The Silverado Moment

In the movie "Silverado," the character played by Kevin Kline has an awakening. His friend, played by Linda Hunt, is threatened with death by the evil sheriff, played by Brian Dennehy. Hunt points out the obvious to the gambler and gunfighter character played by Kline: the Dennehy character can't hurt her if he's dead. In the same way, a crisis of money, in State budgets, is driving already a "Silverado Moment" for White middle class voters. Nearly every state is in budgetary crisis, and the bigger states with terrible demographics are in severe crisis. California faces a $6 billion budget crisis in the next six months and $20 billion for the next 12 budget cycle after that. Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts face similar budget crises. Spurred by middle class flight, and demographic transformation into Brazil like favelas filled with the "Mexodus" of Mexican immigrants, nearly all illegal and very, very poor, with a few highly liberal rich Whites, these states simply cannot pay for the budgets they must have, often by statute or state constitutions or federal consent decrees. There are not enough White middle class taxpayers to fund the required massive outlays in health, education, welfare, and prisons.Sky high taxes make raising new taxes a prospect sure to create massive voter revolt.

Hence the Silverado Moment. Voters in these states, are increasingly realizing they can have the nice things they want, libraries open, beautiful parks, safe streets, saving the obscure mice and birds in wetlands, if they do just one thing. Deport every illegal alien they can find (and their kids) and let the Federal government go hang. Bingo! Budget balanced, with no new taxes.


The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Mexicans outnumber Whites in K-12 students, and about 40% of all K-12 students parents cannot vote (i.e. they are likely illegal aliens). This fact is driving the Silverado Moment.

No, White voters don't want to "kill" Mexican illegal aliens. They just want to deport them, so they won't have to pay for their high costs. Illegal alien labor is not cheap, certainly not for taxpayers.


The Orange County Register posted a budgetary breakdown. Roughly $37 billion in the current budget year goes for K-12 Education, about $37 billion for Health and Welfare, and about $9 billion for prison/corrections expenditures. These are the biggest budgetary areas, all others including Higher Education are minor categories, and cannot be cut radically without impacting middle class, and crucially, upper class White voters.

Assuming a 40% reduction in expenditures in K-12, Health and Welfare, and prisons, with widespread deportation (or even pushing out to other states through vigorous enforcement), you would be looking at decreases of $14.8 billion in K-12, $14.8 billion in Health/Welfare, and 3.6 billion in Prison/Corrections. Totaling $33.2 billion in cuts, without tax increases. Of course, enforcement and deportations cost. Not the least of which is that the Feds and Obama will fight hard to keep "instant voters" in the US, no matter what the costs to States and their taxpayers

This crisis is coming because unfunded pension obligations, among the States, is estimated to be around $500 billion. The unfunded obligations exist because there is not enough money to pay for both contractural obligations to public employees and expenditures on illegal aliens and their children. Already bond markets are reacting badly, with California and Illinois reaching Greek levels of yields (yields are the inverse of prices, cheap bonds equal high yield bonds or, junk level, essentially). California even had to withdraw some bonds due to tepid investor reaction at the prices. California must eventually offer the bonds at junk-level prices.

Rahm Emmanuel and Saul Alinksy counseled to never let a crisis go to waste. Well, the crisis is here. Like Kevin Kline in Silverado, middle class White taxpayers face tax annihilation in a time of stagnant wages, and rapidly increasing food and energy and clothing prices, with no more ability to simply borrow today to put off reckoning tomorrow. To pay, essentially, for the costs associated with educating the children of dirt poor peasants from Mexico who came to America illegally. Or spending welfare on illegal aliens and their children, almost all of them from Mexico. Or spending on prisons and corrections for the massive influx of illegal aliens, many of them low level drug criminals associated with the Zetas or Gulf Cartel.

In addition, many states have constitutional or statute requirements for certain percentages of the budget to be spent on various categories: K-12 education, or welfare. With Obama's Spendulus, many federal funds (that are now running out) came with requirements for states to massively increase (permanently) welfare spending, there is not much to cut.

Unless ... Unless ...

Illegals simply get deported. By States deciding to ignore a federal government and President who is a clueless and destructive idiot. Somewhere, somehow, a Governor and Legislature will decide that a President who cannot jail (and punish) Julian Assange can be defied internally. One cannot be weak abroad and not be also, weak at home. Deciding, as President Andrew Jackson said, to allow the Supreme Court having made their decision to enforce it.

In the end, it will be all about the money. Even Santa Monica and Malibu millionaire marxist liberals care about (their) money. Taxes on their real estate holdings are the next targets, voiced by the uber-rich (David Geffen, Eli Broad) against the merely rich (say, David Spade). The remaining middle class Whites are being squeezed, and don't figure to be very sympathetic to what amounts to a colonization of the US by Mexican peasants. Roughly 7.2 billion for enforcement would be available ($33.2 billion in savings minus the current 18 month budget deficit of 26 billion) under a California plan to simply balance the budget by deporting illegals (and their children).

Of course Jerry Brown and a Democratic Legislature will not ever consider this. Nor will the folks of Massachusetts, or New York. But New Jersey is probably another measure. Or possibly even Illinois (Mayor Daley getting out of town means a scandal is brewing). Definitely places like South Carolina, or Georgia, or Tennessee, can see the way to balance budgets without punitive tax increases that push the White middle class into poverty.

Setting up a confrontation with a President who has gambled everything that he can be weak abroad, deliberately, without being weak at home. In other words, States taking what the President and feds have ceded: control over the borders. With the approval of their taxpayers and voters, in places where moneyed interests are tied to real estate, not mobile assets able to be moved globally. Not obviously, California, but other states with more favorable demographics (bigger slices of White middle class voters and taxpayers, more real estate owners, less uber-rich and Mexican illegals) seem to be moving towards this.

It is always about the money.
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Where Does Wikileaks Money Come From?

The biggest mystery about Wikileaks is where its money comes from. Running Wikileaks is not cheap. Reports indicate a staff of about 20, multiple servers in multiple countries, with fairly large bandwidth charges, plus frequent moves to different hosting providers in different nations. Itself expensive and requiring a well-paid staff. Wikileaks is not using bare-bones hosting and staff out of outsourcing India, for sure. Then there is travel. Julian Assange travels around the world, to avoid arrest, moving about every week to a new location. All told I've come up with a total yearly cost of $1.3 million, minimum, not including Assange's likely generous salary.

So where is the money coming from?


I've constructed a baseline for the costs. Servers, are likely around $7,000 USD a month, or $84,000 a year. It might be more. Remember, Wikileaks must have extensive hot-backup, large security measures, and the ability to move content quickly to a new hosting platform. This costs far more than your basic hosting at Rackmount or Bluehost. Then of course there are the massive bandwidth charges, that probably amount to around $7,000 a month minimum. The money could well be higher.

