poetics.info

My Trip to Shanghai

Allison Taylor — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:17:55 +0000

I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a business trip to Shanghai this past week (December 5-13). The company where I work was putting on a conference to help investors meet up-and-coming small-cap companies — companies like American Lorain, the number-one producer of chestnut products in China; China Natural Gas, the first China-based U.S. listed natural gas company; and China GengShen Minerals, Chinese-based manufacturers of industrial materials for the steel, oil and solar industry. After business was done, me and John were able to fit a little sightseeing in Shanghai in. So, here are my impressions…

Shanghai is a fusion of New York and Paris, only bigger. The city is bustling; it never sleeps. And, almost everything (as of the winter of 2009) is under renovation due to the upcoming World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. I imagine the city by then will be absolutely stunning. The fashionistas in Shanghai are more fashionable than NYC or Paris, and the skyline is more grand and more vast. Incredible. If you never saw anywhere outside of Shanghai, you’d think China was beyond superpower status. But I’m told by natives that there are much more rurals areas. And, lest we not forget that average family’s disposable income in 2007 was about $3,375. Living space in Shanghai is about 140 sq. ft. per person. (Think about that the next time you complain you need a bigger house.) And, official minimum wage is set at about US$1 per day. I’d say China is probably the equivalent of America in the 1920s. They are certainly beyond starving in the streets, but I’m not sure the entire nation has TVs, cell phones, or indoor plumbing yet. But, there is definitely a wonderful sense in the air that they are on the rise — and capitalism is not to be quelled.

At the same time you feel the individualism, you also feel the government’s heavy hand. The paper daily told of executions — drug smuggler, porn seller, Madoffian embezzlers –all executed. There is vitually no crime, no doubt from fear of execution. And, when I overheard an American businessman asking a Chinese businessman how he could buy his land or mineral rights in China, the Chinaman said, “Oh, I can’t sell my land to you. I must sell my land to the government.” So, property rights are nil.

Interestingly, I found Internet access fairly good. I could get my Yahoo! email, and I had no trouble logging in to work on my company’s website. I was even able to read RealClearPolitics.com and DrudgeReport.com, though I am not sure if this is because I was accessing the Internet via a 5-Star hotel or not. I was not able to access Facebook or Twitter. These sites are blocked; and, I think MySpace is blocked too, though I did not check this site.

BBC, CNN and other news sites were shown on our hotel TV; but, for what it’s worth, no Fox News.

We managed one side trip to the city of Hang Zhou, which used to be the capital of China. It reached its peak around 1179 A.D.

Pictures say a 1,000 words…I’ll post more when I have time.

An Inconvenient Truth: ‘Climate-Gate’ Is Real, Global Warming Science Is Bogus

Allison Taylor — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 01:14:03 +0000

Robert Tracinski writes at RealClearPolitics.com on the “scandal of the century” — that the science behind global warming is bogus. In case you haven’t heard, thousands of emails have been obtained by a hackers that expose how scientists working at Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain’s University of East Anglia manipulated data and lied to support their theory of man-made global warming.

In fact, the data actually shows the Earth is cooling. VerumSerum.com has a good post on the emails, which leads to another blog, wattsupwiththat.com, showing the emails from Willis Eschenbach — who believes he is the person who filed the original Freedom of Information Act request that resulted in the coverup.

Tracinski writes:

For more than a decade, we’ve been told that there is a scientific ‘consensus’ that humans are causing global warming, that ‘the debate is over’ and all ‘legitimate’ scientists acknowledge the truth of global warming. Now we know what this ‘consensus’ really means. What it means is: the fix is in.

This is an enormous case of organized scientific fraud, but it is not just scientific fraud. It is also a criminal act. Suborned by billions of taxpayer dollars devoted to climate research, dozens of prominent scientists have established a criminal racket in which they seek government money-Phil Jones has raked in a total of £13.7 million in grants from the British government-which they then use to falsify data and defraud the taxpayers. It’s the most insidious kind of fraud: a fraud in which the culprits are lauded as public heroes. Judging from this cache of e-mails, they even manage to tell themselves that their manipulation of the data is intended to protect a bigger truth and prevent it from being ‘confused’ by inconvenient facts and uncontrolled criticism.

