scripsit

Electronics Project #1

2009-11-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

Since recently completing all 101 projects in the Snap Electronics Jr. kit, Elias has been learning real hobby electronics and loving it. It's almost an obsession, but healthy I think. We have fun and learn a lot together. What makes it natural for him is he is able to retain just about every fact ever explained to him, and he is very excited to learn how physical things work and above all to create his own contraptions. It surely helps that I'm interested in electronics too (cause like all geeks I want to eventually build super-cool robots), though I actually know very little about it.

We've been reading that Forest M. Mims, III book Getting Started in Electronics that Radio Shack has been selling for at least 20 years -- that's how old my copy is. We're up to Silicon Controlled Rectifiers. And to test out our little circuits we use a bread boarding box that I've been storing for 20 years, apparently just for this purpose. Last week, Elias got the hang of creating what he calls a "touch detector" circuit, which involves a transistor, a resistor, an LED, and some wires. I don't even know how (are people positively charged relative to residential ground?), but just by touching one wire attached to the gate of the transistor, the LED lights up. He was building this all by himself on the bread board for a few days.

I recommended that we get out my soldering iron, another relic, and actually burn his touch detector circuit into permanent form. We had a broken circuit board from an old phone handset that was just the right size for 2 AAA batteries to lay on it. Of course I did all the soldering, but only after I had him draw a schematic of what we had laid out on the bread board. He labeled the 10K Ohm resistor, the round and flat sides of the LED with little marks, and the 2N2222 transistor, which has E, C, and B by its legs. The three "fingers" on each of the two free ends of wires are, I think, a reflection of his love earlier this year for drawing diagrams of neurons, after seeing them in my college biology text.

This is what we ended up with. You actually have to bend a wire so that it touches a leg of the transistor to get the LED to light up -- once we went to battery power, the mysterious trick of just touching the end of one wire no longer worked.

What next? We are trying to build a circuit from the Mims book that is supposed to pulse a light or buzzer at about 1Hz. One capacitor, two transistors, and three resistors. He laid most of it out on the bread board looking at the schematic, then I stepped in to finish it. You'd think I could nail such a baby circuit, but we were working on it tonight and it just buzzes solidly. So I know the first thing Elias is going to ask me tomorrow morning is to work on it with him. Fun!

Book: Goddess of the Market

2009-10-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

Last week, Jon Stewart interviewed Jennifer Burns, author of a new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Burns was reasonable, but made a few incorrect statements: Ayn Rand a "conservative"? [15:50] whose life mission was to defend the right? Actually, AR stressed that she was not a conservative, e.g. she couldn't stand Reagan, and The Fountainhead was not about political philosophy at all, but about the psychology and ethics of spiritual independence. Still, not a hint of the childish insulting tone from either Burns or Stewart that I was expecting (such as Colbert displayed about AR earlier this year). In fact, both of them seem genuinely impressed with AR. So thumbs up to Stewart for intellectual honesty here.

Today, Burns has an article on www.foreignpolicy.com, Howard Roark in New Delhi. This is an interesting description of the popularity of AR in India. But this time Burns labels AR with "libertarianism." Actually, AR stressed that she was not a libertarian, calling libertarianism "a mockery of philosophy and ideology" which often plagiarizes her without credit.

So, Burns seems to be generally intellectually honest from what I've seen so far, and may intend to be objective about AR's political thought -- but she doesn't or can't distinguish between the Objectivist political philosophy and two movements that are profoundly incompatible with Objectivism, as has been described many times by many people, including AR.

Movie: The White Rose

2009-10-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched the subtitled movie "Sophie Scholl: The Last Days" about the young and courageous members of the secret resistance group in 1942-3 Germany, The White Rose. The group members, mostly students at the university of Munich, distributed thousands of leaflets denouncing the Nazi programme of war and murder. A few days after they were caught, the leaders (including Sophie Scholl, who was 21) were guillotined; many others were imprisoned. As a movie I don't recommend it, it is very depressing, one is better off to just read about The White Rose on the Internet (the Wikipedia article seems to give a decent overview). But the story depicts, negatively, the grand power of intellectual activism: besides brute force, irrationality has no defense against voices of reason. It may be a fictitious line, but in the movie Hans defiantly tells the judge that he and Hitler must be afraid of -- and thus morally inferior to -- the members of The White Rose, otherwise there wouldn't even be a trial.

