In 2010, Jon McNaughton unveiled “The Forgotten Man,” which depicts President Obama standing on a tattered copy of the Constitution as his predecessors look on. According to McNaughton, the man on the bench

“…represents every man, woman, and child who is an American… he hopes to find the American dream of happiness and prosperity… But now because of unconstitutional acts imposed by the American people by our government we stand on the precipice of disasters.”

I only found out about this painting a few days ago. I was amused to see McNaughton’s take on the earlier Presidents’ reactions to Obama’s horrific and unprecedented abuse of the Constitution. I also tried to see if I could identify each of the other Presidents without looking them up. Here goes, from left to right:

1. The guy who picked a fight with Mexico to win more slave territory.
2. The guy who died too quickly too ruin anything.
3. The guy who sold out the freedmen in order to take the White House and used troops to break up a railroad strike.
4. The guy who signed the Chinese Exclusion Act.
5. The guy who forced five Indian tribes out of Georgia and threatened to invade South Carolina.
6. The guy who did nothing to protect freedmen’s rights during Reconstruction.
7. The guy who signed the toughest Fugitive Slave Law ever.
8. The guy who suspended habeas corpus and deported political opponents.
9. The guy who signed the Comstock laws.
10. The guy who liked the Dred Scott decision.
11. The guy who tried to take over Cuba.
12. The guy who expanded the drug war and raised Social Security taxes.
13. On the bench: the “Forgotten Man.”
14. Another guy who died too quickly to ruin anything.
15. The guy who signed the Sedition Act just a few years after his involvement in passing the First Amendment.
16. The guy who signed the Tariff of Abominations.
17. The guy who signed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Second Morrill Land Grant Act.
18. The guy who annexed Texas without a treaty so he could have another slave state.
19. The guy who embargoed the whole world and bought Louisiana in spite of his former sniveling about strict interpretation.
20. The Trail of Tears guy.
21. The guy who called one entire hemisphere off-limits to the other hemisphere.
22. The guy who created the first Bank of the United States and signed the first Fugitive Slave Law.
23. The guy who nationalized the highway system and created the Department of Education and added “under God” to the Pledge.
24. The guy who signed the anti-everyone-but-Western-European-immigration act.
25. The guy who wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr. and created the Peace Corps.
26. The guy who created Medicaid and Medicare and passed the Public Broadcasting Act and the Fair Housing Act.
27. The guy who seized the railroads and the steel industry.
28. The guy who jacked up the Fordney-McCumber tariff.
29. The guy who created the DEA and EPA and imposed wage and price controls and used the CIA to spy on the FBI.
30. In the “What are you DOING!?!?” pose: the guy who approved the Second Bank of the United States and invaded Spanish Florida.
31. The guy who passed a one-time corporate surtax and jacked up railroad subsidies.
32. Yet another guy who died too quickly to ruin anything.
33. The guy who banned the import of certain rifles and increased federal involvement in education and expanded unemployment payments.
34. The guy who signed the PATRIOT Act and expanded warrantless wiretapping and passed No Child Left Behind and expanded Medicare.
35. Barack Obama.
36. The guy who signed FISA and bailed out Lee Iacocca.
37. The guy who passed the Brady Bill and limited salary write-offs to $1 million and tried to nationalize the health care system.
38. The guy who lent money to failing businesses and passed the Davis-Bacon Act and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff.
39. The guy who created Social Security and the FDIC and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the Works Progress Administration and threw Japanese-Americans in internment camps.
40. The guy who created the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Reserve and federal income taxes and passed the Clayton Anti-Trust Act and promoted Prohibition and threw political opponents in jail.
41. The guy who prosecuted 90 companies for antitrust violations.
42. The guy who passed heavy railroad regulation and threatened to seize coal mines and wrested Panama away from Colombia.
43. The guy who used the Army to stop a railroad strike. He should appear twice but doesn’t.
44. The guy who annexed Hawaii and jacked up tariffs.

How’d I do?

A friend of mine recently lamented that too many people don’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its.” He wrote what he hoped would be a simple mnemonic device that would help writers use the terms properly. I would like to think that this would help folks make the distinction, but I know better.

