Of taxes, tax avoidance, and socialist greed

The BBC reported yesterday that the Tax Justice Network is at it again.

A global super-rich elite had at least $21 trillion hidden in secret tax havens by the end of 2010, according to a major study.

The figure is equivalent to the size of the US and Japanese economies combined.

The Price of Offshore Revisited was written by James Henry, a former chief economist at the consultancy McKinsey, for the Tax Justice Network.

. . .

Mr Henry said his $21tn is actually a conservative figure and the true scale could be $32tn. A trillion is 1,000 billion.

Mr Henry used data from the Bank of International Settlements, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and national governments.

His study deals only with financial wealth deposited in bank and investment accounts, and not other assets such as property and yachts.

The report comes amid growing public and political concern about tax avoidance and evasion. Some authorities, including in Germany, have even paid for information on alleged tax evaders stolen from banks.

. . .

Mr Henry said that the super-rich move money around the globe through an "industrious bevy of professional enablers in private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries.

"The lost tax revenues implied by our estimates is huge. It is large enough to make a significant difference to the finances of many countries.

"From another angle, this study is really good news. The world has just located a huge pile of financial wealth that might be called upon to contribute to the solution of our most pressing global problems," he said.

There's more at the link.

Note the arrogance of the TJN's researcher.  No sooner does he 'uncover' that rich people allegedly have all these trillions of dollars squirreled away somewhere than he blithely assumes it can be taken away from them and used for 'the solution of our most pressing global problems'.  The fact that it's someone else's property doesn't bother him in the least.  Can anyone say 'socialism'?  Can anyone say 'Marx'?  I figured you could . . .

The Tax Justice Network says of itself:

The Tax Justice Network promotes transparency in international finance and opposes secrecy. We support a level playing field on tax and we oppose loopholes and distortions in tax and regulation, and the abuses that flow from them. We promote tax compliance and we oppose tax evasion, tax avoidance, and all the mechanisms that enable owners and controllers of wealth to escape their responsibilities to the societies on which they and their wealth depend.

Again, more at the link.  Bold print is my emphasis.  If that doesn't remind you of President Obama's fatuous claim last week that entrepreneurs and businessmen didn't become successful from their own efforts, it should!  It's drawn from precisely the same sort of ideological background.

I'm not surprised that wealthy people are seeking to protect their assets from a rapacious taxman.  As Ari Fleischer pointed out in the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

... consider the top 20% of [US] income earners (over $74,000). They make 50% of the nation's income but pay nearly 70% of all federal taxes.

The remaining 30% of the tax burden is borne by 80% of the taxpayers, those who make less than $74,000. In short, this group's share of taxes paid, 30%, is lower than the share of income they earn, 50%.

Yet President Obama says that "for some time now, when compared to the middle class," the wealthy "haven't been asked to do their fair share."

He's right that the system isn't fair, but not because the top 1% pay too little. It is because they pay too much.

More at the link.

The only surprising thing about the report is that it couldn't estimate with any accuracy precisely how much has been hidden from taxation.  (Then again, if I were rich enough to be worried about tax [sadly, I'm not], I'd make damn sure the taxman - not to mention nosy researchers - couldn't find it at all!)





Peter

Of seagulls, poop and protests

The Feral Irishman (WARNING:  site not always safe for work) today put up a fun video about some teenage pranksters feeding laxatives to a flock of seagulls at the beach.  The resulting rain of detritus had people scurrying for cover.

It made me smile, but it also reminded me of an incident that reportedly happened in Britain during the so-called 'Winter of Discontent' of industrial unrest during 1978-79.  The truck drivers strike (part of the unrest) shut down many factories, forcing their employees to be idled whether they wanted to work or not, because the factories couldn't get raw materials in or ship their finished products out.

I was told that at one factory, producing bars of chocolate for Nestlé, the disgruntled workers took matters into their own hands.  They allegedly organized a 'solidarity demonstration of support' for the drivers who were picketing the entrance to the factory, preventing trucks from entering or leaving.  As part of the 'demonstration', they presented the pickets with extra-large bars of Nestlé chocolate, free of charge.  Needless to say, the delighted drivers ate most of the bars at once.

Unfortunately for the drivers, the workers had laced those particular bars with concentrated phenolphthalein - an extremely strong laxative . . .  Apparently the pickets were squatting and groaning for days!  The factory henceforth got deliveries and made shipments on schedule, with no further trouble at all.





Peter

"The Single Most Important Thing to Know About Today's Economy"

That's the subject line of an e-mail I received from Casey Research today, advertising their forthcoming 2012 Fall Summit conference.  It linked to an excellent transcript that's one of the most concise and accurate summaries I've ever read of the key economic problem facing the USA and the world today.

Despite the fact that it's part of an advertising campaign, I'm going to recommend unreservedly that you either read the whole thing (with particular emphasis on the graphs illustrating what's been going on), or watch it in TV form (which is a bit boring, as it's just a voice-over reading the text of the article and showing the figures).  The 'meat' is in the first half of the transcript, or the first 11m. 24s. of the video.  You can skip the rest, which is advertising for the conference.

If you want to read a few main points, here are some excerpts to whet your appetite.

