Cab Thoughts Sunday 6/5/16

The pulp-noir writer Jim Thompson died in 1977. "Just you wait," Thompson told his wife shortly before his death, "I'll become famous after I'm dead about ten years."  

Tragedy occurs when the fall of a great man leads us to tremble in sympathy. So tragedy is instructive, not a wasted destructive experience but a terrible yet enlightening experience that improves others. This is in distinction to schadenfreude, which is pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. That, I think, is the basis of all the talk about Jefferson and Sally Hemings. There is some demeaning self-righteousness involved. Strangely, it come from the Left toward a man who was a revolutionary--albeit in the cause of person freedom rather than statist dispensation. The topic is, of course, Hemings. And, like all ill-wishers, they over-reach. The Jefferson family has a distinctive male Y chromosome and it is loudly trumpeted that proof has been found that Jefferson fathered Hemings' six children. But that is both impossible and untrue. The child conceived while the two were in Paris (and Thomas the only available Jefferson), a boy, does not have the gene; the girls can not. The only question is the youngest boy, Easton.

The money for an increased minimum wage has got to come from somewhere, and there are only three places from which it can come: investors, in the form of lower profits; customers, in the form of higher prices; or workers, in the form of fewer jobs.

Few things are as enjoyable as watching arrogant politicians issue proclamations that are totally unenforceable. The Carter Doctrine was a policy enacted by President Carter on January 23rd, 1980 when President Carter specifically stated in the State of the Union that the US would use military force in anyway in the Middle East to protect American interests. He solemnly intoned "Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." Ridiculous. Then, of course, after the nonsense, it got serious as others were asked to enforce it.

As it is their goal to do this for all people who have ever lived on the Earth, Mormons posthumously baptized and endowed Adolf Hitler in 1993. He was “sealed” to his parents on March 12, 1994. Both took place in England.

Dorothy Parker's debut column at Vanity Fair in 1918 was that of a twenty-four-year-old newcomer filling in for P. G. Wodehouse, but it gave notice: of the five musical comedies reviewed, one got "if you don't knit, bring a book"; another got a review that did not include any names, because she was "not going to tell on them"; another did not get reviewed at all, Parker deciding instead to review the performance of the woman sitting next to her as she searched for her lost glove. "I went into the Plymouth Theater a comparatively young woman," she said of a production of Tolstoy's Redemption, "and I staggered out of it, three hours later, twenty years older. . . ."

What is....The Stamp Act?

Progressives also worry that robots will take everyone’s jobs away but that, empirically, raising the minimum wage doesn’t cause workers to be replaced by machines.--Sumner

Bankster: noun: A banker who engages in dishonest or illegal behavior. ety: A blend of banker + gangster. From the derogatory suffix -ster which also gave us poetaster, mathematicaster, and philosophaster. Earliest documented use: 1893. USAGE: “So far for example, no bankster has been indicted/convicted for having a major hand in running the global economy to the ground.” Demise of the Prevalent Political Economy; Capital (Addis Abada, Ethiopia); Mar 11, 2013. How does "jokester" fit here?

The Department of Education was created in 1979 and now has an annual budget of $73 billion, with 5,000 government bureaucrats roaming its hallways. When you include all Federal, State and Local spending on public education it totals about $700 billion per year, or $13,000 per student.

Bordeaux on the true revolution in the West: "The Bourgeois Deal." "As history teaches – especially as interpreted through the keen eyes of Deirdre McCloskey – prosperity for the masses is caused by innovation in open markets. And markets are open only if most people accept the Bourgeois Deal, which is this: Innovators, entrepreneurs, and merchants can get as rich as they like, but only by also making their customers and workers richer as judged exclusively by their customers and workers. Producers serve consumers, not vice-versa. The freedom of contract includes the freedom not to contract. Voluntary trade that takes place across political borders is no less beneficial than is trade that takes place domestically. The fact that persuasion involves no use of force makes it civilized rather than contemptible. Ordinary people cannot be secure in their rights without ‘the rich’ also being secure in their rights; ‘the rich’ cannot be secure in their rights without ordinary people also being secure in their rights." He then gives as example the very existence of Las Vegas, something created out of nothing through the Bourgeois Deal.

Golden oldie:

http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2013/12/simon-capitalism-and-money.html

Former central bank staffer and Dartmouth College economics professor Andrew Levin, special adviser to then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke between 2010 to 2012, said, "A lot of people would be stunned to know” the extent to which the Federal Reserve is privately owned. The Fed “should be a fully public institution just like every other central bank” in the developed world, he said in a conference call announcing the plan

Obama has been getting flack for his casual manner during the recent Brussels attack. This may be a reason: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-belgium-blast-usa-intelligence-idUSKCN0WQ0BU?utm_source=applenews

Only Paul Goldschmidt (164 plate appearances) batted with no runners on and two outs more often than McCutchen (158) last season. No position in the order comes up more often with two outs and no one on than the No. 3 spot. So McCutchen has been moved.

The Q code was instituted at the Radiotelegraph Convention held in London in 1912 as a means of creating a 'shorthand' for use with Morse code. Each code group had a specific meaning assigned which remained the same regardless of the language spoken by either operator, thus neatly overcoming the problem of communications on international services (the later move to voice communication by HF and VHF radio-telephone necessitated the adoption of English as the international language of aviation). Each code group is either a question, an answer or an intention depending on the direction of the communication. For example, QAA is the first code group in the aeronautical section. As a question from the ground station to the aircraft, QAA means "At what time do you expect to arrive?" As an answer, or as a statement of intention from the aircraft to the ground station, QAA means "I expect to arrive at...".  Numerals and other qualifiers could be added to the basic Q groups as required. Thus "QAA 1500" means "I expect to arrive at 15.00 hours". 

Pictogram: Bingo game callers in the UK call ‘Two little Ducks’ for 22, and the game-players’ response is, predictably, ‘Quack Quack’.

The Stamp Act in 1765 was a direct tax on all materials printed for commercial and legal use in the colonies, from newspapers and pamphlets to playing cards and dice. It was a common tax and was felt to be reasonable as it was aimed at covering expenses from defending the colonies. But the colonists had recently been hit with three major taxes: the Sugar Act (1764), which levied new duties on imports of textiles, wines, coffee and sugar; the Currency Act (1764), which caused a major decline in the value of the paper money used by colonists; and the Quartering Act (1765), which required colonists to provide food and lodging to British troops. This tax stirred taxation and independence questions in the colonies. While the British eventually thought the tax created more trouble than it was worth and repealed it, the organizations that grew up to fight it--including the Sons of Liberty--continued to grow.

Restrictions on medical studies usually slows enrollment to studies to 1/2 patient per site per month.

From Barron's: ...consider mom and pop and other people who read Barron’s. They are saving for retirement and to put their kids through college. They might have depended on a historic 8%-like return from stocks and bonds. Well, sorry. When interest rates get to zero—and that isn’t the endpoint; they could go negative—savers are destroyed. And savers are the bedrock of capitalism. Savers allow investment, and investment produces growth.

Trump may have been on to something. According to Reuters, for the first time in 25 years, the U.S. Air Force deployed B-52 bombers to Qatar on Saturday to join the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. This is the first time the B-52 has been based in the Middle East since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. Carpet bombing?

 AAAAAAAaaaaaaaannnnnddddd.....a graph: