2009 AWARDS

Jeanne Kirkpatrick Award
Last year I began giving out two awards that I have long had in mind and almost forgot this year, so I'm a little late with these. As a reminder, the Jeanne Kirkpatrick award is given to someone who says something so stupid that he or she should immediately lose all credibility. I also give this award to those who should know better, but don't. Jeanne Kirkpatrick had a Phd. in Political Science and was US Ambassador to the UN, among other things. She thought the US should support Argentina, not England, in the Falklands War, gaining immediate infamy.

This year I give the award not to any individual, but a group of individuals--the Chicago School of economists. These well educated dunderheads continue to maintain that markets will self-regulate and need no government regulation. The support a completely libertarian philosphy and, as part of that philosophy, believe that people make rational economic decisions, on the basis of what is best for them economically. Thus, with their philosophy, bubbles are impossible because they are irrational. A recent special on PBS showed social science experiments where people behaved very irrationally, paying more than $20 for a $20 bill, for example, at an auction. When faced with the results of these experiments, the economists simply refused to believe them and just kept repeating this philosophical tenants like some religious chant. Of course there are hundreds of years of economic history which also invalidates their beliefs, starting with the Dutch tulip bubble of about 400+ years ago. But, let's not have facts get in the way of our beliefs.

The Bull Connor Award
This award is named after the sheriff in Alabama who so mistreated civil rights marchers in the early 1960's, that he probably did more to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than anyone. In other words, he screwed up so badly that he got the exact opposite outcome from what he intended.

I am giving this year's award to The Tea Party. This group of neanderthals is both extreme and extremely ignorant. Although we have not yet seen the fruits of their labors, I predict that they will succeed in driving the Republican Party so far to the right that they will alienate the vast majority of independents, greatly reducing Democratic losses in the 2010 mid-term elections. The winner of the Republican Party primary in Nevada for US Senate to oppose Harry Reid is so ridiculous that Reid now has gone from being in real trouble to most likely victorious. This woman is against social security, fluoridation, thinks we should reduce regulations on oil drilling (what oil spill?), and so on. You have to be out of your mind to support these kind of policies.