"Tepidly gung ho" about education reform

In perhaps the least emphatic possible way, Megan McArdle picks a favourite among the various contending educational reform notions:

But while taking away much of the teacher's union's power is definitely not sufficient, it does seem to be necessary. They resist changes to their work practices that the best evidence [. . .] seems to show works with disadvantaged kids: rote memorization, and phonics. These replace the tools that upper middle class give their kids earlier — even if you went to a whole language school, if you're reading this blog it's a safe bet you had phonics, too, when your parents taught you to "sound it out".

Instead, they agitate for things like smaller class sizes. It is true that schools with smaller class sizes tend to do better — but this is not surprising, since they tend to be more affluent. Pilot programs with disadvantaged kids also seem to show a benefit, but these suffer from the same problem that I discussed in a previous post about the Perry Pre-School: who's staffing your smaller class sizes? If smaller class sizes means employing more marginal teachers, it's far from obvious that this is a net boon. To the kids, I mean. It's an obvious win for the union.

This is why almost all educational ideas fail: they don't scale when you take the highly motivated grad students and gifted teachers out of the equation. That's why I'm tepidly gung ho about Direct Instruction: it has been proven to work with ordinary teachers using ordinary resources.

I don't care if the teachers have unions to negotiate over salary and benefits. But I think the power to block terminations and set work rules should be entirely stripped from them.

Hurrah for Jindal!

Until his name came up as a potential running-mate for John McCain, I don't remember ever hearing about Bobby Jindal. I think this will change regardless of whether he joins McCain or not. Megan McArdle is a fan:

With a river of federal money flowing in, Louisiana, which used to be stuck at the bottom of state corruption indices, could have gone back to business as usual while the politicians and the powers that be diverted a few rivulets to their own use. Instead, Jindal and the legislature passed anti-corruption laws that in a surprising turn of events actually seem to have done something about corruption — suddenly the state is getting the best scores in the country. They pushed through disclosure rules for all government officials — state and local, appointed and elected. He got a law passed that forbid legislators from doing business with the state. And he took on a tax and regulatory structure that had been built around the notion that companies couldn't go anywhere, and could hence be bled dry.

Huey Long deliberately built a bridge lower than standard so that boat traffic couldn't go upriver. The days when New Orleans could enforce that kind of dominance are long gone, but the old institutional structures remained. For example, Louisiana had special taxes on utilities, on new equipment purchases, on businesses that borrowed money. The unsurprising result was that companies deferred maintenance and refused to buy new equipment, making them uncompetitive unless they paid low wages. It's classic rent seeking behavior by the legislature, and Jindal actually got rid of it; new businesses are now locating there, and others are upgrading.

Staving off disaster in Massachusetts

Katherine Mangu-Ward realizes that she missed some key elements after her move to Massachusetts:

Massachusetts must have been a terrifying place in 1995. A relatively recent arrival in the commonwealth myself, I had no idea that the mid-90s was a time when health care was unobtainable. I didn't know about the washed out bridges and unplowed roads. Nor do I recall seeing bands of feral children roaming the streets from 8:00 am to 3:00 pm due to the lack of public schools.

But a popular ballot initiative to eliminate Massachusetts's income tax — thus bringing the state budget back to 1995 levels — is being greeted with howls of protest and predictions that the state will degenerate into underfunded chaos.

QotD: Title IX and the candidates

USA Today asked the three remaining major-party candidates how they feel about Title IX and about performance enhancing drugs.

Refreshingly, all three said neither steroids nor gender participation are any of the government's business, and that, being private entities, sports organizations should be free to set their own rules free of meddling from the federal government or grandstanding congressmen.

Just kidding. All three favor using the federal government to bend pro and amateur sports to their liking.

Radley Balko, "Sports and Election '08", The Agitator, 2008-05-11

For purposes of political balance . . .

. . . if it seems like I'm deliberately poking fun at the Democrats for their current imbroglio with Obama and Clinton, I don't want to appear to be partisan. So, here's a cry from New Jersey: "Is it too late for the GOP to dump McCain?"

They can't say I didn't warn them. But do they listen to me? No, they don't. If they had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today.

I'm talking about the leaders of the national Republican Party. Way back in 1999, I warned them they should find someone other than a certain George W. Bush to run for president.

And now I fear I must resurrect that warning as regards John McCain. As bad as Bush has been in undermining virtually every traditional Republican principle of good governance, I fear McCain would be worse. If he wins, that is. I fear the Straight Talk Express is going to run off the road if the driver doesn't get his foot out of his mouth and onto the brake pedal.

Since winning the nomination, McCain has uttered a nonstop string of gaffes. His many statements on Iraq, for example, amount to an admission that he has no idea who the enemy is there and why we're fighting there.

Having proved himself incompetent on foreign policy, McCain has moved on to economics. The man who has confessed on several occasions that he doesn't know much about economics went on to prove it by proposing a summer gas-tax holiday that was ridiculed by every economist who heard of it — and then laughed at some more after Hillary Clinton picked it up and tried to sell it to the Democrats.

H/T to Nick Gillespie for the link.

Wil Wheaton also offers some advice

After yesterday's John Scalzi link, today's writer-offering-kindly-advice link goes to Wil Wheaton:

hillary clinton: the psycho ex-girlfriend of the democratic party

[. . .] It's over. She knows it's over. It's been over for almost three months, but she's been moving the goalposts and cynically and cravenly pandering to voters in a way that's not only insulting, but is embarrassing. John Cole frequently says that he can't believe he ever supported Bush, and I can now join him in saying that I can't believe I ever supported, defended and believed in the Clintons.

The thing about all of this is that, with a Clinton victory in the primary about as likely as jumping off the roof of your house and landing on the moon, it's become clear that this whole thing isn't about Democrats or beating McCain (who is inexplicably running for Bush's third term) or saving our country from the catastrophic failure of the Bush years. No, it's all about her. It's about her ego. It's about refusing to admit that she did her best, but voters (except those encouraged by Rush Limbaugh to cross party lines and fuck with our primary) have pretty clearly said "No thanks. You're a good senator, but we want something different now."

It's been crystal clear for weeks, yet she refuses to put party and country over personal ambition and drop out of the race, forcing Barack Obama to not only run against McCain and the Media, but also against her. It's particularly galling, because she can only win if her campaign can force Democratic superdelegates (one of the worst creations in the history of politics) to tell millions of Democratic voters — many of them first time voters who, like me, finally feel truly inspired by someone — to go fuck themselves.

Political advice from John Scalzi

John Scalzi thinks there is a way out:

You know, today would be an excellent day for the mandarins of the Democratic Party to pay a call to Hillary Clinton, sit her down and then, kindly and gently, and with full appreciation of everything she's done for party and country, stick a goddamn fork in her.

Meet the USLP candidates

David Weigel has a look at "wildest Libertarian Party nomination fight in decades". After the big names, he presents the usual list of names nobody should expect to see on the final ballot:

9. The others. There is absolutely zero chance that John Finan, Barry Hess, Dave Hollist, Daniel Imperato, Alden Link, or Robert Milnes will get the Libertarian Party’s nomination. They are occasionally entertaining, and they are harmless. Imperato, in particular, has run a campaign worthy of Max Headroom, bidding (with no success) for the Constitution and Green Party nominations, claiming to run a multi-billion-dollar international organization, to speak seven languages, and to be descended from Emperor Nero. (If that actually was true, why would anyone admit it?) "He is the most ridiculous candidate I have ever seen," says Starchild.

QotD; [INSERT NAME OF MESSIANIC LEADER HERE]

Mrs Obama is most famous for declaring, a propos her husband's candidacy, that "for the first time in my adult lifetime I'm really proud of my country". Just a throwaway line reflecting no more than the narcissism and self-absorption required to mount a presidential campaign in the 21st century? Well, possibly — were it not for the fact that almost every time the candidate's wife speaks extemporaneously she seems to offer some bon mot consistent with that bleak assessment.

And when she stops looking back across the final grim despairing decades of the 20th century ("Life for regular folks has gotten worse over the course of my lifetime") and contemplates the sunlit uplands of the new utopia, it doesn't, tonally, get any cheerier. Pretend for a moment that the name of the candidate had been excised from the following remarks. Would it seem part of the natural discourse of a constitutional republic of citizen legislators? Or does it sound more appropriate to the leadership cult of Basketkhazia or some other one-man stan?