Never before in history have so many governments simultaneously engaged in such extraordinary levels of irresponsible spending.

And never before have the debts resulting from that spending been so extreme on a global basis.

... the cause of all this debt has been an extraordinary increase in government spending at all levels.

Over the past fifty years total federal, state and local government spending here in the United States has steadily crept up to where it now represents over 40% of GDP.

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was under 10%.

And it is poised to only get worse worse: With the passage of Obama care, the government’s share of the economy is expected to grow to the point where it tops 50%.

Let that sink in a bit.

The majority of the economic activity in the United States, purportedly the bastion of free markets, will soon be under the direct control of the federal government.

Of course, governments don’t actually produce anything, so the role they play in the economy comes at the expense of the free market, and by deficit spending.

As you can see in the chart here, in the United States the deficits have reached previously unimaginable levels – over $1.2 trillion annually. And even according to the government’s own projections, the deficit spending will continue at these levels for many years to come.

. . .

But what happens when foreign buyers stop buying a sufficient quantity of U.S. Treasuries, as has been the case in numerous occasions in recent years?

Simple, the Federal Reserve Bank, or Fed as it is more commonly referred to, has stepped in to purchase U.S. Treasury bills directly or indirectly. In short, working closely with the U.S. Treasury, the Fed will do whatever it takes to keep interest rates from rising. That’s because once interest rates rise on the trillions of dollars in debt, the whole house of cards will come crashing down.

In the meantime, savers who rely on the yields they earn are being hugely disadvantaged by the government’s suppression of interest rates. Just this morning I reviewed the statements of a relative and calculated that his annual interest income came to just 80 cents on each $1000 he has on deposit at the bank.

Unfortunately, the problems of a politicized economy are not just fiscal or monetary in nature.

. . .

To varying degrees, it is this ... trend towards central planning at the expense of the free market that is plaguing all of the major world economies.

And when you layer on the costs associated with complying with bureaucratic regulations, the indirect costs of the government’s dead hand on the economy soar.

As a consequence, today's high unemployment numbers are likely to persist. In fact, as governments deepen their involvement in the workplace, and new more efficient technologies become available, unemployment is likely rise to a permanently high plateau.

The situation is exacerbated by a dangerous demographic reality, especially in many of the aging western democracies, with the number of aging citizens ballooning, placing ever greater demands on healthcare and government pension schemes and leaving a smaller population of younger workers to pick up the tab.

Thus, globally, we have historical levels of sovereign debt and deficit spending, a demographic crisis, and a structural problem in terms of unemployment.

Now, believe it or not, I’m not trying to worry you – but rather to make the key point of this presentation. And that point is that the situation is serious, and that governments around the world will do everything in their power – and today they have a LOT of power - to maintain the status quo.

It is this fundamental reality that has been driving the political takeover of our economies.

To put this point perspective, consider for a moment the right thing to do to foster much needed economic growth. The right thing to do is to set the free market free again by dramatically reducing the role government’s play in their respective economies, starting by slashing government spending and regulation.

The free market is, we would contend, the only way to wipe out the malinvestment and misappropriation of resources that has brought us to this challenging point in history.

Of course, reducing the role of government is easier said than done. Thanks to state run schools and propaganda, the average person now believes that government is the best way to solve any and all problems encountered in a modern society.

When times get tough, therefore, people don't expect nor do they want their government to do less for them... they want it to do more. The recent riots in Spain and elsewhere were not caused by individuals in favor austerity, but rather by people wanting the government to spend more.

This gives rise to a catastrophic conundrum. Do the right thing and trigger an economic depression and social unrest, or do the wrong thing and kick the can down the road to the point where a truly serious collapse becomes almost inevitable.

Without a doubt you can expect today's politicians to make the Faustian bargain of trying to pay their obligations through money creation and by launching all manner of schemes to avoid the consequences of their actions.

. . .

It is important to recognize that we are living in a new reality – a new economy where markets operate at the convenience of a central planning government. This is not arm waving, but a straightforward statement of fact about the world we now live in.

There's much more at the link.

I think this is one of the most useful (and accurate) summations of our economic mess that I've ever read.  Apart from the advertising content, I think it's indispensable reading.  It squares with forecasts for the short- to medium-term future by authorities such as Prof. Nouriel Roubini (whose article at the link I also recommend) and others.

I'm not being paid by Casey Research to say this, and I'm not going to be attending their conference - but you need to read the full report, and pass it on to your friends.  It's that good.

Peter

Close call!

This video clip shows a very close call for those aboard a small boat off the coast of Greenland.  The video's owner says:

A tourist from Australia came to my uncle and asked if she could get a ride to the glacier just north of Ilulissat, Greenland, so he asked me if I wanted to be his translator. I am from another town where glaciers are fairytales, I was as much of a tourist as the Australian tourist, so I decided to join the crew.

The beautiful scenery was amazing, but the nature doesn't care about anyone. That day almost became our last day.

Here's how it went down.  I highly recommend watching the video in full-screen mode.

Near-misses don't come much closer than that . . .