Wikileaks has a staff of roughly around 20 people. These people are not ill-trained outsourced staff in India or China, with English as their next language. They include, translators, expert coders, systems administrators, all earning high Western wages. Likely around $60,000 per year at a minimum. Some probably more, others less, but that is the likely staffing cost. Recall they must harden systems against attack, provide security, and prevent disclosure of sources giving them material in the first place. This would amount to about $1.2 million a year, and perhaps substantially more.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange travels extensively. Travel is not cheap, and neither is lodging. While sometimes he stays in private homes, sometimes he does not. I doubt he is staying at Motel 6, they seem unlikely to have left the light on for him, as their slogan goes. Assange is in the habit of buying his tickets at the last minute, with cash, to avoid detection of his travel patterns and avoid arrest. At a minimum, this would amount to about $1,500 a week for travel (late purchasers pay more for tickets) and perhaps double that amount, depending on if he goes short-haul or long-haul (halfway around the globe). At a minimum, we are looking at $78,000 per year ($1,500 times 52 weeks) and this may understate his travel expenses if he travels twice a week, or does lots of trans-global travel.

This of course excludes Assange's salary. Judging by his attire, he seems to be able to clothe himself well. So perhaps there is another $100,000 in expenditures on Assange himself. That would bring us to at least $1,362,000, or perhaps even $1,462,000, in total expenditures for Wikileaks yearly.

Where does that money come from?

The well-known propensity for large monetary charitable donations among the denizens of Slashdot, and the open source community? Unlikely.

The most likely source for that sort of money (which could be even higher) is a sovereign government. With the sources of money that can be disguised, seeking to use the open-ness of the West against itself.

So who is the likely donor?

China comes to mind. It is worth thinking about that little that is unflattering, and even less that is damaging, has come out about China. While there have been unflattering portraits of Putin and his "Robin" Medvedev, and more confirmation of the Litivenko assassination (the cables suggest Putin personally authorized it given his attention to detail and micro-managing history), nothing about China's leaders has surfaced that paints them in an unflattering light. Nothing about Tibet. Nothing about tensions with India, and China's influence in Himalayan kingdoms abutting India. Nothing about China's military-to-military assistance with Pakistan's nuclear program and ballistic missile program. Nothing about who is up, and who is down, in the Chinese leadership. Nothing about the corruption of the Red Princes. A mere tidbit here and there expressing some Chinese frustration with North Korea. That is all.

In the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," Holmes directs Watson's attention to the curious affair of the dog in the night-time (the prize racehorse Silver Blaze has been stolen). Watson protests that the dog did nothing in the night-time. Indeed, Holmes replies, that is what was so curious.

Every action by an intelligence agency, to conduct covert operations leaves evidence. Ripples in a pond, or dogs barking or not. It is telling that in all the cables disclosed so far by Wikileaks, not one has fairly derogatory information about China. There is plenty about Russia, about Turkey, about Iran. But nothing about China. Not even the standard gossip of which Red Princeling is making the most money off a father or grandfather's influence in the Politburo. Only the already known disclosure that China hacks Google, most other US companies, and the US government.

It would seem China is the dog not barking in the night-time. The most obvious (so far) paymaster of Wikileaks.

Consider this. For a few million dollars, China has been able to fund embarrassing and hurtful disclosures about the US, that will prevent any major diplomatic deals being done (because potential participants know the US cannot keep secrets) and will also prevent any critical information from being passed along confidentially.

This gives China an element of surprise. For a "massive stroke" ala Pearl Harbor in whatever form: military, commercial, or both. The US literally will have no warning, and no ability to cobble together any effective diplomatic response. China obviously wants things: conquering Taiwan, probably South Korea, possibly Japan. If nothing else, the massive sex imbalance with far too many men and not enough women can only be changed conquering neighboring territories and taking the women as the new version of "comfort workers."

Economically, China has failed to stimulate domestic demand. This is unsurprising, it remains mostly desperately poor, desperately uneducated, and unable to generate internal wealth wide and deep enough to provide a Western style of living (and thus consumption and wealth) for most of its people. Wal-Mart's expansion into China is not on the Wal-Mart model, rather the hypermarket of Latin America, basically a brick building with concrete floors and no air conditioning, offering only a few really cheap items in bulk.

Can China grow at a 8% rate, year after year? No. At a certain point, the growth created by building roads and electrifying villages comes to an end, and economies either transition to higher value growth (Japan, South Korea, West Germany) or fail: the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, likely China. The only alternative is military adventure to capture territory, resources, and people.

China seems edging ever closer into the same conflict over who will rule the Pacific that Japan did with the US all those years ago. Wikileaks is potentially part of this process of edging into conflict. It is unlikely of course there is a master plan by the Chinese Politburo. Merely a desire to constantly chip away at the US ability to master both diplomatic coalitions (particularly around China's periphery, the disclosure of candid and private conversations by Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew was no accident) and gain advance information about China's aims and actions, that incrementally leads to conflict.

The Chinese are certainly adept at Cyberwarfare, and have a predilection for the indirect approach to conflict. They have the resources. They match the strange exclusion of humiliating and embarrassing secrets against China in the Wikileaks cable dumps.

But one thing is certain. Running Wikileaks is not cheap. It requires money and certainly more money that a shoe-string, independent donor driven outfit like Wikileaks poses as could generate. If not China, then some intelligence agency is using US open-ness and lack of deterrent (by punishing Wikileaks founder Assange and his co-workers in very nasty ways to prevent it from happening again) to take away America's ability to create diplomatic alliances and gain critical information.


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Lifeboat Economics

All of politics can be summed up to: Its Always About the Money. Who pays, who is paid, and the mechanics of the transfer. Its all about the money. Numbers USA has a new video out describing the impact of unchecked immigration (excluding illegal immigration):



Bottom line, another half billion people added (excluding illegals) by the end of the century. Unspoken: they will all be non-White. Now, it might be depending on your perspective (Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffet certainly think so) a good thing to make the US as rapidly majority non-White as quickly as possible, if you believe in Whiteness as Original Sin. But most Whites are not rich enough to play at debased post-Calvinism. With those pre-ordained as "saved" (rejecting their original sin of "Whiteness") and those predestined for damnation (middle and working class Whites). Because most Whites are now in the process of Lifeboat Economics.


When you are suddenly in the lifeboats, as your ship sinks, the only goal is survival. Literally anything and everything that furthers survival is good, and anything that hinders it is bad. Every action and decision is binary: life or death. More men accompanied Bligh in an open skiff on a 3,600 mile journey than stayed with Christian Fletcher in the Mutiny on the Bounty. With inflation for food and gas and clothing (things people buy every day) rising or expected to rise, people are stressed as not seen since the 1970's stagflation.


The Wall Street Journal says that inflation is flat, but the data from the Dept. of Labor shows that gasoline, energy, and dairy, meat, and eggs are all up. In other words, what stressed consumers with stagnant wages must buy every day or so. Clothing is expected to go up, shortly, as the cotton shortages globally work their way through the supply chain. As shown in the graphic, the CPI underweights the daily purchases in life (which affects free cash for savings or spending) and overweights hard goods infrequently purchased. You don't need a new DVD player, you do need to eat and fill your car with gas.

At the same time, people are looking at the new statistics, including Whites in California at below replacement level and Latino kids now the majority in California Schools, at 50.4%, compared to 27% of California students as White. Note:

But their electoral sway has not grown by similar amounts, because almost 40 percent of adult Latinos in California are ineligible to vote, said Lisa Garcia Bedolla, an associate professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education.

