Swiss should rebuff the Fourth Reich like they did the Third Reich

During World War II, as today, every man in Switzerland was armed and trained to fight to the death. Hitler could have invaded and taken over the country and absorbed it into the Third Reich, but the price would have been too high. So Switzerland remained independent, and neutral.

Now a new German threat, the Fourth Reich, is threatening to take over Switzerland. The NY Times reports:

GENEVA — Like Paul Revere, Konrad Hummler sounded the alarm last week as he made his way by train and by plane to his bank’s branches across Switzerland. This country’s storied role as secret banker to the world’s wealthy is under threat like never before, Mr. Hummler warned.

Mr. Hummler, the jaunty, blunt-spoken managing partner of Wegelin & Company, a small private bank in St. Gallen, has watched a German tax-evasion scandal evolve into a debate about banking secrecy here. Worried that the treasured discretion of Swiss banks is under assault, Wegelin’s foreign clients have been inquiring about their money.

Mr. Hummler says that this time, Switzerland may not be able to stop the rest of the world from prying open Swiss banking….

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, is due to visit Switzerland in late April and is expected to press demands for more investigative assistance from Swiss authorities in tracking down German tax dodgers — and less secrecy generally.

The Fourth Reich is upset that some tax refugees are stashing their Euros in Switzerland’s secret banks. The Krauts also are using the European Union — really the European Soviet Union — to batter the Swiss.

Frau Merkel doesn’t have a funny mustache like that other chancellor. But she did grow up in Communist East Germany so, despite her pro-market rhetoric, she obviously hasn’t shed her socialist habits.

It’s ironic that, when West Germany absorbed poor, Communist East Germany after the Berlin Wall fell, the reality may have been that the socialist East absorbed the capitalist West.

Germany has among the most socialist tax policies in the world. No wonder people want to avoid paying taxes to the Fourth Reich.

The Jerries should leave Switzerland alone. If Germany wants to keep its taxpayers’ money in Deutschland, it should cut its taxes to a level people don’t mind paying. That’s how Germany achieved its Wirtschaftswunder — “economic miracle” — in the 1950s. The war ravaged-country, under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who had been an anti-Nazi, slashed taxes and saw rapid economic growth.

And it was Adenauer who advised JFK to cut taxes to “get America moving again,” to use JFK’s phrase. JFK worked for that, and the tax cuts were passed just after he died, giving us the booming economy of the 1960s (until LBJ and Nixon increased taxes and wrecked everything).

Let’s hope the Swiss stick to their guns and rebuff the Germans. If not, their banks soon will be run to the tune of “Deutschland über alles.”

Draft Kathryn Jean Lopez — and send her to Iraq

I’ve always opposed the military draft. And I’ve always opposed sending women into combat.

But I’m making an exception for chickenhawks, including chickenhawkettes. Draft them all and send them to Iraq in combat positions. You want war, well, you’re gonna get it, baby, front and center.

Attention!

The latest candidate for being drafted and sent to Iraq is National Review Online’s editrix, Kathryn Jean Lopez. According to Wikipedia, she was “born March 22, probably 1976.” OK, we’ll take that number. Well, that means she’s 32, well below the 42 top age for joining the U.S. Army.

So she could be drafted today, in boot camp in a week, in infantry training in 3 months, and in Iraq in 9 months.

In today’s column, she’s obsessed with keeping the Iraq War going:

Say what you want about McCain, but he’s been right about Iraq….

Bottom line: Right now there are three choices on the table. Only one is a leader. Maybe not on all the issues conservatives care about, but if McCain looks out for the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, that’s more than Clinton and Obama appear to be offering in their bids to be commander-in-chief.

But, Kate, baby, you’re a leader too. In fact, after you’re drafted, in a few months you’re going to be point girl in patrols through Baghdad.

You’re the new G.I. Jane. Demi Moore will make a movie about you.

Welcome to Iraq, sweetie. You’re gonna love it.

Detroit beats California

My old home town of Detroit is in hard times. The Bush-Greenspan-Bernanke inflation has cut the dollar’s value by 2/3, bringing back 1970s-style jumps in gas prices, crashing the sales of the gas-guzzlers on which the Big Three auto makers thrived a few years ago.