Peter

In Memoriam: Jon Lord

The founder and keyboard player of the iconic British rock group Deep Purple has died at the age of 71.  The Telegraph reports:

With his long straggly hair, droopy moustache and garish stage costumes, [Jon] Lord looked every inch the archetypal 1970s rock star. But his popular success, with hits such as Smoke On The Water, was built on a fusion of progressive rock with classical influences; he went on to compose some highly regarded classical works, such as Durham Concerto. On his first solo album, Gemini Suite, he worked with the London Symphony Orchestra.

As such he was a passionate advocate for rock music as a much underrated art form, and ruffled a few feathers in 1973 by claiming that Deep Purple’s music was “as valid as anything by Beethoven”.

. . .

From the outset, Lord – systematically avoiding using the Moog synthesizer so in vogue with many of his contemporaries – saw Deep Purple as a vehicle for his ideas for fusing classical and rock. There were plenty of classical references on the albums The Book Of Taliesyn (1968) and Deep Purple (1969); and his synthesis of genres came to even greater fruition in 1969 with Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a landmark work performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall with the RPO conducted by Malcolm Arnold.

With Ian Gillan now installed as lead singer, the performance was considered a seismic development for rock music, for it occurred even as the tumultuous impact of Purple’s more rock-driven live shows earned them an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as “the globe’s loudest band”. By flirting both with classical music and thunderous arrangements, Deep Purple, in tandem with other bands such as Emerson Lake and Palmer and Led Zeppelin, were laying the groundwork for heavy metal music.

The group’s best-known hit, Smoke On The Water, co-written by Lord, was very much in the conventional rock style. It first appeared on the band’s 1972 album Machine Head, with Lord’s distorted organ imitating Blackmore’s guitar melody line so effectively that it became a test piece for aspiring guitarists. Indeed, so many guitarists played the tune to try out new instruments that some shop owners put up signs banning Smoke On The Water (along with Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven) from being played on the premises.

. . .

Widely respected as one of the finest musicians in the rock firmament, he made guest appearances on numerous other albums, by such artists as Graham Bonnet and Cozy Powell, before in 1984 re-forming Deep Purple for a triumphant world tour, six more studio albums and international sales that topped 150 million records, all of which cemented the group’s reputation as one of the world’s most successful bands.

There's more at the link.

I grew up to the music of Deep Purple.  What better tribute can I offer than this live recording from 1973 of Smoke On The Water, with a young and energetic Jon Lord on keyboards?  The video also offers some background on how the song came to be written.

May he rest in peace.

Peter

"Holsters 4 Heros"

That's the name of a project begun by Evyl Robot, otherwise known as Michael of Michael's Custom Holsters.  A few weeks ago, he wrote on his blog:

More and more often, I have our men and women overseas contacting me to inquire about a custom holster for their issued M9 pistol. I hear the issued holsters are pretty crappy. Anyway, I would really like to be able to not charge these brave people who are serving – I’d like to make them a holster and ship it.

. . .

I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to have to do legally, but my plan is to offer the custom M9 holsters for sale, but treat the troops like their money is useless. I’ll accept donations from anyone who cares to sponsor an M9 holster, and I’ll keep a list of those who are serving that have expressed interest in a holster, and basically have a random draw for the next recipient if the list of interested gets too long. Is that too vague, or too specific? Is there anything I should be thinking of differently about this? Any of you law savvy people know of anything that I need to be careful about with this thing? I want your input. So, bring on the flames. And the advice. And start donating.

There's more at the link, as well as a number of responses from readers.

I think this is a nifty idea!  I'd like to encourage my readers to consider participating in this project.  I know Michael makes great holsters - witness the reviews of them available on his Web site, and endorsements by many bloggers too.

If you'd like to get involved, please click on the link to the article and leave a comment for Michael.  I think our men and women in the sandbox will thank you for it.

Peter

Urban decay, urban bankruptcy, and fiscal reality

Remember Meredith Whitney?  She's the analyst who, in late 2010, predicted massive municipal defaults on their bonds, which in so many words implies municipal bankruptcies.  We mentioned her twice here.  Here's the interview with '60 Minutes' where she made her predictions.

At the time, she became a prophet without honor in her own country.  As Michael Lewis recalls:

Inside the financial world a new literature was born, devoted to persuading readers that Meredith Whitney didn’t know what she was talking about. She was vulnerable to the charge: up until the moment she appeared on 60 Minutes she had, so far as anyone knew, no experience at all of U.S. municipal finance. Many of the articles attacking her accused her of making a very specific forecast—as many as a hundred defaults within a year!—that failed to materialize. (Sample Bloomberg News headline: MEREDITH WHITNEY LOSES CREDIBILITY AS MUNI DEFAULTS FALL 60%.) The whirlwind thrown up by the brief market panic sucked in everyone who was anywhere near municipal finance. The nonpartisan, dispassionate, sober-minded Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in Washington, D.C., even released a statement saying that there was a “mistaken impression that drastic and immediate measures are needed to avoid an imminent fiscal meltdown.” This was treated in news accounts as a response to Meredith Whitney, as she was the only one in sight who could be accused of having made such a prediction.

