Nicky Cheese

As loyal readers will know, earlier this month I was in St. Louis documenting a civil rights initiative. There, I witnessed firsthand that which is ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

Intimidating to say the least.

Yesterday, Stanley Kurtz at National Review wrote an excellent article on the organization, and moreover, Obama’s relation to it. I’ll except it at length below:

…Acorn is the key modern successor of the radical 1960’s “New Left,” with a “1960’s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism” to match. Acorn, says Stern, grew out of “one of the New Left’s silliest and most destructive groups, the National Welfare Rights Organization.” In the 1960’s, NWRO launched a campaign of sit-ins and disruptions at welfare offices. The goal was to remove eligibility restrictions, and thus effectively flood welfare rolls with so many clients that the system would burst. The theory, explains Stern, was that an impossibly overburdened welfare system would force “a radical reconstruction of America’s unjust capitalist economy.” Instead of a socialist utopia, however, we got the culture of dependency and family breakdown that ate away at America’s inner cities — until welfare reform began to turn the tide.

…Acorn’s new goals are municipal “living wage” laws targeting “big-box” stores like Wal-Mart, rolling back welfare reform, and regulating banks — efforts styled as combating “predatory lending.” Unfortunately, instead of helping workers, Acorn’s living-wage campaigns drive businesses out of the very neighborhoods where jobs are needed most. Acorn’s opposition to welfare reform only threatens to worsen the self-reinforcing cycle of urban poverty and family breakdown.

…According to Stern, Acorn’s radical agenda sometimes shifts toward “undisguised authoritarian socialism.” Fully aware of its living-wage campaign’s tendency to drive businesses out of cities, Acorn hopes to force companies that want to move to obtain “exit visas.” “How much longer before Acorn calls for exit visas for wealthy or middle-class individuals before they can leave a city?” asks Stern, adding, “This is the road to serfdom indeed.”

…What has Barack Obama got to do with all this? Plenty. Let’s begin with Obama’s pre-law school days as a community organizer in Chicago. Few people have a clear idea of just what a “community organizer” does. A Los Angeles Times piece on Obama’s early Chicago days opens with the touching story of his efforts to build a partnership with Chicago’s “Friends of the Parks,” so that parents in a blighted neighborhood could have an inviting spot for their kids to play. This is the image of Obama’s organizing we’re supposed to hold.

…The shame of it is that when the L. A. Times returned to Obama’s stomping grounds, it found the park he’d helped renovate reclaimed by drug dealers and thugs. The community organizer strategy may generate feel-good moments and best-selling books, but I suspect a Wal-Mart as the seed-bed of a larger shopping complex would have done far more to save the neighborhood where Obama worked to organize in the “progressive” fashion. Unfortunately, Obama’s Acorn cronies have blocked that solution.

To check out the entire article, click here.

Last week, I completely forgot about my Rando Thursday Whatever. Yikes. So this week’s edition will be extra rando. Yes!

I picked up a Reader for the first time in months. Politically, it swings consistently left but at least I don’t feel dumber after reading it. In today’s straight dope, we are reminded of the uselessness – no, harmfulness – in continuing to manufacture pennies (and, egad, nickels).

Q: Long ago you determined that it still cost less than a penny to mint a penny. It’s a far different world today, and I find it hard to believe that the cost of minting a penny is less than the face value.

A: It’s true that as of 1998, when last we discussed this topic, minting pennies wasn’t a losing proposition. Each one then cost about four-fifths of a cent to manufacture, giving them a low but still positive profit margin — or seigniorage, as it’s known in the currency biz — of 20 percent. But that was then. Stamping out a one-cent piece now costs about 1.25 cents. Given pennies’ vestigial role in the economy, the government’s insistence on minting them has gone from pointless atavism to expensive hobby.

…And the penny’s not even the big problem. The reigning negative-seigniorage champ is the humble nickel, which now has an extravagant price tag of about 7.7 cents.

You probably have heard of the stink Northwestern graduates made when they heard who their commencement speaker is going to be. Yes, it’s Mayor Daley and hey, I sympathize. I certainly wouldn’t want, nor find inspiration in, such a bastion of cronyism and slush funds. But, come on, these brats are complaining for all the wrong reasons:

“I thought we’d have someone with a much higher profile, especially after [Northwestern] President Bienen hyped it so much,” said senior Simon Lu. “I thought it would be someone with a national or international profile…I was hoping someone more famous would show up.”

And now I’ll leave you with a classic skit from Mr. Show, which isn’t at all public, nor worthless for that matter:

Given the holiday, this week’s NLADP pick, “Soldier’s Blues” by Topp Gun, is quite appropriate:

Topp Gun – Soldier’s Blues

Like it?…d/l the entire compilation for free here. You’ll notice a past NLADP pick came from it as well.

If you haven’t heard already:

DENVER – The Libertarian Party yesterday picked former Republican representative Bob Barr to be its presidential candidate after six rounds of balloting.

…Barr, 59, left the GOP in 2006 over what he called bloated spending and civil liberties intrusions by the Bush administration

Notice anything in particular below?

First one to get it will receive…uh, how about a free Bob Barr sticker!

Did I mention I’m back in Chicago? I am and it’s great to be back! With one exception…

Guess which is from Houston and which belongs in Chicago?

Pretty obvious….Chicago is on the right, with – yes – the highest gas prices in the nation.

How? Why? WHY!?!

Regardless how much as Dick Durbin stresses otherwise, it’s not the oil companies; it’s this.

Hardly timely but since I (strive to) blog about all things relating to personal autonomy…I want to cite the following article from the mid-April edition of the Economist. The context is political pandering, which all too often has the effect of replacing the concept of rational human beings with the concept of ‘the masses’, or-to borrow a term from ancient Rome-plebeians.