"[INSERT NAME OF MESSIANIC LEADER HERE] will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

Barack, eh? Barack Jong-Il? Unlikely. Not too many "comfort zones" in Pyongyang. Barack Turkmenbashi, the late dictator of Turkmenistan? Possibly. But he would have exhorted his people to push themselves to grow more melons (a particular source of national pride). No, the above words were his wife's vision of life under the Administration of Barack Obama, the transformative Presidential candidate offering change you can believe in — or else. I hate to sound like I'm walled up in the Shed of Cynicism, but the constitutional right to be "uninvolved" and "uninformed" is one of the most precious, at least if the alternative is being "required" to work at coming out of your isolation and engaging with fellow members of the uninvolved, uninformed masses as we push ourselves to move out of our comfort zone.

Mark Steyn, "Mrs. Grievance", National Review, 2008-04-29

QotD: Paranoia in politics

On Tuesday the lesbian assassin of Vince Foster won Pennsylvania's presidential primary. In the larger contest for the Democratic nomination, though, she still lags behind a jihadist sleeper agent who is simultaneously a secret Muslim, a secret Communist, and a secret Republican. Whoever wins their race will go on to face a brainwashed puppet of the Viet Cong, and whoever wins that race will then get on with the modern president's central task: serving the interests of Mexico. It must be true, I read it in my email.

There's a persistant political myth that paranoia is only a feature of the fringe, something common among alienated radicals and reactionaries but rare in the great American center. In fact, paranoia has been ubiquitous across the political spectrum. You can find it in nearly every faction and movement at every point in American history, not least among those establishment figures who think they're immune to conspiracy theories. (The most lurid and destructive tales of Waco were not told by militiamen after the raid was over. They were told by the media and the government while the siege was underway.)

Jesse Walker, "The Paranoid Style Is American Politics: Fear and loathing on every campaign trail", Hit and Run, 2008-04-24

There's regrets, and then there are "regrets"

Tom Tomorrow captures the nature of the regrets being offered after five years:

QotD: The Ron Paul Campaign

To be sure, by every conventional measure Paul’s presidential bid has been an abject failure — not a single primary win and only 14 delegates as of press time. Yet Paul managed to raise more than $20 million, virtually all of it online, and inspire an army of hyper-devoted and mostly youthful followers using a pitch — and a style — that will have much more to do with 21st century politics than whatever models of Buick and Oldsmobile the Democrats and Republicans eventually crank out this year. That’s how Paul pulled together over 67,000 people at the social networking site MeetUp (a total that was more than 20 times the number who signed up for the next most popular candidate, Barack Obama). That’s why he won raves from quarters as disparate as conservative commentator George Will (who called Paul "my man" on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos"), punk icon Johnny Rotten (who gave Congress' "Dr. No" a celebratory shout-out during a "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" episode), plus a self-explanatory group called "Strippers for Paul."

What explained the ability of this odd politician, with his inept campaign management team, to attract gobs of money, if not actual votes? Because it was only Ron Paul who said something truly distinct this campaign about the very nature of power. Namely, that government should have less of it on all levels and in every instance. "I don't want to run your life," Paul says. "I don't want to run the economy. ... I don't want to run the world." Such sentiment is simultaneously radical and fully in the Jeffersonian tradition of governing best while governing least. The right to be left alone, as Justice Louis Brandeis once put it, is at the very center of the American experiment because it allows individuals and the communities they form to pursue happiness in competing, peaceful ways. This is especially true in Long Tail America, where people are not only increasingly tolerant of alternative lifestyles but are constantly on the hunt for ways to individualize and personalize their own lives.

Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, "Tuned Out (PDF download)", Politics, March 2008

A (fiscal) plague on both their houses!

Steve Chapman casts a jaundiced eye over the last three presidential candidates still standing:

For some time now, the three presidential candidates have been striving to outdo each other on what Hillary Clinton calls "the commander-in-chief" test. She says that she and John McCain have passed it. McCain's response has been on the order of, "What do you mean, 'we'?" Recently, Barack Obama assembled a passel of retired generals and admirals to publicly salute him.

It's good to know they are preparing themselves for that 3 a.m. phone call. But I'm not convinced any of them is ready for the 8 a.m. call from the budget director reporting that the deficit is raging out of control. When it comes to combating the fiscal menaces we face, these three are all absent without leave.

The budget situation is already dire. In the last six years, the federal government has spent some $1.8 trillion more than it has taken in. This year, the deficit will hit an estimated $410 billion. If the economy falls into a recession, the gap will grow.

Believe it or not, these are the good old days. In the next few years, the budget will begin to show the effects of a mammoth event that has long been dreaded: the retirement of the baby boomers. Social Security and Medicare already account for one-third of federal spending, and over the next 30 years, they are expected to nearly double in cost as a share of the total economy.

"I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning"

Samizdata Illuminatus takes a good deep breath:

If I was a believer, I would be pouring a thankful libation right about now. Eliot Spitzer, one of the most nasty power crazed politicos in US politics today, perhaps second only to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson in authoritarian thuggishness, has just shown that he who lives by the judicial sword, can oh so easily die by the judicial sword. To see a man who thought nothing of using the power of the state to intimidate those who dared cross him get caught in a Federal wiretap is . . . well . . . sweet. I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.

Propaganda re-purposed

There are some very amusing (and effective) re-touched WW1/WW2 propaganda posters at this Cafe Press page:

H/T to Katherine Mangu-Ward.

QotD: Inside the mind of a Drug Warrior

In any case, [new versions of the drug naloxone] certainly seem like a good idea for private groups and non-profits. It's a cost-effective way of saving lives.

But not everyone is happy. Dr. Bertha Madras, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, recently told National Public Radio she opposes the distribution programs because — and hold on to your hat for this one — she believes life-threatening overdoses are an important deterrent to drug use.

"Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras said.

Madras' reaction offers a telling glimpse into the mind of a drug warrior.

We're told that certain drugs have to be prohibited because they're too dangerous. But we should also resist efforts to make them less dangerous because doing so might encourage drug use.

It's a bizarre argument until you consider the real motivation behind it: In truth, it's not so much about the harm some drugs do; it's about an absolute moral opposition to the use of some drugs.

Even if they were completely harmless, some people simply don't like the idea that we can ingest chemicals that make us feel good.

Radley Balko, "Better Dead than High", Reason Online, 2008-03-03

Obama-mania explained to Guardian readers

A brief introduction to the wave of Obama-worship currently engulfing Democratic primary voters by David Weigel:

Maybe it started with the fainting. After a while you couldn't ignore video and reports of Barack Obama supporters, sardine-tin-packed into his monster rallies, blacking out and dropping to the floor as the candidate hit his applause lines. Or maybe it started with the music video Yes We Can, a black-and-white, celebrity-studded mash-up of Obama's soaring South Carolina primary victory speech.

Somewhere on the Illinois senator's improbable march toward the Democratic nomination — and his remarkable steamrolling of the heretofore invincible Clinton family — the American commentariat tried to shake it off. Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein fretted about a "cult of Obama." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose anti-Obama tirades have been reprinted in Hillary Clinton campaign mail, saw the campaign becoming "a cult of personality". Neoconservative Washington Post scold Charles Krauthammer, whose ideology has the most to lose from an Obama triumph, warned Americans that history was repeating: "As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania." (Not as spine-chilling as Krauthammer's usual warning of this or that third-worlder becoming the next Hitler, but scary enough.)

The whole Trudeaumania thing would certainly be enough to scare the pants off me!

The best part of the article is this:

The problem for Clinton isn't just that 79% of her fellow Americans actually believe in celestial choirs. The problem for both of Obama's opponents is that being a "cult leader" is not a demerit in the quest for the presidency. Americans don't want a down-to-earth executive. They want Jesus Christ. They'll settle for Sun Myung Moon.

QotD: The Boomers' Fate?

There seems to be much consternation over Ron Paul failing to win over the mainstream of the Republican Party. The answer is really quite simple, the majority of Republicans are within a few years of getting Social Security. A fiscally sound and Constitutionally honest government would have to tell those Boomers and their still living parents "Terribly sorry but you don't have a contract saying the next generations owe you a damn thing" and they bloody well know it. They may talk a good game about balanced budgets but when push comes to shove they will enslave their kids to provide for their old age.

I just wonder how long it will take for Gen X to start smothering their greedy selfish parents with pillows while they sleep. Especially when "saving" Social Security will mean our contribution will be 25% or more of our paychecks. Until the Boomers start kicking the bucket we wont get that "gimme gimme gimme" monkey off our backs.