Well, guess what?  The bankruptcy filings of three California cities in the past few weeks - first Stockton, then Mammoth Lakes, and now San Bernardino - has ladled egg onto the faces of Ms. Whitney's critics.  As the San Francisco Examiner points out, "Basically the roster of California cities has become a game of dead pool to see which one will drop next".  Michael Lewis again:

What Meredith Whitney was trying to say was more interesting than what she was accused of saying. She didn’t actually care all that much about the municipal-bond market, or how many cities were likely to go bankrupt. The municipal-bond market was a dreary backwater. As she put it, “Who cares about the stinking muni-bond market?” The only reason she had stumbled into that market was that she had come to view the U.S. national economy as a collection of regional economies. To understand the regional economies, she had to understand how state and local governments were likely to behave, and to understand this she needed to understand their finances. Thus she had spent two unlikely years researching state and local finance. “I didn’t have a plan to do this,” she said. “Not one of my clients asked for it. I only looked at this because I needed to understand it myself. How it started was with a question: How can G.D.P. [gross domestic product] estimates be so high when the states that outperformed the U.S. economy during the boom were now underperforming the U.S. economy—and they were 22 percent of that economy?” It was a good question.

From 2002 to 2008, the states had piled up debts right alongside their citizens’: their level of indebtedness, as a group, had almost doubled, and state spending had grown by two-thirds. In that time they had also systematically underfunded their pension plans and other future liabilities by a total of nearly $1.5 trillion. In response, perhaps, the pension money that they had set aside was invested in ever riskier assets. In 1980 only 23 percent of state pension money had been invested in the stock market; by 2008 the number had risen to 60 percent. To top it off, these pension funds were pretty much all assuming they could earn 8 percent on the money they had to invest, at a time when the Federal Reserve was promising to keep interest rates at zero. Toss in underfunded health-care plans, a reduction in federal dollars available to the states, and the depression in tax revenues caused by a soft economy, and you were looking at multi-trillion-dollar holes that could be dealt with in only one of two ways: massive cutbacks in public services or a default—or both. Whitney thought default unlikely, at least at the state level, because the state could bleed the cities of money to pay off its bonds. The cities were where the pain would be felt most intensely. “The scary thing about state treasurers,” she said, “is that they don’t know the financial situation in their own municipalities.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I asked them!”

All states may have been created equal, but they were equal no longer. The states that had enjoyed the biggest boom were now facing the biggest busts. “How does the United States emerge from the credit crisis?” Whitney asked herself. “I was convinced—because the credit crisis had been so different from region to region—that it would emerge with new regional strengths and weaknesses. Companies are more likely to flourish in the stronger states; the individuals will go to where the jobs are. Ultimately, the people will follow the companies.” The country, she thought, might organize itself increasingly into zones of financial security and zones of financial crisis. And the more clearly people understood which zones were which, the more friction there would be between the two. (“Indiana is going to be like, ‘N.F.W. I’m bailing out New Jersey.’ ”) As more and more people grasped which places had serious financial problems and which did not, the problems would only increase. “Those who have money and can move do so,” Whitney wrote in her report to her Wall Street clients, “those without money and who cannot move do not, and ultimately rely more on state and local assistance. It becomes effectively a ‘tragedy of the commons.’ ”

The point of Meredith Whitney’s investigation, in her mind, was not to predict defaults in the municipal-bond market. It was to compare the states with one another so that they might be ranked. She wanted to get a sense of who in America was likely to play the role of the Greeks, and who the Germans. Of who was strong, and who weak. In the process she had, in effect, unearthed America’s scariest financial places.

“So what’s the scariest state?” I asked her.

She had to think for only about two seconds.

“California.”

There's much more at the link.  I highly recommend reading Mr. Lewis' article in full, not only to understand the mess in which California finds itself, but to understand what's happening in other union-heavy states - New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, etc.  New Jersey and Wisconsin have elected governors that are tackling the problem head-on.  They're meeting resistance, but their tough talk is getting results.  I'm willing to bet other states will soon elect governors with similar attitudes.

As for the spendthrift municipal governments?  Michael Lewis spoke to Mayor Chuck Reed of San Jose.

“How on earth did this happen?” I ask him.

“The only way I can explain it,” he says, “is that [the unions] got the money because it was there.” But he has another way to explain it, and in a moment he offers it up.

“I think we’ve suffered from a series of mass delusions,” he says.

I didn’t completely understand what he meant, and said so.

“We’re all going to be rich,” he says. “We’re all going to live forever. All the forces in the state are lined up to preserve the status quo. To preserve the delusion. And here [San Jose] is where the reality hits.”

Warren Buffett believes that more municipal bankruptcies are on the way.

Billionaire-investor Warren Buffet said on Friday bankruptcies by three California cities in three weeks are making traditionally objectionable Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy filings more palatable to local governments in financial crisis.

"The stigma has probably been reduced when you get very sizeable cities like Stockton or San Bernardino to do it," Buffett said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "The very fact they do it makes it more likely.

. . .

"Once people find that the city works the next day, it makes it easier for the city council next time they have a problem with pensions -- or whatever it is -- just to say, 'Well, we'll declare bankruptcy,'" Buffett said.

There's more at the link.

That figures.  Spent your way into a corner?  Take the easy way out.  Declare bankruptcy so you can default on all your commitments and all your promises.  The fact that millions of your bondholders will lose the income on which they rely to fund their pensions is neither here nor there.

