A Chesterton Advent Calendar, Part III

Explanation here.

17 December

Damn it, I sometimes think the only English thing left in England is cherry brandy. —The Quick One

18 December

When, in "[A] Christmas Carol," Scrooge refers to the surplus population, the Spirit tells him, very justly, not to speak till he knows what the surplus is and where it is. The implication is severe but sound. When a group of superciliously benevolent economists look down into the abyss for the surplus population, assuredly there is only one answer that should be given to them; and that is to say, "If there is a surplus, you are a surplus." And if anyone were ever cut off, they would be. —Charles Dickens

19 December

The writer writes these words before Christmas; some readers will read them after Christmas: an awful thought. For I always dimly and dumbly think of life after Christmas as of life after death. I hasten to add that I believe that both will occur. I also add that, as becomes any healthy man, I fear death, but do not fear Christmas—no, not even if it result in death. But I do unconsciously count them both as the end of something and all days beyond them as comparatively vague and visionary. Whenever the year is ending I feel that the world is ending, and I desire to make a good end. I think the best end ever made by mortal man—better than Nelson shot through his stars or Douglas hurling the heart of Bruce—was the death of Faber, who confessed and received all the sacraments of his Church, and on being told he had an hour to live, said: "Then I can hear the last number of 'Pickwick,'" and died hearing it. —Illustrated London News, 11 January, 1913

This Is Why Black Friday Shopping Holds Exactly No Interest for Me

9 Shocking Examples of Black Friday Violence

Here's video of one:



Not only do I find the prospect of getting up insanely early to buy Stuff Made in China not very appealing, but I also prefer, whenever possible, to minimize the likelihood that I'll get trampled, or stabbed, or something.

Tom Morrison is a Mensch

He's forgoing his pension:

Newly elected state Rep. Tom Morrison raised some eyebrows Tuesday during freshmen legislators’ orientation in Springfield when presented with paperwork to join the General Assembly’s lucrative pension system.

That’s because he opted out -- a move officials can recall happening just once before.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” one administrator asked him.

The 35-year-old Palatine Republican, who succeeds six-term state Rep. Suzie Bassi in the 54th House District, realizes that forgoing his pension won’t make a dent in the state’s $13 billion deficit or $80 billion unfunded pension liability.

But Morrison says he’s a proponent of self-sacrifice and leadership by example, and he wasn’t willing to become a financial burden on a system he wants to overhaul.

The district Tom represents is the one in which Jocelyn grew up (and where her parents still live). I know him personally, and he's a heckuva guy.

Oh, and if you're wondering how the State of Illinois came to be saddled with an $80 billion unfunded pension liability, the article goes on to provide some clue:

After four years in office -- the amount of time it takes to become vested -- a current legislator becomes eligible to receive a pension of 12 percent of his salary, along with 3 percent increases if retiring after age 60.

That pension payout spikes to 27 percent of salary after eight years of in office, 45 percent after 12 years of service and finally the maximum 85 percent after 20 years.

Can you say "unsustainable"?

Another clue is here.

Experts, Shmexperts

If you've ever thought that the word "expert" is bandied about way too much, and that many of the people who are commonly regarded as experts are, uh, well, not experts, you're right:

To read the factoids David Freedman rattles off in his book Wrong is terrifying. He begins by writing that about two-thirds of the findings published in the top medical journals are refuted within a few years. It gets worse. As much as 90% of physicians' medical knowledge has been found to be substantially or completely wrong. In fact, there is a 1 in 12 chance that a doctor's diagnosis will be so wrong that it causes the patient significant harm. And it's not just medicine. Economists have found that all studies published in economics journals are likely to be wrong. Professionally prepared tax returns are more likely to contain significant errors than self-prepared returns. Half of all newspaper articles contain at least one factual error. So why, then, do we blindly follow experts?

Because that's what a Herd of Independent Thinkers does.

Overpopulation Underpopulation Is the Problem

Population Research Institute has just released the second installment in its "Overpopulation Is a Myth" series— a slickly produced video that explains in easy-to-understand terms why underpopulation is the real looming demographic disaster:



I first saw this video last week, and about an hour later I received an e-mail from a journalist in the UK asking for a brief comment for a story he was writing about a young British woman who, based on a belief that having children would have damaging effects on the quality of life of people already living, had decided to be sterilized.

