ethanol is not a competitive motor fuel in its own right.
Not tracked in the cost of ethanol production is the fact that corn prices have (at times) doubled since 2004. This increase directly affects the cost of corn flakes, meat, poultry, and soft drinks as well as other foods indirectly. Many food companies have switched from corn oil and corn syrup to cheaper substitutes that are still more expensive than corn was in the pre-ethanol era.
So then, we have already spent billions going green, and we haven’t made a dent in global warming, human-caused or otherwise.
We will be taxed billions more when Congress begins rationing carbon emission rights. West Virginians have always enjoyed low electricity rates. That will change when our coal-fired power plants have to buy emission rights.
Twenty years from now, the country will realize that the global warming scare was just another passing disaster fad-the same as dioxin and Times Beach. Unfortunately, we will have paid dearly to learn that lesson.
For the interim, Greenmania is the new religion. Human-caused global warming is its fall from grace genesis. And Al Gore is its proselytizing Elmer Gantry.
Years ago, I fell asleep watching television. I woke up about 5 am and found myself watching the "PTL Club" for the very first time. Jim Bakker and his guests sat in easy chairs and grinned religiously while Tammy Faye belted out a song.
That was really scary, and I haven’t slept soundly since.
I was sure that I had woken to the "700 Club" and that the ominous narrator was none other than Pat Robertson.
Was I ever wrong. I was watching An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning (and whining) film about the end of the world as we know it.
All of my life, I have been told that the world is coming to an end post haste.
As a kid, I saw Godzilla, the product of atomic radiation, foretelling our ruination. Not to be outdone, Hollywood mutated every conceivable insect and animal to sell the radiated mutant story. James Arness actually polished his marksmanship fighting giant ants in Them! before he got the job of taming Dodge City.
My neighborhood grade school boasted that its basement was a suitable bomb shelter for over 100 people. That seemed adequate until the Cuban missile crisis started. Then, every family began stockpiling food and water and fixing up their basements.
Although we had erased polio and smallpox by early in my life, the threat of epidemic still gets headlines. Remember the swine flu scare? Or Legionnaires Disease? And Ebola? Now we have avian flu in our everyday fear vocabulary.
When I lived at the head of a hollow in Doddridge County, I found myself often visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses. As you may know from similar encounters, their founders previously predicted the exact date of the end of the world-a date that has long since passed.
Perhaps the most popular cartoon ever drawn has been the one featuring a man holding a sign that reads: "The End of the World Is Near." Cartoonists have had a field day captioning this one.
From The Blob to Alien and from War of the Worlds to Independence Day, Hollywood has exhausted every conceivable plot regarding extraterrestrial destruction of Earth.
Hollywood needed a new villain. Thus a star, Al Gore, was born.
Given the box office receipts for The Perfect Storm and The Day After Tomorrow, is it any wonder that Al Gore’s movie won the Oscar? Although the special effects in An Inconvenient Truth are lacking (everyone knows that glacier ice falls much faster), documentaries are not held to the same standard as are feature films.
This new Greenmania has already had an economic effect on the American economy. Ethanol receives a 51-cents-per-gallon tax credit which is paid for by general tax revenue-not at the gas pump. Experts argue both sides when it comes to answering the question of how much energy it takes to produce ethanol. Since ethanol enjoys both a tax credit and tariff protection (54¢ per gal.), we can conclude that domestic ethanol is not a competitive motor fuel in its own right.
Not tracked in the cost of ethanol production is the fact that corn prices have (at times) doubled since 2004. This increase directly affects the cost of corn flakes, meat, poultry, and soft drinks as well as other foods indirectly. Many food companies have switched from corn oil and corn syrup to cheaper substitutes that are still more expensive than corn was in the pre-ethanol era.
So then, we have already spent billions going green, and we haven’t made a dent in global warming, human-caused or otherwise.
We will be taxed billions more when Congress begins rationing carbon emission rights. West Virginians have always enjoyed low electricity rates. That will change when our coal-fired power plants have to buy emission rights.
Twenty years from now, the country will realize that the global warming scare was just another passing disaster fad-the same as dioxin and Times Beach. Unfortunately, we will have paid dearly to learn that lesson.
For the interim, Greenmania is the new religion. Human-caused global warming is its fall from grace genesis. And Al Gore is its proselytizing Elmer Gantry.