Scott Graves, letter to the editor, Libertarian Enterprise, 2008-02-24

QotD: Primary Motivation

There is a reason the urban jihadis of Amsterdam and elsewhere specifically target gay men. Islam as a memeplex and as an adaptive strategy is about access to and ownership of women and by extension the control of sexual behaviour. Any number of cults function as a means for a small, core group of men — usually around a single charismatic leader — to mate with as many women as possible while relegating the majority of men to non-breeding status. David Koresh, Mormon fundamentalists, Raelians, the SeaOrg core of Scientology, and, yes, Islam at its earliest foundations down to its most determined exponents today; the list goes on and on. We see this structure over and over again because it works, at least so long as their are neighbouring populations which can be conquered by the otherwise non-breeding males of the cult and mined as a source of slaves, concubines and the spoils these cults cannot produce for themselves. The jihadis target gay men because of the unacceptable truth their overt ideology denies in themselves. And, quite possibly, out of an unconscious recognition of the most dangerous among their enemy if Europe undergoes another phase change, enters a swarm state and carries out another apocalyptic genocide.

Nick Packwood, "Where they make a desert, they call it peace", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-02-22

QotD: The primaries

This year's primary season has been so full of healthy developments that you could package it with oat bran and hawk it at Whole Foods. The country can thank its lucky stars that the process has pushed forward — in McCain and in Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama — the three most formidable figures in American politics. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, the result will pit the two most widely admired political figures of their generations against each other in a presidential race. The last time the country saw anything remotely like that was when Dwight Eisenhower faced Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956.

Democrats can be grateful they have two tough races on their hands, first for the nomination and then, as now seems virtually certain, against McCain in the general election. Remember LBJ and Jimmy Carter? When Democrats win against weak opponents or crippled parties, they overreach, underperform, and lose touch with the country.

Jonathan Rauch, "Saved by McCain: The presumptive nominee is a tonic for the party", Reason Online, 2008-02-21

QotD: Castro and Cuba

Earlier this year, Castro had said that there would be no change in the Cuba-U.S. relationship until that man in the White House had vamoosed. And George W. Bush, along with most Dems and Reps, haven't shown much interest in changing the ongoing, and idiotic, U.S. embargo of Cuba. (Two pols who dare speak logic on this issue are Reps. Jeff Flake and Charles Rangel).

U.S. policy toward Cuba has been generally misguided for well over a century. Here's hoping the Congress and the president will do something right to accelerate a shift to freedom there. And here's hoping that Cuba becomes a better place as Castro puts one foot into the grave. I don't believe in hell, but I sort of hope there is a place like it for a guy like Castro.

Nick Gillespie, "Castro Resigns as President for Life of Cuba; Wants to Spend More Time with Families", Hit and Run, 2008-02-19

"Unwitting racism" and other Green follies

A guest writer at Samizdata goes through the (UK) Green Party's Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, to sort out the likely effects from the implementation of the proposed policies:

Rob Johnston has produced a very interesting essay on the true soulmates of Green Politics in Britain

   * Forbid the purchase of corner shops by migrants
   * Stop people from inner cities moving to the countryside to protect traditional lifestyles
   * Grant British citizenship only to children born here
   * Boycott food grown by black farmers and subsidise crops grown by whites
   * Restrict tourism and immigration from outside Europe
   * Prohibit embryo research
   * Stop lorry movements on the Lord's Day
   * Require State approval for national sports teams to compete overseas
   * Disconnect Britain from the European electricity grid
   * Establish a "new order" between nations to resolve the world economic crisis

These are the policies of one of Britain’s most influential political parties: a party that has steadily increased its vote over the last decade; a party that appeals overwhelmingly to whites; and a party that shares significant objectives with neo-fascists and religious fundamentalists.

Perhaps — the BNP? Despite its attempts to appear modern and inclusive and the soothing talk in its 2005 General Election Manifesto, of "genuine ethnic and cultural diversity" [1].

Or UKIP? It harbours some pretty backward-looking individuals — but would they stop Britain buying electricity from France if necessary?

Or, maybe, the Conservatives? Could that be a list of recommendations from one of Dave’s lesser-known policy groups — chaired by the ghost of Enoch Powell — quietly shredded to avoid "re-contaminating the Brand"?

Actually, affiliates of the progressive consensus may be surprised to learn that all the reactionary policies in the first paragraph are from the Green Party’s Manifesto for a Sustainable Society (MfSS) or were adopted at the party’s Autumn Conference in Liverpool over the weekend of September 13-16, 2007 [2].

It's a lengthy post, but well worth reading the whole thing.

Government subsidies distort the market

In a post about shilling for environmentally friendly energy subsidies, Radley Balko touches on one of the biggest boondoggles of the 19th century, the building of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads:

In 1862, Congress justified passing the Pacific Railroad Act as a way to forestall a secessionist movement in California during the Civil War. The government subsidized the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at $16,000 per mile over an easy grade and up to $48,000 in the mountains. In addition, the government offered substantial land grants along the right-of-way. Despite these government subsidies, both companies were bankrupt in the early 1870s.

As an example of how government subsidies distort incentives, both railroad construction crews worked past each other building an extra 200 miles of parallel rail lines grades (and some parallel tracks) instead of linking up so their companies could earn more subsidy payments and land grants. The fact that government subsidies were not necessary for building a transcontinental railroad was proved when James J. Hill built the highly profitable Great Northern Railway from Minnesota to Seattle completely without them or land grants.

The UP/CP are an excellent example of how injecting government money into what should be a private endeavour will seriously distort the market, creating a huge incentive to "game the system" to maximize the unearned profits from the government, rather than by serving the public by actually running a business.

If you've read any of the histories of the Union Pacific¹, you'll very quickly discover that the company spent far more time and effort lobbying for subsidy, manoevering against potential competitors (by legislation, bribery, and political obstruction, not by actually serving their customers), and hiding the mind-boggling levels of waste, corruption, and incompetence of their day-to-day operations.

That's not to minimize the difficulties of actually building and running the railroad, which cost the lives of many men (disproportionally immigrant Irish and Chinese labourers), but the fact is that the railroad itself was a very distant second to the government largess to be diverted for private profit by the executives of the two corporations. The excesses and criminality of the various officers of the company had an even more important legacy: after the scandal broke, leaving both companies bankrupt, successive governments felt totally justified in heavily regulating all railroads, introducing economic burdens which would cripple most of them for nearly a hundred years (some of the worst regulatory burdens weren't lifted until the 1980's²).

^1. Except for the sanitized versions produced for children, which only cover the engineering achievements, not the grubby reality of the UP & CP in their early years.

^2. See the Staggers Act for information on the deregulation which belatedly allowed the revitalization of the American railroad industry.

Studies of the rail industry showed dramatic benefits for both railroads and their users from this alteration in the regulatory system. According to the Department of Transportation's Freight Management and Operations section's studies, railroad industry costs and prices were halved over a ten year period, the railroads reversed their historic loss of traffic (as measured by ton-miles) to the trucking industry, and railroad industry profits began to recover after decades of low profits and widespread railroad insolvencies.

Is there a "moderate" version of 9/11 conspiracy theorizing?

Jennifer Abel, writing for the Hartford Advocate, tries to find out:

According to a 2006 Scripps-Howard poll, over a third of Americans believe high-ranking officials either helped commit the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or at least allowed them to happen. Other polls report even greater levels of cynicism.

Where do you draw the line separating "fringe conspiracy theory" from "mainstream phenomenon"? We're not sure, but if one-third of the populace isn't the mainstream it's at least a significant tributary of it.

So last November, when we learned that the Connecticut Citizens for a New 9/11 Investigation were hosting a symposium at St. Joseph's College in West Hartford, we paid it more attention than the usual "UFOs killed JFK" conspiracy e-mails that flood our in-box: rather than delete the message, we called the contact number within.

Distrusting the government is like drinking wine: if you never do it, you're probably too uptight. If you do it in moderation, it's very good for your health. But if you do it too much you make yourself ridiculous. Where on this spectrum do the 9/11 deniers fall? Not in the "uptight" zone, that much we knew. The question was, did they have a healthy anti-government buzz or a sloppy-drunk one?

This is a tough area: I know there are lots of otherwise intelligent folks who are absolutely convinced that George Bush himself was at the controls of one of the planes, and Dick Cheney was at the controls of the other one. Except they weren't really planes . . . except that they were planes, but not the hijacked planes . . . except they fired missiles just before impact . . . and so on, and so on. The libertarian movement has more than their fair share of conspiracy theorists, including some well-known authors and public speakers.

Of course, there have always been conspiracy theorists, and there's always just enough plausibility to persuade some people that something is fishy about assassinations, terrorist attacks, and other major disruptions to everyday life. Here's Penn & Teller's take on conspiracy theories:

There, that should keep you busy for the next 30 minutes . . .