Therefore I make the following suggestions to help our youngest learners avoid the problem altogether:

#1: Replace “it’s” with “tis,” as in “Tis the season to be jolly.” It means exactly the same thing, will fool people into thinking you’re smarter than you really are, and eliminates the homophonic confusion altogether.

#2: Contract the most troublesome two-word-combos (generally “it’s,” “there’s,” “they’re,” “who’s”) by smushing them together (“itis,” “thereis,” “theyare,” “whois”) instead of dropping a letter and adding an apostrophe. Note that when typing these new smushwords, they require just as many keystrokes as the old contractions.

Note that I specified the most troublesome combos. We can still get by with “won’t” instead of “willnot,” and so on.

#3: Stop teaching contractions altogether. They do not save that much time when speaking, writing by hand, or typing. Screw’m.

#4: Be lazier. Use “yer” to mean “you’re” and “your”. Use “thar” to mean “their,” “there,” and “they’re.” Put the pressure on the reader to figure it out; you’ve got too much other stuff to write about to worry about whether anyone understands what you’ve written.

#5: Stop caring about the difference between homophones such as “it’s” and “its.” Seriously, stop caring. There’re bigger fish to fry.

Suggestions four and five aren’t quite compatible with the others.

In my “Resolutions for 2012,” #9 was “I shall make a 9th resolution before January 31st, 2012.” I opened the floor to suggestions, and Dr. Hmnahmna’s idea seems good enough.

My buddy “As I’m A Bassi” is getting married over Memorial Day weekend in Rochester, and the timing virtually demands that I fly up there. Thus do I hereby resolve that:

9. I shall fly on an airplane in order to attend As I’m A Bassi’s wedding.

I shall also fly back.

Might visit the Canadian side of Niagara Falls while up there– it’s an hour or so away from Rochester– but I’m worried they might try to keep me.

Finished the book Against Intellectual Monopoly. Actually, “finished” may be a bit of a stretch since I skimmed some parts; I’ve got a flood of DBQs coming in this week and I wanted this book out of the way. The book’s got gobs of history and thorough arguments, but I’m not totally sold. ‘Tis true that there’d be plenty of creativity in the absence of intellectual property law, but I still worry about innovation in fields with high fixed and low variable costs like pharmaceuticals. I’d feel better about the matter if, concurrent with reducing IP protection, we also liberalized testing requirements and drove down some of the up-front costs of drug development (which the authors do suggest). But while I can see the public supporting the abolition of drug patents, I can’t see them supporting the reduction of the FDA’s testing requirements.

Furthermore, I don’t think the “first-mover” argument is as strong as the authors think it is. The first-mover argument is that even in the absence of IP law, innovators would reap adequate and socially optimal profits simply because they were first to create the product. I can buy that when it comes to tangible products, but not so much when it comes to digital media. As technology improves, it becomes easier to copy digital media and enjoy it prior to public release–i.e., before the innovator and would-be first mover moves. Sure, the creators can figure out other ways to earn profits, or maybe the market (or profit margin) for such material is too big to be socially optimal anyways and the lack of IP protection will cause it to shrink, but either way the first-mover argument seems a little bit flimsy when it comes digital media.

At least in regards to the arts, IP law may one day be rendered moot without being abolished or diminished. A lot of folks take MGM’s motto, “Ars gratia artis,” seriously and not ironically and are willing to give their work away, free of charge. Take me, for instance. I don’t charge anybody to read this website (though I will sell you ad space). This sort of art is more readily available than ever before, and technological advancements are making special effects and editing less and less expensive. That may drive Hollywood and the music industry out of business before a lack of IP protection does.

I’d like to know the opinions of my buddies who probably hold patents and copyrights. I’ll be contacting them shortly and soliciting their opinions on the matter. Hopefully they won’t charge me.

…

If they ever do abolish IP law, the government should still provide protection to all materials published prior to abolition. If patents and copyrights were legally acquired, they should be enforced until expiration.