In other words, fully 40% or so of Hispanic/Latino parents are illegal aliens. Meanwhile proposals keep surfacing to allow illegal aliens to vote, and the White population is told:

"If the majority of the population is becoming bilingual," he said, referring to the growing Latino population learning English, "why shouldn't the white minority also become bilingual?"

Non-White births are expected to outnumber that of Whites very soon, perhaps as soon as 2010 closes. Meanwhile, the LAT reports that the California minimum wage at $8 an hour is being overturned on the ground by illegal aliens paid only $3.50. Or, the cost of illegal aliens is $9,000 a year at a nominal 2,000 hour work-year, for those (in unemployment lines seeking any job) willing to work minimum wage jobs. Or conversely, the subsidy the rest of us pay to businesses exploiting ultra-cheap Mexican labor in the US.

Lifeboat economics suggest that the beleaguered White middle and working class faces now, crowding out for jobs they seek in minimum wage areas, as unemployment insurance runs out and there are no new jobs created. Sixty Minutes had a segment on a former Fiber Optics Engineering manager now working at Target as a salesman at near minimum wages ($9 an hour). The jobs White Americans need are now being taken by a flood of cheap immigrant labor, often at far below even minimum wage jobs.

Of course, the flood of cheap labor is not free. Immigrants legal and illegal create huge costs, they are poor and heavy users of schools (again about 40% of California students are children of illegals), hospitals, prisons, welfare, and other government services, driving up taxes and state spending. While crowding out non-Hispanics in the most desirable places in California. Effectively, middle and working class Whites have been ethnically cleansed out of coastal California into places like Temecula, or the Antelope Valley. Enduring long commutes in order to get to work, and live far away from the barrio. The remaining White enclaves resemble Newport Beach or Malibu or Santa Monica: high cost, uber-liberal preserves of the elite Whites.

But the money aspect goes into other areas. Whites can reasonably expect to be discriminated against in housing, in employment, particularly government, in social spending, in education, in almost every aspect of life, if they are non-rich, non-elite. Warren Buffett says he was lucky, as someone born in 1930, to be White, Male, and American. Of course, his father was a local wheeler-dealer Congressman and businessman. Buffett, of course, is giving most of his fortune away, tax-free, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Which in turn denies any aid to poor White children, focusing its scholarship and aid efforts exclusively on non-Whites.

Contra Numbers USA, the issue is not just how many people will live in a crowded USA filled with immigrants. It is who will live there, and who will win and who will lose, in all aspects of life, but particularly measured by money.

Continuation of the trends will mean ethnic cleansing of almost all non-elite Whites out of places like the Pacific Coast and East Coast, into the interior. It will mean Whites will under Affirmative Action, Civil Rights (Whites of course famously have none as former DOJ official J. Christian Adams testified), and preferences for non-Whites form a discriminated, untouchable caste that will be in President Obama's words, sitting in the back of the bus in terms of spending and taxes. It means higher taxes, at at time when every penny must be saved for gas and food, and soon clothing. It means being pushed out of most of the desirable places to live, into colder, poorer, more isolated places. It means most of America turning into a variation of Mexico, run basically by Mexicans and those of Mexican descent, for Mexicans.

It means, schools forbidding White kids from flying the US flag, out of fear that Mexican kids will use violence. It means having to learn Spanish, just to navigate every day life. It means being last in line, for government assistance, and first in line for taxation. It means, very visibly, a clear preference for Mexicans (who are allowed to violate immigration law with impunity, and indeed rewards for doing so) and a clear punishment for non-elite Whites.

A nation with majority Mexicans is by definition, a colonized nation of Mexico. Whites inside America that is majority Mexican can expect the same treatment as inside Mexico. Which is definitely third class or worse, treatment.

We are seeing now, unavoidably, a direct and immediate transformation from a middle class, majority White society, with a safe middle class environment for most people, to something akin to Cuidad Juarez or Tijuana slums. That is a direct and immediate downward standard for almost all Whites, and guarantees grinding poverty and racial discrimination into eternity, for those remaining Whites.

A few "nice White ladies" and "nice White men" can demonstrate a post-Calvinist superiority and status mongering (or even, a living off it) by pandering to a non-White majority future. The "End of Whiteness" is celebrated by Tim Wise and Harold Myerson. I personally know of one "nice White lady" who makes a living by selling in effect, curriculum consulting and teacher training to non-White majority school districts in Math and Science. Who knew math and science were not color-blind and neutral? Apparently two plus two does not always equal four when you are non-White.

But these interests are in direct opposition to that of ordinary Whites who face a daunting future: discriminated untouchables in a non-White majority America. With nowhere left to go. It is true that Whites in Jim Crow America treated Black people very poorly, and under slavery even worse. Those Whites are all dead, and those living see no reason (unless they are rich and self-serving or make a living off pandering to non-White majority fantasies and "punishment" for the original sin of "Whiteness") to destroy themselves to make amends. Why would they?

Would you voluntary give up half your income to make amends for "Whiteness?" That is what a non-White majority America amounts to, and more.

America in 1940 was about 89% White, 10% Black, and 1% everything else. As late as 1970, America was 80% White, 10% Black, and 10% Hispanic. Most White Americans, even relatively poorer/working class ones, would accept some preferences for Blacks, given historic reasons, as long as Whites remain at about 80% of the population and sacrifices by Whites are not too onerous. Whites facing below 50% of the population know that they will be treated very, very poorly. And that America will resemble, essentially Mexico. Itself a very poor country compared to its natural resources.

There is a moment in the Lawrence Kasdan movie, Silverado, when the Kevin Klein character realizes that the threat the Brian Dennehy character poses to Linda Hunt's character, will go away if the Dennehy character is dead. In a similar fashion, California's projected 2011 budget deficit of $20 billion will go away, substantially, if most illegal aliens and their children were deported. Already Florida, under huge immigrant pressure, is pushing a measure similar to Arizona's SB 1070. Reporting illegal aliens to ICE when they are found. The Obama Adminstration and the Left argues, in essence, that Mexicans by virtue of their skin color and race ought to be exempt from the law. Because of the original sin of "Whiteness" or something.

As long as the good times were rolling, this was acceptable. People would not complain because to do so would generate calls of "racism" and such. But in desperate times, Lifeboat Economics takes hold. Men went with Captain Bligh, not because he was beloved, he was not. Rather, they figured they had the best chance of survival under Bligh, than Fletcher Christian. All the Mutineers on Pitcairn Island but one soon slaughtered each other in fights over the women, and enslaving the Tahitian men they tricked into journeying with them. This was immediately apparent to most of the men onboard. Hence choosing a 3,600 mile journey in open water with a compass, pocket watch, and sextant, and nothing else but Bligh's brain and seamanship. Bligh, the ultimate technocrat, was no leader of men (he faced a revolt as Governor of Australia, and was known for less harsh methods) but was considered able, serving under fire at the battle of Copenhagen and acquitting himself well in tasks such as dredging harbors in Ireland.

Now, the Swiss who a few years ago approved lawyers for plants in mountain meadows, have approved a referendum requiring deportation of foreigners who commit serious crimes. Despite threats from the EU and Human Rights Watch. They don't want to overrun by foreigners either, and face hard times of their own.