QotD: Mitt Romney

The problem with Mitt Romney is that he isn't Mormon enough. His unusual, unpopular religion is the one part of his public image that doesn’t feel like it came out of a focus group. Naturally, he does everything he can to minimize, marginalize, and neuter it. Most voters, he said at one point, "want a person of faith as their leader. But they don't care what brand of faith that is." He thus reduced his purportedly heartfelt beliefs to a brand name, just another toothpaste in the great big CVS in the sky. It might not be Colgate, but the important thing is that he brushes daily.

Jesse Walker, "Make Mine Mormon: If only Mitt Romney were as colorful as his faith", Reason Online, 2008-02-04

QotD: John McCain

As a direct result of his long media honeymoon, much of what we think we know about McCain is wrong. Exit-poll numbers out of the early states showed that McCain was doing especially well among primary voters who were antiwar. The numbers say something disturbing about our capacity to believe that independent antiwar voters are seriously considering a man who championed pre-emptive war three years before it ever occurred to George W. Bush, who personally told me that the U.S. share of defense spending — more than one-half of the world's total — was much too small, and who has demonstrated repeatedly these past weeks that he doesn't understand why any American would question the deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq 100 years from now. After more than seven years of increasingly unpopular war, Americans look poised to nominate the most explicitly pro-interventionist presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt. Don't say you weren't warned.

Matt Welch, "The Unlikely Comeback of John McCain, Maverick Warmonger", LA Weekly, 2008-01-30

The climate debate, all in one handy portal

Whether you're a Global Warming True Believer or an evil Climate Change Denier, you'll find lots of stuff to keep your blood pressure up at Climate Debate Daily, an aggregator of posts on both sides of the Climate Change holy war. It's run by New Zealand philosophy professor Denis Dutton (who also created the Arts & Letters Daily aggregator site).

For the record, I incline to the heretical side of that particular Jihad/Crusade/Inquisition.

If only he actually meant it

Republican front-runner John McCain:

We believe government should do only those things we cannot do individually, to tax us no more than necessary, and spend no more than necessary, and then get out of the way of the most industrious, ingenious and optimistic people in the history of the world so that they can build an even greater country than the one they inherited.

If that was a good summary of his views and intentions, I'd be much more favourable towards a McCain White House. The reality, however, doesn't quite measure up to the rhetoric:

It was a fine sentiment, similar to what he was saying after winning South Carolina . . . and it has absolutely nothing to do with McCain's voluminous track record as a congressman, senator and public figure.

The road begins to fork at the definition of what "we cannot do invidually." For instance, individually we — and by "we" I mean "John McCain," his Senate office, and even his own campaign website — can enjoy making or facilitating bets on, say, college basketball games. But it's only through the government can we — and by "we" I mean "John McCain" — make betting on college athletics illegal.

The same goes for the most sacred style of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment (or should I say, "quote First Amendment"): political speech. Sure, individuals such as John McCain can pay for advertisements attacking his political opponents within 90 days of an election. But thanks to John McCain, if two individuals join forces to pay for an ad attacking an elected official 90 days before an election, they are either forced to register as a political committee (and therefore comply with Byzantine federal laws regarding donation limits and disclosure), or do battle in the courts long after the election in question fades away.

QotD: How bad could it get?

While sharing cocktails with some delightful Reasonoids at the Happy Hour at The Big Hunt earlier this month, I initiated a little game of ranking presidential candidates. I began by saying that I would have to vote for Hillary Clinton if Mike Huckabee were the Republican presidential candidate. On further reflection, I added that I would have to vote for Mike Huckabee if John Edwards were the Democratic candidate. So my short ranking is that Edwards is worse than Huckabee who is worse than Clinton. On further consideration (and some cocktails later), I began to wonder if reason needs a foreign correspondent for the next four years or so.

Ronald Bailey, "The Presidential Candidate Ranking Game — Who is Worse?", Hit and Run, 2008-01-23

Government-provided services

I've often made the case that the government is generally bad at providing services, even in the case of soi disant "natural" monopoly situations. About the only thing that governments do well is kill people . . . and even the most incompetent government can do a crackerjack job of that. This story is an example of why government-provided goods and services are a waste of time, energy and resources, compared to letting individuals and companies provide them:

A new bus-stop has been built in Lashikar Gah as part of the 'reconstruction' effort.

The report does not say whether it is a replacement for a pre-war bus-stop. Somehow I doubt it. It is very well-equipped, having its own mosque and a pharmacy, as waiting times "can be rather long".

An odd approach. In most of the world a bus-stop is a place where buses happen to stop. Of course bus-stops, like ports and railway stations all round the world provide opportunities for traders, places of worship, bars and cafes and so forth, but they seldom have them built in. Bus companies and their passengers are primarily interested in selling and buying travel. The pause at the roadside to move from foot to wheel, wheel to foot, refuel, refresh, is just procedural necessity.

Okay, you ask, what's the problem? It's a big, over-built bus station, so what is your point? This is my point:

[. . .] a government bus-stop is built to different, higher, standards. A throwaway line at the end of the report reveals just how long those waiting times are: "There are no buses yet."

Jeremy Clarkson puts the boots to eco-weenies

Jeremy Clarkson goes to town on the anti-nuclear power agitators:

The fact of the matter is this. The decision to go nuclear has exposed the whole environmental cause for what it is: not a well intentioned drive for clean power but a spiteful, mean-spirited drive for less power. Because less power hits richer countries and richer people the hardest.

I've argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn't go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The reds become green but the goals remain the same. And there's no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we're all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy.

I'm serious. All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain's beardies only because they don't work. I heard one of them on the radio last week explaining that if he were allowed to build 58,000 islands in the Caribbean he could use steam coming off the sea to make enough power for everyone.

Yeah, right. And then you have their constant claims that the tide can be used to make electricity. Really? If that's so, why am I not writing this on a computer powered by the Severn Bore?

Sure, this summer work will begin on a tidal plant off the coast of Wales. Eight turbines, each 78ft long and 50ft tall, will harness the moon's gravitational pull, and if all goes well it won’t even provide enough electricity to run Chipping Norton. You'd be better off burning tenners.

If you're unfamiliar with Clarkson's, er, energetic style, you might enjoy reading his "election manifesto".

It's not Bullshit, but it is more Penn

If you're a fan of Penn & Teller's Bullshit, you may want to direct your browser here, for a selection of uninhibited, unedited, unshaven Penn Jillette.

H/T to Katherine Mangu-Ward for the link.

Calfornia temperature controls

Perry de Havilland finds that California is hoping to become even more intrusive into the lives of private individuals:

According to American Thinker, there is a move afoot to nationalise the ability of people to control the temperatures of their own homes (yes, really!) in, where else, the People's Republic of California:

What should be controversial in the proposed revisions to Title 24 is the requirement for what is called a "programmable communicating thermostat" or PCT. Every new home and every change to existing homes' central heating and air conditioning systems will required to be fitted with a PCT beginning next year following the issuance of the revision. Each PCT will be fitted with a "non-removable " FM receiver that will allow the power authorities to increase your air conditioning temperature setpoint or decrease your heater temperature setpoint to any value they chose. During "price events" those changes are limited to +/- four degrees F and you would be able to manually override the changes. During "emergency events" the new setpoints can be whatever the power authority desires and you would not be able to alter them.

In other words, the temperature of your home will no longer be yours to control. Your desires and needs can and will be overridden by the state of California through its public and private utility organizations. All this is for the common good, of course.

Just remember . . . once you've accepted that government has a role in setting energy prices, they've got a foothold into controlling energy usage, too. And in this proposal, they're creating an even greater incentive for folks to go "off the grid". Wait and see how they choose to address that leak, should enough people attempt to take advantage of it.

QotD: Bipartisanship

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said bipartisanship tends to produce the worst that Washington has to offer — transactional politics where lawmakers scratch one other's backs without regard to the bigger picture. Pork-barrel spending goes unchallenged because members of both political parties know that by objecting to one project, they jeopardize their own, Flake said.

"Partisanship is underrated. There is a time and place for it, and more time and place than we realize," he said.

Jonathan Weisman, "GOP Doubts, Fears 'Post-Partisan' Obama", Washington Post, 2008-01-07

QotD: Libertarian turncoats

One career strategy I considered during my happy time at Reason magazine was to become just enough of a bright boy of the libertarian movement to allow me to stage a very public falling out, write a tell-all book with a title like Ex-Friends or Movement Man or Up From Libertarianism or Whose Freedom?, then build a career as a David Horowitz/Michael Lind-style intellectual turncoat, getting paid to warn the masses about the dangers posed by my erstwhile allies. The strategy was unworkable for many reasons: It was a little too dishonest even for me; libertarianism doesn't generate enough public interest to support a longterm market in defection; and as it happens, defectors from and within libertarianism are a dime a dozen.