This is huge, folks. When you consider how long the lies have been perpetrated, the millions of dollars spent on fraudulent scientific research (taxpayer money to boot), not to mention an entire generation of indoctrinated youth who think the sky will fall if we don’t all drive electric cars — this is a crime of unfathomable proportions.

There is also a good editorial at the Washington Times, posted today on the scandal. In it, the WT observes:

“The story has gotten worse since the global-cooling cover-up was exposed through a treasure trove of leaked e-mails a week ago. The Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia has been incredibly influential in the global-warming debate. The CRU claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its research and mathematical models form the basis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report. The CRU claims the world’s largest temperature data set, and its research and mathematical models form the basis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2007 report.”

It will be interesting to watch how the scandal will impact the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where Obama is expected to personally commit the U.S. to slashing greenhouse gas emissions by 17% in the next ten years to help reduce global warming. This could be a costly mistake on a number of levels, economically and politically.

Liz Cheney: ‘We have grave concerns’

Allison Taylor — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:02:54 +0000

This speech by Liz Cheney at a recent Redstate Gathering is worth reading. The title says it all: “We have grave concerns about the path they’ve put us on.” Posted by Liz Cheney at Redstate.com. I would post the Youtube video of it, but it appears to be down.

The U.S.’ Great Leap Backward

Allison Taylor — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:11:36 +0000

I found this old, half-written post in my drafts, dated January 24, 2009:

It gets more fascinating by the minute, with the “unchartered” economic waters and the New Left controlling the White House (and the House and Senate). Watching the inauguration, I was momentarily hopeful that Obama will prove to be a centrist leader, a sort of middle-of-the-roader like Clinton, rather than a radical leftist who will implement socialism every chance he gets. His recent appointments, which include so many from Clinton’s administration (including the former First Lady as Secretary of State(!), seemed to support this hope.

I now realize the audacity of my hope. The idea that Obama will be more Clinton than Carter is somewhat baseless even with his seemingly pragmatic appointments. Much about Obama remains a mystery, but his true ideological leanings are already beginning to show through.

Prior to the election and up until Inauguration Day, he was careful to keep his rhetoric an evocative mix of statements that promoted both self-responsibility and government welfare. But clearly his newly signed “stimulus package” is about as anti-capitalist as it gets. If you haven’t read the full text (a mind-numbing 647 pages, in pdf), this summary at Powerline blog is easier to digest. Included in the $825 billion spending spree that includes upwards of $136 billion in social programs.)

We know he is closely affiliated or has worked for some of the most radical leftists in America (Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Louis Farrakhan, et al). But somehow he has managed to rise to power unscathed by these connections.

Obama’s popularity is a tipping point in this country and illustrates a frightening fact: that there are now more people in America who want government to solve their ever-increasing problems — which are mostly a direct result of government intervention into the economy in the first place, such as rising healthcare costs, inefficient energy infrastructure, poor quality education, and on an on — than there are people who believe they can be successful on their own.

The left believes that there are things that governments do better — healthcare, welfare, infrastructure, banking, education and energy — and with the elections of 2008, the Democrats now have all the power to expand government control in these areas.

Since I wrote this nine months ago, a lot has happened. Foreign policy debacles aside, on the domestic front, at least one White House Czar (Van Jones) was exposed as a communist and resigned; the White House Communications Director, Anita Dunn, was exposed as self-declared Maoist; Obama received a Nobel Peace Prize for no good reason; and the Senate is debating a health care bill that isn’t even written yet (so, of course, they can’t read it). Something is beyond rotten in Denmark (not to mention Norway).

But despite the rampant corruption in our federal government, I am heartened to see that I was wrong when I wrote that there are more people in this country who want socialism. I now believe there are actually more people who reject socialism. And I am heartened to see so many people stepping forward to not only expose the socialist proponents of the Left but to protest the insanity in Washington. Check out the sign at the end: Capitalism is freedom.

There is hope yet.

Health Care Is Not a Right

Allison Taylor — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:54:07 +0000

John David Lewis (via RealClearPolitics.com) on the rising cost of health care: “Those who want to see an end to spiraling medical costs should challenge the premises behind the government interventions.”

Efforts to rush and pass health-care reform legislation are predicated on the idea that medical care is a “right.” It is not.

Lewis observes:

Health care is a service, which we all need, and none of us are better served by placing our lives and our doctors under coercive bureaucratic control.