From The White Rose leaflet #3:

[W]hy do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanised state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?

Next leg down: Are we there yet?

2009-10-01T12:35:00.000-07:00

Daneric:

So the primary count is officially Minuette (iii) down of Minute [i] of Minor 1 of Intermediate (1) of Primary [3] of Cycle wave c of Supercycle wave (a) of Grand Supercycle wave IV.

Translation: last week we may have seen the highest stocks are going to be for years, with SPX hitting 1088.

UPDATE: The short-term call is already wrong, SPX has since hit 1099, but whether or not this rally ends, sooner than later, with a top in this neighborhood that will reign for years, remains to be seen.

Hazlitt on Profits

2009-09-22T12:47:00.000-07:00

Henry Hazlitt:

The indignation shown by many people today at the mention of the very word profits indicates how little understanding there is of the vital function that profits play in our economy. ...

The function of profits ... is to put constant and unremitting pressure on the head of every competitive business to introduce further economies and efficiencies, no matter to what stage these may already have been brought. In good times he does this to increase his profits further, in normal times he does it to keep ahead of his competitors, in bad times he may have to do it to survive at all. For profits may not only go to zero, they may quickly turn into losses; and a man will put forth greater efforts to save himself from ruin than he will merely to improve his position.

Contrary to a popular impression, profits are achieved not by raising prices, but by introducing economies and efficiencies that cut costs of production.

Ghate on political philosophy

2009-09-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

On Constitution Day 2009, Dr. Ghate of ARI/ARC clarifies the meaning of checks and balances in the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, their notions of man in a "state of nature", Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and the morality of selfishness as supporting the objectivity of liberty ... in 8 minutes.

Just saying "no"

2009-09-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

I have withdrawn Elias from Portland Public Schools. He attended one day of kindergarten.

The political philosophy question

2009-09-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Commerce or coercion, price tags or guns -- which are compatible with morality, i.e., every individual's rational pursuit of his or her own happiness?

Book: Beyond the Mountain

2009-08-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

In Beyond the Mountain, Steve skillfully plots his career with a series of truly amazing stories. Mostly we are treated to gripping descriptions of climbing at the edge of human ability, in which his relentless drive risks his life for reasons he struggles to identify. But there are also understated love stories here -- not of romance, but of the partners and others who have meant the most to him personally in his vertical pursuits.

Steve seems to have put all of himself into this work, writing with a psychological honesty that is uncommon, reliving for us his victories and moments of clarity, but also his intense inner struggles with the desire to succeed and the fear of failure, the love of the sport and the crushing despair over fallen friends, the will to risk everything and the nagging question of why he does this given the intense personal costs. It is because of his brutal honesty, with others but mostly with himself, that what Steve gives us here is truly a gift, a glimpse into another man's soul, so that ironically this biography of the uber-athlete is the story of Everyman.

You will start to read it because it is the must-read of the year for everyone who has ever felt the thrill of going on belay, but you will blast through it and then dwell on it for days because Steve has not tried to oversimplify or falsely dramatize or glorify, but only to describe his lifelong quest to answer with his body the fundamental question of how one should find meaning and fulfillment.

Moral Health Care vs. "Universal Health Care"

2009-08-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

I finally read this long article, which gives the history of why there are now 47 million Americans with no health insurance. The popular myth is that a free market of profit-seeking big businesses is, for some malevolent reason, purposefully excluding these tens of millions of potentially-paying customers. This is absurd on its face. The truth is there hasn't been a free market in health care for decades.

Moral Health Care vs. "Universal Health Care"

Grampa Williams on Guam, 1944

2009-07-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

I think I just found the picture of my grandfather, Robert Williams, pulling the rope on the first "official" raising of the US flag on Guam in 1944.

Do we all work for Goldman Sachs?

2009-07-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to a conspiracy-type article about Goldman Sachs. Of course, I can't vouch for its accuracy, but in general I consider beyond dispute that there are corrupt "businessmen" pulling giant levers in Washington, defrauding the rest of us of enormous sums of the wealth we create, in just the kind of "crony capitalism" that statists use as an excuse for more government controls in the economy.