But the tactic I was planning to use would have been very effective: Simply collect story after story of the moonlight-and-magnolias Confederate nostalgists, stop-the-war-on-men misogynists, traditionalist homophobes, scientific racists and similar fringe characters who seemed to gravitate toward libertarianism, in numbers that I and others found remarkable.

Actually, I probably wouldn't have been very good at this tactic either: I don't do well with policing unacceptable commentary, "kicking" people "to the curb," writing colleagues out of polite society, defining away extremists and all those other things movement types (in all movements) love to do.

Tim Cavanaugh, "Paul vault opens can of worms", L.A. Times Blogs, 2008-01-09

Everyone weighs in with comments on the "Ron Paul" newsletters

Matt Welch rounds up the first batch of responses to the "Ron Paul" newsletter revelations:

David Harsanyi:

The end of Ron Paul? For me, it is. Not the principles, but the man. Sure, Paul has experienced tremendous grassroots support and I've been very sympathetic to a lot of his strong Constitution-based rhetoric. But if even a slither of the quotes in this New Republic article by James Kirchick are accurate, I'm not sure how mainstream libertarians can absolve him.

David Bernstein:

I give Paul the benefit of the doubt on this one, and assume that some right-wing cranks paid him to use him name on their newsletters, and he didn't actually read the newsletters carefully if at all, much less write them. That shows very poor judgment, but is a lot less damning than if he did read, write, or edit these newsletters.

[. . .]

Ryan Sager:

I truly don't understand the Paulites defense that Ron Paul bears no responsibility for any of this . . . just because. (Read the comments to the article — as usual for the Paul brigades, they're unhinged.)

At least Andrew Sullivan may be waking up to the fact that the Ron Paul "revolution" is a front for something much uglier than opposition to the Iraq war and defense of the Constitution.

[. . .]

Ann Althouse:

Look, I said it on Bloggingheads: The things Ron Paul has been saying made me suspect that his libertarianism was a cover for racism.

Much, much more in the original article, with links a-plenty. No matter how it turns out, this is an ugly development for the Paul campaign, and even more so for libertarians and classic liberals.

QotD: The Ron Paul newsletter

I'm disappointed in Paul and in his campaign.

First, a few caveats. I think Paul's prone to nutty conspiracy theories, but I don't think he's a racist, at least not today. Perhaps there was a time when he held views that I and many people reading this site would find repugnant. But I certainly don't think that's the case now. Paul's temperament and demeanor in public does not suggest he's the kind of person capable of writing the bile Kirchick quotes in his article. Paul's position on the drug war alone — which he has acknowledged disproportionately affects minorities — would do more for blacks in America than any proposal any of the other candidates currently has on the table. Paul has also recently rescinded his support for the federal death penalty, also due to its disproportionate impact on blacks. Those two positions alone certainly don't indicate a candidate who fears "animal" blacks from the urban jungle are coming to kill all the white people.

I also think the Paul phenomenon ought to be separated from any personal baggage Paul may have. Yes, there are some losers who support Paul's candidacy. Any time you're a fringe candidate cobbling together support from those who feel disaffected and left behind by the two-party system, you're going to end up bumping elbows with a few weirdos. But there's nothing bigoted about the thousands of college kids, mainstream libertarians, war opponents, drug war opponents, and hundreds-long threads on sites like Digg and Reddit where enthusiasm for Paul's candidacy is strong. This movement is about ideas. There's a vocal, enthusiastic minority of people out there, skewing young, that is excited about "the Constitution," limited government, and personal freedom. That's significant and heartening, and shouldn't be tainted by the fallout from Kirchick's article (though I fear it will [. . .]

Radley Balko, "Ron Paul", Hit and Run, 2008-01-08

QotD: Fascists will heart Huckabee

After a year of wringing their hands over their choices in the presidential race — a pro-choice mayor with an authoritarian streak, a serial flip-flopper, and a senator who is a dedicated opponent of free speech — the Republicans finally have a new front-runner.

Mike Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses Thursday night with 34 percent (with 95 percent of precincts reporting) of the vote, handily defeating Mitt Romney, who came in second with 25 percent in spite of heavy stumping in the key Midwestern state.

Just what Republicans longing for a new Ronald Reagan needed: a religious-right candidate who is also a big-spending nanny statist.

Reporters have been quick to jump on Huckabee's comments in a 1992 Associated Press questionnaire that seemed to confirm their suspicions about a Baptist minister for Arkansas. Huckabee told the AP that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle," and called for isolating people with AIDS. That was a position, by the way, that the venerable Reagan had firmly rejected five years earlier. In 1997, then-Arkansas Gov. Huckabee pushed for a reaffirmation of the state's sodomy law, and in 1998 he compared homosexuality to necrophilia.

Huckabee says his rise in the polls can only be attributed to God's will. He endorsed the Southern Baptist Convention's declaration that "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband." He says he entered politics to "take this nation back for Christ."

David Boaz, "Shakeup in Iowa changes the outlook for both parties:What fresh Hell is this?", San Francisco Chronicle, 2008-01-07

Why mandating higher MPG sooner won't work

Shikha Dalmia explains why mandating higher miles-per-gallon on car makers isn't the panacea everyone seems to assume:

This is an impossible task. The federal standards will be tough enough for automakers to deliver without compromising on space, safety, power and (above all) low prices — all things that consumers value more than gas mileage. There is simply no technology now available that can combine everything that consumers want with the stipulated gas mileage. If there was, automakers wouldn't need a mandate — they'd run, not walk, to put it on the market.

But why are California's goals so much tougher, even though the federal rules allow just four more years to another 1.2 mpg? Because cars have a long production cycle — models now in the planning stage won't be available until 2014.

So there's simply no time to come up with new designs that will do the job. That means the only way automakers could comply with California's deadline is by withholding from consumers the higher-emission vehicles they want in states that insist on it.

In other words, they'd have to pull the vast majority of their vehicles from those markets, not only SUVs and light trucks, but even most sedans.

Consider Toyota, the darling of the greens: It now makes maybe two vehicles — manual-transmission Yaris and hybrid Prius — that meet California's standards. Toyota's Camry, the top-selling car in America, gets only 25 mpg in combined city and highway driving.

Indeed, the net effect of the California standard would be to impose either small compacts or hybrids on all new-car buyers — even though hybrids costs $3,000 to $5,000 more than their non-hybridized versions and have a much shorter lifespan.

QotD: The tone of the campaign

It strikes me as a little-remarked phenomenon in this election that, for the first time since maybe 1988, the Democrats are running a serious candidate with an essentially Naderite worldview on the evils of Corporate Greed. I haven't paid much attention to the Blue Team so far — the Red crack-up being so much more entertaining — but whenever I do I hear some Democrat espousing economic-policy ideas (hatin' on corporations, hi-fivin' Lou Dobbs on trade) much further to the left of Howard Dean in 2004, Bill Bradley in 2000, and Bill Clinton in the 1990s.

With the one-day Hucka-BOO-yah on the GOP side, the big winner in Iowa tonight seems to be illiberal economic populism.

Matt Welch, "Million-Dollar Haircut; Ten-Cent Head", Hit and Run, 2008-01-03

New reader comments on an old post

A new reader contacted me yesterday about adding a comment to a post from over a year ago. As I've had to close down the comments for anything over a couple of days old, I thought I'd add it here instead. This is from the original posting:

The search for easy labels and obvious scapegoats is as old as the news business. People don't want to think more than they have to: providing them with an easy, obvious person or group to blame for misfortune or bad news is, I hate to say it, a deeply rooted part of the human psyche. If it's not the Gypsies, it's the Jews. If it's not the Jews, it's the Mexicans, or the Masons, or whatever group will most easily satisfy the need to assign blame to among your listeners.

Perhaps the most reprehensible reaction seems to be the most common . . . something bad is happening? Who can we blame? It's sick. It's twisted. It often prevents logical thought. And it's absolutely human.

And the would-have-been-a-comment is:

Dunno about Canada . . . but the more whoever is in power can pit us against one another dividing us by race, looks, preferences and such, the more they can make us think it's the other one, and the more we fight, the more distracted we are from what they can do above our heads.

Sometimes it even gets other people fired up to fight wars against another. But a part is also in the mind naturally, too no doubt. It is sick. Ignorant, and horrible to imagine.

You've just gained a new reader.