Folks, this is where the rubber of the economic crisis hits the road of reality.  When your trash is no longer picked up as often, because the city can't buy gas for its garbage trucks;  when your streets are no longer as well lit, because bulbs are too expensive to replace;  when crime soars, because police numbers have to be cut;  when fires burn a building to the ground, because fire stations have been closed, or are operated on staggered hours . . . all these are symptoms not only of financial ruin, but of the decay of the physical fabric of our society.  When that goes, the moral and spiritual fabric of that society often follows.  Remember the old Latin tag, 'Mens sana in corpore sano'?  It means 'A sound mind in a healthy body'.  It implies that one can't have a sound mind in an unhealthy body;  alternatively, an unsound mind will lead to an unhealthy body.  Basically, it says that balance is a good thing.  Disrupt the balance, and bad things follow.  Our cities are living proof of that.

The only answer I know that works in the real world - one that I've seen working in poverty-stricken areas all around the world - is for like-minded people to band together.  Get together with your friends, and bring in like-minded people whom they can recommend.  Form a small group whose members can help each other to sustain themselves.  Some can grow and/or cook food;  some can clean;  some can guard and protect;  some can earn money at their jobs to help others keep going;  some can repair clothes, or cars, or washing machines;  some can cut lawns, tidy up, and haul away trash.

By working together, we can all help ourselves.  If we stand aloof, we may soon not be standing at all.

Think I'm joking?  Tell that to the people of Stockton, California - 'the most miserable city in America', according to Forbes.  Tell it to the residents of San Bernardino.  Tell it to all those cities whose leaders are desperately looking for a way out of their troubles . . . and not finding one.

Urban decay.  It's almost certainly coming to a city near you - and when it does, its effects may well spill over into your neighborhood.  Start preparing yourselves now.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #621

The video clip below has been making the rounds on the Internet for the past few days.  A woman tried to ride her motorized scooter up an escalator at the Broadway station of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).  Details may be found here.

What on earth did she think she was doing???  Definitely our Doofus Of The Day, right there!





Peter

Weddings: What not to wear!

The Telegraph has a photo gallery of what to wear (and not to wear) at weddings.  I couldn't resist these "don't" shots.

The Preacher was right!





Peter

"Incredible Shots Of The Civil War"

That's the title of a fascinating article at Bivouac Books.  I was introduced to it via e-mail this week.  Here's an excerpt.

There is an old adage that for every soldier killed in the Civil War his weight in lead was fired on the battlefield. While it is impossible to prove that statement, it is a certainty that an enormous amount of ordnance was expended during those four bloody years. More than 3,250,000 soldiers were engaged in 2,261 engagements which produced some 673,301 battlefield casualties. With the amount of iron and lead fired in anger it is inevitable that certain shots stand apart from the rest. On one hand there are those shots, like the one which killed Gen. John Sedgwick, which stand out as incredible feats of accuracy. Far more common, however, were random shots which produced incredible results. This article provides examples of both the incredibly accurate and the incredibly strange.

Following the Battle of Gettysburg, it was noted that:

"Some idea of the tremendous work at Gettysburgh may be inferred from the fact stated that more shells were discharged in the single battle of Gettysburgh than were employed in all the battles that Napoleon ever fought."

Occasionally the lead was flying so fast and furious that bullets collided in mid-air. A correspondent writing from Vicksburg mentions just such a curious relic:

"I lately saw at the headquarters of Col. Slack's brigade, two Minie bullets which had once told a history. One was a rebel bullet of English Manufacture, smuggled over by our dear brethren in Britain to shoot their dear brethren in America. The other was a national ball of the Springfield rifle type. The former was fired from a rifle pit at Jackson at our skirmishers. The latter was fired from our line of skirmishers at the rifle pit. They met midway in the air, were welded by the compact and fell harmlessly to the ground. They are now firm friends, sticking each to the other closer than brother or lover."

. . .

The failure to properly train Civil War recruits in the use of firearms often led to on-the-job training in the heat of battle. This of course resulted in shots being wasted and many weapons becoming disabled due to improper handling. A period account bears this out:

"On the field of Gettysburg there were 27,574 guns picked up and of those 24,000 were found to be loaded, and half of them were double loaded. One fourth had from three to ten loads in, and many had five or six balls to one charge of powder. In some cases the powder was above the ball, in others the cartridges were not broken at the end, while in one musket twenty three balls, sixty two buckshot and a quantity of powder were all mixed up together."

While most sensible soldiers wouldn’t think of firing a weapon which had multiple loads in the barrel, Confederate Private William W. Patteson made a point of firing everything but the kitchen sink during an 1862 battle in the Shenandoah:

"I had shot my gun so often (and wiped it but once) that when I had rammed down one Minie ball and nine buckshot I thought I would put in some more. I put in nine more buckshot and some paper. In ramming down the extra charge the ramrod stuck fast. I could not move it up or down. Augustine said: 'If you fire your gun in that condition, it will burst. Turn it up and drive the ramrod down on that  rock.' I did so, but as the enemy were about to charge I had to leave the ramrod in. Thinking the gun might kick me over, I knelt down so I wouldn't have far to fall. It was well I did.