An endlessly upward mobile society, where easy money and cheap labor provided a SWPL paradise, cheap nannies and maids for all, is a different thing from a stagflation driven dystopian future that awaits us all now. Who lives here, how much money they make, what language they speak, and what their race is, is a function of scarcity. Scarce dollars, scarce land, scarce resources, scarce housing, scarce government funds, and scarce White demographics. Since the penalty for being in the minority for Whites is being a third class human being.

Someone, somewhere, in America, will propose deporting all illegal aliens and their children. And provide a detailed break-down of how much it would cost, and how much it would save: in taxes, extra services for the remaining population, better schools, and higher wages for those left. A former Fiber Optics Engineering Manager now making $9 an hour, and getting a boost to say, $15 an hour because of labor scarcity (no more illegals to be salesman at Target), would certainly go for it.

In Lifeboat Economics, it is all about the money.
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Agflation and the Cross of Gold

Updated

Some things never change. American and European history remain "deep," that is dominated by long cycles of debate over fundamental questions, that are never really resolved one way or another. The desire for elites (mostly but not exclusively in the East) for cheap labor and expensive land, and Jacksonian type Westerners (think Sarah Palin and the Tea Party) for expensive labor (their own) and cheap land remains one of these deep cycles. The Federal Reserve's decision to buy back $600 billion of Treasury Bonds, and achieve another $300 billion of repurchases through re-investment of maturing securities, and the resulting inflation of agricultural products, at least in part, is another. Meaning the debate between the Free Silverites, and the Gold advocates, is not over. Just flipped, entirely.


Now of course the Fed is not solely responsible for the inflation of agricultural commodities. As the Financial Times has reported, much of this is due to intense Chinese demand and tight global supply in the face of this increased demand. China has a voracious appetite for cotton, which it turns into cheap clothing exported mostly to the US, various base metals including iron, copper, lead, and tin (propping up the economies of Australia, Chile, Brazil, South Africa, and other commodity exporters) which it turns into various auto parts, cheap electronics, and other consumer goods for the US export market. A rising demand for food, and in particular, more protein, has led to a demand not just for beef and pork imports, but food-stocks including corn, soybeans, and wheat. Meanwhile, floods in Pakistan have destroyed the current harvest, and Pakistan is a major exporter of cotton. Droughts and fires in Russia have led to a ban on exports of grain, and Russia is a major grain exporter. Uncertain harvests in India have led to bans on sugar exports, with uncertain harvests in Brazil leading to very high sugar prices.

As the Financial Times noted:

The spectre of inflation loomed over agricultural markets after the US slashed key crop forecasts and warned of shortfalls in grains.

The agriculture department on Tuesday cut estimates of US corn yields for a third successive month, forecast record soyabean exports to China and warned of the slimmest cotton stocks since 1925.

“The combined production shortfalls and dramatic potential stock drawdowns mean a much tighter supply picture than just a few months ago,” the agency said in a separate grains report.

Benchmark Chicago corn futures soared above $6 a bushel for the first time since August 2008, before ending lower. Soyabeans rose 4.3 per cent and New York cotton futures posted a record above $1.51 a pound. The price rises have revived fears of a repeat of the global food crisis of 2007-08.

Updated!

Drudge has a link to a Financial Times story on global food inflation here.

The bill for global food imports will top $1,000bn this year for the second time ever, putting the world “dangerously close” to a new food crisis, the United Nations said.

The warning by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation adds to fears about rising inflation in emerging countries from China to India. “Prices are dangerously close to the levels of 2007-08,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the FAO.

The FAO painted a worrying outlook in its twice-yearly Food Outlook on Wednesday, warning that the world should “be prepared” for even higher prices next year. It said it was crucial for farmers to “expand substantially” production, particularly of corn and wheat in 2011-12 to meet expected demand and rebuild world reserves.

But the FAO said the production response may be limited as rising food prices had made other crops, from sugar to soyabean and cotton, attractive to grow.

“This could limit individual crop production responses to levels that would be insufficient to alleviate market tightness. Against this backdrop, consumers may have little choice but to pay higher prices for their food,” it said.

Sell-offs at the height of prices last week lowered prices a bit, but structurally the imbalance between demand (high) and supply (low) have led to gains, with March 2011 futures prices still strong, indeed higher in many cases than spot prices. Meaning inflation in food prices is here to stay, at least for the moment. And not just food either, cotton prices have soared to record heights, and oil is trading at about $90 a barrel. Food price inflation in China is reported at 8% annualized rates, with lower rates in the US at 1.4% over the last 12 months. In both cases the real rate of inflation is likely undercounted.

Anyone who has shopped for food regularly in the past year knows that prices have risen appreciably. First, in packaging reduced amounts of food for the price charged in prior years for larger amounts. And secondly, in outright price rises simply not counted by US economists. The things people buy, nearly every day, gasoline, milk, eggs, butter, bread, have all risen steadily over the past year. It is true that prices for cheap Chinese sneakers or electronics have remained steady, but that is not something people buy every day. The ordinary person's experience with inflation (at a time of lowered wages and massive job losses and unemployment) is remarkable as the elite's disconnect from this reality.

And while increased Chinese demand amidst tight global supply of commodities is part of the story, so is the struggle between the Free Silverites and the Gold Advocates.

In 1896 during the Democratic National Convention, William Jennings Bryan, the man pictured at the top of this column, gave the famous "Cross of Gold" speech. He said, "Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Bryan's political base was that of small farmers in the West. Who had debts they wanted to inflate away. Free Silver, or more properly, loose monetary policy designed to create inflation, would allow the farmers to inflate away their debts to nothing. That would of course destroy the Eastern Financiers, with extensive cash holdings, as well as Eastern laborers who paid cash for consumer goods and food. Bryan's base was demographically too small, as the small farmers were just too few in number to make a difference. Strong monetary policy prevailed, arguably until the 1971 decision by Richard Nixon to end the Bretton Woods agreement of 1944.

From then onwards, various Presidents have had more or less inflationary policy, to cover systemic deficits, but the core of US policy has been a free-floating dollar and inflationary monetary policy. From Reagan through Bush, including Clinton, the policy has been to have inflation around 2-4%, on the theory that this level of inflation would not inflame US consumers but mark an expanding economy. Call it the Goldilocks theory of inflation. Just right.

"Helicopter Ben" Bernanke, Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, noted:

In 2002, when the word "deflation" began appearing in the business news, Bernanke gave a speech about deflation. In that speech, he mentioned that the government in a fiat money system owns the physical means of creating money. Control of the means of production for money implies that the government can always avoid deflation by simply issuing more money. He said "The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost." (He referred to a statement made by Milton Friedman about using a "helicopter drop" of money into the economy to fight deflation.) Bernanke's critics have since referred to him as "Helicopter Ben" or to his "helicopter printing press." In a footnote to his speech, Bernanke noted that "people know that inflation erodes the real value of the government's debt and, therefore, that it is in the interest of the government to create some inflation."For example, while Greenspan publicly supported President Clinton's deficit reduction plan and the Bush tax cuts, Bernanke, when questioned about taxation policy, said that it was none of his business, his exclusive remit being monetary policy, and said that fiscal policy and wider society related issues were what politicians were for and got elected for. But Bernanke has been identified by the Wall Street Journal and a close colleague as a "libertarian-Republican" in the mold of Alan Greenspan. However, Bloomberg News writes he is "siding with John Maynard Keynes against Milton Friedman by flooding the financial system with money".