Natilya

Mother Jones on the Ron Paul campaign

Another view of the insurgent Ron Paul presidential campaign:

Their candidate, a 72-year-old obstetrician from Lake Jackson, Texas — land of duck hunters, ranchers, and oilmen — has improbably become an Internet sensation. He counts more Facebook and MySpace supporters than any Republican; more Google searches, YouTube subscribers, and website hits than any presidential candidate; and more Meetup members than the front-runners of both parties combined. In recent months he was sought out on the blog search engine Technorati more often than anyone except a Puerto Rican singer with a sex tape on the loose; his November 5 Internet "Money Bomb" event pulled in $4 million from more than 35,000 individual donors, a single-day online-fundraising record in a primary. (The previous best was $3 million, by John Kerry.) "The campaign calls itself the Ron Paul Revolution," notes Republican Internet consultant David All. "And I don't think that's a far stretch."

Indeed, Paul's literature is dominated by the word "revolution," though with the middle letters inverted to make "love" — a hippie touch that would be countenanced by few Republicans other than the congressman, who has been elected 10 times on the GOP ticket (and who also ran as a Libertarian in the 1988 presidential election). The truth is, Paul's revolution is a conservative one, by his own account — and thus all the more noteworthy for Democrats, who until now comfortably assumed that progressive bloggers, YouTubers, and ex-Deaniacs would give them, and only them, an edge online. As it turns out, nobody has more Internet buzz than a pro-gun, pro-life, antitax, and antiwar Republican.

QotD: Presidential Propaganda

Here's a history test no one should fail: Name a president whose "only reading materials were government documents and Bible scriptures" and whose tenure was linked to an increasingly unpopular war started under morally murky — if not clearly phony — circumstances.

That would be James K. Polk, who pushed for war with Mexico in 1846 after the Mexican army killed American soldiers in disputed territory along the Rio Grande River. As recounted in You Said What? (Harper Paperbacks), Polk "began to prepare his declaration of war, at no time recognizing that . . . the attack had occurred in disputed land. By not addressing the point, he was able to make the strongest case possible to a skeptical Congress."

Polk lied through omission, a disturbingly common characteristic of many of the "lies and propaganda" campaigns gathered in this volume. One hundred and 20 years later, another president, Lyndon Johnson, took advantage of the fog surrounding the Gulf of Tonkin incident to ratchet up the American military presence in Vietnam. What's more, Johnson systematically pursued a "policy of minimum candor" when discussing U.S. aims and troop commitments: "He left office branded a liar because he could not tell the whole truth about the war."

Nick Gillespie, "You Said What? A happy history of lies and propaganda", New York Post, 2007-12-09

Clinton vs Giuliani? Yikes!

David Boaz explains why it may not matter (as far as civil liberties are concerned) who wins next November. If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, we can expect further expansion in the role of government in everyday life:

Clinton, always eager to wield power on behalf of her vision of the public good, has just endorsed new government mandates on health care and energy along with a $50 billion spending program for global AIDS. Meanwhile, revelations about Giuliani's secretive use of New York City police and his refusal to allow the city comptroller to audit his security spending reflect his lifelong affinity for using and abusing power.

Clinton calls herself a "government junkie." She says, "There is no such thing as other people's children" and promises to work on "redefining who we are as human beings in the post-modern age."

Running for President, she's full of ideas about how to use the power of the federal government. Indeed, she says, "I have a million ideas. The country can't afford them all." That's good to hear. But the ones she apparently thinks we can afford still include a national health care plan, a $50 billion program of energy subsidies, more money for local schools and local roads and bridges, a bailout fund for mortgage borrowers, $25 billion for "American Retirement Accounts," and more. She still has the government junkie's love for a nurturing and nannying government.

On the other hand, if Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination, we can expect even more authoritarian measures, more government secrecy, and more intrusions into the lives of ordinary people:

Giuliani seems much less committed to any particular vision of government's role. Rather, throughout his career Giuliani has displayed an authoritarian streak that is deeply troubling in a potential President who would assume executive powers vastly expanded by President Bush. As U.S. attorney, he pioneered the use of the midday, televised "perp walk" for white-collar defendants who posed no threat to the community. It was a brutal way to treat people who were, after all, innocent until proven guilty.

As mayor he was so keen to "clean up the city" and crack down on dissent that he lost 35 First Amendment lawsuits. He fought against any oversight of his activities; he resisted investigations and audits by the Independent Budget Office and the New York State Comptroller. As Rachel Morris reported in the Washington Monthly, "Over the past 40 years, only two commissions had been held to revise New York's governing document. During his time in office, Giuliani convened three." And he stacked the commissions with close allies and pressed them to eliminate the IBO and the city ombudsman.

He released details from the sealed criminal records of police critics, in clear defiance of state law. But he did manage to seal the records of his own administration by transferring them to a private foundation, even though mayoral records are legally city property.

Not much to be said for either candidate as far as limiting the scope of government, or rolling back some of the powers that Bush has claimed during his administration. Both candidates are clearly inclined to be even more likely to attempt to centralize power in their own hands.

QotD: Huckabee's Energy Policy

I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

Mike Huckabee, as quoted by Jesse Walker in "Energy-Free by 2017!", Hit and Run, 2007-12-12

How not to fix a banking crisis

Jeff Taylor introduces some cold water reality to a fantasy castle-in-the-sky "fix" to the sub-prime mortgage crisis:

"It is probably in their best interest to walk away. They have no equity," Whalen says of the hapless borrowers.

The possibility of their underwater borrowers actually taking a walk terrifies the banks, however. Banks would have no choice but to write down and make real phantom losses lurking just off their books. What to do? How about pretending that the loans aren't actually bad. How do you do that? Pretend that the borrowers can pay them back. How do you do that? Pretend the teaser rate is the real rate. Presto, problem solved.

At this point, some adult would ideally step in and say, "no, that's fraud." But clearly Treasury is not that mature. And it appears the Fed has resigned itself to some form of greater idiocy coming out of Congress on the subprime front that maybe, just maybe, the teaser freezer can head off.

However, the stubborn fact remains that banks will lose money on teaser rates. Regulators and investors both know this. Who exactly are we trying to fool? Besides inattentive voters.

Of course, nobody in the highly educated, fast-paced, exciting world of banking ever noticed that lending large sums of money to people with little or no real ability to repay the principal might be a risk. Bailing them out with public funds is exactly the wrong thing to do . . . which makes it the odds-on favourite of both stricken bankers and politicians needing to be seen to be "doing something".

QotD: The economics of bioethanol

Promoters of the ethanol mandate assert that it would help the United States achieve energy independence and slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Evaluating the scientific and economic claims being made for bioethanol can be vexing, but a few urgent questions come to mind: if bioethanol is such a good energy deal, why must refiners and consumers be forced to use it? Again, if it's such a great idea economically, why does the federal government offer a tax credit of 51 cents per gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline?

In fact, the subsidies are probably higher than that. For example, a 2006 report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development estimated that if one took into account state renewable fuel tax breaks and direct agricultural subsidies that reduce other costs, the total amount of the ethanol subsidy rises from $1.05 to $1.38 per gallon of ethanol

Ronald Bailey, "Bioethanol Boondoggle: Political viability is more important than commercial viability", Reason Online, 2007-12-04

QotD: Hillary Clinton

[. . .] I was happy to find in my stack a new copy of Hillary Clinton's famous bestseller, It Takes a Village, revised, updated, and reissued in a special anniversary edition to coincide with her presidential campaign, by which she seeks to take over the whole village.

Like Castro, like Ceausescu, like many other politicians, Mrs. Clinton prefers to be photographed surrounded by schoolchildren, an image that suggests either a kid's birthday party or a hostage situation, depending on your point of view.

Andrew Ferguson, "Read, Weep, and Vote", The Weekly Standard, 2007-12-03

Go, Royson, Go!

Toronto Star columnist Royson James got a public dressing-down from the mayor for his brilliant column on Friday. The mayor's letter was published on Saturday. James responds, with more restraint than I'd have expected:

[. . .] Mayor David Miller inserted his hectoring presence into the debate — and before you know it, a rhetorical hanging became a "public lynching," the memory of his "Uncle Jim" is exhumed and he has concluded that the very foundation of democracy is being threatened by one columnist raging against city hall spending.

As they say in basketball, no harm no foul. At issue is not whether Toronto councillors deserve to be hanged (I'm against capital punishment, banned in Canada), subjected to public flogging (opposed wherever it's practised), or run out of office (we've just elected them, they're in until 2010). At issue is how do we register our disgust — sorry, our displeasure — at their fiscal indiscretions.

A number of readers have emailed concern about the mayor's "over the top" rhetoric. Some, mine. Others fear I'll be beaten (metaphorically?) into submission, afraid to utter a single contrarian view in future. My bosses, far from moving to censure me, are more concerned that I might be "chilled" into overlooking wasteful habits as council embarks on this crucial 2008 budget cycle.

