On the January 1, 2010 episode of the show, the featured topic was Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. I’m a fan of Ehrenreich’s work, and she used to live in Charlottesville, so I tuned in while I was driving somewhere or another. Ehrenreich’s thesis was that a lack of critical thinking was part of what led to the collapse of Countrywide and companies like it, touching off the recession. That the people who advance and do well in those businesses were the people saying “nothing can go wrong with bundling sub-prime mortgages,” not the people saying “I think this is a bad idea, because it could end disastrously.” Olney had a few different guests on the show alongside Ehrenreich, and one of them was John Assaraf.

I’d never heard of John Assaraf before, but a mere glance at his website makes obvious that he’s a shyster. He’s in the business of taking money from suckers by selling them the message that they simply need to imagine themselves rich, and then they will be rich. Of course, somebody listening to the show wouldn’t know this about the guy. They’d only know that he’s a “business growth expert and motivational speaker,” as Olney introduced him.

…

So Assaraf spends a minute making outlandish, utterly unsupportable medical claims, with absolutely no education or experience that would allow him to evaluate them—sheer bullshit—all about how disease can be stopped on a cellular level by thinking happy thoughts, and that’s when we discover that Ehrenreich has a doctorate in cellular immunology. Who saw that coming? Nobody! Nobody could have! It’s astounding! But you know who doesn’t care? Olney. Not in the least. He continues his “so what’s your response?” back-and-forth between the two, never acknowledging that Assaraf has been hopeless owned by Ehrenreich, or that Olney or his produce have erred enormously in matching up a motivational speaker with a cellular immunologist to debate cellular immunology. Olney, presumably not having just fallen off the turnip truck, surely knew he was being bullshitted by Assaraf and that, by extension, his listeners were being bullshitted by Assaraf. But instead he followed his lousy script where he just has two people say their piece, and lets the listeners sort out who they agree with. But that requires honest actors, it requires evenly matched debaters, and it requires that the topic be something on which intelligent minds may disagree. This was not such a topic.

Which begs the opposite question: Why should I take Waldo’s word for it?  Why should you take my word that Waldo’s word might be suspect?

This week’s UK Economist flips the issue of trust into something called affinity fraud, where otherwise sensible people are led to believe things by people whom they inherently trust… only to be fleeced in the end:

The increase is partly a result of better detection, post-Madoff. The SEC filed more than twice as many Ponzi cases in 2010 as in 2008. The number of Ponzis exposed each month began to climb just as the financial crisis struck in 2007 (see chart). Frauds are more prone to collapse in a weak economy as investors try to pull money out to cover shortfalls elsewhere.

Bad times also make get-rich-quick schemes more tempting. Desperation breeds gullibility. The median annual return offered by scammers in the Marquet study was 38%. In a case in Montana, victims were promised 800% back in a week.

Mistrust of mainstream finance helps the scammers. The big guys on Wall Street have shown they can’t be trusted, they say; better to go with someone you know. This was part of Mr Taylor’s pitch in Georgia.

This “Mr. Taylor” would walk into a church, promise the folks in the pews that God wanted them to be rich so they could do God’s work, then sold them on a profit-making scheme… and disappeared with the cash.  Taylor is still on the run.

I’ve opined on this in the past regarding how readers should filter their information.  The blogosphere, sadly, has not improved one iota as baser instincts seem to run roughshod over information, culture, and learning.  At the end of the day, we’re all at the mercy of our prejudices, experiences, and what we know.

As for cash on hand, Kaine has $3.3 million to Allen’s $2.2 million.  Allen, not having the advantage of Organizing for America or other Obama-affiliated programs, has been spending much of their resources building the ground game necessary to fend of Tim Kaine’s Senate bid.

The kicker in all of this?  Kaine really doesn’t seem terribly focused on running a campaign for U.S. Senate, but rather is more concerned with ensuring Obama wins Virginia in the upcoming presidential contest.

How bad is it?  Kaine is still running amok in Virginia lashing his raft to Obama’s sinking ship. Crank the speakers up on this one:

“Unabashed supporter of the president.”

Wow. Betcha that will play well with independent voters, Timmay.

