Posted on 08/29/2013 9:00:58 AM PDT by jimbo123
Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal may have cooled down for now, but his wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime aide and confidante of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, is facing a growing chorus of critics of her own.
When Ms. Abedin was still a part-time employee with the State Department, she also had three consulting jobs. Each of these jobs was closely connected with the Clintons, including the Clinton Foundation, which itself is now confronted with questions about financial dealings.
Abedin has not given a full account of the consulting work, saying she is not required to do so.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Privilege has its privileges.
Just can’t understand why this broad doesn’t want to go by her married name........I just don’t get it. /s/
Huma Weener sounds fetching.
Anyone even remotely connected with either of these Clinton animals is suspect. Most of them are dead.
Huma will be on a G-4 chartered by the Clinton Foundation, wisking her out of the country just before Hillary 2016 files their papers.
Privilege has its privileges.
Yep. The neo-aristocracy is growing more neo-aristocratic by the week. That sounds almost childish; then again, so did the little boy who mentioned the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes.
You’re joking right?
If Hillary wins, Huma will be WH CoS.
This kind of stuff is only a problem when a Republican does it. Just like the MSM was far more worried about Joe the Plumber’s trade license than Obama’s birth cert.
“Huma Weener sounds fetching.”
Yep, it’s right up there with “carlos danger”...................a couple a porno names for sure.
History does repeat itself.
“”Huma will be on a G-4 chartered by the Clinton Foundation, wisking her out of the country just before Hillary 2016 files their papers.”””
Did the same with Kerrys ho, didn’t they?
Is their kid named “Snitzen Gruben Weiner” ?
That sounds almost childish
Even a child can see what’s happening.
I submit they are not an aristocracy (the best), rather they are the plutocracy (the worst).
One wag pointed out that politics provides well paid acting jobs for ugly people.
Of course they weren’t proper. But she’s a liberal.
I submit they are not an aristocracy (the best), rather they are the plutocracy (the worst).
One wag pointed out that politics provides well paid acting jobs for ugly people.
I've got to disagree and agree, donmeaker.
"Plutocracy" doesn't refer to the worst, but the wealthiest. We tend to use the term derisively in America, but its literal meaning is a bit off the target. Neither "aristocrat" nor "neo-aristocrat" is actually more accurate, which is why I usually use "self-appointed neo-aristocrat" to add an element of contempt. I can't think of a word other than "kleptocracy" that describes the ascendance of the worst to the top. Russia certainly has a kleptocracy, but only some of our worst and most powerful are overt thieves and looters.
The people at the top in post-constitutional America, whether wealthy or not, are all connected. They're all members of the same leftist extremist ideological club.
Those unresolved quibbles aside, "Politics provides well paid acting jobs for ugly people" hits the nail squarely on the head. Thanks for that, eh?
I enthusiastically accept the correction that plutocrats refers to the wealthy, not the worst. My apologies for using the word wrong.
Definition of ARISTOCRACY
1: government by the best individuals or by a small privileged class
2a : a government in which power is vested in a minority consisting of those believed to be best qualified b : a state with such a government
3: a governing body or upper class usually made up of a hereditary nobility
4: the aggregate of those believed to be superior
Now 1 sounds good, but the second part encourages me to ask, how is the small priviledged class selected?
3 has the hereditary nobility part, and that is not usually a good thing.
The sad thing is the aristos always think that since they are the best, they would make better decisions. Reality is many decisions depend on information, not brain power, and the one best person may have the best brain, but less information, or wrong information, or old information which was once correct, has a great audit trail, but is still useless or misleading when used to make decisions.
Because delayed information is bad information, central government is nearly always improved by reducing its function to controlling those aspects which do not depend on real time information. Aspects which do depend on real time information should be decentralized or de-regulated.
Time delays typically do not improve control, (though integration can be used to filter out noise) and give you more opportunity to have any degree of operator error induced oscillation which can feed back into itself so the error increases over time.
We use Proportional-integral-derivative controllers a lot, and pick the weights associated with each of the PID inputs based on the local noise, and the application demand for quick response. Good fast response and good noise filtering are mostly opposed to each other, but we can occasionally get both using techniques derived from the Byzantine Generals Problem.
The sad thing is the aristos always think that since they are the best, they would make better decisions. Reality is many decisions depend on information, not brain power, and the one best person may have the best brain, but less information, or wrong information, or old information which was once correct, has a great audit trail, but is still useless or misleading when used to make decisions.
