Sounded Good at the Time...

Well, I have withheld opinion on this nomination until having a chance in my busy schedule to look into the facts. Now, armed with those facts, I can confidently say that I would not support her, and will encourage the Judicial Nomination Committee not to support her, as a Supreme Court Justice.

My reason, however, differs widely from Coulter and the rest of the “hue and cry crowd.”

Harriet Miers, regardless of whether I agree with her decisions or not, does not reach those decisions through reason. She is overly reliant on non-reason in her mental capacities. The law is all fact or it is useless. To base legal decisions on non-reason lowers us to the level of the very people we are fighting in our “War on Terrorism.”

It is amazing how frequently I reach decisions through reason that happen to agree with decisions others make through non-reason. For example, I don’t drink alcohol or use tobacco products and addictive substances such as heroin. I know many others who similarly refrain. They do so based on non-reason, i.e., the threat of punishment in the “afterlife.” I do so for my benefit now, since reason states that engaging in unhealthy, expensive behaviors leads to shortened lifespan, poor health, and poverty.

Unfortunately, people often use this coincidence to say that their non-reasoned path to a reasonable conclusion is valid.

It reminds me of Algebra class in High School. Even though it was decades ago, I still remember coming up with my own “formulas” for reaching the same conclusion as the teacher. While he said he admired my creativity, he strongly encouraged me to learn and use the mathematical formulas. That way, he assured me, I would come up with the right conclusion every time, not just happen on it by chance.

As for Miers, she seems to have come up with some legal decisions with seem reasonable, and many more that seem not. Setting her aside and nominating someone who can reach conclusions through a “formula” of reason will give us all more consistently legally sound decisions. I encourage President Bush to do so without further delay. It’s time for the nation to stop being “Mired in Miers.”

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

First, the residents of Raleigh were forced into a physical fitness program called trash cart hauling, after the city abandoned the practice of having trash collectors pick up trash from residents’ backyards. Now, the pace is being quickened. Residents will have to double-time it to the curb and back. No stopping to catch their breath. Before sunset the day after collection, they have to haul the cart to the backyard. Hup! Hup! If not, the Raleigh police (motto: “We need more silly laws to enforce – yeah, right!”) will issue a “ticket.” Three of those and you’re in the hole for a whopping fifty bucks. There goes dinner out with your sweetie.

Solution for homeowners: Hire-a-hauler – a program where you can hire your neighbor’s kid to haul your trash cart up to the backyard when he/she gets home from school, which is usually before sunset (don’t hire one that is in an after-school sports program, though). Or, for you technophiles, Inventaholics Anonymous founder Henry “Just call me Jake” Harris introduces “Robocart” – a truly high-tech cart that automatically rolls itself out to the curb by 6:00 a.m. on trash day and back up to your house before sunset the next day. Of course, the prototype had a minor flaw – a robotic arm designed to take the trash out of the cart and put it into the trash truck. But the arm kept grabbing the trash collectors instead. Don’t worry, “Just call me Jake” will have the kinks worked out soon.

And for the overworked and underpaid Raleigh police force, there’s “InstaTicket,” a tamper-proof device with a timer/light sensor combo that, when installed on trash carts, functions similarly to parking meters, except this one will automatically pop out a ticket if the cart isn’t rolled back up to the house before the second sunset after trash is collected. (Since the time that sunset occurs varies every day, a model using just a timer had to be scrapped.) Of course, homeowners could always install floodlights in their yard to fake out the sensor – not to mention keeping the neighborhood well-lit, neighbors awake, and their electric bill equal to the state budget deficit. But, hey, it’s worth saving that fifty bucks to take your sweetie out to dinner.

Maybe next time the Raleigh City Council has a gap in its agenda, they can consider a few other earth-shattering issues, such as: How many more times to open, then close, then open the downtown area to traffic; where to post more signs on the beltway to “clarify” which way people are traveling; and how to make parking for the next State Fair even more inconvenient and confusing.

Don’t be surprised if we see a new competition at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, China: Trash cart hauling, part of the track and field events. Can you imagine winning that gold medal?

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

The popularity of the Internet and blogging should help in this area. After all, “practice makes perfect.” But it doesn’t seem to. Maybe that’s because access is so easy. I was up and blogging in about an hour (I tweaked my Template, changing colors, text size, etc., and implemented some special features). So, anyone who knows how to turn on a PC or how to sit down in front of one in an Internet café can, in very little time, start spewing out poorly written, poorly researched “stuff” to fill up their blog.