Despite Kaine’s efforts to drive a wedge between Allen and the Tea Party (59% of whom support Allen), Kaine is losing virtually every major demographic in Virginia needed to win on Election Day. How is Chuck Schumer’s blank check going to endear Kaine with Virginia’s hunters and firearm owners?

After all, why would anyone want to turn Governor Abuser Fees into Senator Abuser Fees?

Usually the legislature sees bills focusing on limits to texting while driving, or talking on the cell phone while driving.

But “texting, putting on makeup, snarfing down a cheeseburger, whatever” while driving can all be dangerous, Orrock said. He said he even saw a man driving down Route 1 using an iPad.

“They’re clearly engaging in a dangerous activity,” Orrock said of such drivers.

But such distracted driving isn’t currently illegal as a primary offense, he said.

OK OK… goofing off with an iPad is bad news.  But eating a cheeseburger?  Really?

Orrock wants to give police the tools to stop such drivers before they cause accidents.

“My intention is to create a new driving offense … so law enforcement will at least have the authority to pull someone over,” Orrock said. “I think this is a tool that they need to assist in that end. We know distracted driving leads to accidents.”

The language of Orrock’s bill outlaws driving a vehicle “while engaged in an activity that is not necessary to the operation of the vehicle and that actually impairs his ability to operate the vehicle is guilty of a traffic infraction.”

Let’s put this one in plain English, folks.  Changing the radio station now becomes a primary offense in Virginia.  Heck — setting your cruise control in your vehicle is a primary offense under this legislation.  Glancing at a map?  That’s a primary offense now too.

Now granted, Orrock isn’t entirely incorrect.  In an era of iPhones and portable electronic devices, using Google Maps to get your way around is natural.  The temptation to text or type in an address while on the move is sometimes irresistible, and as an EMS responder, Orrock has probably seen his fair share of accidents where someone got into a wreck that never should have happened.

It’s still bad legislation — banning cheeseburgers and all that — yet it’s a great conversation to have as Virginia’s laws are constantly refined to catch up with technology.

(crossposted to Bearing Drift)

That’s why no one who has been inside a prison, if only for a day, can ever forget the feeling. Time stops. A note of attenuated panic, of watchful paranoia—anxiety and boredom and fear mixed into a kind of enveloping fog, covering the guards as much as the guarded. “Sometimes I think this whole world is one big prison yard, / Some of us are prisoners, some of us are guards,” Dylan sings, and while it isn’t strictly true—just ask the prisoners—it contains a truth: the guards are doing time, too. As a smart man once wrote after being locked up, the thing about jail is that there are bars on the windows and they won’t let you out. This simple truth governs all the others. What prisoners try to convey to the free is how the presence of time as something being done to you, instead of something you do things with, alters the mind at every moment. For American prisoners, huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world—Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teen-agers to life imprisonment—time becomes in every sense this thing you serve.

Read it all.  If you’ve ever been in a pound and known that a few dozen furry eyes are staring at you begging to be sprung from the joint, that’s close to the feeling expressed here…

It does make one wonder whether our prisons (or more inaptly named “penitentiaries”) really are serving a purpose?  What good does it do to warehouse 6 million Americans to no ostensible purpose?

Here’s the additional catch: Iran could very well instruct Hezbollah to play its aces all at once.  Between a Syrian government looking to re-assert itself, a Hezbollah looking for a moment to strike, Iraq in turmoil and an Iranian regime looking for an out… the mix could very well be in for a wider regional conflict.

…or it could be nothing.

Still, the American people certainly did not see Libya coming up on the radar.  Now we have 16,000 troops on the ground.  With the massive NATO presence in the Persian Gulf right now, there’s enough powder in the keg.

Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

The report is worth reading, if not a bit hyperbolic.  The picture of the child in the UK Daily Mail is, indeed, a stock photo… not an abandoned child.  In fact, that child is probably making money compared to some.

Greece’s inability to cope with its spending is the reason for the shortfalls, and austerity without a plan for economic growth is no plan at all.  Austerity measures inevitably create that downward spiral unless the government can arrest the decline in government spending and/or peel back the socialist command economy.

The nations of Eastern Europe after 1989 have much to teach in this regard.  Romania and other nations more deeply wedded to the idea of socialism as a mode of economy took their time adjusting to the European common (and relatively, more free) market, whereas nations that had socialism imposed such as Czechoslovakia and Poland were very quick to throw off those shackles.