But Detroit just won a big victory against fruity-tooty, enviro-nutsy California. Out here, our state bureaucrats want all of us to leave our cars powered by internal-combustion engines — mankind’s greatest invention — and either crawl into zero-emission vehicles with the acceleration of a trycicle, or be squeezed into smelly mass-transit that takes three times as long to get anywhere.

The Detroit News reports on the California Air Resources Board (a dictatorial, anti-democratic bureaucracy):

The board will require the automakers to sell a combined 7,500 zero-emission vehicles from 2012 through 2014, a 70 percent cut from a previous mandate of 25,000 vehicles.

About the only way even that reduced requirement will be met is if the automakers build electric cars with 50-mile extension cords.

The technology just isn’t there, especially for batteries.

Take that, California!

In fact, the Declaration of Independence specifically said that all Americans are supposed to drive around in gas-guzzlers, like the 1971 Caddy Eldorado in the picture, on “freeways” with no diamond (socialist) lanes, no tolls, no speed limits, and a Stuckey‘s every 50 miles.

Where’s that in the Declaration, you might ask? It’s part of the “pursuit of happiness” clause.

All these planning boards resemble economic planning under the Soviet Union, in which a “five-year plan” — pyatiletka po russki — was imposed to meet industrial goals. If the goals weren’t met, the “wreckers” were shot.

At least nobody is shot for that in America.

Not yet.

The Register was right about the Iraq War being a mistake

My former colleague Steven Greenhut today writes a column about how the Register was right to oppose the Iraq War months before it began. It was the finest hour for the paper during my 19 years there. The Register was the largest paper completely opposing the war. I’ve written about my disagreements with the paper’s management. But it’s worth noting that they let us write freely against the war.

How did we get it right? I think it’s because our philosophy of freedom is right. We followed the Founding Fathers’ distrust of government, including distrust of “our” government. We insisted that the Founders’ design for America was non-interventionsim, not the Neocons’ hyperinteventionism. As George Washington insisted in his Farewell Address,

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.

By this logic, we on the editorial page saw that America was not designed to be an imperial power, and that any such adventurism would end in disaster.

It did.

It’s also worth pointing out that this war was designed by chickenhawks — Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Condi, Perle, Scooter — who, if they even heard a car backfire, would micturate their pants.

I don’t take any pleasure in being right. The long war already has led to more than 4,000 Americans dead, almost 30,000 seriously wounded, more than 1 million Iraqis killed, the destruction of American prestige around the world — and, domestically, to massive inflation, with the dollar losing more than 2/3 of its value, bringing on the coming recession.

If there’s a silver lining to this dark cloud, maybe it’s that Americans will realize that you can have freedom or imperial conquest, but you can’t have both. Even imperialism to implant “democracy” in Iraq — a place that never had it and likely never will — still leads in America to domestic tyranny, economic collapse, and chaos.

It’s not just the Neocons, but a lot of Americans, on the left and the right — check the comments at the bottom of Greenhut’s article — who believe that the laws of common sense and gravity do not apply to them or to America. But they do.

The Iraq War still is teaching us that the hard way.

Did Aristotle make $828,000 a year like new University of California Prez Yudof?

Aristotle has the greatest claim for being the world’s smartest human. He’s the only person who invent two entirely new sciences, logic and biology.

He taught by walking with his students around Athens, hence his followers formed the Peripatetic School of philosophy. There was no expensive “physical plant,” no massive bureaucracy, no overpaid overseers. Just wisdom.

I wonder what old Ari would have thought about the $591,894 a year salary, plus generous perks boosting the total pay to well over $828,000, that will be paid to new University of California President Mark Yudof, who said of his high salary:

It will get my adrenaline going. It will be fun.

Not fun for taxpayers trying to meet mortgage payments in a crashing economy. His comment should give Yudof a red nose.

His base salary is 46% above the $405,000 made by the previous Berkeley president. Did you pay rise 46% this year?

Nowadays, learning in the entire UC system is so suffused with political correctness that Aristotle is disdained as another DWM — dead white male. Most students are more likely to have heard of Aristotle Onassis.

But Yudof’s absurdly high salary is yet another reason to entirely privatize the higher learning in California and the rest of America. Cut the schools loose from government: That would be real academic freedom. And end all government subsidies, grants, and student loans, which are just means of government control of what should be free universities.

Liberate the universities! Liberate the professors! Liberate the students! Liberate the taxpayers!

