Evils of government

Examining the Declaration of Independence past the famous opening lines shows a type of society that is unique amongst mankind.  It is a society that is tolerant of much in the way of government abuse and over-reach and yet one that has its limits and will, in the end, push back against that government which has over-reached itself in regards to the individuals in society and society itself.

The pertinent text is as follows and I'm using the site Early America for this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

One cannot find such ideas in, say, Italy or Spain, nor in Greece nor Germany, but only in the English tradition.  England is that place which has multiple roots and the name, itself, Angla-Land comes from the Angles who settled the Island along with the Saxons.  Together these Norse peoples, originally from Denmark, created a society that had fused with the local culture so as to form a new society, as I described in Roots of Constitutional Government.  With the formation of England under King Alfred the Great also came the recording of these people's history so that they could know the events of their own past and that was recorded in multiple versions of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  Together the local versions of the Chronicle form the historical understanding of a people up to the Norman Conquest, which would be the third and last major Norse infusion of people and culture into England (original Anglo-Saxons, the victory of Canute and then of William the Conqueror).  The last brought French influence to England, but the local ruling system survived, with changes, even after that time and it was a durable system that left local nobles able to check the power of Kings who over-reached themselves.  Yet, as seen just prior to Canute's victory, it was a system in which years could go by in building pressure to bring a King's grasp under control.  That internal set of divisions did cause the loss at the Battle of Maldon, but the battle itself served as a unifying point for Anglo-Saxon culture.  By that point in time the basics of the society and how it reacted to its government were set.

It is a society in which government over-reach is tolerated to an extent, but the more that government pushes for power over localities, the more that resistance will build.  A central conceit of Progressivism is to encroach so slowly on society with the power of government that the people are corrupted with their own funds. Just as the Declaration came out so, too, did Tom Paine's Common Sense, in which he laid out the case for Independence.  He recorded the state of society in the colonies as follows:

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between, English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head.

Notwithstanding our wisdom, there is a visible feebleness in some of our proceedings which gives encouragement to dissensions. The Continental Belt is too loosely buckled. And if something is not done in time, it will be too late to do any thing, and we shall fall into a state, in which, neither RECONCILIATION nor INDEPENDANCE will be practicable. The king and his worthless adherents are got at their old game of dividing the Continent, and there are not wanting among us, Printers, who will be busy in spreading specious falsehoods. The artful and hypocritical letter which appeared a few months ago in two of the New York papers, and likewise in two others, is an evidence that there are men who want either judgment or honesty.

The media of old is reflected by the current media: it adheres to power, gives it succor and thinks only of itself in relation to power.  Look not for honest amongst them.

The Declaration gives a long list of abuses and usurpations of power by the King, and that puts a final bit into place that describes the society that is forming the Declaration.  These had been going on for years, indeed well over a decade in building up to a breaking point.  It is not a society that takes umbrage quickly nor is it one that seeks to upset the applecart at the slightest excuse, but one that bides its time to judge its government and seek ways to bring it into line with society.

To get a feel for this we can move ahead to the early part of the 20th century and to a piece by Rudyard Kipling called The Beginnings:

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the English began to hate.

Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show,
When the English began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd,
It was not taught by the State.
No man spoke it aloud,
When the English began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred, 
It will not swiftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.

Notice that those preaching hate to crowds, preaching divisiveness and utilizing government to try and stir hatred amongst the citizenry are the ones who become the target of the ire of society.  It does take a long series of abuses and usurpations leading towards despotism to cause such a culture as this to begin to hate... its government.

And no amount of lies by the government or its media sycophants can forestall society when it finally does shift to secure its future once more.

Conservative New Media

A pair of articles at Breitbart News looks at the Buzzfeed criticism of 'conservative media' losing the election of 2012: one by Joel B. Pollack and the other by Alexander Marlow.

This is fascinating because the purpose of the Conservative New Media outlets isn't about elections or parties, as such, but about a conservative viewpoint and analysis of events (news and non-news events).  As such these New Media outlets must look to offer viewpoints based upon a conservative understanding of society, culture, economics, freedom and liberty: these are not things amenable to a 'party line' in conservative parlance because they are based on the activities of individuals and what the freedom of the individual actually is.  Parties, elections and the rest of the apparatus of the State is an understood as an organ of society and it is not the brain, eyes, ears nor any of these higher senses or reasoning facilities but the process part of the body meant to contain harm from the body and ensure the body has regularity in its processes.  Instead of the head end of the body, government is at the other end and serves a valuable function but does not deal in a societal 'good' (that is guiding society) but does good only when it acts in accordance with the body, itself.

What conservative media does is to examine how all the rest of the body operates and see what the function and use of government is with respect to that society.  As peoples are different they have different Nations, different sensibilities and different cultures and, therefore, different governments.  Likewise in a federal system of governments within a Nation, conservatism addresses all the levels of government beyond that of the Nation's State or National government.  To that end conservative media isn't about personalities, hair color or a winning smile as those are things that can be done by individuals and are not reflective of their ideas and viewpoints; they are ephemeral parts of being a politician, not a part of policy making nor how policy is crafted into governing legislation or execution of same.  It is very hard to catch a photographer, say, trying to put a halo around the head of a politician: a politician is a human being, not some anointed instrument of the Divine.

From this circumstance the Conservative New Media approaches news (as such) from the vector of 'what are the facts?' and then 'what do they mean?', with an examination of spin to see how far the spin is from the facts and the direct implication of same as seen by those doing the presentation of the facts.  This is in contrast to the Old Media that attempts to present a story, first, which has facts attached to it, and then uses the story to generate a narrative and postulate what will happen next based on a given storyline.  Thus the criticism of sites like Buzzfeed, Politico and Huffington Post is that they are light on facts and high on story and storylines, even when there is little evidence that the facts fit on a storyline that is given.  Conservatives accept more facts as they come in and can re-analyze them in light of prior facts and then draw conclusions from the array of facts, even ones that may be contradictory with each other: facts are facts and must hit into a coherent framework.  Older Media and those sites stuck in narrative making lurch from storyline to storyline trying to find a storyline to fit a given viewpoint, and may not report on, dismiss, discount or wholly forget to look at new factual information that contradicts the storyline.

An example of the latter is the entire 'The Iraq War was about WMDs!' save that the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force had a number of distinct reasons for restarting the conflict, of which only a few dealt with Saddam Hussein's lack of compliance with the cease-fire agreements after Desert Storm.  By trying to create a storyline or narrative, facts are discounted, dismissed or even laughed at, yet the facts of the Authorization are the facts, and no matter how much any individual tries to say the war was 'sold' on WMDs, Congress obviously was sold on a much broader array of materials.  Even with that, when the next piece is 'And we didn't find ANY WMDs!' and then pointing out that the Poles did, indeed, find WMDs and that storehouses of precursor chemicals and facilities to process them, both violations of the cease fire agreement, those are also discounted, ignored, downplayed or laughed at.  They may have set the bar unreasonably high at tens of thousands of shells with active factories, yet the cease fire demanded NO facilities for processing and, indeed, no PLANS to process them, which was an entire dismantling and reduction of ALL WMD capacity.  Yet the Old Media and its apparatchiks push a storyline, even when there are facts to show it to be wholly and completely false in detail and whole cloth.

By trying to attach itself to a particular viewpoint that serves a political end, the Old Media and those following its narrative style online, practice a form of corrupt journalism that serves ends they do not openly state.  When supporting storylines of a candidate looking to 'heal racial divisions' when that candidate openly courts racial groups to try and put animosity between groups based on race, that is deceitful not just to the reader but to the individual writing the material.  It demonstrates a lack of honesty, a lack of capacity to actually read material, and a lack of morals and ethics to do such reporting which states one thing while reporting another.  Yet when in the case of the Breitbart reporters looking to properly put information about a candidate before voters, information that is factual and not based on race or class, but just what a candidate has said and done, this is said to be racist or a 'smear'.  One cannot 'smear' anyone with their own words in proper context of where they were and who they were talking to: that is factual reporting of information that allows analysis of it.  The facts, themselves, should be neutral.  The analysis of them is done knowing the bias imparted by the author in an open and honest manner, not by trying to gloss over words by trying to portray a narrative or storyline.