The result?  Poland thrives alongside Germany as one of Europe’s more stable economies.  The Czech Republic continues to thrive as well, alongside several Eastern European economies that are emerging in the region (Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, and even tiny Kosovo).

The lesson?  The sooner you allow the old system to collapse and allow the free market to clear the muddy stream, the faster one can resolve issues of poverty and bureaucratic largess.  The longer you wait, the more painful the recovery.

Here’s a sample of the awesome:

I’ve been discouraged lately by the lack of enthusiasm that the blogosphere has had for welcoming the growing population of black Republicans into the fold. I have heard for many years, and have said many times myself, that our party is a big tent party. I believe we’ve got the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to recruit more people like myself into our party. Yet it seems that the only thing that generates responses out here in the blogs is conflict. If I post a video or a blog post about the growing minority movement in the GOP I get no responses. But if I attack a fellow Republican, I can generate 50-60 comments. Why are we more interested in seeing cat fights than building our party?

I want to capitalize on the movement that my fellow African-Americans are putting together to strengthen our party, but I can’t do it alone. It’s time we prove to the Democrats that minorities are not their slaves and they don’t own our lives or this country.

This is the time to show the country real change – that the Republican Party is the party of the future, not just the party of old rich white dudes. It’s time to remind everyone what we stand for – life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue the American dream.

Now how can you not add this blog to your RSS reader with thoughtful commentary like that?

Frankly, the author (fdgoldwater — a pseudonym, but I’ll let that pass) is absolutely correct: Republicans have always shown a tendency to be “more pure” in their ideology than the other Republican standing next to them.  As the party of free minds, free markets, and a free society we should expect nothing less than the healthy competition of ideas.

Emphasis on healthy.

Given the wide margins the GOP has carried Virginia since Obama’s 2008 romp, it appears as if the former DNC chairman is being more coy than candidate.

It almost begs the question “why run?” — if Kaine’s intent is just to play nose tackle for Obama’s re-election bid.

A survey last year by two Chicago-area finance professors, Paola Sapienza at Northwestern University and Luigi Zingales at the University of Chicago, found that roughly three out of 10 mortgage defaults in 2010 were by homeowners who could afford to make their payments, up from 22 percent in 2009.
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“It’s a looming problem that’s in the shadows,” said Jason Kopcak, a mortgage trader at Cantor Fitzgerald who advises lenders on how to value the loans on their books. “It’s very worrisome to mortgage lenders.”

Researchers point to a number of forces that are driving borrowers to walk away from their mortgages. At the top of the list is the estimated 12 million homes that are underwater, meaning the owners owe more than they are worth.

…and you know who makes the money when you default?  Mortgage lenders.  Bankers.  Realtors.

If you own an asset, keep it.  If you can afford an asset, keep it.  This is basic Austrian economics, folks… doing this just means someone else snaps up your asset at a fraction of the cost, with the fees going back to the industry.

Remember that these guys want liquidity in the market.  Liquidity keeps them in business.  Everyone holding onto their homes until the storm blows over means fewer transactions.  Fewer transactions means fewer fees.

We’re in Year 4 of a five-year credit crisis, folks.  About eighteen months to go before Americans have paid off their credit cards, their ratings recover, and they feel better about spending again.  This isn’t rocket science, folks…

So sayeth the Huffington Post, ergo it must be true…

Noting a “rising sense of frustration” at the worldwide economic recession, Pope Benedict XVI said that a more just and peaceful world requires “adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth.”

…

The message laments that “some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity.”

Authentic education, Benedict writes, teaches the proper use of freedom with “respect for oneself and others, including those whose way of being and living differs greatly from one’s own.”

Fun with excerpts?  Of course, Catholic News Service picked up a much different tone coming from the Holy Father:

He asked parents and teachers to be more attentive to the hopes and fears of young people today and to their search for true values, and he asked governments to put more resources into education and job creation.

And the pope asked young people themselves to take their schooling seriously and to be open to the example and knowledge their elders have to share.

He asked them “to be patient and persevering in seeking justice and peace, in cultivating the taste for what is just and true, even when it involves sacrifice and swimming against the tide.”