It is important to remember that some state oppression is direct, both politically and philosophically, i.e., taxes and regulations restrict your freedom and are meant to restrict your freedom; -- but a great deal of injustice is the indirect consequence of the non-capitalistic government's parceling out of favors to the "well-connected", i.e., to those who are willing and able to buy men of political power.

Atlas Shrugged gives timeless characterizations of both manifestations of statism.

Defenders of individual rights must communicate clearly the polar-opposite difference between those corrupt "businessmen" of today who are able to "do whatever they want" by trafficking in government favors -- versus the individuals in a system of true capitalism, who would be free to make any business arrangements, but would be unable to purchase economic favors from the government, since a capitalistic government would have none to sell.

Donahue with ITOE

2009-06-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

Donahue holding the little book which revolutionizes epistemology, from his first interview of Ayn Rand here.

Protest in Tehran

2009-06-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Now that's a protest, and without a First Amendment. If only we had SOMETHING worth protesting in the US, we'd fill the streets too, right?

GMO's

2009-06-11T14:08:00.000-07:00

A WebMD doctor's review of the literature shows that the safety of GMO's is unknown and there are reasons to be apprehensive.

For the record: on this issue, as in many others, proof is unnecessary for action. The point of the article is that it is reasonable to doubt the safety of all GM food. I happen to know that WebMD is extremely careful to only make medically defensible claims in their articles, because this is crucial to the market value of the WebMD brand. So until I learn more and otherwise, I'd rather play it safe, within a margin of practicality (affordability), especially with the developing bodies of my children.

Le Guin on growing up

2009-06-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a man's real power grows and his knowledge widens, ever the way he can follow grows narrower: until at last he chooses nothing, but does only and wholly what he must do....

- A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin

A couple of firsts

2009-03-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

Elias started taking violin lessons. At first, in the Suzuki method, they don't even get the violin out, but now he can play six notes, enough for part of a song:

Dahlia went to her first day of preschool! She was extremely excited about it the day before, and the first thing I heard in the morning was her yelling "Daddy I go to school today!" She was fully dressed and even had her shoes on 40 minutes before it was time to go, and had a great time. Elias was excited to have her go too.

The wonderful irony

2009-03-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

During a time of soaring injustice, here's some overdue justice:

The Austrian business cycle in one image

2009-03-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

[T]he only way 45% of the world's wealth could vanish in a year is if it was a mirage in the first place. - Mish Shedlock

Sacramento, California: Inflationary malinvestment in the background; deflationary bust in the foreground.

"As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people." Daily Mail

A government-caused period of massive inflation of credit money has just ended. We are now sliding down the backside of that unsustainable mountain of credit and debt, in a deflationary reset, something not seen since the 1930's:

Peak credit has been reached. That final wave of consumer recklessness created the exact conditions required for its own destruction. The housing bubble orgy was the last hurrah. It is not coming back and there will be no bigger bubble to replace it. Consumers and banks have both been burnt, and attitudes have changed.

It took nearly 80 years for people to get as reckless as they did in 1929. 80 years! Few are still alive that went through the great depression. No one listened to them. That is the nature of the game. The odds of a significant bout of inflation now are about the same as they were in 1929. Next to none. - Mish

Incredibly, the government's solution is to try to inflate more, through "stimulus" spending and through printing. Are these actions about to stop the bust?

Based on what house prices and equity valuation have been doing this quarter, we are likely in for a total loss of household net worth approximating $7 trillion this quarter alone, which would bring the cumulative decline in consumer wealth to $20 trillion. This wealth loss exceeds the combined expansion of the Fed’s and government balance sheet by a factor of ten. That should put the reflation-deflation debate into perspective. - David Rosenberg, North American Economist at Merrill Lynch, quoted by Mish

In other words: we have deflation right now because the shrinking of (and from) credit money matters more than the increasing of "base money" -- because most money is credit money.

If we are in deflation -- the payback for government-caused inflation -- and governmental printing and spending won't stop it (until it stops), isn't everything just going to get cheaper?

If economic recovery is to be achieved, the first thing that must be done is to stop “stimulus packages” and undo as far as possible any that are already in progress. This is because their effect is to worsen the problem of loss of capital that is the underlying cause of the economic crisis in the first place.

