The Cognitive Bias of the Left

"A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own "subjective social reality" from their perception of the input. ... Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality."

I just finished reading an article entitled "Impeach Obama!" in The New Yorker. It suggests that president Obama should invoke the 14th Amendment's statement that "[T]he validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned" in order to unilaterally increase the debt limit. Despite my obsession with constitutional law I am not a legal scholar, so I won't spend a lot of time on the legality of this request. Furthermore, that is not my biggest problem with this article. However, a plain modern reading of the clause suggests that whenever the U.S. issues a debt instrument, if ever confronted in a court of law about whether a U.S. created debt instrument is valid, the answer must always be yes.

It takes a denial or complete misunderstanding of a hundred of years of legal precedent and wilful ignorance of the Liberty Bond Act of 1917 (law that established the statutory debt limit) to make this leap of logic. Or, per my opening quote, it just takes cognitive bias. But as anyone that holds general obligation bonds from the city of Detroit can tell you, just because its valid doesn't mean it will get paid.

A default, in very simple terms, is not getting back the money you were promised. In fact, since the ratification of the 14th Amendment the United States has defaulted not once, but twice! We defaulted in 1934, with Executive Order 6102 (and other legislative actions during the early 1930's), where FDR made it illegal to "hoard" gold and refused to honor gold contracts. The second time was in 1971 where President Nixon refused to exchange dollars for gold despite the language written right on all U.S. currency saying "...and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, of at any Federal Reserve Bank." In case you didn't know, the bills you hold in your purses and wallets are not money, they are currency and there's a HUGE difference. But that's a completely different discussion.

So, no matter what president Obama says, defaulting on the U.S. debt would not be "the first time in history" that it has happened.

Sorry for that diversion, but it sets up my real concern. Leftist love a crisis, even a manufactured one, because they use the inherent irrationality of the public to institute policies that under normal conditions would unlikely be considered. In this case, the author Hendrik Hertzberg is requesting nothing short of an Obama dictatorship (yes, dictators are elected as well.) He openly suggests that Obama should subvert the Constitution because he can't be impeached for doing it. Of the many things Obama would have to ignore in the Constitution and the United States Code would be:

Article 1, Section 7, Paragraph 1
"All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives"

Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 2
"The Congress shall have power ... To borrow money on the credit of the United States."

Article 2, Section 3, Paragraph 1
"...he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

United States Code Title 31, Section 3101, paragraph (b)
"The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter ... may not be more than $14,294,000,000,000, outstanding at one time, subject to changes periodically made in that amount as provided by law through the congressional budget process ...."

Hertzberg suggests that Obama would be greeted as a conquering hero because he'd only be guilty of "...saving the nation’s economy, and the world’s." You see, leftist don't intrinsically dislike dictatorships or totalitarian governments (Fidel Castro anyone?) They are unconcerned with John Dalberg-Acton's admonition that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." As long as the dictator is benevolent, everything is fine. This can be seen in the socialist, politically pornographic, Pre-Code Hollywood era (1933) film "Gabriel Over the White House." As well as in a video by Kfir Alafia and Alan Davidson's video "Crashing the Protests" where they crash an A.N.S.W.E.R. anti-war rally and a woman actually says:

"If a dictator provides clean water for their people... if they provide free health care, I like that dictator. If he provides university and education for everyone, I like that dictator."

Some would say our American society would never allow a dictator to take control of our lives. I'm not so certain, especially if the economic conditions in America are bad enough. The movie mentioned above was created during the Great Depression and the heroic lead is modeled after FDR. This may seem small, but New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempted to outlawed the sale and distribution of all 32 ounce sugary beverages. He had overwhelming support from the liberal, Whole Foods, anti-GMO, Climate Change, anti-Fracking, Gaia hypothesis community of NYC. Of course the courts overturned his law unanimously. But we can't always rely on our court system to protect our freedoms (see Affordable Care Act's individual mandate.) Remember, judges are people and they have agendas too.