Steyn: Health Care Is Liberty Issue

Allison Taylor — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:18:52 +0000

Mark Steyn nails it on the health-care issue:

The president needs to get something passed. Anything. The details don’t matter. Once it’s in place, health-care ‘reform’ can be re-reformed endlessly. Indeed, you’ll be surprised how little else we talk about. So, for example, public funding for abortions can be discarded now, and written in — as it surely will be by some judge — down the road. What matters is to ram it through, get it done, pass it now — in whatever form.

If this seems a perverse obsession for a nation with a weak economy, rising unemployment, and a war on two fronts, it has a very sound strategic logic behind it.

As I wrote in National Review a week or two back, health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. That’s its attraction for an ambitious president: It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists — to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs in every particular. [emphasis mine]

I hope Obama’s health-care bill does not pass, but I don’t want it to fail because the costs are insane — (the Congressional Budget Office estimates the proposed plan will cost over $1 trillion over the next five years). I don’t want any government plan for health care. I oppose state-run health care because it is a leftist power grab that comes from people who only want more power over others. The left has an insatiable and irrational desire to run everybody’s lives — from how much of your own money you can keep to what cigarettes you can smoke to what sodas you can drink. (Watch, they’ll be taxing soda soon.)

No, there is nothing at all magnanimous about the Democrats’ goal to “reform health care.” Their intentions are not noble. It is never noble to confiscate other people’s money or to declare that you have the right to other people’s money.

For exceptional analyses of the dangers of socialized medicine and why we need to oppose it, I refer you to www.WeStandFIRM.org — a site started by Paul Hsieh and some other Objectivist friends back in Colorado.

Obama-Gates Very Revealing

Allison Taylor — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 17:41:48 +0000

This is an excellent article by Melanie Phillips at Spectator.com on Obama’s reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge, Mass. police. The very fact that Obama even commented on this event (!) is very revealing and shows that he is not above racial prejudice himself. I agree with Phillips that Obama’s 20-30 year history of aligning with racists and Marxists was unjustly dismissed by the left-leaning media as unimportant facts. She writes:

His whole background from the earliest days onwards was steeped in anti-white grievance politics of the most bitter and corrosive kind. This was all ignored. His two-decade membership of an anti-white church was ignored, his early anti-white mentors such as Frank Marshall Davis were ignored, his participation on the Nation of Islam ‘Million Man march’ and his association with Nation of Islam cadres were ignored.

We are all Iranians

Allison Taylor — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:23:21 +0000

I’ve been watching this story on Iran’s “election” build for weeks now; and I, like everyone in the U.S. just assumed that Friday’s vote would come and go and that Ahmadinejad would be reinstated, as dictators always are, and that would be that.

Then, when I started to see images on blogs of rallies starting at Tehran University, I thought it was just a few rebellious youth. But then I started to see streams of Twitters from people in Iran talking about the police coming for them, and in their communication there was a determination I did not expect. Then, to my horror, I started to see images of bullet-riddled dorm room doors, bloody fighting, fires, continuing police brutality–there were reports of police firing into crowds and at least one person confirmed dead.

I notice that many of the larger news outlets were not reporting the uprisings much until last night, but instead on Saturday many were leading with stories like crowds hold “celebrations for Ahmadinejad.”

But then social media outlets dominated and broke through. I think the government in Iran cracked down on the Internet, but people were still able to Twitter using mobile phones. It’s almost as if the youth (those under 25, who are reportedly 70% of Iran’s population) have seized on a rare opportunity to let the world know what is really happening in their country. I fear they only have a few days left before the remaining foreign reporters are expelled or quieted. The foreign reporters who were allowed in to cover the “election” will be sent home now. I fear the government will become more violent at that point, and I hope the international community will not forget what it happening there and what has happened to the people.

No matter the outcome, I think it is too late for the Iranian government to escape without injury. The current regime has lost any remaining respect they had, and I believe the days of dictatorship in Iran are numbered. The people want to be free, and this is clear.

I just read on Bloomberg.com that “[H]undreds of thousands of people demonstrated today in downtown Tehran at a rally led by Ahmadinejad’s defeated opponent, Mir Houssein Mousavi, who charges widespread fraud in the June 12 vote.”