Well that’s a bit more balanced… but neither really captured the essence of what was a truly excellent and appropriate message to leaders in Rome for this week’s World Day of Peace 2012.

The message is worth printing out and carrying with you to lunch this week.  Pope Benedict XVI — in fact, many arms of the Vatican — are generating some excellent, hard-hitting content.  Sadly, most of this has to run through a filter… the media.

Let me give you a quick sample:

Where does true education in peace and justice take place? First of all, in the family, since parents are the first educators. The family is the primary cell of society; “it is in the family that children learn the human and Christian values which enable them to have a constructive and peaceful coexistence. It is in the family that they learn solidarity between the generations, respect for rules, forgiveness and how   to welcome others.”  The family is the first school in which we are trained in justice and peace.

We are living in a world where families, and life itself, are constantly threatened and not infrequently fragmented. Working conditions which are often incompatible with family responsibilities, worries about the future, the frenetic pace of life, the need to move frequently to ensure an adequate livelihood, to say nothing of mere survival – all this makes it hard to ensure that children receive one of the most precious of treasures: the presence of their parents. This presence makes it possible to share more deeply in the journey of life and thus to pass on experiences and convictions gained with the passing of the years, experiences and convictions which can only be communicated by spending time together. I would urge parents not to grow disheartened! May they encourage children by the example of their lives to put their hope before all else in God, the one source of authentic justice and peace.

That’s stuff right out of Rerum Novarum – the papal encyclical establishing Catholic norms on social justice — and worthy of being compared to Pope Leo XIII’s exposition on the ends of a just society.  I’m sure the language on family can’t please most observers (the Huffington Post editors most of all), but it remains a salient fact that what separates Catholic social justice from the namby-pamby variety peddled by the socialist left in America is precisely this — an emphasis on family.

For those counting, this also offers a bit of insight as to why the Catholic Church hesitates on just about every other issue of import (abortion, environment, living wage legislation, even health care) but will lead with its chin on family.

And why is this so important?  Because families are where good consciences are formed:

I would also like to address a word to those in charge of educational institutions: with a great sense of responsibility may they ensure that the dignity of each person is always respected and appreciated. Let them be concerned that every young person be able to discover his or her own vocation and helped to develop his or her God-given gifts. May they reassure families that their children can receive an education that does not conflict with their consciences and their religious principles.

Every educational setting can be a place of openness to the transcendent and to others; a place of dialogue, cohesiveness and attentive listening, where young people feel appreciated for their personal abilities and inner riches, and can learn to esteem their brothers and sisters. May young people be taught to savour the joy which comes from the daily exercise of charity and compassion towards others and from taking an active part in the building of a more humane and fraternal society.

I ask political leaders to offer concrete assistance to families and educational institutions in the exercise of their right and duty to educate. Adequate support should never be lacking to parents in their task. Let them ensure that no one is ever denied access to education and that families are able freely to choose the educational structures they consider most suitable for their children. Let them be committed to reuniting families separated by the need to earn a living. Let them give young people a transparent image of politics as a genuine service to the good of all.

Did the Pope just endorse home schooling?  Why yes… I believe he did.

You can see the argument being laid brick by brick by the Holy Father: family, formation, vocation, education, polity, and finally social justice.  Skip just one, and the entire thread separates.

Oh — you didn’t get this in the Huffington Post article?  Of course you didn’t… that’s not what they wanted to stress.  They’d rather stress that even the POPE! supports a program of socialist wealth redistributions, the rest is just blah blah blah… which is why Benedict is quick to point out their role too (something the HuffPo writers must have missed as they were furiously editing their pre-programmed stories):

I cannot fail also to appeal to the world of the media to offer its own contribution to education. In today’s society the mass media have a particular role: they not only inform but also form the minds of their audiences, and so they can make a significant contribution to the education of young people. It is important never to forget that the connection between education and communication is extremely close: education takes place through communication, which influences, for better or worse, the formation of the person.

Interestingly enough, Pope Beneidct XVI never uses the term “socialism” to describe his position.  For those familiar with the German economy and the experience of Poland in the 1980s, you’ll note a very different phrase: solidarism.