Unfortunately, they are not likely to be stopped. If they are implemented, especially on the scale already approved by Congress, the effect will be a decumulation of capital up to the point where scarcities of capital goods, including inventories of consumers’ goods in the possession of business firms, start to drive up prices.

Higher prices of consumers’ goods will result not only from scarcities of consumers’ goods (which, of course, are capital goods so long as they are in the hands of business firms), but also from scarcities of capital goods further back in the process of production. - George Reisman

What's the big picture here?

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved. - Ludwig von Mises

What would Ayn Rand say? Luckily she already said it. Besides Atlas Shrugged, there's the speech "Egalitarianism and Inflation," the original speech is available here and reprinted in Philosophy: Who Needs It. She gave this speech decades ago, during a time of "stagflation," but you can judge if it is relevant today. In part:

While the government struggles to save one crumbling enterprise at the expense of the crumbling of another, it accelerates the process of juggling debts, switching losses, piling loans on loans, mortgaging the future and the future’s future. As things grow worse, the government protects itself not by contracting this process, but by expanding it. ...

Do you think a spending orgy of this kind could be paid for out of current production? No, the situation is much worse than that. The government is consuming this country’s stock seed—the stock seed of industrial production: investment capital, i.e., the savings needed to keep production going. These savings were not paper, but actual goods. Under all the complexities of private credit, the economy was kept going by the fact that, in one form or another, in one place or another, somewhere within it, actual material goods existed to back its financial transactions. It kept going long after that protection was breached. Today, the goods are almost gone. ...
The value of the total tangible assets of the United States at present, was estimated—in terms of 1968 dollars—at 3.1 trillion dollars. If government spending continues, that incredible wealth will not save you. You may be left with all the magnificent skyscrapers, the giant factories, the rich farmlands—but without fuel, without electricity, without transportation, without steel, without paper, without seeds to plant the next harvest.

If that time comes, the government will declare explicitly the premise on which it has been acting implicitly: that its only “capital asset” is you. Since you will not be able to work any longer, the government will take over and will make you work—on a slope descending to sub-industrial production. The only substitute for technological energy is the muscular labor of slaves. This is the way an economic collapse leads to dictatorship—as it did in Germany and in Russia. ...

A dictatorship would find it impossible to rule this country in the foreseeable future. What is possible is the blind chaos of a civil war. ...
Is there any hope for the future of this country? Yes, there is. This country has one asset left: the matchless productive ability of its people. If, and to the extent that, this ability is liberated, we might still have a chance to avoid a collapse. We cannot expect to reach the ideal overnight, but we must at least reveal its name. We must reveal to this country the secret which all those posturing intellectuals of any political denomination, who clamor for openness and truth, are trying so hard to cover up: that the name of that miraculous productive system is Capitalism.

The bottom line is that wealth is something real in the world: it is not paper, it cannot be printed, and it cannot be increased by being redistributed. When government economic manipulations caused a boom of soaring paper-dollar asset prices, people the whole world over were lured into disastrously wasting their actual savings. Deflation is the economic process in which we are forced to accept this reality. Further governmental printing and spending now will only make things worse, by destroying even more real wealth. Instead we must demand that the government cease all bailouts, stimulus spending, and money printing.

Mish versus Schiff

2009-01-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

This is my take on Mish's post explaining that Peter Schiff was wrong (Schiff is a highly visible analyst who predicted the housing bust and recession):

Schiff ruined his own credibility. Even if he's pro-laissez faire, he's not a philosopher: foremost he's supposedly an expert on this economy, but he was dead wrong on the most fundamental economic trend last year which followed the housing bust: global deflation. He will get called out on this because he can be. It is far better the calling out be done by someone who deserves an audience for being right (Mish), than by the "MSM" defenders of statism. (Statism is what nurtures the mass corruption we suffer from among both politicians and their corporate clients, by the way. And if you don't mind a foul-mouthed, emotionalist tirade, this video -- not to be played at work or around children or nuns -- expresses something of the proper attitude towards the powers that be.)

I see nothing personal in the Schiff piece, I judge it to be objective and just. Mish laid out the facts which make the case that he's the real thing, he's what Schiff was supposed to be, both as investment advisor and as outspoken expert on our economic-political reality. Good for him, I hope he gets a lot more readers and customers. I think the post and the attention it gets can only be good for the cause of laissez faire.