No worries. Let's just use the mayor's letter to the editor Saturday as the template for all further analysis and critique of city hall. Surely, an ink-stained wretch is allowed to borrow the mayor's own carefully crafted words.

A cursory glance at the mayor's letter, dripping with bile and bluster, reveals no cause for concern that one's criticism must now be facile, gracious or temperate. The mayor provides a list of choice adjectives and phrases that might now be at a columnist's disposal.

Appropriating the title of ombudsman, editor and publisher — in addition to chief magistrate and monarch — in an attempt to control all propaganda, er, communications in Hogtown, the official list of approved words and phrases include: "Beneath contempt," "Shows absolutely no respect for democracy," "stoop so low," "outrageous thoughts," "beyond belief," "hateful ruminations," "absolutely offensive," "loathsome advocacy."

The win goes to James, by knockout, in the second round.

Toronto council wastes money . . . in other news, water is wet

I was amazed to find this column in the Toronto Daily Worker Toronto Star today:

Toronto city councillors do seem tragically hooked on spending needlessly and foolishly — despite constantly crying poor.

The mismanagement of the Union Station file being a recent example.

The private sector wanted to fix up the place, pay the city an annual fee and make some money off the venture. That deal fell apart. GO Transit wants to buy it, but the city isn't willing to deal. So now a city-inspired fix-up plan has hit $388 million and counting — and hopelessly dependent on cash from the federal government.

Another example. Budget committee voted Wednesday to borrow $700,000 to purchase food carts so the city can then rent them out to food vendors. Why not let the vendors get their own carts? Because the city wants to control the trade, keep entrepreneurs (conglomerates, John Filion says) from cornering the market.

Why the city has created this business to compete against restaurants is another question. But let's say it's good to be selling a variety of food from the sidewalks. Why must city hall get involved in the purchase, maintenance and distribution of the carts?

If Royson James isn't careful, he'll find himself the "token right-winger" in the TorStar newsroom! He may never do lunch in this town again!

All joking aside, this is the kind of thing you very rarely find in the local media: an article that isn't demanding yet more government spending and more government control over businesses and the lives of private citizens. Huzzah, Mr. James.

It's tough to disagree with the sentiments here:

Councillors should be hanged, one a day, at noon, in Nathan Phillips Square. Charge admission. We'll net enough money to pay off most of our civic bills.

To the tumbrils with them!

The real reason Ron Paul's message is becoming popular

Brian Doherty puts his finger on the real reason for Ron Paul's rising stock in the polls:

The real lesson of the Ron Paul phenomenon might be not, as standard right wingers now seem to think as they rise to attack him, that the country is unexpectedly full of dangerous freaks who are being arbitrarily ordered by the voices they hear in their fillings to venerate this out-of-nowhere madman Ron Paul, but rather that the "smaller government" stuff isn't as unpopular as Goldberg thinks, especially when it is surgically detached from the endless international policing and adventurism that, alas, Goldberg's institutional home of National Review has tried to link with small government rhetoric for the past half century.

It must have been tough to be a genuine Republican over the last few years . . . while the talk has still been vaguely market-friendly and constitution-observant, the practice has been corporatist and constitutional-abusive. And let's face it, even the talk hasn't been particularly inspiring. And the Democratic party certainly wouldn't welcome small-government fans, so more and more of them have become alienated from both major parties. Ron Paul is talking to a group of voters who clearly feel that neither party represents them at all. It's going to be interesting to see how many of them go back to the Republican party due to Paul's campaign . . . and whether they stay if Paul falls by the wayside.

You could say that he's providing (temporary) shelter for the politically homeless.

The Nation's take on Ron Paul

Friendly words from an unlikely source:

It's Romney at 33 percent, McCain at 18 percent, Giuliani at 16 percent, Paul at 8 percent, former Arkansas Governor Huckabee at 5 percent, former Tennessee Senator Thompson at 4 percent — with Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo taking one percent and California Congressman Duncan Hunter at his usual zero.

Paul doubled his support from September to November.

During the same period, Paul's sparring partner on foreign affairs issues, Giuliani, lost fully one-third of his support. And Thompson lost a remarkable two thirds of his support.

So here's a question: When is the Washington press corps going to start treating Ron Paul as seriously as it does Fred Thompson?

The likely answer is "not soon." And that's the most frustrating thing about the way in which the GOP race is being covered by major media. After all, Ron Paul has more to say — and says it better — than any of the other Republicans. With a fair shake from the media, he'd be rising even faster in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

Of course, one of the reasons Paul's on the rise now is the fact that he is not the kind of contender who tailors his message or his campaign to meet media expectations. And in this volatile year, that may yet prove to be a smart strategy. At the very least, it is starting to pay off in the "Live Free or Die" state of New Hampshire.

Of course, the obvious rejoinder to "Paul doubled his support from September to November" is that he started from such a low base of support to start with that doubling still doesn't make much of a dent in the other candidates.

How big government influences big business

Radley Balko shows why telephone companies doing the federal government's bidding isn't necessarily the fault of big business:

You can inveigh all you like against corporate power. But corporations by themselves can't force us to do anything we don't want to do. Only the government has the power to do that — or corporations with power on loan from the government.

The federal government is enormous. It has a massive and growing influence over what happens in the private sector. Witness (as I've pointed out many times before) the fact that the richest counties in America today aren't near the country's entrepreneurial epicenters, but in the D.C. suburbs, home to most of the country's federal employees and government contractors. Now as lefties, you may find all of this to be sweet potato pie. But know that a federal government of today's size and scope also gives whoever is controlling it enormous leverage to bend the private sector to his liking. That's great when your party is holding the reins. Not so good when it isn't.

Sure, in an ideal world, all the telecos would've consulted their lawyers, realized that what the Bush administration was asking was illegal, and boldly told the White House where to stick its nosy information requests. But come on. Incentives matter. Such a move may have been principled, but it would have been foolish. Corporations are obligated to their shareholders to protect their bottom lines. Pissing off the people in power who with a swipe of the pen can swing hundreds of millions of dollars, either to you or to your competitor — well, that's just not good for the bottom line.

In a truly free economy, this obligation to shareholders is a good thing. Because in a free market, shareholder interests are generally in line with customers' interests. Piss off your customers, they take their business elsewhere, and you're shareholders are angry.

Unfortunately, in a market where the government is likely to be one of a particular industy's biggest customers, shareholder and (non-government) customer interests start to clash. You see, the telecos made a calculated decision. Billions of dollars in federal contracts over the long-term, combined with the other value they saw in in winning favor with the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress (a favorable turn of phrase in the Federal Register, for example, can mean millions) was in their estimation more lucrative than protecting the privacy of their non-government customers in the short-term.

Shouldn't that tell you something about just how frighteningly large and influential the federal government has become? The telecos concluded it's better for their collective bottom lines to risk pissing off all of their other customers than to risk pissing off this one.

No surprise here . . .

Frequent commenter "Da Wife" sent in this link to yet another "who's the best candidate for you" quiz. My top result was no huge surprise:

Those other two guys? Hmmm.

QotD: "the autumnal aroma of a burning straw man"

Are you still afraid terrorists will attack the Mall of America?

I was never afraid. I was always concerned. I still am; who wouldn't be? It's a big red target with great symbolic value. It never keeps me from going there, though. Somehow I've avoided the FEAR and PARANOIA and PERMANENT WAR HYSTERIA that we're supposedly fed 24/7. You know how it goes; if you believe there's actually a credible threat from Islamofascists — well, no, that's not the right word, because it's inflammatory, inaccurate, racist, and is used as a code-word for an exterminationist agenda founded in a desire to control all the oil in the Middle East and convert it to Christianity. So call it the Small but Legally Containable Conservative Religion threat, since that reminds us that all religions are equally dangerous when taken to extremes. I mean, Fred Phelps, Catholic priests, Timothy McVeigh, and that little thing called the Crusades. Also the Inquisition and the persecution of Galileo. No one has clean hands here, except for me, because I washed them before I put that clever COEXIST bumpersticker on my car. No, I'm more afraid of the Mall of America itself. You go there in December — not that I do — and see people walking around eating meat and shopping for things they don't need and shouldn't really have because they don't need them, and you can almost hear the planet shriek like the music in that scary movie about the psycho, whatever its name is. I didn't watch it. I don't support movies that promote violence against women. Wasn't she in a shower? Those are so wasteful. I clean myself with a pumice stone and the sharpened edge of a clam shell.

(Sorry; I just enjoy the autumnal aroma of a burning straw man.)

James Lileks, The Bleat, 2007-11-02

QotD: Political Experiment goes wrong

Political scientists at the Cato Institute announced Monday that they have inadvertently synthesized a previously theoretical form of government known as megalocracy.