In this world of ours, in which, despite the profession of good intentions, the value of the person, of human dignity and human rights is seriously threatened by the widespread tendency to have recourse exclusively to the criteria of utility, profit and material possessions, it is important not to detach the concept of justice from its transcendent roots. Justice, indeed, is not simply a human convention, since what is just is ultimately determined not by positive law, but by the profound identity of the human being. It is the integral vision of man that saves us from falling into a contractual conception of justice and enables us to locate justice within the horizon of solidarity and love.

We cannot ignore the fact that some currents of modern culture, built upon rationalist and individualist economic principles, have cut off the concept of justice from its transcendent roots, detaching it from charity and solidarity: “The ‘earthly city’ is promoted not merely by relationships of rights and duties, but to an even greater and more fundamental extent by relationships of gratuitousness, mercy and communion. Charity always manifests God’s love in human relationships as well, it gives theological and salvific value to all commitment for justice in the world”.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Mt5:6). They shall be satisfied because they hunger and thirst for right relations with God, with themselves, with their brothers and sisters, and with the whole of creation.

Solidarism — sometimes derisively called “social Catholicism” — is the name given to the works of Fr. Heinrich Pesch S.J. which are sometimes summarized as the Summa Economica — a 10-volume marriage between Catholic social teaching and Thomistic scholasticism.  His works have only recently been translated into English, but summaries are available and recent experience has verified their timelessness.  The Polish Solidarity movement that broke the back of Eastern European communism?  Now you know why they used the term.  Germany’s Christian Democrats in the 1950s rebuilt the West German economy on such principles, ones that have weathered the recent Great Recession in grand style.

Solidarity has a lot more to do with just hanging in together, nor is it a baptized form of socialism.  It is an understanding and a realization that labor and capital depend upon one another, that individual accomplishment should not be sacrificed to the collective, and that such individuals must pass on their accomplishments and opportunities to future generations.  In other words, leave the world better than we found it.

Here we get to the rock of the Huffington Post article, because it is the only time in the entire message the word “redistribution” is even mentioned (guess they failed to tell folks that, eh?) in the message, and it’s remarkable from a couple of perspectives:

“Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity.”  We Christians believe that Christ is our true peace: in him, by his Cross, God has reconciled the world to himself and has broken down the walls of division that separated us from one another (cf. Eph 2:14-18); in him, there is but one family, reconciled in love.

Peace, however, is not merely a gift to be received: it is also a task to be undertaken. In order to be true peacemakers, we must educate ourselves in compassion, solidarity, working together, fraternity, in being active within the community and concerned to raise awareness about national and international issues and the importance of seeking adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth, the promotion of growth, cooperation for development and conflict resolution. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:9).

 How’s this for awesome?

1. “Peace is not merely the absence of war” — guess what Pope Benedict is quoting?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Not an unsubtle message to those turning Pope John Paul II’s legacy and turning into a condemnation of Catholic just war doctrine, eh?
2. Peace, and by extension social justice, is not an end.  It is a means that must be lived in union with faith.  Ouch… so much for orthopraxy without orthodoxy.
3. “(A)dequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth” — like, I dunno, the free market perhaps?

This distinction in #1 is critically important, because otherwise one totally misses the point of what Pope Benedict XVI is trying to say.  ”Redistribution of wealth” is not an end.  It is a means — a byproduct of a just society.  Nor is it an indictment of the free market system… or even a recommendation that the current system need be replaced by a competing idea (socialism, for instance).

Rather, in the light of all that was said before, socialism has been utterly rejected by the Holy Father.  What is instead being suggested are two items: (1) Social justice is a symptom of a just culture that includes a respect for family — and above all, life — and (2) ideologies that promise social justice as ends are to be assiduously questioned and rejected.

Moreover — and this is what I sincerely appreciate — is that the task of establishing Catholic social justice is not one for the bishops or even for the Church to accomplish.  Rather, this responsibility lies with the laity to accomplish.  The Church can only point the way… if it seed remains in the pews, it will never accomplish itself.  We have to go forward and set good examples — and create the conditions so that others may set good examples — if the means of peace are to be achieved.

This truly was a fantastic message to the world’s youth.  Unfortunately, the media completely missed the point… and pearls that would otherwise be considered wisdom were tossed before less worthy creatures.