Ronald Reagan began his political career as an FDR supporter. Beginning in the 1960s, he took to using FDR’s iconic “Rendezvous with Destiny” phrase in many of his most important speeches. But these days, it’s looking like the next few years—maybe even a big chunk of the next decade—could very well be a rendezvous with scarcity.
As we note in the latest edition of our Silicon Graffiti video blog, it didn’t start with the financial crisis of September of 2008. Flashback to:
A division of General Electric spending millions of dollars of valuable television airtime to encourage consumers not to use light bulbs, one of GE’s chief products.
A future president telling potential voters they can’t heat their homes and drive large cars to the degree they’ve become accustomed, and a former president saying, “We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.”
Well, Mission Accomplished, Bill!
Plus calls for the New, New Deal, back when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was well over 12,000 points, and Tom Brokaw begging the president (even before he took office) for four dollar gas–consumers be damned!
You and I have a rendezvous with scarcity—a destiny that for some is already here, and for the rest of us may be arriving all-too soon. Because a surprisingly wide swatch of the nation’s elite apparently wants us to have just that.
(Assuming your broadband isn’t too scarce, click here for a couple of dozen previous editions of Silicon Graffiti.)
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28 Comments
1. K:A division of General Electric . .
Maybe their media division is working at cross purposes with their electric light division, but good luck to the politician who goes after GE. And considering how much of GE’s revenue comes from the government, that media division’s heavy Democratic lean is probably paying huge dividends right now.
Feb 24, 2009 - 9:33 pm 2. Pajamas Media » Rendezvous With Scarcity:[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]
Feb 25, 2009 - 2:21 am 3. Rod Stanton:Great!
But – where can we get a conservative party to give us back our freedoms we’ve lost the last 8 years and make the top tax rate 28% again as it was undder Ronnie? Do not tell me the liberal liars who ran the government from to _ their big government nanny state record speaks for itself!
full disclosure _ I am a conservative former Dem. I was my college YD president in 62. I watched “THE SPEECH” Oct 64 and voted for Barry. A feel like Ronnie twice over. Twice I have not left my party (Dem, GOP) but my party has left me!
Feb 25, 2009 - 4:48 am 4. Mongoose:Who wil kill NCLB, “Part D” and all the other Nanny State laws and intrusions into our life of the past 9 years. Again do not tell me who says theywill do it; I heard enough lies from the GOP since 01. Who will *DO IT*?
Rod: what nanny state laws are you talking about?
Feb 25, 2009 - 5:26 am 5. JohnnyL:I’d like to know what freedoms were lost other than my freedom to see people off at the airport gate. People complain about loss of freedoms over the last 8 years but I’ve yet to have anyone that has actually been arrested or had actual contact with law enforcement due to any laws passed over the last 8 years. Am I being naive here?
Feb 25, 2009 - 5:47 am 6. LynnS:You are correct and I believe that the night earth satellite photo of the world that President Bush showed us with North Korea completely dark was to the “I consume, but your just doomed” crowd a attractive goal for everyone else but them.
I watched “House of Cards” on the business channel and it made the housing collapse debacle clear and understandable. I watched a PBS special about the Bush Administrations handling of the coming market drop and it was Barnie Frank and Harry Reid talking as if they were outsiders looking in and had no part to play in the fall. I think Nancy Pelosi was somewhere practicing her smile for the camera.
I despair of ever wading through the political swamp and finding dry land, I mean common ground.
Feb 25, 2009 - 6:40 am 7. Frank Logan:Yes, JohnnyL you are being naive. Everytime a law is passed, we all are prohibited from doing something that we were free to do until passage of that law.
Feb 25, 2009 - 7:21 am 8. Carol&John:JohnnyL,
In this context people are not talking about the BIG freedoms so much as little ones, but it’s a slip sliding process. Or that’s the fear
We used to be able to talk on a cell phone in a car but not talk on a cell phone if it meant you were driving dangerously. Now it’s illegal to talk on a cell phone without a hands free device even if you’re driving perfectly safely.
We used to be able to choose whether to wear a helmet on a motorcycle or not. Now in most states its illegal to not wear a helmet.
People in SF can’t drink bottled water.
I have no desire to talk on the phone while driving without my bluetooth or ride a motorcycle without a helmet (I do like a bottle of water sometimes) but I would like to make those decisions myself – not have the government tell me. Hence the term nanny state.
John
Feb 25, 2009 - 9:41 am 9. Self-hating Boomer:The last president who told us to make do with less (while in office)…is now running around the middle east talking to terrorists, and blithering about apartheid. This is the future of Teh One.
Feb 25, 2009 - 10:48 am 10. peter jackson:“Rendezvous with Scarcity”
Damn damn damn damn I wish I’d thought of that!
Feb 25, 2009 - 3:38 pm 11. Dave:Tom Brokaw probably noticed, as I did, that there was a lot less traffic congestion at $4.00/gallon. Forcing the proles into mass transit is a huge time-saver for those who can still afford to drive. Higher gas taxes would spark a revolt, so instead let’s “save the planet” by not licensing any new wells, pipelines, refineries, tanker ports, gas stations, etc. Then we can blame “speculators” for high gas prices, and add more layers of regulation to force prices higher still.