I commented on how how tragic it is that someone would decide to not have children based on a mistaken belief that the world is somehow overpopulated—and that, quite the contrary, the real danger in our world is underpopulation. I further pointed out that this is the looming demographic and economic threat that no one wants to talk about. If there are not enough babies being born today, who will support tomorrow's pensioners?

It's a shame that such frantic handwringing about overpopulation still persists in our day. How much more stuck in the Stuck-in-the-Sixties can you get? It's as if Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb had just hit bookstore shelves (and thus had not yet been proven completely wrong), and the writers of Star Trek were still hard at work producing birth control propaganda.

[Cross-posted at Pro-Life Action League and Generations for Life]

Our Tax Dollars at Work

Not far from of our office, on Cicero Avenue, about two blocks south of Peterson Avenue, is this sign:



There's another such sign about a mile west of Haus Jansen, along 26th Street, just east of Harlem Avenue.

I've seen several other such signs around Chicagoland recently. No doubt there are hundreds (thousands?) more elsewhere around the country.

For them that don't know, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is what most of us call simply "The Stimulus". And so, as a result of these signs, we now know that some of the $787 billion of our tax dollars are being used to fund repairs on state and local roads (not to mention the signs themselves).

Could someone explain to me why the good people of Boston, Charleston, Dayton, Louisiana, Washington, Houston, Kingston, Texarkana, Monterey, Faraday, Santa Fe, Tallapoosa, Glen Rock, Black Rock, Little Rock, Oskaloosa, Tennessee, Hennessey, Chicopee, Spirit Lake, Grand Lake, Devils Lake, or Crater Lake (for Pete's sake) should have to pay for roads to be repaired in Illinois?

Disaster?

When you hear the word disaster, what do you think of?

To me, the word brings to mind images of tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, plane crashes — well, you get the idea.

Perhaps it's antediluvian of me to say so, but I don't think of the creation of a unique human being with an eternal soul is an event that would ever warrant such a label.

Silly me.

In an article in today's Chicago Tribune (that reads almost as if it could have been written by someone at Planned Parenthood), we read this:

About 50 percent of pregnancies in the United States are unintended. In good economic times, many families are happy to welcome another child, [ACOG Vice President Dr. Iffath] Hoskins said. But when money is tight, an unintended pregnancy can be a disaster.

It's unclear to me whether it's the ACOG spokesmouth who thinks the creation of a new human life could be a "disaster", or if that's just editorializing thrown in by the writer of the article, one Shari Roan.

Regardless, such misanthropic sentiments are self-evidently appalling, and those who harbor them ought to be ashamed of thesmelves.

A little later in the article, Roan writes:

Every dollar spent in the public health sector on contraceptives saves $3 in childbirth and newborn health-care costs for Medicaid.

Did you catch the subtext there? As Mark Shea has quite rightly pointed out:

The solution of rich Western elites to poverty is always and everywhere, "Just enough of me. Way too much of you. Cull your herds and buy Pepsi."

Ka-ching for Planned Parenthood

When I see dreck like this:



...I can't decide whether to do this:



...or don sackcloth and ashes and recite the penitential psalms (followed, perhaps, by the imprecatory psalms).

Heh

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP

DEAR AMERICAN:

I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE.

I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF 800 BILLION DOLLARS US. IF YOU WOULD ASSIST ME IN THIS TRANSFER, IT WOULD BE MOST PROFITABLE TO YOU.

I AM WORKING WITH MR. PHIL GRAM, LOBBYIST FOR UBS, WHO WILL BE MY REPLACEMENT AS MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY IN JANUARY. AS A SENATOR, YOU MAY KNOW HIM AS THE LEADER OF THE AMERICAN BANKING DEREGULATION MOVEMENT IN THE 1990S. THIS TRANSACTIN IS 100% SAFE.

THIS IS A MATTER OF GREAT URGENCY. WE NEED A BLANK CHECK. WE NEED THE FUNDS AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WE CANNOT DIRECTLY TRANSFER THESE FUNDS IN THE NAMES OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS BECAUSE WE ARE CONSTANTLY UNDER SURVEILLANCE. MY FAMILY LAWYER ADVISED ME THAT I SHOULD LOOK FOR A RELIABLE AND TRUSTWORTHY PERSON WHO WILL ACT AS A NEXT OF KIN SO THE FUNDS CAN BE TRANSFERRED.