This about sums it up

2009-01-12T08:55:00.000-08:00

But I think either one of these would have been a more appropriate picture:

Life in Hooverville

Death in Vietnam

Economics and the absurd

2009-01-09T09:09:00.000-08:00

Mish Shedlock is the only applied economist or market analyst I listen too. I wish I'd found his blog years ago when he was predicting this recession. Mish is always fact-based and level-headed, he seems to be extremely careful to differentiate between what he knows is probable and what he doesn't know. No crazy predictions, just a few very good ones, based on both fundamentals and technicals. He works 14 hours every day.

He is an analyst at Sitka Pacific, with two hedge funds which make money even today:

Mish may be at his best when concisely showing that the Keynesians and Monetarists -- Krugman, Paulson, Bernanke, Greenspan, Friedman, etc., etc. -- are flat out fools, that 8th graders could know better just by using common sense. Mish is a fan of the Austrian school. He likes to quote von Mises:

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

Here's the best place to start with Mish. If one spends an hour reading this and following some of the links to his other posts, it can be very educational.

Those with [Fiscal Insanity Virus] are trapped in academic wonderland with no ability to see anything from a real world logical perspective. Instead they rely on formulas that imply free lunch theories and/or perpetual motion.

Mish's predictions now are for housing to tank to at least 2012, the S&P to hit 600 or possibly 450 in 2009, and unemployment likely to go over 11% (from the 7.2% reported today). Among bears, these numbers are said to be too optimistic, especially that last. He is most "famous" right now for being one of the first to figure out that deflation has arrived. (He notes that deflation is a good thing; inflation was the problem. Most economists and all governments want to inflate some more, right about now.)

Here's today's update, where he notes that unemployment is really 13.5% -- not the more presentable 7.2% that is making headlines:

There is no official definition of depression. Here is mine: When the U-6 unemployment rate rises above 12.5 in conjunction with a stock market that is down close to 50%, the CPI is negative, and nominal wages are stagnant, it's an economic depression. We are in one.
...
The Fed is desperately trying to get you to borrow. I am suggesting you cut all unnecessary spending cold turkey. We cannot spend ourselves to prosperity. It is simply impossible. Job losses are going to mount, few jobs are safe and the best thing to do is to be mentally prepared to be working fewer hours.

My response to all of this mess is: how absurd!

It is absurd that 99% of economists did not see this coming, could not explain what anyone was doing wrong to cause a recession, cannot explain it now, and are recommending exactly the worst government actions possible.

It is absurd that Greenspan, who actually understood economics once upon a time -- thanks to Ayn Rand -- was the latest and greatest cause of this mess.

It is absurd that there is such a thing as "fractional reserve banking." It is absurd that many Objectivists either don't know what it is or think it could be okay in a capitalist system. It took me two months to figure it out -- I'm very slow -- but make no mistake: FRB is fraud. When a bank cannot pay back its "on demand" deposits on demand, the deposit notes it issued are fraudulent. How hard is that to understand? It would not even matter if there existed (as there can't; ask Iceland) some magical guarantee that depositors would never demand their money at the same time, FRB is legalized counterfeiting all of the time. How much counterfeiting? Try 1000% -- since 10-1 ratios are the norm at American banks. And that is inflation, massive inflation. Inflation causes price bubbles. And bubbles pop when reality crashes the party, sending prices back in line with actual wealth.

It is absurd that popular Objectivist blogs haven't been all over this for years, that there seems to be little sense of how bad the economy is going to get still, and that it hasn't been common knowledge among Objectivists since at least 2005 that housing was going to crash. Sadly I read about Objectivists who bought a house in the last two years, apparently thinking the worst was over.

It's absurd that I haven't seen a single comment by another Objectivist (I mean a real Objectivist, not some libertarian dork) on Mish's posts.

It's absurd that Atlas Shrugged has been out for over 50 years and this is still happening.

But my first point is the most important. How can the entire profession of economics be such a colossal failure? How can the very professionals tasked with understanding the economy be its worst enemy? We can blame politicians, Wall Street, sub-prime flippers, and "bankstas" all we want, but the bottom line is that none of this would have been possible if the economists hadn't been on board, i.e., if the vast majority of professional economists weren't incompetent or corrupt or both. (Most are both: not only do they not understand that a country can't consume its way to prosperity, they are collectivist statists anyway.)