Yes, not the most inspiring view of the human condition, and not the view that most Americans accept. Myself included.

But this pandering to “ordinary Americans” is annoying in all sorts of ways. Isn’t America supposed to be a meritocracy? Two-thirds of Americans reject the idea that people’s chances in life are determined by circumstances that are beyond their control, a far higher proportion than in Europe. Almost 90% say that they admire people who have got rich through hard work. Yet whenever elections come around politicians treat the people at the bottom of the heap as the embodiment of American values. And aren’t Americans supposed to believe in self-reliance? America’s farms are some of the country’s biggest subsidy hogs. Many small towns-Congressman Jack Murtha’s Johnstown in central Pennsylvania is an egregious example-are kept alive only by federal pork. [emphasis mine]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we are more than mere automatons. Own it!

My knowledge of Newt Gingrich is limited, for the most, to the following interview by Ali G:

Really, I have a faint memory of Newt and, like most people, associate the Contract with America with him but that’s about it. It’s a memory with positive undertones though. Like the Ali G video articulated, there was welfare reform. And term limits. A balanced budget. All of which I consider good legislation…and Newt was leading it!

However, in the last week, I’ve randomly come across some items-articles, blogs-that dispute this positive association.

Big ups to Subtle as a Sledgehammer for sending me this link, an NPR article with an excellent excerpt from Ron Paul’s bestselling The Revolution: A Manifesto (which I will in turn pathetically excerpt) in which he briefly critiques the ‘Contract’:

a toothless, soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

I know, not much substance but I thought I’d link to it anyway.

Tennessee Cottonmouth gets more into it, giving Newt a scathing indictment based on his reaction to Bob Barr’s presidential announcement here (copied below):

Look at the former House Speaker presuming to lecture Bob Barr on the danger a robust Libertarian Party presidential candidacy poses for Freedom and Pursuit of Happiness in America.

“Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion,” jabbered Gingrich a couple days ago in the Washington Times upon recieving word that the former Republican Barr is officially pursuing the LP nomination in Denver next week, and if successful will likely be kicking John McCain square in the musty folds of his crotch all summer long.

Let’s be clear: Newt Gingrich has never been an ally of anything or anyone remotely libertarian, and for him to even mouth an understanding of what motivates adherents of the Freedom Philosophy to believe the way they do is an act of stark profanation capable of inducing waves of emises. Newt Gingrich is a quintessential right-wing progressive interventionist who’s got a fundamental ax to grind — like the left-wing progressive interventionists he loathes culturally and admires ethically — against all things pro-individualist and anti-statist. Newt’s ideological rallying yawp, like that of John McCain and, indeed, the Democrats, is “Subordinate Your Life and Happiness to Patriotism, Collectivism and Government’s Divination of the ‘Common Good.’”

Newt, of course, is one of the chief Republican nitwits responsible a decade or so ago for purposefully derailing the party’s mildly libertarian-leaning “Contract With America” — the electorate’s November 1994 embrace of which helped the Stupid Party roll back Democrats into the congressional minority for the first time in roughly an eon.

But as was well documented in Cato Institute budget analyst Stephen Slivinski’s “Buck Wild: How Republicans Broke the Bank and Became the Party of Big Government,” Gingrich and his rabid band of nationalist-socialists endeavored to bring about a new millennium of Big-Government Love. For a pat on the head, a kiss on the cheek and a few pieces of political silver from fellow adultery addict Bill Clinton, Gingrich sold out, discontinued, decommissioned and dismantled the Republican Revolution — and it’s been all about expanding the abusive scope and power of federal leviathan for the GOP ever since.

To explain the title, link here…it may be a metaphorical stretch. I haven’t decided.

Remember the punk/ska movement of the late ’90s? I was in high school and it was a pretty big deal. Definitely the trendiest music-wave I’ve ever lived through and I, yes, I embraced it…with blind, groundless elitism.

An odd psychology, indeed…one that celebrated its underground quality, its exclusiveness, in a totally ostentatious manner. I mean, I went of of my way to advertise the punk and ska bands I liked, only to condemn them when they achieved commercial success (i.e. Green Day, Goldfinger, Blink 182)

…as if money corrupted the creative process or purity or whatever, I’m not sure. I said “sell out” and “poseur” a lot though–I was dumb and in high school.

Anyways, in 1994, the Santa-Barbara based punk band Lagwagon put out the album Trashed and the song “Know it all” quickly became a fan favorite. It’s a song made fun of this music-snob attitude–it’s stupidity, it’s hypocrisy.

A few lyrical excerpts:

And alot of the bands on the college charts are great bands
Until they get signed. Then you hate them
It’s such bullshit – you used to love them you hypocrite…

I remember you and I listening to bands that we liked
Only the songs mattered to you
But now you’re a D.J. and preaching that hype
“Corporate Rock Sucks”…

The bands are good ’til they make enough cash
To eat food and get a pad
Then they’re sold out and their music is cliché
Because talent’s exclusive to bands without pay…

Why am mentioning this? And, moreover, why is this song apart of my libertarian dance party mix?

Because I think this song speaks to the belief that the exchange of money corrupts integrity and creativity, that commerce negates morality. That getting paid for one’s talent diminishes the value or meaning of that talent. (It doesn’t.)

And you can’t say that this attitude doesn’t exist. All to often it finds its way into our public policy, obfuscating legitimate issues like organ transplants or prostitution and making debate on their merits a pipe dream.

I don’t think that’s a stretch.

In any case, it’s a great song. Enjoy.

Lagwagon – Know it all