I don’t care about the Rev. Wright and Obama

This is the first time I’ve written on my blog about the Rev. Wright and his association with Barack Obama. There’s a reason for that: I don’t care about it. The Rev. Wright isn’t running for president, Obama is.

Likewise, I didn’t care about Romney’s Mormonism. And for that matter, even though I’m a Catholic, I haven’t supported the best known “Catholic” candidates — Schwarzenegger, Kerry, and Giuliani — because they’re pro-abortion. My two favorite politicians, Ron Paul and California state Sen. Tom McClintock, are pro-life, small-government Protestants. As for Jewish candidates, I supported Bruce Herschensohn’s Senate run in 1992, but I opposed Joe Liberman’s run for vice president in 2000.

For any candidate for any office, what I care about are only two things: 1. What he says he’ll do. 2. The likelihood he’ll actually do it.

For Obama, I believe he will do what he says on the most important matter of the day: Ending the Iraq War.

I still can’t vote for him because he’s pro-abortion, and I’ve never supported a pro-abortion candidate. But McCain is squishy on abortion, especially on potential judicial nominees. As The American Conservative reports:

But will the Arizonan make good and usher in a conservative majority on the Court? Unlikely. Republicans hoping to rally their dispirited base in 2008 can find little evidence that John McCain is interested in effecting a judicial counter-revolution. Though there will probably be multiple vacancies in the Supreme Court in the next presidential term—John Paul Stevens turns 88 this April; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 74; Anthony Kennedy is 71—McCain has never made the judiciary a central theme of his campaign.

Given the chance to join conservatives in disarming Democratic opposition to conservative judges, McCain compromised. Lacking incentives to appoint strict constructionists, his attitude toward judicial conservatives runs between indifference and hostility. And while McCain dutifully praises Roberts and Alito in public, he sometimes questions their rulings—particularly when they threaten to overturn his legislative legacy.

Given that McCain, if elected, would face a Democratic Senate, his judicial appointments likely wouldn’t be much different from Obama’s.

As to spending and taxing, Obama is terrible and likely would be in office. McCain is singing small-government lullabies in the ears of conservatives. But the new wars he lusts after would cost trillions on top of the $3 trillion cost for the Iraq War (so far). And given that he originally opposed Bush’s tax cuts, you just know he’d cave in to Democratic demands for tax increases to pay for the new martial carnage.

Neither candidate even talks about returning to the gold standard, the only way to prevent even more inflation.

With all that going on, who cares about Obama’s retired pastor?

It’s a dismal year.

Time to stock up on scotch and bourbon before the prices go up even more.

 

California Republicans should back Demo bill to allow a majority to pass the state budget

If you’re not from California, you should know about the weird kabuki dance done almost every year over our state budget. The state Constitution mandates a 2/3 vote of both houses of the Legislature to pass a budget.

So, the Democratic majority in the Legislature spends wildly, often with the connivance of Republican governors, such as Gov. Arnold, and proposes tax increases. Then the Republican minority in each house, which barely has enough votes to make it past the one-third threshold to reject a budget, insists on minor spending cuts and (usually) stops tax increases. So the GOP is portrayed as a bunch of skinflints who won’t approve “minor” and “temporary” tax hikes. Deficits almost always result.

Every couple of years, things are so bad that a GOP governor can get enough GOP votes in the Legislature to pass a tax increase, as Gov. Pete Wilson did in 1991 and Gov. Arnold soon will do later this year. The tax increases sink the economy and make matters worse. Eventually, large spending cuts are made to satisfy the New York banks that hold the state’s bond paper.

Meanwhile, the GOP numbers keep shrinking because new immigrants, who keep coming here, vote 70% Democrat.

The GOP has one chance to regain some momentum: Let the Democrats completely wreck the state. The instrument: Democratic state Sen. Tom Torlakson’s bill, SCA 22, which, if it is put on the ballot and voters approve it, would reduce the 2/3 budget requirement to a majority.

If it is enacted, then Democrats would immediately, at first chance, jack up taxes to unsustainable levels. Doing so would chase out even more businesses and jobs, crashing the economy and reducing the tax base. Budget deficits would widen, mandating more (not fewer) spending cuts.

Unemployment would zoom up to 15%, a depression-level.

