Beware of “Click to Call” Skype Add-on

This blog is usually about theology, philosophy, cultural critique – if you read it you know that.  Today, however, there is a small little tech matter I want to warn my friends and readers about in the hope that you won’t become as frustrated as I was yesterday.

I recently noticed that in Office 2010 applications, my multiple paste options had disappeared.  I could only paste things as text.  I often want to keep the original formatting.  It became a bit maddening.

After much searching, I found the answer on a Microsoft support forum.

If you install Skype (which I had done the day before) it will, by default, install a little add-on called “Skype click to call.”  For some reason, this little digital critter screws up the ability to paste properly in MS Office applications.

If you encounter this problem, be thankful that all you need do is uninstall “Skype click to call” and restart your computer.  The problem will disappear.

My guess is that the Skype people will fix this soon.  The Skype main program does NOT cause the problem, just the “click to call” add-on.  I hope this saves someone from frustration.

We now return to our usual business around here!

Please Don’t Send Us Free Stuff!

This item recently came from the newsletter of my U. S. House member, Geoff Davis:

Last week, I voted with a majority of the House to pass H.R. 4105.  This bipartisan and bicameral legislation ensures that the Department of Commerce can continue to apply countervailing duty (CVD) law to non-market economies, such as China.  Trade remedies are tools that allow the government to take remedial action against imported goods that are hurting a domestic industry.  CVDs are among these tools, which aim to offset foreign government subsidization of imported goods that can distort the free market.

Mr. Davis has announced he will not seek another term.  I must say that he has generally been an above average member of the House as far as representing my views is concerned.  But here is a place where we seriously disagree.

Sometimes people fail to engage their ‘economic minds’ when these sorts of matters come up.  I am but an amateur in this field, though I have read enough to be somewhat informed.  So think through this with me.

China subsidizes goods it exports to us.  What does that mean, economically speaking?  It means that China is giving us some free stuff, or more accurately, the people in China are being forced to pay part of the cost of things we consume.  Why is free stuff a bad thing?

According to Mr. Davis (and this idea is very common), this free stuff will ‘hurt domestic industry.’  This is true in one sense, but false in another, very important sense.

It is true that if your business makes widget X, and you don’t plan to give part of yours away, you might not be able to make widget X profitably as long as the people of China are being forced to pay part of cost of sending a widget X to us.  But this does not ‘hurt domestic industry’ as a whole.  Rather, it means that domestic industry should turn its attention to making things other than widget X.  After all, many of us want widget Y and widget Z too.  (This is beginning to remind me of The Cat In the Hat!)  If we don’t have to make widget X, we can spend our efforts making more of widget Y and widget Z.

Suppose you were a farmer.  Perhaps you produce eggs, milk, and grain.  If your neighbor decides to give you all the eggs you need, what is your likely, reasonably economic reaction?  Will you do something to stop the free eggs from getting to you – your version of H. B. 4105?  Only if you are a little nutty, it seems to me.

But what if companies in the U. S. give up making widget Xs and then China stops sending us partly free ones?

Back to you as a farmer, you might object that if you get accustomed to free eggs, you might sell your chickens and no longer be able to produce eggs.  Won’t it be expensive to restart your egg production?  Perhaps.  But consider the two possibilities.  First, your neighbor might come to his senses quickly and stop giving you eggs.  At this point, it is not too difficult to restart production recently ended.

The other possibility is that the neighbor is nutty enough to keep giving you eggs for some time.  It won’t be long before you have been given enough free eggs to more than make up for the future costs of restarting your egg production if you need to do so.

Politicians like to think in terms of ‘jobs.’  But in the end, most people don’t want a job.  They want the stuff that working can make.  In the local neighborhood we don’t seem to worry about someone giving us free stuff.  In the international neighborhood, we do seem to worry about getting free stuff.  H. R. 4105 was just part of a move by our government to force us to stop taking free stuff from China, among others.

And that seems, well, just plain stupid.

Dear Mr. Madison

 

"What is to be the consequence, in case the Congress shall misconstrue this part [the necessary and proper clause] of the Constitution and exercise powers not warranted by its true meaning, I answer the same as if they should misconstrue or enlarge any other power vested in them ... the success of the usurpation will depend on the executive and judiciary departments, which are to expound and give effect to the legislative acts; and in a last resort a remedy must be obtained from the people, who can by the elections of more faithful representatives, annul the acts of the usurpers."

--James Madison, Federalist No. 44, 1788

Dear Mr. Madison:

I greatly appreciate all you tried to do for us in the founding of our nation.  But in specific reference to your words above, I have some complaints.