This is a huge movement of brave dissenters! Now, I don’t know Mousavi, and I don’t know how he would rule under the clerics. But I still think the revolt itself is a hopeful sign in the right direction.

In honor of the protestors, and as we approach July 4th, here are the opening words of our own Declaration of Independence…

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world…

A word about the Website

Allison Taylor — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:57:19 +0000

My host server did some maintenance a few weeks back and ever since then my WordPress theme hasn’t worked. They told me I need a new theme. But before that happens, I need to upgrade my WordPress version. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while now anyway. Needless to say, I haven’t found the time to focus on this project but will very soon. (I miss my customizations and my Amazon ads!)

When I upgrade the site this weekend, I plan to rearrange some things.

Gary Kaltbaum Let’s Loose: Government Needs to Get Out of the Market’s Way

Allison Taylor — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:46:04 +0000

Part II: Why Obama Scares Me

I’ve been remiss in my blogging but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been following current events closely. I’m in shock. I can’t believe how fast the Obama Administration is moving toward a socialist economic system. I’m outraged that the Bush Administration set the stage. It seems like yesterday I wrote that Obama scares me, and while I was working to gather up evidence to show why he is a hardcore leftist, i.e. as hardcore as his cohorts, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Bill Ayers, et al; he came into power and starting passing horrible, stupid laws.

I wanted to think that maybe he had risen to power pretending to be a liberal but that he might actually govern pragmatically. I was hoping for this because even though a pragmatist is dangerous, at least a pragmatist is not necessarily consciously evil. But the events of the past few weeks leave me no choice but to conclude that Obama is dangerous for this country. He is, as Robert Tracinski said, “[N]ow preparing to lead the left’s effort to reconstitute itself in the first serious way since the Fall of Communism.”

I am very concerned now. I am not afraid yet. Fear will come when as a writer I am silenced with threats. I do believe we are at a tipping point, though; and, we are perhaps nearing a state of censorship, if not now, then in the next three to five years for sure.

So, why am I so afraid of socialism as an economic policy? What, after all, is wrong with socialized medicine or free health care for all? Why not redistribute wealth to the less fortunate?

Because it is a bad idea and it never works. And, worse, wherever socialism is tried, it leads to total bankruptcy of body and mind. Socialism destroys life. It sucks the life out of people until they are rioting in the streets or standing in line for a loaf of very expensive bread. It expands insidiously, like inflation, until there is no entrepreneurship, innovation or passion left.

Socialism, like any truly bad idea, is anti-life because it goes against human nature. With socialism there is no justice. Socialism brings out the worst in people, not the best, as with capitalism. With capitalism, I work and I keep the fruits of my labor. If I want to give my money to you because you are struggling, nothing in a capitalist system stops this transaction. When government steps in and forces me to give up my money to countless, nameless, faceless others, it is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme intended to extract money from my bank account into the public coffers so that politicians can use that money however they want. Socialism is legalized theft; it is slavery. Slavery is bad.

Tonight, I happened to be listening to one of my favorite radio personalities, Gary Kaltbaum of Investor’s Edge. A great show if you are into economics and markets at all. Gary went into a rant during part of the show, and his words summed up my thoughts on these recent events and Obama pretty well. The only thing he left out was Greenspan’s treason in all this.

Here is an excerpt from his February 19th show: (His full webcast is here.)

So, I will ask the same question that I asked when George Bush and Hank Paulson came out with the TARP — otherwise known as ‘Taxpayers Again being Raped by Politicians’ — Hey, Barack, why do I, Gary Kaultbaum, handsome and buffed…have to pay for somebody else’s mortgage? Why? Why do I have to pay?

Hey, George Bush, why do I have to pay for GM, and Chrysler, and Citi-puke and Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers? Why?

Somewhere along the line, ladies and gentlemen, there has got to be enough of us, because I got news for you, 95% of us pay our mortgages! And we vote! Do any of you know they have taken $1.5 trillion bucks out of this economy to pay off crooks? And now a scamulous-stimulous plan that does nothing for nobody except a bunch spending pork bills that should be in separate bills to be voted on, shoved down your throats with scare tactics by Obama and his people just like the Bush people did his scare tactics with that stupid TARP plan.

