A Modest Proposal for Mozilla

Keep your products free, provided the user warrants no to contravene various leftist dogmas. To break the pledge exposes one to liability.

Don't worry, folks, the Mozillans would never ever use your private information against you. They're tolerant and enlightened.

Preaching to the Choir, Not Making Converts

That's the trouble with conservative & libertarian media, IMHO. Suggestion:

...it might be useful to have awards recognizing people who spread the conservative message to skeptics and people who haven’t heard it. Best Conservative Evangelist, with categories like Blogging, Press, Radio, Television, Policy Analysis, etc. Ditto for libertarians.

But nooo...

For Mayor-Elect de Blasio's Urgent Attention

I gather that deB will end or rein in the program because of racial profiling...and yet, African-Americans are, um, overrepresented in violent-crime statistics. What to do, what to do?

Simple once you think of it: race norming!

Hire a bunch of police to stop & frisk all racial groups in equal proportion. That will be a whole lot of police, but no price is too high to pay to avoid racial profiling. You'll also want to replicate the experience of being frisked by an officer of different race, so most of the new hires will be minorities.

Hurray for diversity!

Make Valerie Magic Even More Magical!

Background here, here and here, for example.

A couple of suggestions, posted here as a public service.:

1. President Obama, direct America's Poet Laureate to compose an Ode to Valerie Jarrett to be read on prime time TV while video of Jarrett's slum properties is shown.

2. Have the words, or separately commissioned lyrics, set to music and sung, in prime time of course, by a diverse™ choir. Someone whose link I didn't save suggested that the tune be 'To Know Him Is To Love Him'. I suggest opening with that, then breaking into a gospel beat.

Reynolds' Fourth Law: A Modest Proposal

The first three:

1. Subsidizing the markers of status doesn’t produce the character traits that result in that status; it undermines them.

2. The more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

 3. Whatever politicians control, they will use against you to get what they want.

Actually, the third has been proposed by Will Collier. Reynolds has not explicitly embraced it.

So here is:

0., 3., or 4. When confronted with a public policy decision, politicians will prefer the option that maximizes graft.

Proposed Plot for a Science Fiction Novel

1. Note that the higher lower (corrected 20130729) the population density of a piece of US ground, the more likely, on average, it is to be inhabited by conservatives, and vice versa.

The novel describes a near-future civil war between urban and rural areas. After initial setbacks to the conservative rustics, they are driven to Mao' and Ho's writings to learn how to run a peasants' guerrilla war. (Of course, the American Revolution was in part a rural rebellion.)

To turn the novel into a series, introduce conflict among leaders of the rebellion. Some are fighting to roll back the power of the government, and others seek to emulate Mao and Ho in governance as well as in guerrilla strategy. The latter is plausible given the authoritarian tendencies of much social conservatism.

2. In fact, I originally wondered if Mao and Ho can be adapted to political tactics for rural conservatives. Probably not, is my inclination though I haven't read M&H: the methods proposed by these writers are intrinsically violent.

3. The hacker culture may well have something to teach conservatives and libertarians who are resisting the metastasis of the State.

A New Precautionary Principle

The Precautionary Principle states that no innovation or policy change should be implemented until it has been proven to be safe. That is, no change should be adopted until every objection has been conclusively refuted; the burden of proof falls on those who propose the change.

My suggestion:

Disregard everybody who invokes or implies the Precautionary Principle.

Lang Lang

Submitted as a comment to the Tatler report:

1. This is gross negligence by whoever, presumably the State Department, vetted the program. A senior head should roll: somebody at the undersecretary level, and maybe the Secretary herself, should be fired.

2. Imagine if an American residing in China had done this kind of thing. He'd be lucky--lucky--to be kicked out of the country on the spot.

Yes, my immediate reaction is that that Lang Lang should be expelled from the US (I gather he does not have dual citizenship). Unfortunately, this would only deepen the tragicomedy since our Left would rally around him as a human-rights victim--but so be it.

3. Since I don't expect Lang Lang to be expelled, I have a more modest proposal: have him play at the opening of the Ground Zero Mosque.

4. From sean Carlsd #6: ...The song is also the opening theme song for 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony (the lip-syncing brouhaha is on this song), G.W. Bush attended the opening ceremony, nobody seemed to think China showed disrespect back then.

Bush also stayed at the Olympics (and was photographed with our bikini-clad female volleyball team) while his BFF Vladimir's army invaded Georgia.

Bush and Obama: Chimpy and Chumpy.

No wonder the Chinese believe that history is on their side.