"We were attempting to recreate a military junta in a controlled diplomatic setting, and we applied too much external pressure," said head researcher Dr. Adam Stogsdill, a leading expert in highly reactionary ruling systems. "The resultant government has the ruthless qualities of a dictatorship combined with the class solidarity of a plutocracy — it's quite a remarkable find."

Stogsdill explained that megalocracy is extremely unstable and can only exist in idealistic conditions for a few minutes before collapsing into anarchy.

"Political Scientists Discover New Form Of Government", The Onion, 2007-10-30

QotD: The Farm Question

Here's how the American free enterprise system works. You have an idea for a business. You find the money to start it up. You try to give customers something they want at a price low enough to keep them happy but high enough to earn a profit. Either your plan works, allowing you to make a living, or it doesn't, indicating you should find a different line of work.

Unless, of course, you are a farmer, in which case all this may sound unfamiliar. A lot of American agriculture operates in an environment where none of the usual rules apply — where the important thing is not catering to the consumer, but tapping the Treasury. It's a sector that, ever since the Great Depression, has been a ward of the government, both coddled and controlled.

By any reasonable standard, federal agriculture policy is past due for a major overhaul. But judging from the latest farm legislation moving through Congress, not much is going to change.

Back in the 1930s, when the economy was a wreck, the survival of capitalism was in doubt and Oklahoma was blowing away, you could understand the impulse for Washington to intervene on behalf of farmers. But the days when agriculture meant a lifetime of toil for a meager living are just a memory. Today, farmers monitor soil conditions by computer, drive air-conditioned tractors and have a higher average income than nonfarmers.

Yet many of them continue to enjoy treatment other industries can only dream about. Imagine the government rigging the market to assure high prices to people selling concrete or cameras. Dairy farmers and sugar growers get exactly that, courtesy of the Department of Agriculture. Farmers who plant a host of other crops receive compensation anytime their prices fall below a fixed minimum.

Steve Chapman, "Take the Federal Out of Farming", Reason Online, 2007-10-25

QotD: "Le p'tit gar"

Reading this book you detect an undercurrent of hostility toward "Bay Street" and "Wall Street," but no great sense of what Chrétien's for — other than "tolerance" and the other hollow cobwebbed buzzwords that boil down to little more than a passionate belief in not believing passionately in anything. The Iraq chapter is headlined "No To War," as if M. Chrétien is an elderly student on the march with Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow. In fact, under the cover of various "liaison" programs, Canada had more men in Iraq than many full-throated paid-up members of the "coalition of the willing." It was happy to be a unilateral coalition of the unwilling as long as it didn't have to march in the victory parade. But the author strains credibility when he claims to have told Bush, six months before the invasion, "I've been reading all my briefings about the weapons of mass destruction, and I'm not convinced. I think the evidence is very shaky." My Beltway pals scoffed when I relayed this snippet to them, and I'm inclined to agree. Even Chrétien's chum Chirac, who opposed the war, never disputed the fact that Saddam had WMDs, if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

Mark Steyn, "He's still da boss", Macleans, 2007-10-23

QotD: The campaign for the presidency

I have, as of yet, no real opinion about the race, except, as stated before, that I think Giuliani is crazier than a funhouse full of drunk chimps. But what I wonder about Hillary is: do Democrats really like her? Or do they just think that other people like her?

That, after all, was the main problem with John Kerry: he was a Democrat's notion of what a Republican wanted to vote for. After all, he served in 'Nam! I know of exactly one person who was really enthused about Kerry before he won the nomination — and that person worked for the Kerry campaign. Yet somehow, my friends were actually surprised when it turned out that no one else liked John Kerry any more than they did.

I get a similar lukewarm vibe about Hillary from many of the people I know. They themselves will vote for her in the general election because she's a Democrat. But the reasons that they offer that other people will vote for her are kind of lame. Like, she's female. Or she's a Clinton. Or . . . hey, have you noticed, she's a woman? Women love that. And they're half the population!

No one ever argues that they'll vote for her because she's got sound policy ideas and a winning personality, which kind of seem like the criteria Democrats ought to be using.

Megan McArdle, "Hail, Hillary!", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-10-11

QotD: Fred Thompson

I'm not sure what kind of reviews zombie candidate Fred Thompson is getting for his performance, but I'll tell you the one thing I like about him: He always has an expression on his face like he just walked out of the most-godawful state fair porta-potty on the hottest day of summer. If Dick Cheney's sneer is a smug, cowardly, Draco Malfoy turn of the lip, Thompson's is full-blown, immersive revulsion and barely constrained contempt for all that he can see, hear, taste, and smell.

So I like that about him. Everything else, not so much.

Nick Gillespie, "The President's Name Is Missing...", Hit and Run, 2007-10-11

MMP proposal defeated

Well, the election result was pretty much what I expected, no real surprise there. The referendum result was much more pleasant: resounding rejection of MMP:

At 8:15 a.m. ET Thursday, with more than 98 per cent of polls counted, the proposal had the support of 36.8 per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, 63.2 per cent of voters cast their ballots in favour of the existing first-past-the-post (FPTP) system.

Only five ridings, all of them in Toronto, showed a majority supporting MMP.

The MMP proposal required 60 per cent support to become the new electoral system. As well it had to win a majority in 64 ridings.

A citizens assembly was appointed by the previous Liberal government to study the issue. It recommended MMP to replace FPTP, which has been in place in Ontario for 215 years.

Huzzah!

Why Ron Paul's campaign bothers Republicans

David Weigel tries to explain to Guardian readers in the UK why Ron Paul's campaign upsets mainstream Republicans:

And all of this is happening in the context of a larger crisis in the Republican Party. The party of Gingrich and Reagan is arguably weaker than it has been at any time since the 1970s. Four years ago, when campaigns were tallying up their July through September fundraising totals, George Bush's campaign had raised almost $50m. This year the top four Republicans — Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain — raised a combined $35m. Giuliani led the pack with $11m, only a little more than twice as much as Paul. All of this while the top four Democrats — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson — raised $59m.

Put in that perspective, Paul's graduation from the fringes to a serious presidential campaign says as much about his party as it does about him. The old party of "small government" now supports enhancing the state's power to spy or detain prisoners indefinitely. A party with a long-running isolationist streak is becoming inhospitable for war doves — every Republican who votes against funding the Iraq war, Paul included, has a pro-war candidate challenging him for re-election in 2008. In this climate, with the party so fraught and fractured, a colorful libertarian is starting to gain some steam. Why is Washington so surprised?

Christian right announces tentative plans to elect Hillary Clinton

At least, that's what this proposal would really result in:

Alarmed at the chance that the Republican party might pick Rudolph Giuliani as its presidential nominee despite his support for abortion rights, a coalition of influential Christian conservatives is threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop him.

The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participants said. Almost everyone present expressed support for a written resolution that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

H/T to Brian Doherty.

QotD: Shibboleths of the 60's

I'm not unsympathetic to those who favor a constitutional amendment prohibiting all baby boomers from public office. It's amazing to me how many institutions remain entirely in thrall to the received wisdom of 40 years ago — scarcity of "resources", world "overpopulation", the growing "inequality" between the rich countries and the "Third World".

None of these things exist. The UN now says the planet's population will peak in mid-century, and in many parts of the developed world it's already in decline: the problem Germany faces, for example, is not "sustainable growth" but sustainable lack of growth. Meanwhile, the last three decades have seen the emergence of what Professor Xavier Sala-i-Martin calls "a new world middle class" made up of over 2.5 billion people in developing lands who now have a standard of living near enough that of the west. So about half the folks in the so-called "poor countries" are, in fact, doing pretty nicely. As Virginia Postrel put it, if you take the planet as a whole, in 1998 "the largest number of people earned about $8,000 — a standard of living equivalent to Portugal's."

Mark Steyn, "Thinking Globally", National Review, 2007-09-21

QotD: Private stupidities versus public ones

Personally, I'm on the record as believing that companies quite often do stupid things. The difference between companies and the government is that thanks to market discipline, companies that do stupid things eventually have to stop, because they run out of money. Government programs that don't work, on the other hand, have a seemingly indefinite shelf life. The US government seems to be doing almost every stupid thing it has ever done, and to be planning to continue doing those stupid things forever. In the past sixty years we've had three serious attempts that I can think of that even partially grappled with the problem of programs that weren't working: the Carter/Reagan deregulations; the Reagan tax simplification; and the Clinton welfare reform. Of those, the first is intact, the second has been gutted, and the third is slowly eroding. This is not a promising track record for people arguing that the government should do more stuff.

Megan McArdle, "Success is in the eye of the beholder", Asymmetrical Information, 2007-09-12