The problem doesn’t stop there.

Photos can be posted to a blog. One person actually posted a photo of the placenta after his son’s birth. I only expect to see such things on Discovery Health channel, and then only briefly as I’m cruising through the channels trying to find something aimed at the intelligent mind.

Spammers can post to blogs in the comments feature. There is a filter to help with issue. Now, if we could only filter out the gibberish posted by those who look in the mirror every morning and see a much more intellectual person than is really staring back at them.

Some “Ivory Tower” thinkers are totally adverse to someone commenting on one blog and mentioning that he/she has a blog. To them, I say,

After all, people like me don’t have TV shows to announce our blog to the planet. We have to get the word out in other ways.

Here’s hoping you’ll have a fun time with your own blog. And thanks for reading mine. Read carefully and thoroughly. Write even more carefully and thoroughly. What you post will be out there in cyberspace for a VERY long time.

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

First, R E L A X.

Panic is always to the panicker’s disadvantage and to the calm person’s advantage.

Remember the scene from “It’s a Wonderful Life”? There was a bank run. People were suddenly convinced that their money was at risk in the building and loan. Jimmy Stewart tried to explain that the money they had deposited with him had, in turn, been invested in loans to others, which would be repaid with interest. Some people listened to him. Others didn’t. When Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore) offered to buy up shares people held in the building and loan for cents on the dollar, some took him up on it, thinking something was better than nothing. They were wrong.

Panic caused the run. Customers got only a fraction of their money back. And people like Old Man Potter won, ending up owning more of the town than before.

Similarly, people see gas prices at the pump going up. They panic and rush to fill their car’s tank. The station owner may panic and think he has to raise his price further to slow down demand. People panic more and rush in more.

It’s a vicious cycle.

If they, instead, remained calm, said to themselves that they didn’t really need to top off their tank right now, that the price may be going up because of the weekend (which happens a lot around here), then they will not artificially inflate demand by panic-purchasing.

An article this morning on The Drudge Report is a good illustration that this works. In “Oil Hits Two-Month Low on Falling Demand” by Brad Foss, stated:

This shows that people are not panicking and topping off their tanks.

Foss continues:

and

Bottom line: Stay calm. Don’t rush to buy gas because you hear a rumor that prices are headed up or that there is a shortage. But don’t expect prices to stay low just because you don’t drive to the grocery store. Nor do you need to rush out and trade in your SUV for a hybrid car. If demand goes down, supply will go down by necessity to keep prices up. That’s economics.

Got errands to run now. See you later!

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

A prime example of such behavior is Eliot Spitzer (check out his political ambitions at his campaign site). He picked Martha Stewart as his star to hitch to. She was perfect: a hard-working, wealthy, self-made woman who was loved (and hated) by hundred of thousands. She was very much a celebrity with a bull’s eye on her back. And Spitzer took aim.

First, he charged her with insider trading. Then, when he couldn’t make those charges stick, he had to fall back on that tired cliché of “Obstructing Justice.”

It worked.

Martha went to prison and – Poof! – like magic, Eliot became a household name. She got a cell and an ankle bracelet. He got a leg up in his political ambitions. (Anyone who thinks only corporate moguls step on others on their way up the ladder of success should think again.)

Now, Ann Coulter is playing the game, possibly to promote sales of her latest book. (I guess if Star Parker can go on Bill O’Reilly’s show and plug her new book during a debate, Coulter can promote hers while ragging on Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court.) As a dyed-in-the-wall Capitalist, I see Marketing as a cornerstone of that economic philosophy. However, Coulter is a columnist who supposedly speaks for conservatives and, therefore, what issues she picks to focus on reflect on other conservatives.

Coulter, in an appearance last night (4 October 2005) on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” stated that there was clear “cronyism” in Bush’s selection of Harriet Miers for the latest Supreme Court nominee.

Not very logical. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it could be Robin Williams rehearsing a new comedy routine. Based solely on Miers relationship with Bush as justification for such an accusation overlooks an important fact: We know best the qualifications and temperament of those we have worked closely with over the years. Bush picked a nominee that he knows very well.

As for Miers’ qualifications, that has yet to be seen. But for now, let’s hold off on the cries of “cronyism,” even if it does get us a few extra readers or book sales.

At the very least, you don’t speak for this independent, yet basically conservative, thinker.