Suspicion is high that Bernanke, following Obama's marching orders, is determined to inflate away the Government debt, and also create high inflation to "force" companies with large cash reserves (which describes most large companies) to invest them to create economic growth rather than see their cash values decline in inflation. Bernanke in various public statements defending the Fed's purchase of $600 billion of US Treasury bonds, and the additional $300 billion re-investment in the same, by simply declaring the new money "created" has argued explicitly that inflation must be higher to force re-investment by major companies.

In other words, the most stupid policy one could imagine, is what the Federal Reserve (and Obama) are following. And it is the same debate over monetary policy that characterized most of the 19th Century, only reversed completely. [Astute observers will note that cheap dollars are merely serving to allow multinational corporations to invest in China and Vietnam and other places, taking US tax dollars to create jobs overseas where interest rates and returns are greater and labor is cheaper. Bernanke's and Krugman's and Obama's 1930's Depression models don't take into account US companies investing in China and other cheap labor places. FDR did not have to deal with Ford and GM and US Steel investing in China to earn more money than in the US.]

Now the loose monetary policy advocates are not relatively powerless small farmers, but East Coast and West Coast elites, with globally mobile investments, mostly sitting in government or the media or the universities, seeking to create inflation to preserve social spending (on their favorite hobby horses) and put away for another day a fiscal reckoning on the budget and spending. Those pursuing a strong currency are people who must buy the necessities of living every day, and do so on a limited budget.

On the one hand you have Obama, and Bernanke, and much of Wall Street, wanting high inflation to pump up stock prices, or commodity investments (which Wall Street makes a tidy profit on), and inflate away the government debt so that spending can continue, and on the other hand ordinary people who want to pay smaller amounts not larger ones of their earnings (which are not inflated) for daily living.

Deflation has been a feature of Japanese life since the end of the asset bubble (real estate) bursting in 1989. For most Japanese consumers, deflation has been tolerable, despite low or no economic growth, because their money goes much further. Inflation particularly linked to low or no economic growth (1970's stagflation) means a constantly eroding standard of living for ordinary people. While deflation means those with jobs at least, pay less every day not more for daily living.

Thus Obama's and Bernanke's objectives (and that of their Wall Street allies who donated heavily to Obama) are directly opposite that of ordinary people's. Who now, contra Bryan, want a cross of Gold. To protect them from inflation. The ads that run on shows like Glen Beck's on Fox News Channel, hit a populist chord with his viewers. Because they fear inflation as a mortal threat to their lives. Which it in fact is, and remains.

So what can be done to improve people's lives? Simple. Dump Helicopter Ben (Friedman's speech alluded to dumping money out of a helicopter to "save" the economy) and adopt a sound monetary system. Gold-backed dollars are probably out of the question, as there simply is not enough gold in US reserves or global reserves to back the dollar. But silver is another question. A silver backed currency, redeemable at a fixed rate, would force the US dollar into a strong rather than weak currency. This would hurt of course, US manufactured exports. But the exports themselves are a small portion of US manufacturing, itself only about 10% of all US jobs.

A strong dollar also means cheaper imported oil, and thus lower costs for daily living. Cheaper gas! A strong dollar can also promote more production domestically of grains and other food stocks, and cotton as well. Tariffs would have to be raised to keep US manufacturing from being flooded by cheaper foreign goods, but that is something that is far easier when US dollars buy much more food and gas than when it buys almost nothing. Certainly the experience of Argentina, which like Russia has used bans on wheat exports, has not been positive. The short term protection of prices in the local markets meant farmers stopped growing wheat and switched to soybeans, not subject to export bans. A strong dollar allows US consumers to outbid weak Chinese or other currencies, for the same bushel of wheat, and allows farmers to make money by planting more wheat.

A strong dollar also allows from a policy that is critical: US creation of currently imported foodstuffs internally. Some predict that Chocolate will be as expensive as Caviar in twenty years:

Chocolate industry experts say that in just 20 years, chocolate will be as expensive as caviar, Anthea Gerrie reports for the Independent. African farmers, who produce a huge chunk of the world's chocolate supply, are abandoning their farms because the work is so backbreaking and the pay so miserable. Their children are leaving for the city where they can life a better life.

Meanwhile, demand for chocolate is rising sharply as the Chinese and Indians develop Western a sweet tooth. "The biggest hope," Gerrie reports, "is a Nestlé project to replant 10 million trees over the next decade." But that will replace just a quarter of the trees lost in recent years. By 2030, we may face a depleted, miserable world in which only the rich can afford a chocolatey snack.

Cocoa of course, was native to Mexico. There is no reason that with a strong dollar, US farmers in parts of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and even South Carolina cannot grow Cocoa trees. And harvest them with mechanical harvesting machines, the way many orange and grapefruit trees are done now. Does cocoa need to be grown in chaotic, violent, and poverty-stricken Ivory Coast, or in the US in subtropical regions (Puerto Rico and Guam are also good candidates) with the latest equipment substituting for cheap labor?

Coffee too, can be grown in the US. Hawaii currently exports premium coffee, but the plant itself is native to Ethiopia and Yemen. Meaning varieties can be grown in places like Southern California, or Arizona, or New Mexico, or Texas, or Louisiana, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or Florida, or Georgia, or South Carolina. As well again, as Puerto Rico and Guam.

Starbucks is opening its first ever coffee plantation in China, why not ones in the US employing a few people with labor-saving farming/harvesting techniques? Hawaiian growers are using coffee plants on trellises, to harvest the plants the way automated harvesters do grape vines in New Zealand, Australia, and some California vineyards. Some California growers are already experimenting with growing coffee this way, in California.

Certainly the government can play a small role, in providing credit and assistance. But private industry, taking advantage of strong domestic demand, and a more robust dollar, would be the model for growing US coffee and chocolate. The way California restarted its wine industry after prohibition, to become one of the dominant regions in the world. All of which is good for ordinary Americans.

The main feature of globalization is that cheap stuff comes with risks. Risks to supply, as shocks around the world are connected directly to ordinary Americans (and vice-versa). A "seat-belt approach" is needed along with global air bags of trade deals and the like. Meaning strong domestic supplies of key commodities and resources currently imported. From rare earths (currently not mined in the US due to environmental concerns and cheap Chinese competition) to coffee and chocolate, and particularly food and gas, the global system as configured is not working for most ordinary Americans. America has no power to change the global system, so it must create its own seat-belt to mitigate shocks from the global system of trade.