"When the enemy came out of the woods, moving straight toward us, I said to my cousin: 'Watch that Yankee on the dark sorrel horse.' Well, when the shot went off, I fell one way and the gun another, the horse had no rider, and a gap was cut through their lines. That ramrod, the eighteen buckshot, and the Minie ball did the work. My captain said: 'See here, young man, where did you get that piece of artillery?' I replied that it was a gift from General Jackson. 'Well now,' said he meditatively, 'General Jackson should have had it mounted on wheels, so it wouldn't kick you over.' "

There's much more at the link.  Very interesting reading for military history and Civil War buffs.

Peter

Around The Blogs

There's a bumper crop of other bloggers' entries, articles, posts and links this week.  Here they are,  in no particular order.

# # # # #

Joe Martin's Ghost claims that the banks are 'Stacking Fraud Like Cordwood'.  It's hard to argue with that headline when Washington's Blog posts a long list of crimes and improprieties committed by big banks, and also notes that some banks may have been - possibly still are - raiding allocated gold accounts.  In other words, customers who believe that physical gold bullion is being stored in their name by the banks may be shocked to find that the banks have stolen filched misappropriated it for their own purposes.  If this reminds you of the MF Global scandal, I'm not surprised!

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Tranquility Lost offers what might best be described as the kid antidote of the day.  Good for a laugh!

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Whiskey And Gunpowder, which is more of a financial site and newsletter than a blog, nevertheless has a very interesting article titled 'The Day Your Life Fell Apart'.  It examines the bitter consequences of government over-regulation.  Here's a brief excerpt.

All these seemingly small regulations may not seem like much in ordinary times. But in extraordinary times, they can make the difference between life and death. A natural disaster we can deal with. A man-made disaster such as that imposed by thick layers of crufty, enterprise-destroying regulations are a far greater problem because they are permanent, cumulative, and imposed at the point of a gun.

The regulators play with our products and our lives as if they know better than we do what’s good for us. To the political class, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as managing the lives and property of others. But when the unexpected happens, the mischief they do begins to reveal terrible things. Suddenly, the denial of our freedom to manage our own lives matters a great deal.

There's more at the link.  The Silicon Graybeard has another very good article on the same subject.  Both are well worth reading.

Perhaps the quote of the month on what government is good for comes from Coyote Prime at Running Because I Can't Fly.  Go read.

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The Feral Irishman (WARNING:  site not always safe for work) has a fascinating article about 'Strange Weapon Concepts From The Past'.  Here's one example.

There are many more at the link.  Intriguing reading.  I mean . . . who came up with these daft ideas, anyway?

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Warren Meyer, writing at Coyote Blog, fisks what he calls 'one of the most irresponsible [economic] suggestions I have seen in a while'.  I couldn't agree more!

In similar vein, W. C. Varones points out that we're spending plenty on education - we're just not getting any value for our money.

Finally, if we keep on spending too much money on the wrong things, the Survivalist Blog offers 'A Comprehensive Supply List for Economic Collapse'.  It's quite useful as a checklist to see how far advanced your preparations are (or aren't).  Food for thought.

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Old NFO has two useful and timely posts.  One warns of the danger of counterfeit CR123 batteries, used in many modern electronics.  The other links to an article about the first photograph ever put up on the World Wide Web.  It's an interesting story for those who feel nostalgia for the 'good old days' of computing.

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Discover Magazine's 'Bad Astronomy' blog covers 'The 50th anniversary of Starfish Prime: the nuke that shook the world'.  It's a very informative look at an atmospheric nuclear test that introduced the world (the hard way) to the dangers of electromagnetic pulse effects.

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The ever interesting Dustbury has two links for us this week.  One takes us to what the author calls an 'Ancient Numbers Page'.  If you've ever wanted to express 99 and nine-twelfths in Roman numerals, this site will do the conversion for you (and also into Latin, Arabic and Greek notation).  The other links to Clayton Hove's 'Ad To The Bone' blog about advertising.  Mr. Hove tells us of the time one of his Tweets led to an amusing and thoroughly researched reply from a car company.  Great fun!

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In an older post I found through a random Internet search, The Top Two Inches blog lists '35 aphorisms on liars and lying'.  Most of them are new to me.  Intriguing!

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Last but by no means least for this week, Uncle Jay brings us a (not entirely safe for work) generic cover for modern woman's magazines.  A sample headline from the cover:

SEXY TOUCH:  Tickle His Prostate With an Egg-Beater

OK, I think I'm going to take up celibacy . . .





Peter

Doofus Of The Day #620

Today's award goes to four young idiots people in Alaska.

After bailing [Jonathan Hill] out of jail in Palmer, four Anchorage residents kidnapped the man and demanded marijuana they said he'd stolen, Alaska State Troopers said.

. . .

Just before 10 p.m., troopers were called to a fight at a Tesoro gas station at Mile 49 of the Parks Highway, just north of Wasilla city limits. The responding troopers took four people into custody: Jonathan Walls, 31, Jeffrey Ahvan, 24, Amone Mavaega, 20, and Katrina Walls, 26.