It is the unwillingness of Old Media reporters and their storyline adhering counterparts online to actually present the facts without preface save for setting who, what, where, when and how that is disturbing.  How can the public properly assess a candidate without a good and thorough grounding in the background of the individual involved?  What they have done or not done, what they have backed or not backed, and the candidate's viewpoints in their own words to different audiences allows for an overview of the individual and their character to be done.  By pushing a predetermined narrative or storyline about a candidate, the Old Media and their online doppelgangers do a grave disservice to their media consumers and leave citizens unequipped with the necessary background to make decisions on how the process function of the body to protect it from harm can be best served.

One other thing about the Conservative New Media is that it is not monolithic nor trying to create a monolithic party nor State.  Our charge that we agree to as citizens is to form a more perfect Union, which means allowing for our differences and ensuring that they do not become a cause for friction or social disturbance.  There is no attempt to try and push a large scale agenda down on conservatives as a whole, but to respect differences and work where there is general agreement and to not interfere save by participation in an honest way when there is disagreement.  This is not done to drive legislation or to force activities upon people: it is done to see if there is any reason to have any legislation AT ALL in certain areas as the principles require respect for each other in our differences, not a forced similarity upon all people.  From that there are social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, military conservatives, cultural conservatives, religious conservatives, and human rights conservatives which includes the positive human right to keep and bear arms to protect our property. 

As all of these venues are in play for any given event or happening, this requires that reporting be with an understood set of references and that there be respect in disagreement of analysis, not a cause to vilify or castigate, but to discuss and understand amongst people.  In this the Conservative New Media is at a stark contrast to the Old Media and their cohort members online: one seeks to unify by common agreement upon what needs to be done, the other seeks to enforce a monolithic agreement upon individuals and mold society to its own ends.  Frank and open discussion amongst conservatives is one that does not boil down to name calling, but often finds citation of first principles so that one must become familiar with Kirk, Smith, de Vattel, Grotius, Pufendorf, Seneca, Plato and a host of others just to be able to understand what the basis for a difference in viewpoint is.  To find commonality amongst such original arguments on man and society is seen as a duty of each individual.  The Old Media wants individuals to just be a collection of items, a checklist of race, color, religion, etc. so that group can be set upon group, class upon class, in an attempt to create a uniform society and control it via media output used to purely political ends.

Conservative New Media puts the process and an understanding of it as a priority as a good process will generally yield good ends.

Old Media and their counter-parts online put the ends as a priority and then use any means to get to it.

And that is why Buzzfeed, Politico, et. al. do not comprehend the Conservative New Media: the means are an end in and of themselves and that fits to no storyline and does not fit into pushing an agenda forward, thus they cannot understand how anyone can think like this.  For all the alleged intelligence of those with such an ends-oriented system, they truly aren't all that smart or capable of accepting true differences in the way people are in this life... diversity only in external things, never in the soul and the mind.

Closing out Phase 1-3

Phase 1-3 of preparing for disaster has meant getting the basics done and then augmenting on that base to get longer term capabilities in place for larger scale problems.  The very basics I've outlined previously under my DIY posts and you have to go back to my oldest posts to find the first Phases.  The first 3 Phases are yourself, your everyday transportation and home, and of those getting the last (which is where you live) set up for survival is one of the most time consuming.

As I've outlined, at home you have two generalized choices, of either making home an intermediate place (a supply and then final bug out point) or to start laying in necessities for longer term survival.  Survival for this means something major like electrical grid collapse, economic collapse and even factoring in EMP effects from a nuclear device or the similar (though somewhat different problems) of a CME.  I cannot weigh and judge the possibilities of these things for you, but as Hurricane Sandy demonstrates: disaster preparedness is not an idle topic.

My general thoughts for my situation I've laid out before and it starts with median term survival in situ to ride out the worst of disasters: being far enough inland means that hurricane force winds are blunted by 30+ miles of worn-ridge terrain, and those ridge lines also serve as natural barriers against movement from the metro area to the post-suburbia areas.  Being in outer suburbia is not ideal, but no where is really ideal for a disaster if you are getting one handed to you.  If the power grid collapses (taking with it, say, central water and natural gas systems) then you have a full scale collapse of the infrastructure of civilization, which is to say you also don't get much time until sewage backs up and you have disease and pests to deal with.  After that having potable water is a critical factor for how long you can stay in one place, and then comes food.  To offset these things a reliable power supply that is not grid-tied nor dependent on scarce consumables (read gasoline, diesel, liquid natural gas, propane) limits energy choices to solar, water or wind.  These are not optimal power solutions as they require a static or semi-mobile gathering system (wind and water power for the first, and solar for both categories).  With even a few hundred watt hours per day, you can do a lot if you scale your capabilities to your power supply.  In a disaster you also have opportunities to clear out problems for gathering power (cutting down trees, putting in paths, erecting poles for wind turbines or scaffolding across a river for a micro-hydro generator) that you normally wouldn't have with a government bureaucracy in place.  Survival is its own license and wisdom requires forethought so that you have as little impact on the natural resources around you so that you can have better access to the vital ones.

Thus, down this logic pathway, critical needs for long term use of home as a place to survive means having power and having artificially chilled storage space for keeping medical supplies and even freezing items to be kept until needed.  To reduce overhead for power use means that you either go small (that is small devices that don't take up much power) or go with larger, but well designed and low power devices (usually with large amounts of insulation).  In my prior article of Riding out Sandy, I outlined what I got done before the storm came.  The equipment that I had gotten all has long lead-times to them, and the 6-8 weeks got dragged out for all of it and instead of having staged deliveries of having one set of devices arrive for full set-up and test over a couple of weeks and then another set a couple of weeks after that, it all arrived on the same week.  I didn't know Sandy was coming, I just felt that all of this stuff had to be basically up and operational before winter arrived, which has meant stalling out every other project and getting this stuff done.

I worked to just get the two Sunfrost units on their bases (which I needed to shim up and the company that makes them didn't put adjustable feet on the cabinets).  Due to the circumstances of trying to get shims put in, the SUNRNR units arrived before I could get the refrigerator and freezer tested out.  Plus I had to put some additional bracing into the bulk shelving unit I got for the SUNRNR units, which meant that for a few weeks it was hard to navigate through the main floor due to the amount of stuff in boxes that was strewn around.  We also got the bed replaced during all of this.  Yet more time taken from getting things done...

With that said the Sunfrost units came first and with two scissors jacks and a couple of pieces of shim stock white wood about 1/8" thick, I got the units shimmed up and they tested out just fine:

The doors open from the center (just a real tight fit for the fingers) and the bottom cabinets have sturdy drawers, and the cabinets are made from 3/4" ply, meaning they can take the weight of the things.  I do want to put some wood in back of them to help put a bit of rearward stability to the arrangement, either some 1/2" plywood sheets or at least a 2x10.  There are no tops to the units and the compressors are on top, and airflow is vital to cooling so you can't really put anything up there beyond perforated sheeting and nothing that would block airflow (i.e. no boxes or sheets of stuff).  If these were going to be built-in units... no, scratch that, if I had though ahead I would get the kitchen remodeled to put in the Sunfrost units as built-in units so that they could have some upper shelving (and yet open air flow behind) along with cabinets on the bottom, all built into the studs of the kitchen.  And if I did that then I would also make proper cabinetry next to them for the SUNRNR units so that they don't look like this:

I just love rivet shelving!  It is unsightly, makes you feel like you are in a warehouse and otherwise just looks purely functional with no frills attached.  If this was all built-in then all of what sits there would be behind doors and look all spiffy and professional.