Fundamentally, a nation's economic and monetary system (which are mere reflections of each other) should be arranged to benefit ordinary people, not the rich and powerful (in concert with preferred poor people). A strong dollar, "the Dollar of our Daddies" provides the best means for ordinary people to play within the rules (save lots, work hard, spend wisely) and have a happy life. One less filled with anxiety because a Russian grain harvest failed, or a flood in Pakistan killed the cotton harvest. A strong dollar hurts stock prices, and commodity investors, but who cares? They are rich and powerful and can look after themselves. A strong dollar means a fiscal reckoning, well now, and programs like ObamaCare and others being junked as unaffordable (No Child Left Behind, Ethanol, "Green" subsidies, Fannie/Freddie, being prime candidates).

Will this require an all-out political battle against the powerful elites in the legal system, the media, the universities, and government? Assuredly. Can it be won? Yes, if put plainly: a strong dollar benefits ordinary people by reducing the price increases in daily life, and hurts Wall Street and the current elites.

It is simple as that.
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Tim Wise Calls for the End of Whites in America

Like Harold Myerson before him, Tim Wise has called for the end of Whites in America. Of course, he himself is White, but the internet is a glorious thing, not the least of which is that it collapses Wise's world of "professional anti-racism" into that of the larger public. Wise depends on most people not knowing what he is saying and doing, operating behind the veil of "anti-racism" in the University system and Corporate HR idiocy. That veil is now pierced. For better or worse, Wise must defend himself (and his employers/sponsors his ideas) in the public square. Reasonable White people (and the elderly White people) who Wise pretty much called for extermination, might wonder why their taxes go to support: Smith College, the Utne Reader, or Fisk University.


From Wise's own site here:

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States, and has been called, “One of the most brilliant, articulate and courageous critics of white privilege in the nation,” by best-selling author and professor Michael Eric Dyson, of Georgetown University. Wise, who was recently named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader, has spoken in 49 states, on over 600 college campuses, and to community groups across the nation. He has also lectured internationally in Canada and Bermuda on issues of comparative racism, race and education, racism and religion, and racism in the labor market.

Wise is the author of five books, including White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son; Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White; Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male; Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama, and his latest, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity. He has contributed essays to twenty-five books, and is one of several persons featured in White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories, from Duke University Press. He received the 2001 British Diversity Award for best feature essay on race issues, and his writings have appeared in dozens of popular, professional and scholarly journals.

One might argue the worth of "anti-racism" lectures to White people when it is Black and Hispanic people screaming racism:





Particularly since the internet prevents the news media from news suppression. Heck Fox News has ridden these internet-generated videos to ratings supremacy.

Wise wrote:

And in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.

Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.

Because you’re on the endangered list.

And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.

In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.

There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” -- a bunch whose white contingent was top-heavy with ethical miscreants who helped save the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.

It's OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.

Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.

Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.

And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement -- hell you’ve all but done that now -- thus guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.

Like I said, this is math. And numbers don’t lie.
...
We just have to be patient.

And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well...

Do you hear it?

The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?

Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.

The internet is beautiful too. It puts the open words calling for the extermination of Whites in America, into a "Colors of Benetton" society where Mexicans, and then Blacks, are all that is left, into undeniable and quotable words. Everyone now knows where the battle lines are drawn.

Those who depend on the "anti-racism" scam, of course want Whites essentially demographically cleansed. And look forward gleefully to the day when lower class Whites (Wise is at great pains to mock Larry the Cable Guy and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry) and their culture are cleansed from America.

Selling America and White people as an original sin is easy pickings in Academia. So too in the corporate world. Outside it, now every White guy in America must be asking, "What's in it for me?"

And really, what is in it for them? A life as a discriminated, permanent minority? For payback for things long-dead White guys did fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago? Groveling for original sin for the "crime" of being born a beta White guy? [The Hollywood glitterati don't seem to hate their own Whiteness. I've never seen George Clooney or Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp act ashamed of being White.]

For most White guys, and increasingly White women, it comes down to money in the pocket, and quality of life. White people spend tremendous amounts of money to avoid having to deal with non-Whites, moving to distant exurbs. Because non-Whites are not people, for the most part, they want to send their kids to school with or live around. Drop out rates, gang involvement, single motherhood, rates of criminality, in the real world Whites do not talk about it much, but they move heaven and earth to avoid living in a working-class city like Bell. Preferring to drive considerable miles to live in distant exurbs like Temecula.

Yes, SWPL women do find this anti-White guy stuff great. They eat it up when it comes time to bash beta White guys. And that group of people punches above its demographic weight, culturally. But even they don't hang out in the Barrio or Ghetto, nor do they live around such places. Nor do they tend to marry non-Whites in significant numbers. [Working class enlisted people in the Military, including White men and Women, tend to be the biggest cross-race marriage group, followed by rich new celebrities. For the enlisted person, the divide is military/civilian, and for celebrities, likely famous and ordinary. In neither case do the issues of relatives, family, social approval, and much of anything else really matter.]

The Office on NBC shows SWPL women the clueless adventures of a beta White guy idiot, running afoul of PC rules and office etiquette all the time. SWPL women enjoy laughing at his failures. Tellingly, there is no White woman to make fun of as the central buffoon. And broadly speaking, the SWPL alliance, and particularly SWPL women, and guys like Wise (he himself is of course, White) has been effective.

Even nationally, The Wall Street Journal reports that White women voted, after a 50-50 split four years ago, at 41% Dem to 57%, compared to White men at 36% Dem, and 62% Republican. This is a not insignificant gap of about 5%. Had White women remained at their voting patterns four years ago, it would have been about a twelve point gap.

And here is the weakness of bashing beta White guys and calling for the "end of Whiteness" and a colors of Benetton America. Or Target commercials. It depends on good times. When times go bad, even SWPL women who do HATE HATE HATE beta boring White guys (because they insult them by hitting on them, thus lowering their sexual market value), worry about economics.

Does making America look like this put or take money from your pocket?


The answer, even for those with solid reasons to dislike the boring beta White guys hitting on them, is that it takes (considerable) money from your pocket. It requires you to move far away, from desirable jobs, or live under heavy and expensive security. It requires you to be on your guard at all moments, and to know you could be killed at any time. It requires heavy taxes, repressive policing, and eventually military rule, to counteract the drug cartels and spiraling violence. A hefty price to pay for a Target commercial fantasy.

This is why Wise's White-baiting rants are helpful. They concentrate the mind even of SWPL women, to the bottom line. Which is the bottom line. They can indeed have, a non-White majority country, where the only surviving White guys are by definition Alpha, not beta (and of course they will have to share them with other girls). But the cost is likely to be too high. In many cases, literally stepping over bodies. The Mexican investigator looking into the shooting of the American shot on a Mexican-Texas border lake, was beheaded in Mexico.

Even SWPL women find that just too expensive.



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Boehner vs Obama

Rarely do events throw up two antagonists who are direct and total opposites of each other. With the House now moving Republican, a show-down between John Boehner and Barack Obama, both total unknowns four years ago, seems certain. And for all the "genius" label put on Obama, don't bet against Boehner. Unheralded, White, Working Class, he's the complete opposite of Obama. He's worked all his life, and worked his way to his position.