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

You’re probably thinking, “Hey, we have a huge Federal deficit, a huge cleanup effort in the Gulf Coast, pork projects bulging out of the Transportation Bill and the Energy Bill. How can we even think of switching to the FairTax now?”

Wrong question.

The right question is: “How can we get the FairTax bill (H.R. 25) passed as quickly as possible?”

Here are a few things you can do (not necessarily in this order):

• Buy the book (this will help keep the book high on the NY Times Bestseller List and keep it in the eye of our “public servants” in D.C.).
• Read the book so you’ll be informed on why passage of the FairTax bill (H.R. 25) is vital to our economy.
• Write to your Congressmen/women in support of the FairTax bill (H.R. 25).
• Buy several copies of the book to give to family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, strangers at the mall, etc.
• Talk to your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, strangers at the mall, etc., about the benefits of the FairTax and how vital its passage is to our economy.
• Visit The FairTax Website for more information and to volunteer.
• Write again to your Congressmen/women again to make sure they don’t forget.
• Reread The FairTax Book

Phew! That should keep you busy for awhile. But it will be effort that will pay off BIG TIME!

Oh, by the way, if you’re worried about what all those IRS employees would do for jobs if the agency were disbanded, I can assure you they’ll be fine. There are plenty of jobskill retraining programs out there, funded with our tax dollars.

Ready – Set – Go!

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

Worse still is the idea that such a tax will make us independent of foreign oil (based on the warped concept that the reason we are dependent on foreign oil is that we all drive too much, not that environmentalists keep us from getting at our own oil or that choking governmental regulations keep new innovations from being developed and/or implemented.

Add to that the reasoning of Jackson and others, in an article titled “HybridCars.com, up to 135,383 by the end of August 2005, an increase of over 14 times from 9,350 in 2000.

Do we really need a gas tax to spur the numbers higher?

Dr. Michael Tamor, manager of Ford’s Sustainable Mobility Technologies, stated in that same item, “‘If you think about the 15- to 20-year timeframe, you could argue that all vehicles are going to be hybrids.’” Part of the problem with hybrids is the price, but Toyota is making “hybrids much cheaper and in greater numbers.” This seems like a better solution than a gas tax.

By the way, Jim Press, who heads the U.S. arm of Toyota Motor Corp., is one of the backers of the tax hike, claiming that to get the real cost of gas, we have to “add to that $3 a gallon the cost of a war in Iraq, the cost of losing American soldiers to keep a pipeline of oil going.”

Yeah, right, Jim, that’s why we’re in Iraq. Just another war for oil – like Kuwait. Freedom for the citizens of those countries and stamping out terrorism is a total smokescreen, but no one has you fooled. Wink!

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill

An item on the Drudge Report today shows that “Eminent Domain” is being wielded as freely and broadly as ever. The article, titled “Florida City Considers Eminent Domain,” states that Riviera Beach Mayor Michael Brown (no, not that Michael Brown) sees “Eminent Domain” as one of the “‘tools that have been available to governments for years to bring communities like ours out of the economic doldrums and the trauma centers.’”

Well – yeah – he does have a point. Eminent Domain has been the big club used in the past to mow down anyone who “stands in the way of progress.” Does that make it right?

In an article I posted to Townhall.com titled “Blighted Neighborhoods,” I talked about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo vs. New London, Connecticut, on Thursday, June 23rd 2005 (a day that, as FDR once said, “will live in infamy”). Mayor Brown cites this very decision to justify displacing about 6,000 poverty-level residents to build “a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex.” All in the name of creating jobs.

Yeah – right – jobs.

Hopefully, the Institute for Justice will join the fight. Dana Berliner, senior lawyer with the Institute for Justice, stated that Mayor Brown’s plans are typical “‘pie in the sky’ expectations” for such redevelopments. A more realistic scenario will be that the 6,000 displaced residents will huddle in some other corner of the county or state or country until more local officials decide to redevelop that spot.

Do you see the pattern emerging here? Moving poor people around to create more tax revenue to provide assistance to those poor people is just a shell game.

As I stated in that previous article, we created this mess through our votes and by demanding that the government pay for our needs. The money they pay us has to come from somewhere. It seems that Mayor Brown plans to take it out of the houses of the poor in Riviera Beach, Florida.

All in the name of jobs, progress, and increased tax revenue.

We created this monster. Let’s go to the polls and kill it. And – oh, yeah – by the way, let’s make sure the next Supreme Court Justice sworn in respects our property rights more than Mayor Brown does.

Copyright © 2005 A.C. Cargill