Republicans would then say, “See, we told you so” — and have a chance of getting a majority.

Of course, being California Republicans, they then would mess it up by backing some Arnold-Wilson clone moderate for governor, who would act like a Democrat, leading people to put the real Democrats back in charge of the Legislature.

But at least there might be a brief, shining moment when reality prevails and leads to actual tax and spending cuts.

Finally, Republicans might as well pass this reform now because it’s going to happen no matter what after the 2010 U.S. Census. Redistricting will reflect the influx of those 70% Democratic immigrant voters, leading to Democrats controlling 2/3 of each House of the Legislature anyway.

But the above scenario no doubt is too complex for California Republicans, who think Machiavelli is an Italian sports car.

Bush “surge” unravels

As I predicted a month ago today, the “surge’s” supposed “success” wouldn’t last long. Iraqis don’t want Americans in their country, so they’ll do what it takes to get them out, including killing one another in larger numbers — as well as killing more Americans. Doing so discredits not only President George “W. for Surge” Bush, but John McSurge, the presumptive GOP nominee, and a major backer of the surge.

The Iraqi counter-surge has now begun. The Independent reports:

A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.

Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq’s two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons.

Also being tainted by the new bloodletting is Gen. Petraeus, whom the Neocons have been portraying as a combination Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and Captain Kirk. Gareth Porter notes:

The escalation of fighting between Mahdi Army militiamen and their Shi’ite rivals, which could mark the end of Moqtada al-Sadr’s self-imposed cease-fire, also exposes Gen. David Petraeus’ strategy for controlling Sadr’s forces as a failure.

Petraeus reacted immediately to Sunday’s rocket attacks on the Green Zone by blaming them on Iran.

That’s the new Bush line: Blame everything on Iran. That will give President Klutz an excuse to attack Iran. Except doing so might prove disaster to our troops (not that Bush, Cheney, McSurge, and the Neocons give two hoots about our troops). William Lind cautions:

The purpose of this column is not to warn of an imminent assault on Iran, though personally I think it is coming, and soon. Rather, it is to warn of a possible consequence of such an attack. Let me state it here, again, as plainly as I can: an American attack on Iran could cost us the whole army we now have in Iraq.

Lots of people in Washington are pondering possible consequences of an air and missile assault on Iran, but few if any have thought about this one. The American military’s endless “we’re the greatest” propaganda has convinced most people that the U.S. armed forces cannot be beaten in the field. They are the last in a long line of armies that could not be beaten, until they were.

How could America’s military, the mightiest the world has ever seen, be vanquished by Iran, a fourth-rate military power? Well, the Soviet Army, at the height of its power, was beaten in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The British, at the height of their Empire, in 1879, were beaten by the Zulus at the Battle of Islandlwana.

And the Romans at the height of their Empire and the magnificence of their legions, in AD 9, were beaten by German tribesmen at the Battle of Teutoberg Forest. After the later defeat, the Emperor August screamed, “Give me back my legions!”

Let us hope that the bottomless incompetence and hubris of Bush, Cheney, and the Neocons do not lead to Americans screaming, “Give us back our troops!”

 

Governor Clint Eastwood? Go ahead, make our day

Our current action-hero governor, Arnold, hasn’t gotten rid of the state’s budget problems. Time to try another action hero: Clint Eastwood.

“Dirty Harry” was just fired by Arnold from the state Parks Board. This is his chance to run for governor in 2010.

Imagine Clint confronting the spendthrifts in the state Legislature. When they don’t pass a balanced budget by the July 1 deadline, and refuse to do so even by September, Gov. Clint squits and says, “Go ahead, make my day.”

Unlike Arnold, who had no experience holding office prior to his fluke election in 2003, Clint has experience. He was mayor of Carmel.

Somebody with real guts has to deal with the Big Wasters in the Legislature. And Clint’s just the guy to do it.

Eastwood for Governor in 2008.

Send Hillary back to Bosnia

Hillary has been caught lying about her actions in Bosnia during a trip there when she was co-President. There’s a way out of this for her.

She should enlist in the U.S. Army and be sent back to Bosnia, this time as a troop. Alternatively, she could be sent to newly “independent” Kosovo, which she and her husband “liberated” in 1999 by murdering 5,000 Serbs in their long bombing war.

Put her in a uniform, giver her an M-16, and send her to the front.