A few days ago, Noutheteo asked:

From an economic standpoint, what is your opinion of SOPA/PIPA and the recent “blackout”? Is there a need for government to intervene with intellectual property laws, and if so, is the SOPA/PIPA route appropriate? On a similar note: any thoughts on the book Against Intellectual Monopoly?

I’m doing my best to read the book before I get another batch of essays to grade. It may well change my opinions on the matter of intellectual property, so there’ll be a part two coming along one day. Now, allow me to ramble:

Like the overwhelming majority of people who have commented on the matter, and probably like most congressmen who would vote on the matter, I haven’t read either SOPA or PIPA. The rumors and the one-page warnings worry me, though. I don’t like the idea that I could be punished because one of my commenters posts a link to protected materials.

If the feds already have the ability to shut down a website like Megaupload without SOPA/PIPA, then one wonders and worries about what additional purpose would SOPA/PIPA serve. If SOPA or PIPA were to pass, I think we’d someday see (hopefully futile) efforts to regulate political content on the internet, a la the old Fairness Doctrine.

I hope the government would act to protect my intellectual property just as they would act to protect other types of my property. The problem is one of cost and benefit as much as it is one of morality: at what point does it become simply unfeasible for the government to protect my property? There was no 50-man task force to track down the guy who tried breaking into my house three years ago– they had nothing to go on but a messed-up footprint. It is so simple and inexpensive to pirate IP, and so complicated and expensive to stop piracy, that one wonders if intellectual property law will soon resemble those warnings you see in deserts or mountains: proceed at your own risk. Publish at your own risk.

It looks like technology has come to the point where we have to revolutionize intellectual property law whether we want to or not. Either shift the paradigm, or watch the paradigm become useless.

Now that I think about it, maybe we have an unspoken contempt for intellectual property law. I’ve met a few people in the education field who were sincerely angry that someone might sell academic materials instead of freely giving them away.

I loved the day of protest, especially since I could still read Wikipedia via smartphone. In keeping with my the topics of my last few posts, I would point out that the reaction to SOPA was very Hayekean– “spontaneous order,” if you will.

But perhaps I’m conflating piracy with theft and/or plagiarism. I’ll have to finish the book, won’t I?

By the way, if you remember any part of this in your brain, I’m going to sue you.

…

I think there’s a much simpler way to explain the NFL’s playoff rule: it’s sudden-death, except that the game cannot end on a field goal on the first possession of OT.

An anonymous reader asks, “What are your thoughts on Ron Pauls rise in fame and in the polls. Is he the real deal? Or just another Ross Perot?”

Ron Paul has had an unusual effect on the political scene. Some pundit (I forget which one) pointed out that no other major party candidate in recent memory has gotten as many people reading as Ron Paul has. And I don’t mean the typical fluff that your typical presidential candidate puts out, I mean works of political philosophy and economics. (Unfortunately for him, some folks are also reading his old newsletters, which feature some questionable material.)

I’m not sure what, exactly, you mean by “the real deal.” Is Ron Paul sincere? Far more so than any other major party candidate of the last two presidential election cycles, with the possible exception of Elizabeth Kucinich’s husband. His consistency on the issues puts other politicians to shame, if such creatures were capable of such a condition. Does he have a shot at winning? Yes, but it’s remote. Is he going to win the Republican nomination? Nope.

Is he just another Ross Perot? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that both are Texans who aren’t going to be President, they both focus heavily on the national debt, and they share initials. But the dissimilarities are legion. Paul is far more ideological than Perot. Paul has consistent, principled stances on a broad array of issues while nobody can remember what Perot talked about aside from the debt. Also, I think (I can’t prove it) that Perot ran due to spite towards George H. W. Bush more than anything else, while Paul is running based on genuine conviction. Furthermore, Paul’s not going to run as a third party candidate.

I remember when Perot was running and everyone was complaining about a debt of around $4 trillion. Good times.

From the mailbag:

Last week, “Hard Candy” asked, “What is your opinion on the Austrian School of Economics?”