The SUNRNRs are currently not attached to the solar panels, because I don't have a pass-through for the cabling yet.  During Sandy I ran them through the sliding door and used plastic sheeting to keep out water and the worst of the wind, but that did nothing for humidity and the heat escaping through the sheeting.  SUNRNR uses Anderson style plugs (like are seen with many winches) for the panels and the next grade up of those for the cross-link cable.  These units do not use the standard MC-4 style plugs used in most of the solar industry, thus when you think ahead on how you are going to use these, put that into the planning bin.  For the input side there are 2 sets of receptacles per unit for solar and wind/aux of regulated 12v DC input, and 2 of the larger receptacles so that SUNRNR units can be diasychained together to share battery power.  This is important as when you have different outlets for AC use (above are 110v and 240v units) they can draw from the batteries of the entire array for power.  SUNRNR also makes a dedicated well-pump power unit and a battery unit just to help back the output units.  If you need a mixed mode power gathering capability and have the resources available for wind and/or micro-hydro units, then a SUNRNR can help to serve as the main systems for storage of power.

Now going from the kitchen to the deck door, you get this:

That is the back of the solar array, which are 4 Kyocera 140 units that went through SUNRNR which helpfully hinges them together 2 at a time and changes them from MC-4 to Anderson cable.  The wooden lumber is exterior rated 6x6, previously used at another place in the complex for deck support and replaced during renovations back when all the equipment was arriving and just left out for anyone to take.  Providence was, obviously, doing something there and I took the hint and here they are.  I had cinderblocks I intended to use for another project that now serve as ballast and a few bricks to help lift the forward and lowest panels up a few inches.  The rail mounts, tilt legs and feet are from DPW via a reseller.

This is in no way 'permanent' construction, just bolted on to ballast.  Those thick black cables are the Anderson plug cables and they are rugged.

These upper panels are the workhorses in the array since they are up high enough to get direct sunlight for half the day.

The lower panels are in the shade of the railing and nearby trees, and gather very little power.  Only some of that can be remedied by work on the tree on our property, the rest is from trees on common land.

Next year the reseller for the SUNRNR units plans on having mobile platforms for the dual panels that will be a ballast/tray system.  As two sub-arrays set far back from the fence and trees, both sets of panels will gather more energy... but that is for next year.

During the most direct parts of sunlight I'm getting about 10 amps between the two panels at 12v DC, which is a bit less than 25% of the power the entire array should be able to put out.  I knew that going in, however, and waited for a 2 for 1 deal on the panels.  With 4-5 hours a day (on good days) of direct sunlight, there is enough to cover the Sunfrost units.  To minimize power use, turn off the AC output during the day and only run the refrigerator and freezer at night, then minimize opening the units.

As the Sunfrost freezer is not 'frost free' (that is it doesn't cycle warmer air in to remove frost and then exhaust it out) so you do have to keep an eye on frost build up.  The unit is made so you can shut down just one compartment, however, so you can muck out one while keeping the other frosty.  Or if you only need half the space, you have storage space by shutting the other unit off.  I did a continuous 2-day draw with the Sunfrosts from the SUNRNR units which started out in the 3/4 capacity stage and were at 1/2 capacity storage for power at the end of it.  That was with intense overcast (barely 5 amps peak, total) which meant that there wasn't much coming in to replace what was going out.  With the AC output turned off, the two units spent one day with very little sun (about 2 hours where the sun peaked out on and off) and was getting 7-8 amps for 3 hours which recharged both units to 3/4 capacity.  Actually, that is pretty impressive, when you get right down to it.

After this comes system hardening: getting EMP shields in place for vital equipment (SUNRNR units, the Sunfrosts I already have a mesh base which they sit on, and the other refrigerators and freezers), seeing if there are better solutions for protecting/hardening the sliding doors and windows (against hail and such), and then looking at rainwater collection/purification along with better waste disposal plans (all of which are at the 'rough and ready' stage but not at all pleasant).  With a constant source of power available, however, much can be done.  Once a pass-through for the cables are put in, then the Sunfrost units go off-grid.

Phase 4 also begins next year: getting mobile and survivable.

Remember, one step at a time and over a year you can go from very little to a much more solid feel for what you need to survive.  Better to have and not need, than need and not have.

Riding out Sandy

Hurricane / Post-Tropical Storm Sandy started showing up on 27 OCT 2012 with clouds and some light winds and by 28 OCT the rain had started late in the day.  Where I'm at in NoVA was in the projected forecast of the storm up to late 28 OCT 2012, before Sandy sped up to make landfall south of Atlantic City, NJ on 29 OCT 2012, which puts it to the north of here.

The main effects in the section of NoVA that I'm in has been a steady wind from 28 OCT at around 30 MPH from the NNW which shifted just late yesterday to come from the NW.  Rain from 28 OCT to this morning has been in the o.5"/hr. range which means low-land flooding and a number of underpasses getting flooded out.  I know what that means heading towards the beltway having commuted that way for years, and it isn't pretty just for a normal storm or melt water flooding scenario.  As I'm up closer to a ridge top the only worry was winds, and those winds have to go over a lot of land to get here, which means friction and slowing of them.  There were some gusts last night as Sandy made landfall and just afterwards that got to about 45 MPH locally, but also brought a lessening of the constant rain.  As of this morning the post-Tropical Storm Sandy sits in West Central PA and is giving us very light winds (10-15 MPH) and mist, not real rain.

There has been only one interruption of power for less than a few minutes and that can be attributed to just about anything, and happened just after 10:30PM on 29 OCT.  The severe wind event this past summer may have helped to clear out trees and branches so that mild but sustained winds and rain had little effect on the local power grid.  Other areas are not as lucky, as swaths of NYC, NJ and other regions in New England and the Mid-West can attest to.

Household preparations for food were only for a few goods that we have duplicates of in storage in dehydrated or evaporated form.  Earlier this month two Sunfrost units came in: one full 19 cubic inch freezer and one 19 cubic inch refrigerator, both with drawer stands.  After getting them set-up and operational, a slow process of moving food to them began and is an ongoing process that would require a bit of speeding up if the power went out for days or a week or more.

To power those units two SUNRNR units were purchased (a 110v and 240v system) through one of their resellers (Alternative Energy).  Since there was a special on solar panels, I got 4 of the Kyocera 140 units and that all arrived on the same week as the Sunfrost units, which has meant a lot of work getting everything set up.  A frame mount for the Kyocera panels had to be found and put up, and they currently are bolted into 6x6 exterior lumber that a neighbor had taken out from their old deck during a replacement of it.  Large cinder blocks with unequal hole spacing allows the 6x6 lumber to fit through the cinder blocks, and they serve as an anti-tipping ballast at the end of the timber.  Three other pieces brace the forward (and lowest part of the panel mount) with two doing that and a third going across them with cinder blocks sitting on the intersection of the bracing pieces.

Together this array with the 2 SUNRNR units should power both the Sunfrost units just enough each day to let the Sunfrost units chill down to storage temps and then sit there utilizing their insulation to keep things cold.

The major drawbacks to this system are two-fold:

1)  First a pass-through for the Anderson cables from the solar panels needs to be installed in the house so that they don't have to go through a partially open screen door.

2)  Lack of much direct sunlight impedes the amount of power that can be collected greatly.  These panels sitting on my deck have much in the way of trees that block out collection space which means not much power is gathered at all during overcast and rainy conditions.  Which isn't to say that none is gathered, just an amount less than what is necessary to run the Sunfrost units.

Part of the reason to get the SUNRNR units was portability and the reseller I went through is getting portable frame mounts fabricated for sale in the near future.  Breaking up the array into two sub-arrays will allow for optimal placement of the panels to get at least 2 optimal panels of collection during daylight hours.  Mounting them on the roof (and having to go through building codes) means that they aren't portable, and that goes for a pole mount as well.  There isn't enough roof space to take the townhome I'm in off-grid in a built-up area and wind is erratic, which means that all alternative solutions for powering the place means either consumables or not running very much.  A whole house generator running off of natural gas (and supplemental LNG input if the natural gas pipeline system goes down) would be good if all building codes allow it.  I expect that my simple 4 panel mount will raise some local hackles, but that 2 mounts of 2 panels each will disappear from view and all questioning.

