Outbreak of Sensibility

So, here I sit watching Kramer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  Despite that I cannot politically agree with Kramer and that he is pretty late to the sudden discovery that the vast majority of our economy has been fraudulent for so long now,  I am impressed with him, as he has actually shown up on The Daily Show and taken his lumps.

I have been a fan of Jon Stewart for some time.  I watch the Colbert Report much more religiously, but The Daily Show sometimes has streaks of brilliance.  What amazes me is that this show digs for material to show people as the hypocrites they always are.  Were the world to care, this editor held opinions in the past that he would like forgotten, but well-meaning men change their minds when presented with  new truth.

So, here is Kramer taking a beating at the hands of Stewart, taking it like a man, offering as his mea culpa that he wishes to make it right within the bounds he is allowed to.  That his masters, CNBC, allowed him to show up on The Daily Show and take his lumps reflects well on CNBC.  In the past few months, I've seen quite a bit of actually truthful information leak out of CNBC, suggesting maybe someone is thinking again in network news.  It's almost the breath of fresh air Fox was before the Bush administration.

I do not understand why six different feeds haven't already picked up on this interview, as I think it is a stunning piece of work, nearly equal to Dr. Colbert's speech at the Whitehouse Correspondents' Dinner.  

One of the things that impresses me with these men is that they merely stand.  Occasionally Stewart will let his flaming liberal panties show, and Colbert plays at being a conservative, but in both cases they rarely let that stand in the way of poking fun at anyone who does something stupid in the news.  And, they constantly research, rather than merely reciting a canned news story, leading to even more hilarity.

This has been one of the things that bothers me about politicians, that of the complete lack of real access.  They are not allowed to face hard questions and are insulated from what people really feel.  I would dearly like for Obama to go on the Colbert Report or The Daily Show and explain why this stimulus package is going through despite that most of America hates the idea.

I will wander mildly off topic and mention that the President of Iran came to the United States in order to present his case to the American People.  To be sure, I remain utterly skeptic of any attempts to paint Iran as being actively hostile to American interests, let alone American people, and, indeed, reports on the ground seem to indicate that the United States and Iran have much in common and have the potential to join hands in a true, useful and effective 'war on terror'.  However, to end the digression, the President of the United States has never gone to Iran to talk to the people.

So, to wrench back on topic and tie in the above, we now here the Prime Minister of New Zealand quite sensibly pointing out that there is no way his country can effectively stop the global slide and doing so would needlessly place the country in debt, thus saddling future generations with the cost of fixing this problem.  Instead, he says he is going to focus on reduced taxes and infrastructure improvements in order to ready New Zealand for the recovery that is sure to come.  He is not talking about reducing taxes for the poorest in New Zealand, he is talking about compressing the tax structure, which means reducing all the brackets, but reducing the higher brackets more.

Of course, ask any Austrian or Anarcho-Capitalist what to do to get out of this mess, and they will all say what the Bureau has recommended over and over, which is to reduce taxes across the board, flatten the tax curve, eliminate capital gains (New Zealand essentially has no capital gains tax), spend money to improve infrastructure if you must spend money, and reduce needless regulation across the board.

So, the Bureau remains cautiously optimistic that what is happening is the people of this earth are beginning to lose patience with the fools who think they lead.  The one thing politicians must learn to fear again is the pitchforks.  The Bureau remains pretty certain that the attempted globalization will go forward, but, like all previous attempts to bring the whole world under one regulatory sphere, it will fail because nobody wants to pay for it.

This editor is also seriously considering starting the paperwork to move to New Zealand next week.  Such a decision is not taken lightly, but this country has not resembled the ideal that was laid down by the founding fathers in over a hundred years.  It is not the land of the free and clearly not the land of the brave.  It is a land where people talk about 'defending freedom' and 'invading Iraq' in the same sentence as if those two concepts were in any way related.

As time has progressed, the patriotic fervor that once burned in the breast has turned to cynical anger at the continued hijacking of the Republic by people who have power lust and liberal agendas.  Despite being an actual Democratic Socialist state, countries such as New Zealand and Switzerland more closely resemble the ideals that our great country was supposedly founded on, those ideas of personal dignity, financial freedom and the right to pursue happiness, long lost in this country.  After a while, one is tempted to simply reject the soul-sucking stupidity and find greener pastures.

And, once again, the Bureau's futurological model predicts brain drain in the United States.  It predicts a period of dominance in many technical sectors by the tiny country of New Zealand and predicts Zurich will be the major financial center once again, as New York and London collapse in ignominy.  Hopefully, any country that is the benefit of the leftover brains in the United States will not follow the same course that this country has, but all great countries must try their hand at empire, it seems, despite the likelihood of success being zero in the long term.