Before I respond, let me warn you that my answer would probably not please the purists of the Austrian (or “Vienna”) school or of the Keynesian (i.e., mainstream) school of economics. The Austrians would find reasons to call me a “socialist” or “statist,” the Keynesians would find reasons to call me an “anarchist” or “shill for the rich,” and both would find reasons to say I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m not saying I’m going for the middle ground, I’m just saying that the purists tend to be a bit tightly wound.

I have a generally favorable opinion of the Austrian school. In fact, one of the my favorite blogs is Cafe Hayek, named for a Nobel Prize winning economist who was an Austrian in both the academic and, having been born in Vienna, the literal sense. If I may briefly continue to plug www.cafehayek.com, that’s www.cafehayek.com, allow me to quote myself:

“I like this website not merely for the subject matter, but also because of the authors: one was an economics professor at my alma mater; the other wrote The Invisible Heart, a novel about the adventures of a high school economics teacher.”

I should add that the one who taught at Clemson can be a bit abrasive at times. Anyhow, back to the subject. Why do I have a favorable opinion of the Austrian school? Two reasons: one that has to do with how Austrians and Keynesians look at the economy, and one that has to do with their policy prescriptions.

First, I sympathize with the Austrian view of our ability to understand the economy. The Keynesian school is essentially an attempt to create a “grand unified theory” of economics. The Austrian school makes a vitally important criticism of the Keynesian effort, which is that it’s never going to work. The world is too chaotic. There are too many people interacting in too many ways, too many times a day, with too many resources, under too many conditions that shift too quickly, for a single model to be all that useful in predicting what people are going to do.

To that, one might say, “But shouldn’t we study the economy and at least attempt to model it?” I say, sure. Go ahead and try to figure it out. It’s important that we try to figure it out as best we can, because the more knowledge, the better– but you’ve got to be willing to update the model constantly and incessantly, and you’ve got to understand you’re rolling a rock up a steep hill.

A ridiculously simplistic version of my first reason: is economics a “social science” or a “social study”? Keynesians: science. Austrians: study. I think the Austrians are right.

Second, I tend to oppose government intervention in the economy, as do most Austrian economists. The mere existence of Lord Keynes’s General Theory and its later iterations leads many folks (not necessarily economists, but “folks”) to believe that the economy can be “macro-managed,” and that central governments should intervene heavily in the economy. The Austrian school argues that economies are far too complicated to be managed from above. Again, I think it’s important to study the economy as scientifically as possible, even with Keynesian tools of analysis– but it seems to me that the more we learn about the economy, the more obvious it becomes that it is too complicated to be managed effectively by governments, especially as populations grow. I think most Austrian economists would agree with that view.

A more interesting question (not that Austria vs. Keynes is uninteresting) would have been whether I favor the Austrian/Vienna school or the Chicago school. I’d need time to ponder that one, preferably whilst eating a Chicago-style Vienna Beef hot dog. I just discovered Let’s Nosh down on San Jose this weekend, so my mind’s wandering thataway right now.

Resolution time again. First, let’s have a look at my resolutions from all the way back in Twenny-Levvin went:

1. I shall ride the exerbike for thirty minutes (or engage in the substantial equivalent of other exercise) at least three times per week. Nope. I played a few seasons of 7v7 and rode the bike the first half of the year, then had to stop playing ball and the bike broke down. Oddly, the weight stayed down anyway.

2. I shall cook something I’ve never cooked before, and cook it at least three times to fine-tune the recipe. Errrrrrmmmmm… nope. Tinkered with the sweet-and-sour recipe a good bit, but not enough that it legally counts as a new meal. I’ll cook two this year to make up for it.

3. I shall write at least one journal entry each week. I shall not go seven days without posting an entry. Kept.

4. If a task or chore will take less than one minute to accomplish and I have a minute to spare, I shall do it immediately. Kept as much as possible.

5. On weekends and days off, I shall awaken and get out of bed before 9:19 AM. Nope. There were a handful of 10AM rise-and-shines in there, and it turns out that painkillers make it easy to sleep through alarms.

6. When I leave my classroom at the end of each day, my desktop will be clean, organized, and ready for the next day’s work. Kept. Now I need to amend this to include the top of the filing cabinet next to my desk.