It seems that providence was on my side for ordering the systems, getting them in and up and running just before this encounter with Sandy.  We also had to get the be replaced, which is less fun than it sounds.  I'm exhausted.

Rain has just picked up a notch, but still not much more than light rain/drizzle.  Sandy isn't done, yet and for those in regions of the Mid-West, Northeast and New England who rarely get one of these storms, my thoughts are with you.  As I watched the tide gauges rise for NYC last night I knew that this was not going to be good...when the one at Providence, RI went off the top of its scale, the full size of Sandy got driven home to me as the gauges in NC were just starting to do down at that point.  This is no Cumbre Vieja event, to be sure, but Sandy is reminding us that the works of man, no matter how great they seem to us, aren't very much to Nature and that we must take heed of warning signs when they are clearly delivered to us.

Are you a Trustafarian?

I am ran across the term Trustafarian while perusing an article by Zombie at PJM.  She was using it to describe the class of people at The Ongoing Occupation of America post on 29 SEP 2011.  I had never run across the term and decided it needed just a bit of personal definition which required a few days to mull it over.  By the time I finally started to get the term I then came up with a definition after Herman Cain criticized those at the OWS (Occupy Wall Street/ Out With Sanity/ Ongoing With Stupidity/ Outing Witless Students... take your pick) at Hot Air.  I will correct a few spelling errors and such just to make it clear who he was talking about and what a Trustafarian is by what they do.

= = =

You might be a Trustafarian if you are part of the OWS crowd and…

- Have any electronic device starting with an “i-”

- Have a pair of sneakers costing over $100

- Have a shirt, pair of pants or jacket with a logo emblazoned on it

- Have an ‘art’ shirt that cost more than $50

- Have a netbook/notebook/laptop/tablet computer

- Have more rings festooning your body than a packed bar has glasses on the bar

- Have a bandana/headband/keffiyah with a designer tag on it

- Have a pair of shoes that has individual toes as a feature

- Have any piece of clothing other than a belt made out of leather

- Have more pieces of artwork tattoo’d to your body than a SOHO art gallery has

- Have a pre-printed sign because you can’t figure out how to use a magic marker

- Have an item with the mass murderer Che on it

- Spout off about how a system you can’t even understand needing to go because your parents have paid your way through school

- Have a law degree

- Have any degree in any set of studies involving a hyphen or ethnic or gender in its title

- Have more gold jewelry on your body than a pawn shop has in its inventory

- Can say Media Matters with a straight face and think it means something

Yes these are leading indicators of being a Trustafarian.

Any Trustafarian needs to run, not walk, saunter, or just, you know, go more or less in the direction of, the nearest mental health clinic and report yourself with permanent detachment from reality syndrome… they will spend a decade ‘treating’ you and making you poor so you will then have something to complain about.

And if you think you paid too much for your college education then ASK FOR YOUR MONEY BACK as it has done you NO GOOD AT ALL TO GO THERE.

= = =

You see?  A handy visual guide to the Trustafarians!  If you see someone with MORE than one of these attributes who is at the OWS gatherings (or 'supporting them') you have a Trustafarian: those living off of their parent's trust funds.

Easy to do, no?

Then I realized that they also fit under another term, which is a bit broader, in this headliner at Hot Air about how these OWS folks just might be, you know, POPULISTS!  Be still my beating stomach... I commented thusly...

= = =

Just a buncha Trustafarians.

Old hipsters and young dipsters.

The doucheoise.

= = =

Doucheoise was proposed as a new name for hipsters (I'm not going to bother looking up who proposed it) but as the class of people who are douche's, it also overlaps highly with the Trustafarians.  In fact all Trustafarians are part of the Doucheoise, but not all Doucheoise are Trustafarians and come by their status via other means.  The Trustafarians, in other words, are a sub-species.

Ahh... science!

I did a bit more after that on the Studentia branch of the Trustafarinensi.

= = =

And for the dipsticks complaining about their college loans and blaming the BANKS, just who is it that is ASKING for the money?

Oh, yeah, the COLLEGES.

How about BLAMING THEM for asking so much? And asking for your money back as you didn’t learn a damn thing there other than how to whine, moan and complain about how ‘hard you have it’. The banks are pushing you asshats to take out a loan the SCHOOLS ARE.

= = =

Yup!  It isn't the banks, folks, but the bubble of higher education that Insty has been talking about for a couple of years.  It is a much, much larger bubble than SSA, home loans, and medical cost inflation from 1970 to present.  It is the biggest bubble right next to all of them taken together next to our federal debt.  All these little bubbles gotta pop to get things set straight and the big one has to go down by removing the inflator we call 'government'.

Now since I'm the helpful sort with the guidebooks and such, though in no way the Shell Answer Man because I don't take questions, I decided to sum up not only what the problem is for the various sub-species of the Doucheoise, but what you need to do about it.  I really don't have time for real posts these days, what with finishing up my SKS stock and getting the thing re-assembled, plus having another 2-4 projects on my agenda, so these will have to do.

This is from another Hot Air thread at a Quotes of the Day posting. A spelling error and one typo corrected, mangled syntax and logic left as-is.

= = =

Remember in a deal in which the schools ask for more money and the banks lend it to students, who is to blame for the high cost of education?

A) The schools for CHARGING IT?

B) The students wanting the money to PAY FOR IT?

C) The banks for LENDING IT?

These OWS people blame C, put no responsibility on B and can’t think that those actually doing A who are the originators of the cost are to blame.

Now put in homes and who is to blame?

A) Those asking for more money than a home is worth?

B) Those wanting to pay those high amounts?

C) The banks for lending the money?

Again if you are an OWS’r you blame C, put no responsibility on B, and never, ever blame those asking for unrealistically high prices A.

In each case the root cause of the ‘problem’?

Government regulation that sets the playing field for giving loans. In the first part are federally backed loans that MUST be paid back to the federal government and that you can’t get around paying back.

In the second it is the government determining the risk, setting regulations as to who MUST be able to get loans for FAIRNESS which allows such things as NINJA loans to meet pre-set quotas by the regulators.

Now when you put the government as the D option in both, who is to blame?

A) Those asking for extraordinarily high amounts that they know YOU CAN GET via regulation?

B) Those seeking such high amounts and not questioning the ACTUAL VALUE of what they are getting and not blinking at the COST being asked?

C) Those providing the money as intermediaries for the government regulatory system because, to do business, they have NO OTHER OPTION in those realms?

D) The government for rigging the system to allow A to put B into debt via C the regulated intermediary?

The banks are not the villains, here, although they do share some blame in setting up D, it is the regulatory system, itself, that is swayed by such input. When A and C collude with D, it is B that is shafted.

The answer to what to do is to get D out of the equation so that they do NOT write exacting ‘fair’ regulations and only put out statutes against misrepresenting value and cost from both A and C so that B can make a decision based on actual facts, not promises of ‘fairness’ in a system being rigged against them.

These Trustafarians, the members of the Doucheoise, are HELPING those in the A category to vilify the C category so that they can get MORE REGULATIONS THAT DON’T WORK AND MAKE THINGS WORSE from the D category. They are not playing class warfare but committing economic suicide on a personal basis. If they meant what they said they would join the Tea Parties and work to get the government out of the system so that there is less to no government save for cases of fraud that need be ruled upon. As it is they are supporting the existing fraud-backed structure and want nothing to do with removing it.

Yes Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It was, however, sacked in 3.

You are seeing the sackers, not the builders, wanting their bite and not expecting the collapse to effect them one little, tiny, bit. If they get what they want they have a greatly limited life span because of what they get, that will shorten down decades to years, months, weeks or even days.

If you aren’t prepared for that disaster NOW then you will be joining them.