I'm reminded of a famous poem by Martin Niemöller that is on a large monolith at the end of the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston. I've taken some poetic license with it:

They came first for the 32 ounce sugary beverage drinkers,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a beverage drinker.
Then they came for the gun owners,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a gun owner.
Then they came for the health care free riders,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a health care free rider.
Then they came for the Republicans,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Democrat.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

I'm not suggesting that we are headed for a new holocaust. Nor do I think that Godwin's Law has been invoked here, but that's debatable. Rather, I'm suggesting that the road to serfdom is also paved with good intentions.

Useful Idiots

I was working on a blog post a few days ago about the debt-to-GDP ratio and how useless it is as a debt service metric when I realized just how fucking boring it was! No doubt I'll eventually post it, but only 2% of the population will care and there's a good chance that none of my blog readers will.

It made me realize that I need to focus on the stuff that people might care about. That's going to be tough because most people just don't care about politics. For instance, I'm constantly reminded that there are millions of American's out there that are completely clueless about federal budgeting and the continuing resolution process given the current government shutdown. Instead, they treat the political process like a Red Sox versus Yankees rivalry rather than a substantive argumentative process meant to accomplish meaningful policy that will enhance the nation or at least move us forward as a nation.

Here are some basics that most American's don't seem to know.

• All revenue generating bills must originate in the House of Representatives. (see Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution)
• The Senate is required, by law, to create a budget each fiscal year (they haven't done it in 4 years)
• The Federal Reserve Act prohibits the Federal Reserve Bank from lending directly to the U.S. Treasury

I don't expect everyone to be as passionate as I am about politics, or especially the outcome of the recent government shutdown. However, some talk the talk but can't walk the walk. I sometimes let myself get caught in conversations with these "useful idiots" until at some point I realize they have no idea what they are talking about. They are merely spouting cliché political phrases or rooting for what they consider to be the home team. I'd give examples but that's not important. What is important is that my time is precious and I can't waste it having meanless conversations with someone that has the intellectually curiosity of a 3 year old.

More importantly, what am I going to do with all this knowledge I'm accumulating. I haven't figured that out yet, but stay tuned! By the way, I'm a Red Sox fan and actually do care about them as well. Just not as much as politics.

Obama's Pseudologia Fantastica

"Raising the debt ceiling, which has been done over 100 times, does not increase our debt." - President Barack Obama

I figured out how President Obama does it! The man can't possibly have a moral center because his ability to look into a camera and lie is truly awe-inspiring. He knows that raising the debt ceiling will allow him to increase the national debt. It's a mathematical certainty. He lacks compunction for all the boldface lies he tells. I'm told by our mainstream media that Obama is extremely intelligent, so I can't attribute his singular ability to do this to diminished intellectual capacity.

I figured it out when I was researching Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, environmentalist and author of 1968 alarmist tome The Population Bomb. I was researching this because his book, as well as the Eugenics craze and the DDT scare, reminded me of how leftists get things implemented in this society. I was trying to determine how the Climate Change hoax and hysteria is going to end. In short, virtually everything that Dr. Ehrlich predicted in this rehash of Malthusianism (i.e., mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals) was wrong. Yet Dr. Ehrlich insists that many of his fundamental ideas and predictions have been proven by science. He is of course completely wrong and is the poster child for cognitive dissonance.

Who worked with this man to develop the theories and predictions in The Population Bomb and participated in a failed bet on those predictions? Dr. John Paul Holdren, the current senior advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology issues. I'll give it to leftists. They go out of their way to protect their own. Ideology trumps EVERYTHING! Failed leftist almost always end up in academia with a tenured position. It is not a coincidence.

There's the thread. Here's my observation on why Obama can lie without compunction. He religiously believes in the cause he's trying to forward. I can only surmise that he's a devout Machiavellian and therefore will do anything to forward the leftist movement. Just look at what he said on the Senate floor just 7 years ago. In 2006, he called increasing the debt limit a "failure of leadership." But now that he's the leader, its essential to our democracy. Furthermore, he knows he has a co-dependent media that will whitewash his every move.

Obama will say or do anything to forward the cause and that's the advantage that the left has over the right. For the right, their religion is the God of Abraham, Isiah, and Issac. For the left, their religion is the implementation of a utopian society brought on by collectivist ideals where everything and everybody is equal. Of course, that society has never existed in human history and is grandly unrealistic. What is more likely to happen is a society that mirrors the environment detailed in Kurt Vonnegut's short story, Harrison Bergeron.