You placed some hope in the executive and judiciary departments to check Congress in attempts to usurp their powers.  But you must have suspected that this remedy would not always be successful, because, in the end, you rely on the people and elections to “annul the acts of the usurpers.”

But what if elections become vast, expensive marketing operations?  What if many of those who might protect liberty simply cannot afford the expense of marketing themselves?

What if the people become lazy and indifferent?  What if by a self-imposed ignorance they lack that ability to recognize of understand cases of misconstruing the Constitution?

What if the people become addicted to the largess that can be provided to them (for a time, at least) by the very usurpations that you fear?  What, my dear sir, if they become the very way they are in the Year of Our Lord 2012?

On further review, sir, I withdraw my complaints.  We cannot rightly expect you to overcome our rampant stupidity.

I am humbly yours,

Kent B. True

Of Al and Rick

I must admit that I cannot keep up with ‘politics’ in the sense of electioneering.  I am busy with other matters.  But beyond that, even though I am interested in who might be elected, I find many aspects of the process revolting.  But that, as they say, is ‘politics.’

There is, however, an interesting article out the other day from Al Mohler in which he does a nice summary review of the campaigning of Rick Santorum.  I have heard many complaints about Santorum, especially that he is not focusing on what is important now, that being economic issues.

Who really knows what a candidate thinks these days.  From most of them you hear what they think you want them to say about various matters, including the very selection of matters about which they decide to say anything at all.  This is the impression I get from the admittedly very small bit of listening I have done to Mitt Romney:  a man reciting (somewhat woodenly) lines he thinks will get him elected.  And who can blame him for that?  His goal, after all, is to be elected.

But Mohler’s article portrays Santorum as saying things that many people think are likely to prevent him from being elected.  Mohler says, in effect, that Santorum has a theological view that he tends to brandish very openly when speaking about matters political.

I find that refreshing.  There are good reasons, some of which are very theological, not to force people who object to pay for abortions, or even birth control, just to name a few things.  And the fact that Santorum has certain theological views that motivate him to say these things – and that he freely makes those theological views known - I find to be a good quality in a candidate.

This is not an endorsement of Santorum.  I lean very much in the direction of Ron Paul on many issues.  (Though I hope that rumors that he might be maneuvering to be Romney’s VP candidate are false.  That would make me a bit queasy.)  But I can admire a guy like Santorum who puts his theological/worldview cards right out there on the political table, and follows them to their logical conclusions.

This in spite of the fact that I realize that such behavior is unlikely to get anyone elected – which probably speaks not so much to candidates as to the mental laziness and even stupidity of many voters.

Give Chuck Colson a D-

I like to interact with Chuck Colson because we have some important things in common.  It is because we have these things in common that I am sometimes disappointed with his analysis, or lack of it.  The transcript from his Breakpoint is a good example of this.

The topic is the recent rush by Congress to pass a bill to stop members of Congress and their staff members from ‘insider trading.’  Colson explains that the bill that was passed was the revival of a 2006 bill minus one of its key provisions.  This provision, Colson explains

would subject a new class of Washington insider, so-called political intelligence consultants, to the same rules as lobbyists. If you have never heard of “political intelligence consultants,” that’s because they want it that way.

Unlike lobbyists, you see, who advocate for the passage or defeat of a bill or regulation, these consultants pump people in Congress for information that they then pass on their clients, hedge-fund managers and wealthy investors. This information gives their clients an insider’s advantage when it comes to buying or selling securities.

The version of STOCK passed last week by the House omits this key provision. It was stripped out by the Republican leadership.

While I appreciate Colson’s concern here, his analysis is far too shallow.  The real problem is not that people who buy and sell stocks want to know what members of Congress know about stocks.  The real problem is that Congress is so deeply involved in matters affecting stocks that information about all this has become valuable.

I would be quite pleased if the manager of a mutual fund I own had some knowledge of things Congress might do to the stock market.  It is not limited to ‘hedge-fund managers and wealthy investors’ Colson so political-correctly cites as the financial villains he thinks the public will hiss and boo.

Anyone who risks his savings investing in capital goods (which is what happens when you invest in stocks) needs to know all he can about those things that might affect the future price of those capital goods.  The problem is that Congress, and the other branches of the central government for that matter, have seized control over much of what used to be the arena of free exchange.  It was this power grab that made knowledge of what they might do valuable.

Now Colson, probably like many others, wants to blame the victims of this power grab for trying as best they can to defend themselves.  That is shallow analysis of a kind far too often found in Christendom.