Have any of you gotten it yet? That since their proposal of the TARP we’ve gone from 11,388 on the Dow to 7,465? So forget my opinion, forget everybody’s opinion. How about the market? This thing is screaming! This market is screaming at the Bush Administration and now the Obama Administration. It’s screaming, ‘Get the heck out of the way! Leave us alone! Stop creating money out of thin air and destroying what is left of what we have!’

And I heard Obama today with this Canadian Prime Minister, the next move is they’re going to fight ‘global warming.’ What global warming? The last decade was the coldest in god knows how long. What are these people reading? They’re insane! All of them! And we all sit there, and I’m so worried now that they’re going to tip us over! Obama said this is just the beginning, not the end! So you know what’s next: 50% tax rates! You know, we used to have 80% tax rates! They’re going to destroy us! All in the name of sacrifice. I’ll tell them to take sacrifice and stick it!

I work my butt off to earn the money that I make, and I pay a ton in taxes! And they want more, to give to GM, who has mismanaged their company for god knows how long! To give to Citigroup! Criminals! These are criminals! They committed crimes! Out in plain sight! And nothing!

Blah, blah, blah, blah, Barack Obama…65% approval….Not in my household! Yeah, I’m the guy that has lost no money in this bear market, but I want bull markets! I want to meet people throughout my day that are happy and are loving life and are creating jobs and are working hard and realizing that when they make a dollar they’re going to keep a lot of it!

And I watch this Barack Obama, ‘change and hope’, this guy’s talking about the end of the world every minute of every day! And don’t get me started on George Bush again — he’s gone — the numskull that he was!

Y’all out there better start listening and get off this politics thing, Democrat/Republican — put them all on the bottom of the ocean and that will be the good start! I am going to get louder and louder about this! Hopefully, somebody’s listening! Before the Dow goes to a 1,000!

Thank you, Gary, for saying this. (Read more by Gary at http://www.garyk.com.)

Make no mistake — a socialist agenda like the one Barack is leading is nothing more than a power grab over everyone’s freedom. If you do not have economic freedom, i.e., the ability to choose how you make and how you spend your own money, you have no freedom at all.

And, when a society loses freedom, especially freedom of speech, it gets ugly. By ugly I mean you see more and more violence. In a full socialist system, we all work for the State, and the State controls us. During the transition from freedom to statism, people get angrier and angrier because they sense the injustice of it all. They start to resent that they have less money, but they don’t understand why they make less, why there are fewer jobs, or why things cost more. They start lashing out. And then government uses that violence as an excuse to grab more power.

Is this what we want? Because we have to decide that answer now. Time is running out. We are at a tipping point. We have two years to vote back in supporters of a free market and to vote out the Democrats, who are obviously more interested in saving crooks and supporting their own elitist agendas than worrying about the average person working for a living. When inflation hits because they are printing money, it is going to be ugly.

Margaret Thatcher once said, “Socialism works until you run out of the other guy’s money.”

We’ve run out of money. We are broke. To start down the path to total socialism (and nationalism) now is really to destroy America and to begin down the path to totalitarian dictatorship with all the bloody implications of that prospect.

Does that sound like hyperbole? Ask yourself why they (Bush and Obama) use scare tactics to move their policy changes along so swiftly. Have you ever seen such speed in Congress? No, they are seizing on the moment, i.e., the housing bubble burst that they created with their crookedness and lies; and they are making a good old-fashioned power grab. A power grab just like Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has opined he doesn’t want to miss: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is that it is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

The Democrats never thought they could get socialized medicine or nationalized banks in this country. Now, with majorities in both the House and the Senate and control of the executive branch; they are like kids in a candy store, frothing at the mouth over our money. And they just got $1.6 trillion or $1.7 trillion of it, give or take a few billion.

The actions of the current administration are clear: They do not have your best interest at heart. And I mean any American, regardless of ethnicity or religion. People who want power over people don’t care what color you are. They just want to take your money and give it to other people while they surreptitiously scrape a few million or billion off the top for themselves. They want to create a massive, helpless social welfare class so that they can create an even more extravagant ruling political class system for themselves.

I agree with Gary Kaltbaum — throw them all into the ocean. Vote out anyone and everyone who does not fight against these so-called “bailouts” and “stimulus packages.” Vote out anyone who talks doom and gloom. Vote in anyone who supports more freedom, freer markets/less regulation, capitalism, and more self-responsibility.

Don’t let it go.