7. I shall replace my mattress and give careful consideration to replacing the ‘Rolla. Kept. I did replace the mattress, and am quite content with my new mattress. Also, I did give careful consideration to replacing my car. Did I actually replace it? Keep reading.

8. I shall buy lunch no more than once per workweek. Nope. There were a few workweeks in the fall that saw me buy lunch twice.

9. I shall, to the best of my ability, follow the “orders” in the one-goofy-instruction-a-day book my sister gave me years ago. I abandoned this one right away, partly because I kept forgetting to check the instructions, partly because I didn’t want to get arrested.

10. On any day I collect essays, I shall grade at least ten of those essays. Not kept nearly often enough, but this is a good one and will get renewed.

11. I shall make a pencil sketch at least once a week. Nope. Well, yes, but only in the most technical sense… I know I drew the same frigates at sea over and over again on trivia scoresheets, post-its, and napkins. Wasn’t quite what I had in mind upon making the resolution.

12. I shall replace the mattress by summer’s end and the ‘Rolla by year’s end. The Department of Redundancy Department informs me that this should have been merged with Resolution #7. Either way, I replaced the mattress by summer’s end… but the ‘Rolla continued to run well, and “careful consideration” never turned into “kicking the tires and test-driving.”

Four of twelve. Not good. If the world is indeed going to end this coming December, I’m gonna have to go out on a high note. So let’s start with the renewed resolutions:

1. I shall ride the exerbike for thirty minutes (or engage in the substantial equivalent of other exercise) at least three times per week.

2. I shall cook two somethings I’ve never cooked before, and cook them at least three times each to fine-tune the recipes.

3. I shall write at least one journal entry each week. I shall not go seven days without posting an entry.

4. If a task or chore will take less than one minute to accomplish and I have a minute to spare, I shall do it immediately.

5. On weekends and days off, I shall awaken and get out of bed before 9:19 AM.

6. When I leave my classroom at the end of each day, my desktop and the top of the filing cabinet next to my desk shall be clean, organized, and ready for the next day’s work.

7. I shall buy lunch no more than once per workweek.

8. On any day I collect essays, I shall grade at least ten of those essays.

No newbies yet. I’ll add four along the way and entertain suggestions.

9. I shall make a 9th resolution before January 31st, 2012.

10. I shall make a 10th resolution before February 29th, 2012.

11. I shall make an 11th resolution before April 30th, 2012.

12. I shall make a 12th resolution before June 30th, 2012.

Here goes.

After more than a dozen debates, countless ads and interviews, oodles of fawning endorsements and myriad scathing critiques, I have selected a favorite presidential candidate: Rick Santorum.

A few months ago, I had the following to say about Rick:

…he seems bitter that he’s not getting as much attention as other folks, and nobody likes bitter (my life is a testament to such). He’s about a month away from acting completely resigned to losing, and I think he’ll drop out after Iowa.

Things haven’t played out that way. Thanks to being the flavor of the month for the anti-Romney and anti-Paul crowds at just the right time, Santorum finished a very strong second in Iowa. Some say that his popularity will drop upon further inspection, as did that of Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich. But upon taking the closer look at the candidate that his unexpected success demanded, I realized that Rick is more than just the candidate I am compelled to support in this election.

I realized that Rick Santorum is the greatest candidate for President in the whole entire history of this great country. Thus far.

Careful research has revealed that Rick’s father was Italian, and Rick’s mother is half-Italian and half-Irish. This puts Rick as close to the ideal ethnic composition as we’ve ever seen in a major presidential candidate. Someone may one day come closer, since Aldo Santorum was from Trentino in the northern, lesser part of Italy instead of a vastly superior southern province like Benevento or Potenza.

Lest you think that I’m claiming that DNA is destiny, let me assure you that other factors contribute to his greatness. He lived in northern Virginia in his youth– not in Manassas, but in a pretty OK town I guess– and in a northern suburb of Chicago called Mundelein– which is a little further from Chicago than, say, Wheaton is. It is true that Santorum never lived in New Hampshire, Florida, or South Carolina, but he has compensated by being a far more devout Roman Catholic than the ideal candidate would be.