Jonathan Walls wanted to know what Hill had done with some marijuana Walls said Hill stole from him, troopers said. The investigators soon discovered the four Anchorage residents had paid for Hill's bail, kidnapped him and a fight broke out when Hill tried to escape at the gas station.

The four suspects from Anchorage were arrested on kidnapping charges, and Ahvan and Jonathan Walls faces addition assault charges, troopers said.

There's more at the link.

To add insult to injury, the four kidnappers are now in durance vile, whilst the man they bailed out of jail to kidnap is still free - because, after all, they paid his bail!  Talk about delicious irony . . . the only improvement would be if he walked in front of their jail cell, smoking their marijuana and blowing the smoke through the bars at them!





Peter

Desperation dating advertisement?

Received via e-mail, origin unknown:

Peter

How rich are you?

A British Web site calculates the answer for us - and it may surprise you.  The authors state:

We are obsessed with wealth. But we gauge how rich we are by looking upwards at those who have more than us. This makes us feel poor.

We wanted to do something which would help people understand, in real terms, where they stand globally. And make us realise that in fact most of us (who are able to view this web page) are in the privileged minority.

Click on the link to compare your own income to that of most other people in the world.  It's pretty eye-opening.  You can ignore the appeal for donations to charity that follows the calculation, and find a deserving cause closer to home if you feel so inclined.

Peter

Sticking it to Obamacare?

Reason magazine suggests there may be a way to do so.  It's not very palatable, but when one considers the alternative . . .

Obamacare requires insurers to take all comers and charge them the same rates, regardless of health. Those rules create two problems that reinforce each other: They raise premiums, and they encourage people to delay buying medical coverage until they're sick.

As more healthy people go without insurance, rates rise further to make up the difference, which encourages more people to go without insurance, which increases rates further still. To avoid such a "death spiral," Obamacare commanded young, healthy people to "maintain minimum essential coverage" as defined by the government, thereby subsidizing the medical expenses of older, sicker people.

But in upholding this mandate last month, the Supreme Court said it could not be justified under the Commerce Clause, instead redefining it as an exercise of the tax power. It is perfectly legal to go without the health insurance that Congress thinks you should have, the Court said, as long as you pay the "tax" imposed on people who reject the government's recommendation. That interpretation creates new challenges for Obamacare.

"For most Americans," the Court observed, "the amount due will be far less than the price of insurance."

. . .

Even paying the penalty is effectively optional, because Congress, for political reasons, barred the Internal Revenue Service from using its most effective tools—liens, forfeiture, and prosecution—to collect it. As the Associated Press recently explained, the IRS, confronted by uninsured taxpayers who refuse to pay the penalty, must instead resort to "scary letters and threats to withhold tax refunds."

How effective will those letters be once taxpayers realize the threats are empty? They can even avoid having the money taken out of their refunds by adjusting their withholding or estimated tax payments so that they come out even (or owe a little) at the end of the year. In practice, no refund means no penalty.

There's more at the link.  You may rest assured that I, for one, will be examining this option very closely.  If I can't afford what they want to charge me, and the penalty's substantially less than the charge . . . guess what?

Peter

The "Batman Massacre" in Colorado

I got very sick, very quickly, of all the pontificating, prognosticating and posturing that blew up almost immediately the news broke of the murder of a dozen people and the wounding of half a hundred more last night at a screening in Colorado of the new Batman movie.  It seems an awful lot of people lack the common sense - not to mention the common decency - to shut up.  (Piers Morgan, Mayor Bloomberg, Salman Rushdie, ABC News . . . are any of you listening?)

Tonight hundreds of friends and relatives of those who died, and those who are recovering from their injuries, are going through grief, trauma and emotional strain that most of us simply can't comprehend.  I suggest we pray for them, think of them, and do our best to support them in whatever way we can over the next few days.

After that, let's get real.  The shooter broke any number of laws with his actions last night, plus a whole bunch more in booby-trapping his apartment, thereby endangering the lives of his neighbors.  Passing another law - another ten, or a hundred, or even a thousand laws! - would not make what he did any less legal, or any more criminal.  To agitate for more laws, more gun control, etc. as a result of this tragedy is to deny reality.  We certainly need to address the culture of violence being propagated by our entertainment industry;  but even that can't be solely to blame for this catastrophe.

Evil is present in the hearts and souls of every single human being (including myself).  What defines us as good or bad is how we respond to the opportunity for evil when it arises.  We'll all have such opportunities from time to time;  the opportunity to steal, the opportunity to cheat on someone, the opportunity to deliberately hurt or demean or belittle someone, the opportunity to wound or kill.  You name it, we'll probably get an opportunity (perhaps more than once) to do it.  We can choose to turn aside from that opportunity, to do good instead of evil . . . or we can give in to temptation, and commit evil.

No laws or restrictions will stop us making that choice, for good or ill.  They haven't done so since Homo Sapiens first appeared on this earth.  They won't now or in the future.  Anyone thinking otherwise is living in cloud cuckoo land.

May the souls of those who died in Aurora, Colorado last night receive mercy for their sins, and rest in peace.  May those who were wounded recover speedily and fully.  As for the killer . . . we don't know what made him do this.  If it's insanity, may he be given what care he needs, and kept far away from the rest of us, so as to ensure he never has the chance to do it again.  If it wasn't insanity, but deliberate choice . . . then let him pay the penalty, and find what mercy he may, if mercy there be for such as him.