PLEASE REPLY WITH ALL OF YOUR BANK ACCOUNT, IRA AND COLLEGE FUND ACCOUNT NUMBERS AND THOSE OF YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN TO WALLSTREETBAILOUT@TREASURY.GOV SO THAT WE MAY TRANSFER YOUR COMMISSION FOR THIS TRANSACTION. AFTER I RECEIVE THAT INFORMATION, I WILL RESPOND WITH DETAILED INFORMATION ABOUT SAFEGUARDS THAT WILL BE USED TO PROTECT THE FUNDS.

YOURS FAITHFULLY MINISTER OF TREASURY PAULSON

I remarked a few months ago on this here weblog that at one time in my life, I thought I knew a lot about economics. Ironically, the more I came to learn about economics, the more I realized I actually don't know very much about it.

Like many of us, I'm left scratching my head wondering whether the current bailout proposal is a good idea. Needless to say, I'm skeptical.

[HT: Mark Shea]

Are There Too Many Brown People?

Um, no.

That's why it's nice to know that in response to agitprop like this article, which I wrote about this last week, and this article, which I didn't, there are eminently sensible rejoinders like this:

Ask the average informed first world citizen what he or she knows about the Philippines and they are likely to tell you that it is a poor, overpopulated, Catholic country, and that the “Catholic” part explains all the rest. A recent article in the Washington Post is typical of the media coverage that feeds this view: “Birthrates Help Keep Filipinos in Poverty,” ran the heading. “Contraceptives, Rejected by Government, Are Unaffordable for Many in Majority-Catholic Nation,” the subheading explained. Enough said.

The Post’s pitch faithfully reflects the view of the global family planning industry, which has long viewed the Philippines as “that Asian upstart” for resisting a national population control program. In the past thirty years official aid agencies and non-government groups led by International Planned Parenthood have poured resources into influencing the Philippines government to enact such a program.

Whence comes this resistance? How has it benefited the Philippines?

Certainly the majority Catholic culture explains a lot. Even when other parts of the Catholic world fell in with the birth control mentality, the Philippine clergy were stalwart in their defence of the principles set out in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae 40 years ago. Asian family values have also played their part.

Now, media messages to the contrary, they stand vindicated. As much of the world confronts a demographic meltdown caused by very low birth rates and ageing populations, the Philippines is in a strong demographic position to build its own social and economic wellbeing -- as well as continue contributing to the workforce of the developed world. That is my ultimate argument in this article.

Read the whole thing.

[HT: Sunnyday at This Is Not a Job for Superheroes]

Woo hoo!

We got our stimulus payment this weekend!

There was a time in my life when I thought I knew a lot about economics. Ironically, the more I came to learn about economics, the more I realized I actually don't know very much about it.

That said, I don't know whether Uncle Sam's plan to drop money from the sky and tell people, "Spend it! NOW!" is such a good idea.

But I will say this: Haus Jansen — and even more so, Garage Jansen — is in dire need of a new roof, so our rebate will help pay for that. (And as much as it pains me to part with such a significant sum of money as is required to reroof our place, the distributist in me is pleased that we're having the job done by a small-time, locally owned contractor who was recommended by a friend of ours who knows more about home maintenance, repair, contracting, etc., than I'll ever know.)

We're doing our part, so if the stimulus plan works and actually does help to kickstart the economy, you can thank us.

Our Tax Dollars at Work

I'm with Mark Shea on this one:

I think we would be well served if most of the executive and legislative branches went without public funding, for the very simple reason that the vast majority of our ruling class are millionaires who don't need my money, but confiscate it from me anyway when I could really use it myself. I'd also love to know that I am not paying for keeping Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter wealthier than they need to be.

Do *you* think we should be paying for Bill Clinton's retirement? Does this seem like a sound use of your confiscated money?

I might be able to be persuaded that elected officials should be paid minimium wage, but if it's such an "honor" to "serve" the people (read: us), I think there's a stronger case to be made that they should be paid a salary of exactly nothing.

Abortion, Politics, and Economics

DarwinCatholic has a fascinating post in which he argues that three assumptions commonly accepted in some circles "are partly or wholly false", to wit:

1) Economic well-being (as measured by a low poverty rate and a high median income) has been greater under Democratic administrations than Republican ones in the last 30 years.

2) Abortion rates have either been lower or have decreased faster under Clinton than under Reagan, HW Bush or W Bush.

3) There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and the abortion rate.

Check thou it out.