Feb 25, 2009 - 11:10 pm 12. Roderick Reilly:Johnny L:
I saw a bumper sticker a while back that went like this:
GO AHEAD, TAKE SOME OF MY FREEDOMS AWAY — I WASN’T USING THEM ANYWAY
Feb 26, 2009 - 3:32 pm 13. Rendezvous with Scarcity - Maggie's Farm:[...] From Ed Driscoll’s Rendezvous with Scarcity: [...]
Feb 26, 2009 - 4:02 pm 14. David S:I think a “Rendezvous with Responsibility” is more like it.
After the complete disregard shown for Americans and the world by the GOP, it should be no surprise that Democrats are trying to move toward a sustainable future.
We could have moved into the 21st century with a much healthier economy, but thanks to massive deficit spending and a refusal to advance energy alternatives, the GOP has left us with a lot more work to do just to make ends meet.
Peace.
DS
Feb 28, 2009 - 7:30 am 15. Ed Driscoll:David,
Thank you–you’ve captured perfectly the mindset I was trying to describe in the video.
Feb 28, 2009 - 1:30 pm 16. Chuck Pelto:TO: All
RE: Just a Thought….
…but if none of the Congressmen, Reps or Senators, who voted FOR the ’stimulus’ bill read it….
….would that amount to a neglect of responsibility? Something along the lines of gross negligence or malfeasance?
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Feb 28, 2009 - 2:53 pm 17. David C.:Those of you who might scrape up the money for a new car may notice that it will, by law, include a Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) at a cost of about $400 (no, it isn’t itemized and it’s not optional).
The federal nanny believes that, for your own good, you must have a light on your dash board that tells you when your tires’ pressure is low. That’s about 10 million cars X $400/car = a lot of money not available for other things.
By the way, TPMS by all accounts is troublesome in operation, prone to failure and expensive to repair.
The last estimate I read claimed that federal mandates added $1 trillion of cost to the economy each year. These are hidden taxes, instantly passed through to the consumer.
Sounds like ours is a rendezvous with stupidity.
Mar 1, 2009 - 5:12 pm 18. David S:@17. David C.:
I don’t see the TPMS being a big problem. The $400 figure is likely to drop to $50 once production ramps up, and the advantage for safety and fuel efficiency will pay back this cost within a very short time frame. Just like airbags, this is a technology that costs a small amount up front, but saves much more over time for all of us.
Peace.
DS
Mar 2, 2009 - 12:17 am 19. Chuck Pelto:TO: David S[tupid]
RE: Yeah….Right….
Tell me about how the ‘killer’ air-bags have come down in price. Let alone deactivating them.
My wife, is ‘petite’. If the steering-column air-bag were to go of, it would likely crush her lungs while trying ’save’ her.
To deactivate the government-damned device costs hundreds of dollars.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Mar 3, 2009 - 1:13 pm 20. Pajamas Media » PJM Political 04/04/09: What’s Good For GM…:P.S. You are SUCH a d—…..
[...] Ed Driscoll interviews Jonah Goldberg, the editor at large of National Review Online, and the author of the best-selling (and prescient) Liberal Fascism, on “Big Bedfellows”-the deeply intertwined connections between big business and big government. (With cameo appearances from NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Bob Costas.) [...]
Apr 4, 2009 - 12:07 am 21. Vodkapundit » Cap & Trade & Decline & Fall:[...] Ed Driscoll calls it a “rendezvous with scarcity” in his latest Silicon Graffiti [...]
Apr 17, 2009 - 11:33 am 22. Ed Driscoll » News You Won’t See On MSNBC Tonight:[...] covered several of these items in my “Rendezvous With Scarcity” video in February. Check it out here, if you haven’t seen it yet. Filed under: Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, God And Man At [...]
Apr 18, 2009 - 7:59 pm 23. Ed Driscoll » Crashing By Design:[...] then, for the administration and its supporters, that’s a feature, not a bug. Religious issues far outweigh something as bourgeois as actually growing the economy: Filed under: Bobos In Paradise, [...]
Apr 22, 2009 - 11:31 am 24. Ed Driscoll » An Inconvenient Narrative:[...] Elect to raise gasoline taxes once in office. (You can see Brokaw in action about 6:30 into this edition of Silicon Graffiti.) So while they’d rather have higher gas prices benefiting the federal [...]
May 8, 2009 - 1:59 am 25. Ed Driscoll » Tax Increases Could Kill The Recovery:[...] is that a bug or a feature? As Glenn Reynolds recently pondered on a different topic, “So, a question: If [...]
May 13, 2009 - 1:02 pm 26. Ed Driscoll » Don’t Leave Home:[...] “A more aggressive posture toward successful tech companies” — yes that’ll jump start California’s economy, not to mention America as a whole. [...]
May 18, 2009 - 2:58 pm 27. Ed Driscoll » Barackman Geithner Overdrive:[...] not ‘fix’ it.” Welcome to the neighborhood of the street of the driveway of the party, [...]
May 29, 2009 - 12:24 pm 28. Ed Driscoll » 2009: A Smoot-Hawley Odyssey:[...] passes? “Welcome to the opposite of stimulus”, Michelle Malkin writes. It’s a Rendevouz With Scarcity! Filed under: Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, Liberal Fascism, The Assault On [...]
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