Peter

Here's to Obamacare - musically!

Regular readers will know that I'm a long-time fan of British rock group Jethro Tull.  I recently renewed my acquaintance with their album 'Catfish Rising', which includes this musical comedy gem.  In the light of the recent Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, I thought it might raise our spirits if we raise a metaphorical, musical finger to that ghastly legislation.

Peter

Will 'nanobiotics' take over from antibiotics?

It seems that nanotechnology is having an ever greater impact on medication, as well as many other fields.  The University of Florida has announced:

University of Florida researchers have moved a step closer to treating diseases on a cellular level by creating a tiny particle that can be programmed to shut down the genetic production line that cranks out disease-related proteins.

In laboratory tests, these newly created “nanorobots” all but eradicated hepatitis C virus infection. The programmable nature of the particle makes it potentially useful against diseases such as cancer and other viral infections.

. . .

“This is a novel technology that may have broad application because it can target essentially any gene we want,” [Dr. Chen] Liu said. “This opens the door to new fields so we can test many other things. We’re excited about it.”

During the past five decades, nanoparticles — particles so small that tens of thousands of them can fit on the head of a pin — have emerged as a viable foundation for new ways to diagnose, monitor and treat disease. Nanoparticle-based technologies are already in use in medical settings, such as in genetic testing and for pinpointing genetic markers of disease. And several related therapies are at varying stages of clinical trial.

The Holy Grail of nanotherapy is an agent so exquisitely selective that it enters only diseased cells, targets only the specified disease process within those cells and leaves healthy cells unharmed.

To demonstrate how this can work, Cao and colleagues, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research and the UF Research Opportunity Seed Fund, created and tested a particle that targets hepatitis C virus in the liver and prevents the virus from making copies of itself.

. . .

The particle they created can be tailored to match the genetic material of the desired target of attack, and to sneak into cells unnoticed by the body’s innate defense mechanisms.

Recognition of genetic material from potentially harmful sources is the basis of important treatments for a number of diseases, including cancer, that are linked to the production of detrimental proteins. It also has potential for use in detecting and destroying viruses used as bioweapons.

. . .

In laboratory tests, the treatment led to almost a 100 percent decrease in hepatitis C virus levels. In addition, it did not trigger the body’s defense mechanism, and that reduced the chance of side effects. Still, additional testing is needed to determine the safety of the approach.

Future therapies could potentially be in pill form.

There's more at the link.

This news is of particular and very personal interest to me, because I've lost two friends to complications resulting from Hepatitis C.  If this treatment proves feasible for wider use, not just in the laboratory, it may save tens of thousands of lives - and that's just the start.

Of course, there's also the negative aspect.  Unscrupulous nations and individuals might turn to nanotechnology to produce biological weapons - meaning that counter-weapons, also using nanotechnology, can't be far down the road.  I can't imagine it'll be fun if our bodies turn into battlegrounds . . .

Peter

Eye of the tiger!

I've reported before on the aircraft art of 'Tiger Meet', more formally known as the NATO Tiger Association.  Reader Scott M. remembered that earlier article, so he sent me these pictures (which I presume he took) of a Czech JAS-39 Gripen aircraft photographed at the recent Florennes air show in Belgium.  He says, "The eyes have it!"

Scott, they certainly do!  Thanks for the pictures.





Peter

X-rays and archaeology

I was very interested to read how X-ray technology is helping archaeologists research artifacts without having to dismantle (and possibly damage) them.  I've heard of Egyptian mummies being X-rayed, but it seems the process can now be applied to much smaller and more complex objects.  The Guardian reports:

Scientists have used a new x-ray technique to produce spectacular 3D images of Roman coins that were corroded inside pots or blocks of soil.

The rotating images built up from thousands of two-dimensional scans are so clear that individual coins can be identified and dated, without a single battered denarius – the Roman currency – being visible to the naked eye. The advantage of the new method – developed by a unique collaboration between archaeologists and scientists at the British Museum and Southampton University – is that it means coins can be identified and even dated much more quickly and without risking damage to them.

Roger Bland, a coins expert who is also head of the Portable Antiquities and Treasure schemes for reporting archaeological finds, based at the British Museum, said: "The initial results are very encouraging and in some cases remarkable. The techniques could have profound implications for the way we assess and study finds in the future, producing results in a few hours that would take a conservator weeks or even months."

Bland astonished the team at Southampton by sitting down with a sheaf of printouts and then identifying and dating each individual coin, including silver denarii from the reigns of Marcus Aurelius, Vespasian, Trajan and Hadrian, which were all still clumped together in a pottery cup, one of two found by an amateur with a metal detector in a field near Selby, Yorkshire.

. . .

Unlike conventional excavation, the technique avoids the risk of damage to corroding metal. As the method evolves it should be possible to fully study some objects without ever exposing them to daylight.

The x-ray technology at Southampton was originally developed to scan Rolls Royce turbine blades for flaws.

There's more at the link.  Here's a video clip showing how the imagery is refined.

Color me impressed!

Peter