Your job is to survive, help and educate. And all three MUST be done AT THE SAME TIME. And to those who don’t listen, who scream and rage, you must turn away FROM to help those that WILL listen to reason. That is your duty as a citizen to your fellow citizens. Those that aren’t listening, who are screaming, who are marching… they are the walking dead if they get their way. You can save them but only if you do the right things as a citizen, now. It all depends on YOU being civilized each and every single day of your life no matter HOW BAD things get, all the way to your last breath on this earth. Only your fear will stop you…

= = =

All that stuff I've written about for survivalism, DIYism, plus looking at terrorism, organized crime, money laundering, politics... all that stuff... still comes down to you.

These people blockading their common sense for freebies don't understand how the world works and just want everything to be free.  Just like the USSR!  They can't live there any more since it collapsed under the weight of what happens when no one CAN achieve and everything is FREE and damned scarce, but that doesn't matter to the Trustafarians.

It does matter to the person wanting to be civilized and a citizen.

What you must do in such conditions is clear and I've spelled it out via hundreds of posts.

Your duty to your fellow citizens is to survive and be the one at the other end offering a hand up to a better life of personal liberty and freedom.

The verbiage that goes with being a free man, an individual, is well known and alien to the ears of those in the Trustafarian crowd, but should strike home to any who wish to lead a free life of equal justice, not 'fairness' as what is 'fair' is in the eye of the beholder:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.

My life is my own.

The OWSr's?  They DO want to be pushed (look at how they got there by having helpful 'organizers' push them), stamped (see the guidebook?), indexed (just HOW MANY loans do they have they can't pay up on?), briefed (again the organizers), de-briefed (they are going to lose everything including their briefs), numbered ('we are the 0.00001% who are the 99%'!).  Listen to any of the 'call outs' done by 'organizers' or 'radicals' or Frances Fox Piven or Cornel West and you begin to imagine Monty Python's Life of Brian in which the call out is 'You are all individuals' and the response 'YES WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS' save for that radical saying 'I'm not...'

There you go!

Now back to my normal business around here.

Gotta get that SKS up and running and then put the drum magazine through its paces now.

I will not be pushed.

And neither should you.

The Constitution With No Name

The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflexion. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which, is nevertheless subject to change, and which, every secret enemy is endeavouring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independance contending for dependance. The instance is without a precedent; the case never existed before; and who can tell what may be the event? The property of no man is secure in the present unbraced system of things. The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts. Nothing is criminal; there is no such thing as treason; wherefore, every one thinks himself at liberty to act as he pleases. The Tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the state. A line of distinction should be drawn, between, English soldiers taken in battle, and inhabitants of America taken in arms. The first are prisoners, but the latter traitors. The one forfeits his liberty, the other his head. 

- Common Sense, Thomas Paine, 1776.

What is the Constitution With No Name?

Have Americans seen it before?

Is it coming again or is it always there?

Does it require you to have Belief or to have Faith?

To any who have read this blog off and on over the years, these are questions that lay under everything that I have written, and not only in this blog but my others and in my fictional writing, also.  I come at this from many different angles, yet it always boils down to the simple things, and it is those simple things, described by many, that have been masked by imposed complexity.

Ah, what is 'imposed complexity'?

Imposed complexity are those things that we create as complex from the start.  Imposed complexity is our will upon our ourselves to create order.  It is the belief that complexity will give us order.  It is the belief in the expansion of cumulative or collective power will create a better world when that is channeled and guided by complexity.  Yet complex things tend to fail.  To paraphrase Montgomery Scott from Star Trek: 'The more they overhaul the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drains.'

Created complexity falls apart to simplicity.

Thus regulatory regimes cause chaos because they attempt to impose order on the human spirit, on human nature.  Belief in regulation falls apart when it is imposed on those that have Faith in themselves and their fellow man.  Complexity creates chaos because it cannot rule Simplicity.

Belief in God is not enough to have Faith.

Most provocatively, to have Faith in human nature does not require Belief in God, but the simple observation that Man is a part of Nature.  Thus my other writings examining the difference between Moral Law, Civil Law and Natural Law (via the examination of Pufendorf, for all his pluses and minuses) put into play that Moral Law, God given Law, is not enough for man to rule himself.  The creation of society, which man does by Natural Law, is a pre-requisite for instituting Moral Law.  Man as animal creates society which then puts in play Moral Law as those two come together to create Civil Law.  Thus if you have Faith in yourself and God, you can create a civil self, a civil person, that then partakes of creating Civil Law.

When man creates society and accepts that there is Moral Law necessary to regulate himself within society, then there is the basis for Civil Law.  Natural Law creates society, Moral Law allows us to self-govern, and we then join with these other self-governing individuals in society to create Civil Law.  It is an order that has a precedent order in that if you do not get the first part you cannot get to the other parts.  For us, as individuals, to enact Moral Law we must first come together to form a society under Natural Law.  So long as there is Nature and that we accept the drives of Nature to form society, the basis for enacting Moral Law is present.

Together these two create The Constitution With No Name.

That construct is more formally called The Law of Nations, which is unwritten law that can be discovered by creating society under Natural Law to accept Moral Law and then create the Nation.  In man this has a particular instance where it is founded: in marriage.

Marriage is that time that we accede that for our children to survive we must no longer exercise all of our Natural Liberties with our Natural Rights so as to create society and then have self-order under Moral Law.  With that acceptance The Law of Nations is created and re-created over and over and over again, so long as man and woman may live to have families.

The act of marriage is an act of Faith in the one that you marry.  With that individual you are taking the primary Leap of Faith that they will put aside the savage order of Natural Law and self-govern so as to accept Moral Law.

Faith begins at home, doesn't it?

Kindness also begins there and begats Charity.

Charity is the kindness of helping your fellow man in a selfless fashion so as to make society better for all involved so that your progeny can survive and learn to self-govern.

Notice where Civil Law comes into that?

Oh, that's right, it doesn't.  Governments which are organs of society are not organs of Charity nor are they enactors of Charity: only people can do that.

Belief cannot drive this Faith.

Faith must drive Belief for this system to work, any other system will quickly become unhinged as simple Belief can fail, but Faith in what you see, hear, and understand can never be shaken as your eyes and ears will continue to beat reality into your head until you finally recognize that YOU must deal with it.

You.

Not your neighbor.

Not the police.

Not any part of government.

You are the basis for all the rest of that working, and when you deny what is going on around you, then all the rest begins to fail.

This is how you create Order from Chaos, and Chaos gains Order from similar means.

What?  Did you think you were just an unimportant member of society to be ruled over?  You are a moral actor.  Unfortunately, in a realm of Chaos, you have to make up your role as you go along.  You don't get a script or even a plot outline as there are no set ends, just destinations you can determine on your own.  Individuals do that.  Animals cannot.  We have a braced order of self-government as individuals, not an un-braced one of animals requiring herding.

The answer to all of those trying to impose a civil order from the top, downwards?

From The Prisoner: "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or NUMBERED.  I am not a Number, I am a free man."

You are born free.

It takes government to enslave you.

To close with Paine, again:

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

Unthinkable, thought

The Economist presents an article on 02 DEC 2010 on How to resign from the club.

The 'club' in question is the Eurozone, and resigning from it is presented as a showing how Nation States can get over a debt crisis via examining past such crises in other Nations. The EU has a problem in that it is not a Nation State but a cooperating agreement amongst Nation States and, thusly, more of a confederation than a federation (as these things are normally termed for such governmental arrangements). Thus leaving the EU would be done to localize debt to those debtor Nations within the EU and as a result end the Euro as a currency. The article presents the rationale for this, but does not come down in an advocacy position, but a neutral one as this is an article to examine the process not the implications of it beyond the economic.

To start the reasons for leaving are put into question form:

The idea of breaking up the currency zone raises at least three questions. First, why would a country choose to leave? Second, how would a country manage the switch to a new currency? Third—and perhaps most important—would leavers be better off outside the euro than inside it?