Years ago, I fell asleep watching television. I woke up about 5 am and found myself watching the "PTL Club" for the very first time. Jim Bakker and his guests sat in easy chairs and grinned religiously while Tammy Faye belted out a song.
That was really scary, and I haven’t slept soundly since.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Winning Strategy: West Virginia University Proves Pay Matters
Comparison of Gross Wages:
WVU Football/Men’s Basketball Coaches to WVU College of Business and Economics Ph.D. Professors; Rounded to nearest $1,000
Head Football Coach: $1,233,000
Asst. Head F/B Coach: 210,000
Asst. Football Coaches (9); 1,334,000 (Aggregate)
Asst. Football Coaches (9); 148,000 (Average)
Dean, College of B&E: $ 202,000
Coll. Of B&E; Ph.D. (54) 108,000 (Average)
Head Basketball Coach $ 849,000
Asst. B/B Coaches (3); 110,000 (Average)
Aggregate: FB & BB Coaches (14): $3,747,000
Aggregate: Coll. Of B&E; PhD (54) $5,831,000
Sources: WV State Auditor, WVU College of Business & Economics, WVU Athletic Department (via respective websites)
----------------------------------------------------------
While in the grips of cabin fever last month, I had time to memorize all 1,223 pages of state employees’ wages.
With knowledge comes duty. So I compared West Virginia University coaches’ wages to those of WVU’s College of Business and Economics (CB&E) professors.
For comparison purposes, I limited my study of the CB&E professors to the Ph.D.s listed at www.be.wvu.edu. The football and men’s basketball assistant coaches are those listed in the 2006 coaching guides at www.msnsportsnet.com.
By now, everyone knows how much Rich Rodriguez and John Beilein earned in 2006. What I found more interesting is the payroll of their assistant coaches.
Dean Stephen Sears holds the CB&E’s top-paid position. But Dean Sears made about $8,000 less than Assistant Head Football Coach Rick Trickett. Overall, the average assistant football coach earned 37 percent more than the average Ph.D. professor. The average Ph.D. professor also earned less than the average assistant men’s basketball coach.
The payroll for 14 coaches is almost two-thirds (64 percent) of that for the CB&E’s 54 Ph.D. professors.
Coaching salaries have always been defended by the argument that football and men’s basketball are revenue sports that bring home the bacon. Left unsaid in that argument is the fact that college sports enjoy two substantial subsidies.
College sports are subsidized by tax-exempt donations to the athletic program. Ostensibly, this tax-exempt status was granted in an era when athletic scholarships were the major expense of the department. Now that Division I coaching salaries have mushroomed, Congress has asked the NCAA to justify the tax-exempt status for donations that effectively make high salaries possible.
A second subsidy is the uncompensated labor of scholarship athletes. These youngsters are indentured servants who risk permanent injury when plying their trade. While the athletic department makes money from ticket sales and television contracts, the department’s financial obligation to scholarship athletes consists mainly of room and board and an opportunity for an education.
In making fair comparisons, we need to recognize that the CB&E is also generously subsidized. If Pell grants, PROMISE scholarships, student loan subsidies and transfers from the WVU Foundation and state government stopped tomorrow, the school would easily lose more than half of it students; the professorial ranks would shrink accordingly. As well, the competition for an open professorship would drive salaries down.
In other words, without all of these subsidies, WVU’s campus would look much like it did in the 1950s. Come to think about it, that was WVU’s Golden Age. The rifle team, Sam Huff, Jerry West, three Rhodes Scholars, and a new medical center represented WVU well.
I have no clue as to what the ideal Ph.D. salary should be. Nor do I have access to the national norms for Ph.D. salaries. But my instincts tell me that when the head football coach makes more in one month than half of the CB&E professors make in one year, then Ph.D. pay scales are far too low-not the other way around.
When the football or basketball program goes awry, the old coach is unceremoniously dumped and a new coach is hired to turn the program around in three to four years. If the university’s academic standing falters, then recovery is much more complicated.
A good example of this dilemma is the College of Law’s slide to fourth-tier status in the U.S. News and World Report survey. Rather than read the scoreboard, the faculty remains in denial; they blame the magazine’s survey criteria and beg the need for remodeled classrooms.
At least coaches understand that life is a game, that the game has rules, and that competition is their friend.
In this world, you pretty much get what you pay for. WVU’s success in all of its athletic programs has happened because financial commitments have been made. If the university is to project its academic reputation in the same fashion, then financial commitments for academic salaries must be forthcoming as well.