Here's what history tells me about aristocrats:
1.) They sincerely believe they're better than the commoners, but very rarely are. In the European Middle Ages, they were, indeed, more likely to be able to read and write than the commoners, but did that make them wiser? Did technology advance faster or slower under their leadership than after? Did people eat better before or after the passing of feudalism? I suspect someone, somewhere, could come up with verifiable data to answer such questions.
2.) Hereditary aristocracries tend to suffer from both genetic and intellectual in-breeding.
3.) In economic terms, open markets tend to produce better decisions for more people than closed or managed markets. That's a large part of the reason Soviet Russian and communist Chinese died of starvation by the millions, while Americans devoted less and less labor to producing more and more food, and non-agricultural workers added greater efficiency and innovation to the accumulated industrial wealth.
Because delayed information is bad information, central government is nearly always improved by reducing its function to controlling those aspects which do not depend on real time information. Aspects which do depend on real time information should be decentralized or de-regulated.
I made rough intuitive sense of that; the rest of your thoughts, however, are beyond me. I think you're talking about decision-making. I'm glad you know whereof you speak! All I can contribute is this: I discovered during my Silicon Valley years the more lateral and free-form the organization, the faster and better the decisions usually were, whereas the more vertical and rigidly structured, the slower and generally worse the decision. None of that was universally true, but I found again and again short ad hoc meetings in comandeered conference rooms let us accomplish more than larger, scheduled, planned, orderly meetings. How exactly does that relate to open versus closed markets?
I've to confess I perceive a similarity, but can't elucidate it clearly.
I believe the Marxist oligarchy that's replaced our constitutional republic is moving toward serving the needs and wants and whims of closed market investors, super-connected, clubbish politicians, and people who strongly favor inflexible social pyramids with themselves at the top, of course.
I don't know anything about information quality and timliness; I'm very sure, however, closed economies, clubbish political systems, and rigidly hierarchic social pyramids always result in failure. If I look at the pre-1914 European empires, I see a cook book recipe for disaster—always easier to see with hindsight, to be sure.
I don't know why open markets—economic, religious, ideas-oriented, political, et cetera—are so much more productive. I'm not even sure, truth to tell, open markets are the key differentiator.
Somewhere in all that, I'm sure there's a link or room for a link to process and resource optimization. I wish I were clever and intellectually nimble enough to pursue it.
Thanks again, eh?
One reason why open markets are productive is because prices are a quantitative signal of relative scarcity. That signal is created by the buyer and the seller working together, either to create a transaction, or to leave the good on the shelf. Either way, communication occurs, thousands of times a day. That is a lot of bandwith, expecially compared to a command economy which says “do this”.
By contrast a limited market doesn’t have as much bandwidth, so there isn’t as much price correction. For the connected, those who sell high and buy low, that is a positive feature. For the people who must buy high and sell low because they are not connected, it is a bad thing, and the 90% of productive people get hurt.
Soviets had many people whose second job, and sometimes first job, was standing in lines. All those people were working for somthing they percieved as value, which was making their personal shortage of the item somewhat less.
People slept at work so they could be effective in their main job, standing on line. “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” as one comedian put it.
Remember Yakov Smirnoff, the Russian comedian?
Sometimes in US you have to stand in a line. In Soviet Russia, line stands on you.
He goes to a US market. He sees powdered milk, and asks about it. The storekeeper patiently explains that you add water to the powder and get a milk like drink. He finds Orange powder. Ah, you add water, and get an orange drink. Very clever!
Down the next isle he found Baby Powder. He exclaims “What a country!”
Hayak wrote that the price setting nature of the market was a key efficiency. It may be theoretically possible for a bureaucrat to demand exactly the right number of shoes in the right sizes and styles for everyone, but getting it right would require foot information on millions of people, and usage information so that the proper number of shoes can be ordered.
By contrast, the market achieves that easily, with people deciding for themselves to buy, or not buy shoes. When shoes are not bought, the shoe salesman can offer the shoes at increasing discounts, eventually giving the worst shoes away to a charity for a tax deduction, and update his notions of what will sell. He learns from every sale that is made, and from every day that the shoes sit on his shelf not selling. Buyers lean from every shoe they try on, or wear out, and from every price tag posted. That is a lot of learning, that the limited market can not match.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.