A better analysis would complain that government involves itself in matters is should not.  If Congress legislated only in those areas specified in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, there would be very little to be learned from Congress about the stock market.  No one would bother to do the things Congress is outlawing if Congress were not outlaws from the Constitution by their illicit meddling in matters that affect the market.

So I agree with Colson in condemning Congress, but not for the shallow and unperceptive reasons he cites.  I am in contempt of Congress for their ‘legislation’ in so many areas where they have no authority to legislate.

Judicial Stupidity

An interesting court case is under appeal in Georgia.  Read more about it here, but some relevant details are as follows:

In 2010, the State of Georgia enacted a law making it a misdemeanor offense for a person with a concealed weapons permit to carry a concealed weapon "in a place of worship." Several plaintiffs, including a church and its pastor, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this law.

The fundamental question before the court was whether a state law prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons in a church violates the constitutional rights of church members to bear arms and practice their religion. In January 2011, a federal court in Georgia said no.

That decision is going to an appeals court.  One key point of the lower court’s decision was this:

"Although the Constitution protects a person's right to free exercise [of religion] only against governmental intrusion, it is clear that the protection of religious freedom against private bias or coercion is also an important governmental goal. Prohibiting the carrying of firearms in a place of worship bears a substantial relationship to that important goal by protecting attendees from the fear or threat of intimidation or armed attack."

Kent comments:

It is amazing how ‘factually stupid’ some court rulings can be.  The quote above was offered by the court as part of the reason why the Second Amendment guarantees can be preempted in this case.  Notice how the court assumes that if concealed carry permit holders brought concealed weapons into a church building, it would amount to “private coercion” and would constitute a “threat of intimidation or armed attack.”

There are many odd points to this reasoning.

First, if that is a reason to preempt concealed carry, then it could be preempted everywhere.  If the mere fact that someone could be carrying concealed weapons constitutes a “threat of armed attack” then that threat does not exist in church building only.  It exists everywhere.

Also, as a matter of fact the misuse of weapons to threaten or attack innocent people by those with concealed carry permits is statistically almost non-existent.  So, while a meteor might fall on me while mowing my yard, the likelihood of that happening is so small as to make it irrational to avoid mowing my yard for fear of being hit by a meteor.  It is just as irrational for the court to, it appears, rely on this statistically insignificant possibility as a basis for its ruling.

Finally, what the empirical evidence shows is that we are generally safer in a population that contains armed citizens who are concealed carry permit holders.  But such permit holders will usually obey the law as it stands.  This means that in Georgia, they will either not attend church meetings, or do so unarmed.  This also means that, like the Virginia Tech situation of a few years ago, someone who wants to commit multiple murders is fairly safe in choosing a church meeting in Georgia as a target.  It would be a perfect place to kill many innocent people before anything could be done to stop the killing.

So the court made an assumption based, not on factual considerations, but on its own ideological suppositions.  The court simply assumed that an armed concealed carry permit holder is a standing threat to those around him.  That is simply false.

We can only hope that the appeals court reverses this rather idiotic decision.  And we can only hope it is before someone bent on mass murder picks those at a church meeting as his victims.  If that occurs, it will not be martyrdom.  It will just be judicial stupidity.

Ideology vs. Reality

The President’s budget plan calls for more than $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations and wealthy.  This is supposed to help the economy.  The President said in a speech today that this is not ‘class warfare.’

It matter little what you call it.  This kind of policy has demonstrable effects.  As a recent study shows:

corporate income taxes have a highly significant and negative effect on long-term growth.
The estimates suggest that cutting the corporate rate by 10 percentage points is associated with an increase in total real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 11.1 percentage points over the period.
This would move the United States from below average to above average in terms of economic growth among OECD countries.

Personal income taxes on high incomes also have a significant negative effect on growth, such that cutting the rate by 10 percentage points is associated with an increase in total real GDP growth of 7.5 percentage points over the period.  This would bring the United States to roughly an average level of growth relative to OECD peers.

If lawmakers want to have the biggest impact on boosting long-term economic growth in the United States, they should turn their attention to cutting tax rates on corporate and individual income.

Studies showing this relationship are neither new nor rare.  This means the President is well aware of this relationship.  So when he says that his policy is an attempt to help the economy, he cannot possibly be speaking from ignorance.  He is speaking from ideology, which in this case means he is lying.

For some reason we find it is easy to envy those with high incomes and incorporated businesses.  But it is easy to figure out why taking more money from those with large incomes and from businesses will hurt the economy.  These are two important sources of capital:  goods used to produce the things we want to consume.

You cannot both remove the source of production and hope to have more to consume.  The President knows this very well.  He is simply not an honest man whenever his ideology conflicts with the facts.