Barack Obama was born to the former Stanley Ann Dunham, daughter of a Honolulu banker, and Barack Obama Senior. Obama Senior being the right hand man of Kenyan Luo tribe king-maker Tom Mboya. Obama Senior of course famously graduated from the University of Hawaii and enrolled in the graduate program at Harvard, and was a top man in Luo politics until his alcoholism got out of control. Stanley Ann Dunham held various US Embassy jobs in Indonesia, and received her Phd from the University of Hawaii (on peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, no kidding). Obama Sr. was an economist. His ex-wife an expert on Indonesian peasant culture.

Obama himself was an infant and toddler, in the sole custody of his then single mother, who briefly received food stamps. After her marriage Lolo Soetero, an Indonesian national, Dunham and Obama moved with her new husband to Indonesia, then in the aftermath of the overthrow of Suharto. At the age of nine, Obama, after being educated in an Indonesian Madrassa, was sent to live with his grandparents in Hawaii. Residing in their high rise Honolulu apartment, he attended the exclusive and expensive Punahou Prep School, where by his own account he was an indifferent student, often getting high.

Obama then attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, where he was close to a wealthy Pakistani student, and by his own account in "Dream From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" he hung out with radical feminists, marxists, gays, Black Nationalists, and Muslims. At Columbia University, in his final two years as an Undergrad, he was the room-mate of a Muslim who's lack of devoutness he criticizes in his autobiography. Obama of course later attended Harvard, where he was the first Black President of Law Review. Famously, he never wrote an article while President of Law Review. Holding brief jobs as an investment newsletter researcher, most of Obama's working life has been as a community organizer, State Legislator, and part-time guest lecturer at the University of Chicago. Obama has also written two books, his autobiography and "The Audacity of Hope," dedicated to long-time anti-White racialist preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's mentor. The very title taken from a Wright sermon.

Obama has dazzled news people, and the media, and celebrities. He famously recited the call to prayer in Arabic, which he had memorized as a boy, to a New York Times reporter.

John Boehner, by contrast, is completely different. The second of twelve children, he grew up poor, White, and rooted. His parents slept on a pull-out couch. He started working in his family's bar at age 8. Boehner has lived in Southern Ohio his entire life. Boehner enlisted in the US Navy during the height of the Vietnam War (1968) but was discharged honorably for medical reasons. He earned his bachelor degree much later, eleven years in fact (1977) from Xavier University in Cincinnati, becoming the first person in his family to attend College. [Obama's maternal grandparents attended and graduated, his mother and father were both Masters holders, and his mother held a Phd.]

Boehner has said he has done every dirty job there was. Cleaning toilets, sweeping floors, doing dishes, busing dishes, waiting tables, tending bar, he's done it. He worked his way up from salesman at Nucite Sales, a small packaging and plastics company, to President. Boehner served as member of the board of trustees for Union Township, Butler County Ohio, then a State Representative. He has been a Congressman since 1990, and was briefly majority leader in 2006 following Tom DeLay's resignation. Following loss of the House in 2006, Boehner has been Minority Leader.

Boehner's reputation is one of a hard worker, night owl, and steady but unspectacular. He can play hardball, and is credited along with Minority Whip Eric Cantor for helping the Republican Congressional Wave get larger:

Success came with a fair amount of bickering. House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio decided to oust Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole as head of the GOP re-election effort amid a staffing spat. Mr. Boehner engineered his replacement as chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's political arm, by installing Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas.

Boehner's man, Sessions (son of Clinton fired FBI Director William Sessions), led the effort to demand Republican candidates raise their own money, instead of depending on the NRCC to do it for them. In turn, this allowed the NRCC to target vulnerable Dems. Another Boehner Lieutenant, Kevin McCarthy of California, copied Rahm Emmanuel's use of statistics and money to find weak opponents. Quality challengers to "safe" Democratic districts were funded, to force some to retire, and others to raise money denied to other candidates. Census maps were studied to analyze demographics.

Boehner is steady, unspectacular, well known to his Republican colleagues. He has a reputation for toughness in politics, and has not panicked. He held his colleagues together on ObamaCare, the Stimulus, and other Obama policies that early on, looked both unstoppable and politically advantageous. Boehner has presided over, and at least not harmed, a Republican counter-wave that has erased all Democratic House gains since 2006. Which is remarkable, and speaks to his ability to delegate properly, organize politically, and remain focused for long periods of time.

Where Obama has lived a life of rootless internationalism, and is very familiar with Islam, Muslims, Indonesia, Kenya, Hawaii, and rich White liberals in New York City, and rich Black Nationalist radicals in Chicago, he knows nothing of ordinary Americans. Indeed he drips with contempt for them, and it shows, over and over again. Obama has never worked a dirty, manual labor job in his life. Indeed his autobiography is totally absent the kind of crummy Summer job that was a passage of life for most White American teens.

Boehner by contrast has deep roots in Southern Ohio. He knows ordinary working White voters very well, because he is one, along with his family. Where Obama was the beneficiary of Affirmative Action and wealthy privilege, and many personal connections, Boehner's success is due mostly to hard work and the ability to simply out-wait and out-organize opponents. It took the man after all, eleven years to finish College, working all the while. To move from sales job to President of a small, unglamorous plastics packaging company, is impressive in determination and doggedness, if nothing else.

In the coming showdown over defunding ObamaCare, and administrative Cap and Trade (which Obama will surely pursue) and monetary policy, and trade, and nearly everything else, don't bet against the stolid, stubborn Boehner. Obama is the mega-celebrity of all celebrities. Obama will always have the media with him. Famously tweaking Boehner as a "fellow person of color" for referring to Boehner's tan, Obama got his class-based shot in to the amusement of the media. But like Katie Couric talking of visiting the "great unwashed in the middle of the Country," that may have been a backfire.

Ridiculing "working class" people with "spray on tans" who "look orange" is a way of asserting upper class identity and Obama reflexively took it. Because Obama is at his core, a spoiled foreign prince deigning to rule and oh so obviously punish White America for past sins real and imagined. Against determined to lose McCain, and the huge unpopularity of George W. Bush (mostly because Bush failed to level on the costs and blood required by Iraq and Afghanistan), coupled with a suddenly collapsing economy, Obama cruised to victory. But media adulation cannot help him when unemployment is 9.6% officially, and about 20% in real terms. White voters have turned on Obama, only about 35% of White men and only 41% of White women voted for Democratic Congressional candidates, a referendum on Obama. His support is about that level too, in job performance. White voters have stopped listening to him, as a writer at NRO's The Corner noted. As they did before, with George W. Bush.

Obama can win the media, but it won't help him. Not with expected food inflation to hit, along with the effects of administrative cap and trade through the EPA. While wages stagnate and the Fed feeds inflation, with no prospect of a real recovery by employment gains. Upper class ridicule gets laughs from the press, when the target is a working class White guy, but White voters are not laughing. Outside of New York, California, Oregon, Washington State, DC, and Massachusetts, those are the people who vote: working class and harried middle class Whites. Not moneyed elites, secure in ridiculing those "prole."

In an otherwise whining editorial about how sullen and stupid ordinary Americans are for turning on Global President Obama, the columnist Philip Stephens notes that the US Dept of Labor Statistics paints a dire picture for the middle and working classes and a bright one for the new elite:

For some time, one of the most interesting numbers in US politics has been one not found in the opinion polls’ exit survey. It is published every month by the Federal Bureau of Labor statistics. It tracks changes in the real earnings – and thus the living standards – of middle America.