The law school’s decline may very well be the canary in the coal mine in this regard.
WVU Football/Men’s Basketball Coaches to WVU College of Business and Economics Ph.D. Professors; Rounded to nearest $1,000
Head Football Coach: $1,233,000
Asst. Head F/B Coach: 210,000
Asst. Football Coaches (9); 1,334,000 (Aggregate)
Asst. Football Coaches (9); 148,000 (Average)
Dean, College of B&E: $ 202,000
Coll. Of B&E; Ph.D. (54) 108,000 (Average)
Head Basketball Coach $ 849,000
Asst. B/B Coaches (3); 110,000 (Average)
Aggregate: FB & BB Coaches (14): $3,747,000
Aggregate: Coll. Of B&E; PhD (54) $5,831,000
Sources: WV State Auditor, WVU College of Business & Economics, WVU Athletic Department (via respective websites)
----------------------------------------------------------
While in the grips of cabin fever last month, I had time to memorize all 1,223 pages of state employees’ wages.
With knowledge comes duty. So I compared West Virginia University coaches’ wages to those of WVU’s College of Business and Economics (CB&E) professors.
For comparison purposes, I limited my study of the CB&E professors to the Ph.D.s listed at www.be.wvu.edu. The football and men’s basketball assistant coaches are those listed in the 2006 coaching guides at www.msnsportsnet.com.
By now, everyone knows how much Rich Rodriguez and John Beilein earned in 2006. What I found more interesting is the payroll of their assistant coaches.
Dean Stephen Sears holds the CB&E’s top-paid position. But Dean Sears made about $8,000 less than Assistant Head Football Coach Rick Trickett. Overall, the average assistant football coach earned 37 percent more than the average Ph.D. professor. The average Ph.D. professor also earned less than the average assistant men’s basketball coach.
The payroll for 14 coaches is almost two-thirds (64 percent) of that for the CB&E’s 54 Ph.D. professors.
Coaching salaries have always been defended by the argument that football and men’s basketball are revenue sports that bring home the bacon. Left unsaid in that argument is the fact that college sports enjoy two substantial subsidies.
College sports are subsidized by tax-exempt donations to the athletic program. Ostensibly, this tax-exempt status was granted in an era when athletic scholarships were the major expense of the department. Now that Division I coaching salaries have mushroomed, Congress has asked the NCAA to justify the tax-exempt status for donations that effectively make high salaries possible.
A second subsidy is the uncompensated labor of scholarship athletes. These youngsters are indentured servants who risk permanent injury when plying their trade. While the athletic department makes money from ticket sales and television contracts, the department’s financial obligation to scholarship athletes consists mainly of room and board and an opportunity for an education.
In making fair comparisons, we need to recognize that the CB&E is also generously subsidized. If Pell grants, PROMISE scholarships, student loan subsidies and transfers from the WVU Foundation and state government stopped tomorrow, the school would easily lose more than half of it students; the professorial ranks would shrink accordingly. As well, the competition for an open professorship would drive salaries down.
In other words, without all of these subsidies, WVU’s campus would look much like it did in the 1950s. Come to think about it, that was WVU’s Golden Age. The rifle team, Sam Huff, Jerry West, three Rhodes Scholars, and a new medical center represented WVU well.
I have no clue as to what the ideal Ph.D. salary should be. Nor do I have access to the national norms for Ph.D. salaries. But my instincts tell me that when the head football coach makes more in one month than half of the CB&E professors make in one year, then Ph.D. pay scales are far too low-not the other way around.
When the football or basketball program goes awry, the old coach is unceremoniously dumped and a new coach is hired to turn the program around in three to four years. If the university’s academic standing falters, then recovery is much more complicated.
A good example of this dilemma is the College of Law’s slide to fourth-tier status in the U.S. News and World Report survey. Rather than read the scoreboard, the faculty remains in denial; they blame the magazine’s survey criteria and beg the need for remodeled classrooms.
At least coaches understand that life is a game, that the game has rules, and that competition is their friend.
In this world, you pretty much get what you pay for. WVU’s success in all of its athletic programs has happened because financial commitments have been made. If the university is to project its academic reputation in the same fashion, then financial commitments for academic salaries must be forthcoming as well.
The law school’s decline may very well be the canary in the coal mine in this regard.
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