The comment is posted here.

Addendum 20110202: John Derbyshire thinks this is much ado about little as far as Lang Lang is concerned. Money quote:

I applaud Lang Lang as an honest patriot. I only wish our ruling class had half as much love for their country as Lang Lang has for his.

There's a lot of ruin in a great nation. For the time being our wounds are primarily self-inflicted. As the ruling class continues to weaken the country, at some point that will no longer be true.

California

The state might be better managed if we returned it to Mexico.

Demographic trends may bring that about. IMHO a more plausible worst-case scenario is a Latino majority exacting a steady stream of concessions from Washington, as Quebec does from Canada.

At least Mexico would have the common sense to tap the state's natural resources which are currently off-limits due to environmentalist special interests.

The fate of Berkeley-type watermelons who tried the obstructive ploys to which they have come to feel entitled would be...entertaining. Perhaps grimly so.

My Evil Idea

Gene Healy on making criminals out of all Americans:

There are now more than 4,000 federal crimes, spread out through some 27,000 pages of the U.S. Code. Some years ago, analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offenses on the books, and gave up, lacking the resources to get the job done...

You can serve federal time for interstate transport of water hyacinths, trafficking in unlicensed dentures, or misappropriating the likeness of Woodsy Owl and his associated slogan, "Give a hoot, don't pollute."...Bills currently before Congress would send Americans to federal prison for eating horsemeat or selling goods falsely labeled as "Native American."

"Is that the system we have, that Congress can say, nobody shall do any bad things?" an exasperated Scalia asked (Deputy Solicitor General) Drebeen. The system we have comes pretty close, unfortunately. And a federal criminal code that covers everything delegates to prosecutors and the police the power to pick their targets at will, leaving everyone at risk.

(HT: Instapundit) So much for limited government in a free country. Note that the impetus is bipartisan. (Note also bipartisan legalization of things like intellectual-property banditry and expansive eminent domain.)

The law has become so complicated that Congressional researchers can't even enumerate the crimes that Congress has created? This is a job for...Artificial Intelligence!

Some public-spirited entrepreneur should create a software package that runs along the lines of a search engine. The enterprising prosecutor types in a target's behavior and the engine returns the crimes that are compatible with those actions.

In fact, every police department should have one! Initial versions might require an officer seeking a pretext for an arrest to call a dispatcher who will run the program and relay the options to the officer. Very quickly, however, voice recognition software can take the dispatcher out of the loop and automate the entire process.

(According to Healy's piece, Jim Webb is taking this issue on. Good for him. I'm glad I donated to his campaign against MacacAllen.)

How to Fix NASA

Rand Simberg has been blogging about a commission chaired by the eminent Norman Augustine. Unfortunately, vested interests are determined to preserve the status quo.

I'm guessing that the next meaningful step will be taken by private industry or the Chinese.

Ever minded to civic helpfulness, I have a modest proposal to improve NASA: merge it into the Department of Agriculture.

Be President, Barry

"House Democrats propose $410B spending bill", reports the AP. Including an 8% increase during a dangerous recession.

One of Bush's biggest mistakes was his failure, afaik, to veto a single spending bill while his party controlled Congress. Obama should not repeat it.

Let me fantasize. Everybody (Pelosi, Reid, etc.) gathers for the signing. Obama marches in stonefaced and announces he's not going to waste the American people's money with this and this and this and too much else to mention. He takes out a magic marker and writes a big block-letter VETO that he holds up for the cameras. Saying "Madame Speaker, take this back and fix it," he starts to hand the bill to Pelosi, but then he stops and says, "No, just start over." And marches out.

Seriously, "the President is who you vote for to protect you from other people's Congressmen." Obama should make it publicly clear that he is such a President. (Is he?) Note that early in his administration, Reagan fired government air traffic controllers who were striking illegally, even though their union had supported him in the election.

In other words, Obama should set up a kinder, gentler Sister Soujah moment with Pelosi.

Gitmo: Mend It, Don't End It

Next time the executives of a bailed-out bank give themselves bonuses while assuring us that government dollars weren't used...whoosh!

As for the prosperous respectable people, well hidden in the shadows, who suborned the government to open the border and flood the country with illegal aliens: lock 'em up! (Not the illegals, but the people who invited them. The fact that the illegals were invited is one of the toughest aspects of how to deal with them.)

Addenda. Who else deserves to go?

Bush, obviously.

Phil Gramm.

Barney Frank.

I'll give Greenspan probation because he voluntarily admitted he was wrong.