During the past 20 years the median earnings of these workers have risen in total by less than 10 per cent after adjustment for inflation. During the past decade they have stagnated. Someone has thrown a wrench into the escalator.

To put these figures into perspective, the economy grew by 60 per cent – six times as fast as median earnings – during the 20 years from 1990. Even during the past decade, which included the deepest recession since the 1930s, output expanded by 15 per cent.

For a time the effect on living standards was masked by the explosion of cheap imports and cheap credit. Americans could live their dream by borrowing from the banks and buying cheaply from China. The party came to an end with the global financial crash.

If Middle America has not shared in rising prosperity, the same cannot be said of the most affluent. The proceeds of growth have gone largely into corporate profits and into huge increases in boardroom pay. The richest have had a ball.

Figures from the Congressional Budget Office show that the share of overall incomes of the wealthiest 1 per cent of households stood at about 12 per cent in 1990. By 2007 that had jumped to more than 19 per cent. Measured in 2007 dollars, the incomes of this group more than doubled from a little more than $800,000 a year to $1.8m.

Globalisation, from this vantage point, has been good only for the few. It has enriched bankers and chief executives, but left the middle classes at once no better off today and more insecure about tomorrow.

Of course, read the whole thing. Even an elitist like Stephens (who goes on to excuse Obama with "Bush did it" and "racism" and of course, Obama not at all being in any way sympathetic to Muslims) can see it.

The case to be made against Obama and Democrats is that they will enrich a few elites, with sweetheart deals, flood America with Mexicans made instant citizens for votes to keep those sweetheart deals, sell out remaining manufacturing and agriculture to "save the polar bear" (and enrich China by killing competition), and turn the White middle and working classes into dispossessed, discriminated against, bottom of the diversity totem pole, people in their own land. All to benefit a few. The case against this is a massive border fence, massive tariffs, particularly at Chinese goods but also other low-cost labor manufacturers, oil and gas drilling here and now, tight money, a sound dollar, and a rebuilt industrial base with military stimulus. One that puts millions of Americans back to work, building latest generation fighter jets, or UAVs, or carrier groups, or attack submarines, or the latest nuclear missiles and warheads.

Closed borders. A closed economy (like China's). Massive military spending and build-up, to put people back to work and threaten bad actors. Drilling for oil and gas. An America that exports grains and manufactured goods, and imports relatively little from China or anyone else. One focused on pushing wage gains to average workers instead of a privileged few.

Can Boehner sell this? That remains to be seen. But it is clear from the character of both men, that Obama on the attack as the man against Boehner, who is indeed, not the man, turns Alinsky's rules on their heads. You cannot attack the man when you are the man. Freezing and personalizing the target does not work when people expect you to put money in their pocket and produce results. Obama has never been responsible for anything, nor can he grind out daily tasks.

There is this gem from Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisors and a Michelle Obama crony (which right there says it all):

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

Yes, too "talented to do what ordinary people do." About 90% of success in anything comes from grinding things out. White voters have soured on Obama because he has not been willing to work. Work hard, long, tedious hours. White voters expected Obama to make their lives better, and he has shown them time and time again, he is only interested in parties for himself and Marie Antoinette Obama, at the Costa Del Sol, or with 34 warships guarding him in India, to the tune of $200 million a day, with over 3,000 people going with him.

Obama's weakness is that outside campaigning, he has not been willing to work. He is in fact, lazy. Bored. And rather untalented. Because he is both Black, and can string two sentences together without sounding like an NFL star who has sired seven kids with six different women, he has been told, and believes himself, to be brilliant. Obama has no ability to understand, or even affinity, with Americans outside Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan. The world of hard work, loyalty, doggedness, and lack of privilege that encapsulates nearly all of White America escapes him.

When Obama lectures the out of work plumber, who has spent his entire life since 18 working, on his innate racism and "White privilege," he loses him, as he does the waitress, or the out of work program manager for a fiber optic manufacturer, who as a teen worked as a roofer. Obama literally does not understand that the average White person has had a much harder, tougher, less secure life than he has had. And that his princely ways arouse their anger not their admiration.

John Boehner may lack Obama's ability to read a teleprompter, impressively. He is not Black, with all the social and political advantages that being Black brings to political figures. He has no followers among the media, or the glitterati. He does, however, like the hedgehog know one big thing very well. And that is to keep working. I expect the political showdown between Boehner and Obama to last fairly long (Obama has many resources as President). But in the end, I expect Obama to lose. Simply because Obama does not know how to fight a man prepared to simply out-tough and outlast him. Boehner may be simply a dogged, establishment and professional Republican politician. But as the man with the one thing Obama lacks (a work ethic) he is far better prepared than Newt Gingrich (who was and is, in many ways, just like Bill Clinton) to stare down the President. If the fight elevates him, which I think it might, he could even be a player for the race for President. At any rate, he more than Obama understands America and its voters.
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France 1, Roma 0, EU Nothing

For those keeping score at home, the EU dropped threatened legal action against France for deporting Gypsies. Meaningless weasel words were added to regulations deporting the Gypsies, also called Roma. Meanwhile, the deportations continue.

Because at the bottom, France cannot afford even retirement at 60. Much less become the welfare state for Bulgaria and Romania's Gypsy population. When people claim high moral principles, and say it's not about the money? It's always about the money. What little France has is reserved for the French. Thus begins the end of the EU. "Free Movement of Peoples" is one of the foundations of the EU. Another being no targeting national or ethnic groups for any legal enforcement. And that ran smack up against the challenge of paying for the Gypsies. Or, perhaps Romanians in general, or Bulgarians, or other impoverished Eastern Europeans.


No, France has not yet begun to deport all the Muslims in their country. But they cannot afford to pay for their welfare either. And as France faces the challenge of paying for all the social welfare their population has come to expect, the usual calculus applies: the cut goes further the fewer people get dealt in. Most Frenchmen would gladly trade a retirement age remaining at 60 for the cost of deporting every last Muslim, than retiring at age 75, or maybe 80, to pay for the welfare costs of the Muslim population, which creates little wealth. But consumes disproportionate amounts of welfare spending. Polygamy, segregation of women into burquas (and lack of their education) are reliable poverty generators. And Muslims immigrating from dirt poor nations that have always been dirt poor (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia principally) don't magically get turned into prosperous Frenchmen. No matter how many generations they live in France. Any more than Koreans can turn into haggis-eating, caber tossing, bagpipe playing Scotsman.

All around the globe, Western nations face the same dilemma. An aging population, with no productivity increase, faces the twin burdens of providing for their own population retirees, and welfare consuming, non-wealth producing immigrants who are "here to take over" but add nothing to the nation's wealth. Sooner or later, the immigrants and their descendants will be gotten rid of, deported to a nation of origin. It might end in tears, or one time payoffs, or a mixture of both, or low-level ethnic cleansing.

But it will happen.

Because the West just ran out of money. And even the EU recognized that France was not going to back down, and every other nation plans basically the same thing. So dies the soft, squishy dream of utopian trans-national organizations.


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