But what, one might ask, of his stance on the issues? Cutting to the chase, I looked at his stance on the biggest political issue of the last twenty-five years: the appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Senator Santorum voted to confirm Justice Alito. I am on record as heartily supporting Alito’s confirmation.

November 6th is still a long way off. The other candidates, Obama included, may raise their standings through careful preparation. Barring the entrance of a superior candidate into the race, I have no choice but to endorse Rick Santorum for President of the United States of America.

Yesterday I attended a Jaguars game for the first time. Before you ask how it’s possible I’ve lived here so long without going to a Jags game, let me assure you that it’s been quite easy. Anyhow, at halftime, a marching band from a not-so-local high school performed “All Along the Watchtower,” which, as the announcer mentioned, was made famous by Jimi Hendrix.

A brief thought on poetry: if you look at the average high-school English reader, you’re not going to find too much that was written in the post-1960-ish. That’s not to say nothing worthy of academic study has been written; it certainly has. I think it’s a combination of two factors. First, stuff written that recently hasn’t been around long enough to be recognized as great or timeless poetry. Second, the people we would’ve called poets in centuries past are now writing rock songs (I would’ve written “pop songs,” but that probably would’ve offended songwriters more than “lumping all the different genres in with rock” would). Throw Bob Dylan (who wrote “Watchtower”) or Smokey Robinson (whom Dylan once called “America’s greatest living poet”) a little further back in time, and they’re poets, not songwriters.

So the boy sitting right behind me asked his dad, “What song did they say this is?” It was perfectly reasonable question, given the boy’s age and the difficulty of understanding the announcer.

The dad responded, “‘All Along the Watchtower.’ It’s a Dave Matthews song.”

Sure it is, just like “Behind Blue Eyes” is a Limp Bizkit song, “American Pie” is a Madonna song, and Psycho is a Gus Van Sant movie.

…

I was also reminded that the celebrations-after-anything-other-than-a-touchdown look even more silly live than they do on television. Act like you’re not playing Pop Warner ball anymore.

Last year was a pretty good year. To wit:

I had a few good seasons of 7v7 soccer.

My glorious visage adorned the hallway of my workplace, for all to gaze upon as they passed.

I tested an iPad for a week for zero dollars and zero cents. Didn’t like it enough to keep it. Later I bought a new MacBook Pro.

I got a nice mention in the valedictory address.

My APUSH pass rate rose for the third year in a row. Or, more precisely, my students’ APUSH pass rate rose for the third year in a row. My pass rate has held steady at 100% since I was a junior in high school.

Osama bin Laden died ignominiously, Kim Jong-Il died un-sincerely-lamented, and Gaddafi died with the transliteration of his name unresolved.

My new classroom is well-lit, suffers no infestations, and isn’t sliding into a sinkhole.

I made new friends, dispatched ancient rivals, and became reacquainted with a friend I hadn’t seen in 15 years.

I saw most of my closest buddies, was visited by some cousins I haven’t seen in a while, and video-chatted with my niece twice.

I watched my friend ear33wig become an American citizen.

I was elected chairman of the school improvement team, though they haven’t given me a gavel. Yet.

I visited Clemson, saw my brick in person and watched a game in Death Valley for the first time since graduation. The Tigers had their best season in decades, won an ACC title, and earned a trip to a BCS bowl.

I still have students to teach despite the lack of district funding for transportation, and there was a JV soccer season despite having to raise funds independently.

They announced a new Bond flick, with a strong director and some star power in supporting and villainous roles and I was given parking decal number 007.

I developed and implemented new napping strategies.

Cutler (briefly) came back from his knee injury, Crosby (briefly) came back from his concussion, and though the Celtics wane, the Bulls seem to be back as a major power.

My folks’ dogs were relieved of the burdens of their sufferings, and are now in Doggie Heaven.

I kept the weight down and finished the year under my target.

As resolved, I bought a new mattress and wrote an entry at least once a week. In fact, I set a new personal record for posts in a year.

And despite predictions to the contrary, the world didn’t end.

…

In all, a spectacular year. I don’t see how 2012 can possibly live up to it.