Why Leave

First is the 'why' question for a country - what is the rationale for this leaving of a common currency?

The primary reason is economic independence from the common currency and there is a reason for doing so for both strong and weak economies (as measured in their economic activity, debt load and state of solvency).

Germany, with a relatively robust manufacturing economy that has been shedding social programs and increasing the retirement age, is seen as able to cover its debt better than other Nations in the EU. Thus their portion of the common debt would have the backing of a strong currency and even see an influx of funds from other countries from individuals seeking a 'safe haven' for their cash. This would require massive changes to the banking regulation which seeks to get at savings accounts outside the country, but that could be put down as effective for EU funds only, and those converted to other currencies (like the brand new Deutschmark) would not have that regulatory overhead. This would be kept in check, to a small extent, by keeping lines of credit open for liquidity to foster economic activity. The change-over would cause an export problem as the strong DM would mean that the value of its goods would rise as compared to under the Euro, but that would be from a stable economic base that has actual liquidity to it. Thus a transition, though hard, would not be expected to be long.

Greece and weak countries, at the other end of the scale, also need economic policies that reflect their populations. The Euro has been no boon to these countries, either, as the ability of the earned Euro to purchase goods from stronger Nations within the Eurozone has decreased. Weaker economies having to compete inside the Eurozone are unable to do so and they are pressed from the outside by Asian manufacturers able to undercut Eurozone production costs. Thus, while holding to a Euro means having a more powerful currency, you have far less of it due to lack of economic activity and governmental promises on retirement and other payouts to selected groups of people within their Nations. Leaving the zone means that these countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland) can put out currencies that can be devalued and yet find a stable floor based on the state of the economy. These Nations would become quite poor as they have a non-economical basis for their social structure in regards to working life, labor costs, and taxing policy, all of which would return to local control without EU overhead. And independent Nation is better able to navigate social policy, as an example, than a larger Confederation forcing an end social policy via a currency and regulatory system that does not take local conditions into account. These Nations did not change their policies coming into the Euro, beyond some one year benchmarks, and continued their spending policy for a generation based on lower interest loans garnered by joining the EU. Now that all comes due with defaulting on debt looming on the horizon.

How to Leave

The 'how' part is the mechanical part - the way to get from Point A to Point B.

Here the article is short and sweet, with some analysis after:

How could this be done? Introducing a new currency would be difficult but not impossible. A government could simply pass a law saying that the wages of public workers, welfare cheques and government debts would henceforth be paid in a new currency, converted at an official fixed rate. Such legislation would also require all other financial dealings—private-sector pay, mortgages, stock prices, bank loans and so on—to be switched to the new currency.

That plus have the printed and coined new currency ready to go, and having the banks exchange the old and new. The original set conversion ratio would last for a period of time and then the old scrip is no longer legal tender (although a minor collector's item for numismatic enthusiasts for generation after). This has been done a few times in the history of the US and happens far more frequently outside the US.

Argentina is a Nation that did this during its fiscal crisis and, as a result, destroyed its own banking system with a contraction in available credit to cover losses on loans that had a more favorable exchange rate than other items so as to keep savers mollified.

Germany would tend to have a stronger currency than an abandoned Euro, not only because Germany has left the Euro but due to the Euro having represented an average value across all Nations: the less capable Nations brought the value of the Euro down as they did not change social and fiscal policy to that of thrifty Nations like Germany. A new DM would gain its own adherents and those that then convert their local currencies on the basis of the DM for purposes of trade and commerce. The cost of the value of its debt would fall, over time, if it could keep its fiscal house in order and maintain a productive economy with low economic overhead by the national government. Its current holdings in other EU countries would be devalued while its own currency gained strength, and limitations on capital movement from weak countries would limit the ability of Germans to shift those funds or convert capital into liquid assets.

Weaker Nations would have to set limits on the amount of withdrawals per person, per year to transfer into a DM. This is on top of the losses that all people would suffer (personal, commercial, financial and institutional) due to the sudden change in value of the Euro in regards to the currencies leaving it. Those in weak countries paid in devalued currency would not like that state of affairs and yet see that they have limits on exactly how much of that currency can leave the Nation. This acts in the form of a firewall that limits currency trading and capital flight at the expense of internal accounts being devalued. Thus some capital is retained even during a general currency devaluation. Here good laws would allow for a legal process of wealth transformation to take place so as to avoid lawsuits over the incurred costs of devaluation. The internal scrip for these Nations would be debt obligation (or IOU) scrips that would, over time, be converted to a real currency. It would be an extremely devalued currency, yes, but the only one for legal tender in the Nation after all the Euros had been converted to them.

While a shrunk Euro would still have its member Nations to back it, those outside of it would be faced with the EU board acting to the interests of members... although the question of how long the Euro would survive comes into being with Germany leaving or one or more of the weak economies deciding to 'go it alone' to survive.

Fallout

Shifting a National currency, even when done via normal means such as the need to replace one format of bank notes with another or going on/off a gold/silver standard is one that does happen for normal Nations. In the latter part of the 20th century this has happened more often than most people think as you consider the Nations that have gone off of a worthless internal scrip to create one of value: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany (moving to the DM then Euro), and Russia. These Nations all faced a scrip that was uniform under Communist rule, but of no real value outside of its trading block. Dollars went for ten to one hundred times the official exchange rates inside these Nations, and when time came to break away their currencies got unhooked from the centralized system run from Moscow. We don't notice those change-overs, in the West, but they did happen quietly and efficiently as the Eastern Bloc vanished in a matter of years, taking Russia with it out of the Communist era.

Argentina has been more problematic, but while facing a set of challenges for having a currency not pegged to a foreign currency, it is a set of problems largely under the control of the Nation and its policies. That is the goal of the exercise, to bring the financial house under sovereign control and have a Nation set its own path on what is agreeable and disagreeable to it and suffer what fate hands out to those choices.

The US

The United States has many artifacts of the EU in its common currency arrangement: member States taking on huge debt load at rates that they could not normally get, a massive decrease in productivity due to the overhead of the State, and the flight of capital and individuals from some States to others. Additionally the National system has taken part in multiple Ponzi schemes for public programs, these being Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, all while enacting laws and regulation that increase the cost of manufacturing causing a flight of capital overseas for decades, thus lower the rate of economic growth. On a National level spending, regulation and social payouts are the mirror of that in some European Nations now looking to cut back on them severely: Great Britain, Germany, France. Meanwhile there is also a debtor State problem with a number of States with their own social programs that are fiscally unsound in the realm of public spending: CA, NY, IL, MI, MA all come to mind.

There is already the start of a debt scrip system going on in CA as the State is now offering IOUs to those who should receive refunds on their income tax. At this point CA does not accept such scrip to pay off debt to the State, but the moment it does so it has its own and devalued currency. NY has made some similar sounds as well as a few other States so highly in debt that they cannot offer standard refunds on taxes.

This state of affairs of States having their own currencies existed right up to the Civil War and is perfectly legal but how you do it is important, and CA is not headed into good territory there.

Here are the powers of the Constitution in this realm:

Section. 8.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

[..]

Section. 10.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

CA is running afoul of Section 10 of the US Constitution and to complete its system of scrip would be required to offer gold or silver backing for its debt obligations. Basically a gold or silver debt scrip.

Just how much gold and silver does CA have? Beyond what is in 'them, thar hills' not much due to the FDR Administration having gold taken into Ft. Knox from all over the Nation as it was illegal to have large quantities of gold. Which brings up the question: is it legal for the US federal government to have done that? As the States are permitted to make legal tender of gold and silver, does the US government have the power to stop them from doing so by confiscating the gold and silver from those States?

Consider a proposal to have CA, say, ask to have its portion of the US held gold and silver reserves returned to it via population size. It would be recognized that the federal government has its own need of reserves and that could be made at 30% of the total held for the Nation.

Just working with gold the US has 4,603 tons, or 147.4 million troy ounces, the latter of which is easier to work with for numbers (going via Wikipedia for ballparking here), and this isn't including other bullion reserves like those at West Point.