Of course the blame goes back one more step -- to the philosophers and other intellectuals who allow and make possible such irrational economics. Why is your IRA or 401K a bad dream? Because philosophy PhD's couldn't care less about reality.

And with that final insight, I realize none of this is really absurd; it is ugly but it makes sense: social collapse is the only thing that can follow -- sooner or later -- the intellectual collapse of the 19th and 20th centuries, which was fueled by the philosophical collapse that began, ironically, in the Enlightenment, by the arch-enemy of reason: Kant -- and the monster he unleashed on Germany and the world: Hegel.

I end with a quote:

Inflation is a man-made scourge, made possible by the fact that most men do not understand it. It is a crime committed on so large a scale that its size is its protection: the integrating capacity of the victims' minds breaks down before the magnitude -- and the seeming complexity -- of the crime, which permits it to be committed openly, in public. For centuries, inflation has been wrecking one country after another, yet men learn nothing, offer no resistance, and perish -- not like animals driven to a slaughter, but worse: like animals stampeding in search of a butcher.

Ayn Rand, "Egalitarianism and Inflation", 1974, in Philosophy: Who Needs It

Bailouts: impractical and immoral

2008-11-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

Sent to my congressmen today. Find yours here.

Do not bail out any more failing companies with tax receipts.

Bailouts are not practical, they are financially destructive. Bankruptcy is a normal part of a free economy, because it allows capital to move from malinvestments to successful enterprises. Giving life-support to a failing company wastes money on a non-productive venture -- money that could be put to productive use, including the creation of viable jobs, at companies chosen by the free market for their ability to create the most valuable goods and services.

But more importantly, bailouts are immoral and statist. Appropriating taxpayer money to a private company is simply the road to fascism, in which the government controls the fundamentals of the economy, thereby violating every individual's right to freely pursue happiness.

Sincerely,

Brad Williams
North Portland

The beginning

2008-11-07T14:26:00.001-08:00

When was he elected, like three days ago, right? I admit I was actually relieved, because I think there would have been actual riots had the equally-repulsive McCain pulled it off. But already reality has set in, because on the change.gov website which supposedly speaks for "The Office of the President-Elect" -- an "Office" which doesn't exist, mind you -- the president-elect doesn't think it's too soon for this:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

Actually, my kids won't be compelled to do jack fracking squat hours of "community service", thank you very much. If America doesn't just say "no" (or something a bit more colorful) to this, it will be more evidence of, let's say, those ominous parallels.

Update:

Already, there's more! With GM and Ford predicted to go bankrupt next year, the Senator has this to say:

I have made it a high priority for my transition team to work on additional policy options to help the auto industry adjust, weather the financial crisis, and succeed in producing fuel-efficient cars here in the United States.

Exactly which laws will the executive branch of the United States government be fulfilling when it helps two companies on the brink of insolvency "weather the crisis"?

In other news, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet just went to $2T, thanks to "bailouts". Meanwhile, unemployment is shooting up, which means tax revenues will plummet. Methinks car companies aren't the only thing insolvent around here.

The march to fascism continues.

Update 2:

Obama has replaced his plan to make students part-time slaves with a plan to make students part-time social workers. Now the site says:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

So the "service" won't be required -- but note that $4,000 is a fortune to a college student, especially for 50 hours of "service." This is still government coercion.

The scariest thing here is perhaps not the content, but the political method: float the statist proposal you really want, but if it attracts too much of an outburst replace it with a similar but evolved statist proposal that will silence the first criticism. I assume this is nothing new in politics, and I expect we will see it over and over again from this administration (which isn't even an administration yet). In the years to come, we are going to get every bit of statism that the filters of the left and right let through, and I fear that is going to be a lot.

db4oProviders Release 1.0

2008-11-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

db4oProviders Release 1.0 now available.

Description: Custom ASP.NET 2.0 providers which use db4o as back-end. Beginning with Membership Provider, Role Provider, and Profile Provider. Code is based on MSDN sample code and is unit-tested. Version 1.0 uses db4o 7.4 and C# 3.0. Prior versions of source use db4o version 6.1 and C# 2.0.

http://www.codeplex.com/db4oProviders