So a proposal to keep 1/3 in reserve for the federal government means the following is available to the States via population: 98.27 million troy ounces.

Current population of the US at the census site: approx 311 million people.

Current population of CA: approx 37 million.

Call that just a bit shy of 12% of the population, which would yield it 12% of the gold: 11.8 million troy ounces.

Total long and short term debt issued by CA (Source: CA Treasurer's Office): approx. $53.3 billion

Note that CA's debt is huge compared to any price of gold today.

With that said the State would have the legal basis to offer a currency with a conversion rate to the US dollar for CA incurred debt. If set sufficiently above the current rate of conversion, say at $1,500 per ounce, the new Golden Bear (which I invent for this purpose) currency would have a lower valuation than US currency but have full gold backing to it. CA could start issuing this currency to those who would be getting tax refunds or other forms of funds from the State and create a dual currency system within the State for its own gold tender and standard US greenbacks. In addition CA would probably place a holding time limit for cashing out gold, so that the Golden Bear will have time to circulate and get a real value, perhaps as much as 5 years for that.

CA would then have to decide if it wanted to incur debt via US dollars or its own Golden Bears. While 11.8 million troy ounces sounds like a lot, that is less than 1/3 troy ounce per citizen in the State. If CA can get its fiscal house in order in 5 years, stop the debt outflow and get a sane tax climate in place for investors, it can offer a 'safe haven' currency that is gold backed (possibly have silver backed ones as well, but it is difficult in getting the silver reserve figures) and holds the State to the value of the currency.

The Golden Bear would be a 'hard' currency and if set above the current conversion price of gold, then gain few attractors but serve as a reserve system to pay off internal debts owed to the citizenry. Citizens would be faced with a currency that would take a few years to convert to physical gold (with 1 troy ounce = 1.0971428571 ounce = 31.1034768 gram) with each Golden Bear dollar only about 0.02 gram weight or waiting to get paid in US greenbacks once CA got more of those to go around... which it might do by marketing Golden Bears or converting a portion of its debt into Golden Bears for payout (possibly the short term debt). Once in circulation the value of the US greenback would float compared to the Golden Bear and it is possible that CA might even see an influx of some cash if it can get its fiscal house in order.

Of course CA and probably AK would see a major uptick in the gold prospecting business as getting gold and getting gold backed tender in return makes the gold portable. CA might see an increase in gold reserves, over time, if it got its house in order. Other States might take this route to try and get some foundation to their economies and find some, final bottom to their fiscal woes as they have a new and much smaller economic platform to move to. This would mean that most of the 'services' in the way of regulations, 'entitlements' and even such things as public pensions would either get liquidated or devalued or have a final gold backed tender put into their holdings which they can sell at market prices.

Congress did not have the power to stop this after the Civil War and no power was given to it during or after then to allow it to stop such things: they are allowed in Article 10 explicitly. While paying off debts to the federal government would still be done in greenbacks, if those are seen as getting worth less and less, then the States would have a means of fall-back currency by issuing gold and silver backed tender based on the holdings being held for all of the people at the bullion depositories. The US federal government would still have a substantial gold and silver deposit for the Nation, but the rest would be used by the States to create legal tender in the States for State obligations. And as it is circulated debt backed by gold, it is not normal valued currency and might be impossible to tax (can you tax debt? my guess is: no).

A two-track system would be a PITA, to be sure, for each State, yes. But this might be a way to give the people of those failing States some assurance that there is a final, much smaller, fall-back position for their States that would have an opportunity to shed obligations and right their economies. And with a gold backed system the people would be assured of being able to get some useful currency after their State's bankruptcy and re-ordering to become solvent. We would still be a common Nation, but those in financial crisis would be allowed to figure their way out on their own and not put the entire Nation at peril for the spendthrift ways of the few.

9 Years and 1 Day

After the attack of 11 SEP 2001 there is but one question to answer:  are we safer today than on that fateful day?

To examine that there are the good and bad to look at since then.

On the good side, first.

We have removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan.

We have removed a genocidal leader and helper of terrorism, Saddam Hussein, from leading Iraq and he got justice from his people.

Monzer al-Kassar the grand supplier of arms to terrorists and organized crime, head of the family responsible for the heroin fields in Lebanon and one of the craftiest men alive is in Club Fed.

Semion Mogilevich is in Russian custody, although the extent that it limits him is unclear.

Imad Mugniyah, the most deadly man to the US before bin Laden, is dead by Israeli attack.

Raul Reyes, the high level leader of FARC, is dead.

Viktor Bout is in custody, no longer plying his arms to terrorists and thugs.

The Islamic Courts Union have been booted from Somalia.

The IRA is, functionally, gone as a terror organization.

The Tamil Tigers are much reduced.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is on the ropes in the Philippines.

Colombia has been successful in getting FARC out of its production areas for cocaine.

Syria has attempted to start a nuclear bomb building group and was stopped by Israel.

Mohamar Kaddafy of the many spellings has given up backing terrorism.  For now, at least.

Canada staged the first winter offensive, possibly ever, in Afghanistan, in 2007.

The 'Surge' worked in Iraq, pointing out that COIN can work in societies that were once functional.

 

All of these are good things that have gone on since 11 SEP 2001, and the US has been involved directly or indirectly in most of them.

Now to the bad side.

The actual source of support for the Taliban is in the Pashtun region that crosses the Af-Pak border, and they have waited out a century of imposed borders by the British and now work cross-border to keep the Taliban alive in Afghanistan.

Inside Pakistan there is the rise of 'The Shadow Army' which is a cross-organization terror group that has contested power in the cities and streets of Pakistan.  It is now possible to purchase the services of a suicide bomber inside Pakistan to blow up commercial rivals, or personal enemies.

London was attacked unsuccessfully once and successfully once, and the source of those attacks is the central Asian group run by Gulbudden Hekmatyar from a refugee camp in Pakistan.

Madrid was attacked by an organization supported by radicalized Muslims that matriculated through the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iran is emboldened by US vacillation and unwillingness to give reprisals for our dead killed by those supported by Iran.

Even as Iranian oil infrastructure crumbles, they seek nuclear devices and delivery vehicles to start greater conflict in the region.

The Islamic Courts Union successfully evacuated Somalia with the help of 'Our Friends' the Saudis.

Yemen has been radicalized.

The ICU is staging a return to Somalia.

The Bank of NY penetration by the Red Mafia, moving over $70 billion dollars in the largest money laundering system ever seen has still not been solved.

Semion Mogilevich's picked successor now runs a natural gas empire large enough to extort money from Iran by threatening to cut off exports to it if they don't cough up more money.

Gulbudden Hekmatyar's group runs a multi-income source operation including gold smuggling, semi-precious stones smuggling, heroin, and operational information to terror cells as far away as London.

In Albania terrorists and organized crime operations cooperate across Europe, the Americas and Africa.

Syria continues to stockpile chemical weapons and utilizes the phosphorus deposits for uranium purification.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the organization that radicalized bin Laden, Zawahiri, and runs HAMAS, continues to be funded by 'Our Friends' the Saudis, and Democratic Congresscritters have had private talks with this radical organization.

Congressmen from both 'sides' of the aisle have flouted the Constitutional powers of the Executive in meeting with the tyrant of Syria, Bashar Asad.

The Tri-Border Area of South America remains uncontrolled and a haven for terrorists from around the planet.

The US Border is still not secured even after evidence of the passage of radicalized members of the Muslim Brotherhood having crossed from Mexico to the US have been found.  Over 6 years ago.

A human smuggling ring operating uninterrupted for years was finally closed down three years ago.  Members smuggled in came from many places including Iran, Syria, Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia and other places less savory.

The Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI) continues to fund the Taliban, Hekmatyar and others in Pakistan, even as they ally with each other so that monetary favoritism no longer matters.

The current 'Surge' in Afghanistan is in doubt due to US policy timidity and the lack of previously functioning society there since the mid-1970's.

Our President is alienating our closest allies: Britain and Israel.  This is destabilizing in the Middle East and globally.

Our President's outreach to our enemies is seen as weakness and vacillation by them and they are now emboldened by a President incapable of understanding how he is seen globally.

The US, after decades of government backed funding schemes for 'entitlements', housing, higher education and who knows what else, now owes the world more money than exists on the planet.

China has a bubble economy based on the US model, save that it is not just in residential housing, but commercial real estate and industrial infrastructure.  What has gone on in the US will seem tame compared to what is to come with China.

 

The last time there was a similar confluence of tyrants, attacks, economic destabilization and vacillation by the West the world got the lovely present of World War II.

We are now on that same road, again, save this time it is a 'come as you are' conflict that will be determined by and large in the first half-hour of nuclear fireballs with some extra sweetness of chemical and biological weapons assuredly thrown in by Nation States and private war organizations.

America has forgotten the lesson of Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates and how, exactly, you go after those waging private war.  The elite intellectual class has gotten so intelligent that can't even discuss the topic any more, confounding normal civil crimes things that are illegitimate war and, thusly, war crimes to be addressed by the laws of war.  When we capture 'terrorists' we do not try them as they should be tried under the Geneva Conventions as spies and saboteurs, and are mocked by terrorists telling us we must do our duty.

We do not do our duty to ourselves nor civilization any longer.

 

We are less safe now than 9 years and 1 day ago.

 

Not because of what we have done, but because of what we haven't done: treat warfare as warfare and not the breaking of mere civil law.  Civil law is for civilians inside civilized Nation States.  Those waging private war set themselves, by their actions, outside that venue unless they actively seek it to be judged for their actions, which is known as Piracy under the Law of Nations.  Without this understanding we no longer can even conceive of what is necessary to fight them.

We can no longer say those words nor uphold the Law of Nations any longer, because we are taught that civil rights and civil laws cover everything.

They do not.

Warfare is primal and the laws of war are those of Steel.  You have no civil rights when you are at war, and only the venue of warfare will decide your fate by your actions.  Because we have not been taught this we become less civilized, not more, and our ability to be civilized decays when we believe that civil laws can cover everything.  That is termed 'decadence'.

The last civilization to welcome predators in because it believed civil law would take care of them was the Roman Empire.

That didn't end so well for Rome, nor those it was in contact with.

We are also on that path, as well, and so is most of the West.

If we cannot honestly say that such a simple thing as running a Ponzi Scheme to fund Social Security on the backs of our children and grandchildren is unconscionable, immoral and unethical then our chances of honestly facing up to the fact that savage man cannot be covered by civil laws is nil.

I do not like saying this, but we are about to get what ANY civilization gets when it thinks it can calm the storms and lower the oceans, and what comes next is not pretty.

Being civilized means doing the right thing no matter what the cost is.

Not the 'fair' thing as that is in the eye of the beholder and biased.  There is no 'fairness' in life or nature, as that is the nature of the universe we are in.

Doing the right thing requires an example.

It starts with you as each of us is the heart of civilization, the Law of Nations and the fount of all that comes from those things.  Our ancestors as little as one century ago knew that, and yet we no longer teach it, understand it and live it.  We have been made uncivilized by politics and ideology that seeks 'fairness' instead of equality: it seeks entrenched prejudice over simple even-handedness to all.  It encourages you to grab for today and let your children pay for your sins.  There are even those who will smile and tell you that this is 'good'.

It is barbaric.

We will be lucky if we only get Lebanon as a modern Sudetenland.

If we are extremely lucky we will have enough honesty to say: our enemies who declare themselves against us, attack us and seek our downfall are our ENEMIES and deserve the treatment that they so readily ask for.

And if we go beyond all expectations, renounce 'entitlements' and seek the bounty of our liberty to sustain us, we will not see a Dark Age and Iron Times come in our lifetimes nor leave that for our children and grandchildren.  Yet it is we who unwisely knock on the door of chaos thinking it is a 'good thing' to do to grasp for our petty needs and burden those that follow with debts we have no intention of EVER paying off.

Hope is not a strategy.

Luck is not a tactic.

To change the way the world works, you must change your outlook and accept responsibility for your liberty, your freedom and your duties you take on by being civilized and under the Law of Nations.  The longer you wait, vacillate, deny what is in front of your nose, the harder we all will be hit not just in this generation but for many, many, many following who will spit when they talk about us.

Yes it is a hard way to live.

It is better than any other alternative as it tends to keep you alive and civilized by being responsible for yourself.

The reason we are less safe today than 9 years and 1 day ago is because of our inability to do these things.

They are not complex but simple, yet the fallout of good from them can shake the world.

If you dare to be responsible for yourself and demand it of all other humans so that we can press civilization forward against savage man.  We stopped doing that and are pressed back.  We are told that is the consequence of stopping that forward press of self-responsibility.  They made their choices... you can move from being decadent to being civilized.  They told us what happens when you don't.

Rome told us that.

Greece told us that.

Egypt told us that.

Civilized.

Powerful.

Decadent.

Dust.

The problems of federal 'help' in housing

Looking at Steve Chapman's article at Reason on Mortgage Madness (Via Insty) there are a few interesting things that come to light.

First is that in this housing downturn the FHA often requires only 3.5% down on a mortgage, which means the lender is on hook for the rest.  This in a market where commercial lenders are now wanting 20% down due to the number of foreclosures and people who default on their repayments.

Second is that the FHA now makes four times as many loans as it did during the height of the stock market bubble.  And their foreclosure rate is climbing... meaning that they are going to 'need' another bailout right quick.

Third is that this lending by FHA is being done on their cash reserve of $30 billion in a bet that housing prices will not fall.

Fourth, as pointed out in the comments, the government now has an $8,000  first time buyer bonus tax credit which means you get to write off $8,000 in the purchase of a new home.

The net result?

Well, think of that $8,000 as the 3.5%, although it is actually less due to fees, etc. consider it a 'ball park estimate'.

That makes the 100% that you can get in the way of a home in the $228,000 range.

Turn and sell that home for anything almost immediately and you stand a good chance of making money on the deal as your first $8,000 is repaid via taxes and even a small amount of yield can pay for the paperwork of the original purchase and the resale, leaving a good sized net yield.

Free money!

If you can get it, that is.

Now we had all better hope it doesn't actually work that way.

Because the bet is that people will actually be able to get MORE for their homes, while the last three years has seen the market decline due to previous easy lending from the FHA and rules and regulations from the Community Reinvestment Act that pushed private lenders to accept more 'local' loans from people with poor ability to pay them back.  What you would expect is that no one will pay for even the cost of those homes and that these first time buyers will take their tax credit and then default if they can't pay for their mortgage and would be unwilling to throw good money after bad by having paid more for a home in a declining home value market.

Which is what we have now.

Thus the reason people unable to get 20% down flock to the FHA.

Which is drawing on its reserves.

Which is seeing its default rate climb (these are Non-Performing Loans of the over 90 days past due type that are indicative of a shaky market).

Which means it will want another bailout.

To lend more to those unable to get a commercial loan.

And that starts the process all over again.

Then the amount we have to pay out on bonds will go up as people see the US as a bad place to invest since we will be inflating our currency to try and pay off this debt at a lower cost.

Mind you, the swell folks Upon The Hill are going to re-authorize the CRA to pressure more commercial banks to follow this routine.

The regulations have not worked as intended.  The regulators are not exercising good fiscal judgment based on politically backed laws that require these things.  And the commercial sector is trying its hardest to keep bad loans from getting into the market to stabilize it, but those lovely laws and regulations will increase the pressure to do otherwise.

I'm sure that will help us no end as the government seeks to inflate the housing bubble with tax dollars and debt at the National level.

All for that lovely government 'help'.

Not from Wall Street does this corruption come but DC.

'By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.'

- William Shakespear, Macbeth.